Las Vegas Metropolitan Police announced Friday a positive ID for human remains found 55 years ago.

The remains of Anna Sylvia Just were identified last week, after 55 years. (Image: National Missing and Unidentified Persons System)

Anna Sylvia Just was a 27-year-old stenographer and an outpatient at a mental hospital in Calgary, Canada when she disappeared in August 1966.

In March 1968, her belongings — including her purse, suitcase, underwear, bouse and a bloodstained cloth — were found in the desert south of Las Vegas, prompting then-Clark County Sheriff Ralph Lamb to tell newspaper reporters he believed she was murdered.

During the initial investigation, it was discovered that Calgary police already issued an active missing persons report for Just.

On Friday, Las Vegas police reported that “several reports suggested she was an acquaintance of Thomas B. Hanley and had gone to him for money.” They said “it was alleged that Hanley had his associates drive Anna out to the desert where they murdered her.”

Who Was Thomas Hanley?

Thomas B. Hanley photographed in a 1977 mug shot. (Image: Las Vegas Metropolitan Police)

Hanley was a notorious organized crime figure and labor leader who led the Federation of Casino and Gaming Employees and the Gaming and Office Employee Union. His leadership was marked by corruption, corruption and violence.

Though not a formal member of a traditional crime family, Hanley was linked to the Binion family and the Midwest mob, and used bombings, beatings and murder to enforce union compliance.

Hanley was the prime suspect in the 1954 murder of James Hartley and the 1966 murder of Ralph Alsup, both of whom were union officials found buried in shallow graves. Hanley was never charged with Hartley’s death and the charges against him in the Alsup case were dropped before it went to trial.

Hanley was finally brought to justice in 1977, when he and his son, Andrew “Gramby” Hanley, were convicted of kidnapping and murdering Al Bramlet, the head of Nevada’s AFL-CIO and Culinary Union Local 226.

According to prosecutors, Bramlet had hired them to bomb non-union businesses but refused to pay for the jobs when they weren’t completed. That decision cost him his life.

Just-ice at Last

On June 7, 1970, the remains of a female were found by children playing in the desert about a mile from where Just’s belongings were found. The Clark County Coroner’s Office ruled the death a homicide due to a depressed fracture to the skull.

Las Vegas police never connected Just’s disappearance to the remains found two years later, however, because the remains were unidentifiable and genetic fingerprinting didn’t become available to police until 1986.

In October 2024, Calgary Cold Case Missing Persons detectives reached out to Las Vegas police about Just, and Metro provided the name of the person who collected her personal belongings in 1968.

It was Just’s biological sister, whom Calgary detectives located and collected DNA from. She was a genetic match for the remains found by the children in 1970.

Hanley died in 1979 of chronic hepatitis at age 63, while in custody at Valley Hospital in Las Vegas.

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