NEW DELHI: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Alberta announced on Friday that they have connected the deaths of four young women from nearly 50 years ago to a deceased US fugitive named Gary Allen Srery. Srery, who passed away in 2011 while serving a life sentence for rape in an Idaho state prison, had been hiding in Canada from the mid-1970s until the late 1990s.
Superintendent Dave Hall suggested that Srery might also be connected to other
unsolved murders
and sexual assaults in Western Canada, and authorities are seeking public assistance to potentially link him to additional cold cases.
"We are now announcing that we have linked four previously unsolved homicides from the 1970s to a now deceased serial, sexual offender," Hall stated during a press conference held in Edmonton, Alberta. Srery was identified through the use of
DNA evidence
and criminal databases that helped trace his family tree.
In 1976, Eva Dvorak and Patricia McQueen, both 14-year-old junior high students living in Calgary, Alberta, were last seen walking together downtown. The following day, their bodies were discovered under a highway underpass west of the city.
That same spring, 20-year-old Melissa Rehorek, who had recently moved to Calgary from Ontario for new opportunities, was working as a housekeeper at the downtown YMCA. She was last seen by her roommate before going hitchhiking, and her body was found the next day in a ditch west of Calgary.
In 1977, Barbara MacLean, a 19-year-old Calgary resident originally from Nova Scotia, had been working at a local bank for six months. She was last seen leaving a hotel bar, and her body was discovered six hours later just outside the city.
While the cause of death for the two 14-year-olds was not determined at the time, Rehorek and MacLean's deaths were attributed to strangulation. Semen was collected from all four crime scenes, but the technology to develop DNA profiles did not exist then.
Inspector Breanne Brown of the Alberta RCMP revealed 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 throughout his life and frequently changed his appearance, residence, and vehicles. He obtained illegal identification and social assistance through aliases and lived a transient lifestyle while occasionally working as a cook in Calgary from 1974 to 1979 and then in the Vancouver area from 1979 until his arrest in 1998.
After being deported to the USin 2003, Srery was convicted in Idaho for sexually motivated crimes and sentenced to life in prison, where he ultimately died in 2011. "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 further S's timeline in Canada," Brown said, expressing concern that Srery appears to have had no meaningful contact with Canadian law enforcement agencies from the mid-1970s until his arrest in 1998.
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