TORONTO (AP) — Canadian police revealed Friday that they have connected the deaths of four young women from nearly 50 years ago to a now-deceased U.S. fugitive who lived in Canada from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s.
Alberta Royal Canadian Mounted Police Supt. Dave Hall stated that Gary Allen Srery might also be linked to other unsolved murders and sexual assaults in Western Canada. Authorities are seeking more information from the public that could tie Srery to additional cases.
“We are now announcing that we have linked four previously unsolved homicides from the 1970s to a now-deceased serial, sexual offender,” Hall announced at a news conference in Edmonton, Alberta.
Srery died in 2011 in an Idaho state prison of natural causes while serving a life sentence for sexual assault.
A breakthrough in the Canadian homicides occurred when authorities compared the killer’s DNA with profiles on ancestry websites, eventually matching it to Srery, Hall explained.
Hall detailed the four Canadian cases connected to Srery.
He mentioned that in 1976, Eva Dvorak and Patricia McQueen, both 14, were living in Calgary, Alberta and attending junior high. They were last seen walking together in downtown Calgary. The next day, their bodies were discovered under a highway underpass west of the city.
In the spring of 1976, 20-year-old Melissa Rehorek relocated to Calgary from Ontario seeking new opportunities. At the time of her death, she was living at the YMCA in downtown Calgary and was last seen by a roommate before hitchhiking. The following day, her body was found in a ditch in a township west of Calgary.
In 1977, Barbara MacLean, a 19-year-old from Nova Scotia living in Calgary, was working at a local bank and was last seen leaving a hotel bar. Her body was found six hours later just outside Calgary.
Authorities did not determine a cause of death for the two 14-year-olds at the time, but Rehorek and MacLean’s deaths were attributed to strangulation.
Semen was collected from all four crime scenes, but the technology to match DNA did not exist at the time, Hall noted.
“Were Srery alive today he would be 81 years old,” Hall remarked.
Alberta RCMP Insp. Breanne Brown indicated that Srery had an extensive criminal record, including forcible rape, kidnapping, and burglary, when he fled to Canada from California in 1974. He lived in Canada illegally until his arrest for sexual assault in New Westminster, British Columbia in 1998.
Srery used nine different aliases and frequently changed his appearance, residence, and vehicles, Brown said. He acquired illegal identification and social assistance through aliases and lived a transient lifestyle, occasionally working as a cook in Calgary, Alberta from 1974 to 1979, and in Vancouver, British Columbia from 1979 until his arrest and conviction in 1998 in New Westminster.
Srery was deported to the U.S. in 2003, where he was convicted in Idaho for sexually motivated crimes and sentenced to life in prison. He died there in 2011, Brown added.
“We know that Srery’s criminality spanned decades over multiple jurisdictions and numerous aliases. The Alberta RCMP believe there are more victims and we are asking the public to assist in furthering Srery’s timeline in Canada,” Brown said.
