Brian McDonald
Canadian police announced Friday that they have linked the deaths of two 14-year-old girls and two young women nearly 50 years ago to a deceased American fugitive who hid in Canada between the mid-1970s and the late 1970s. nineteen ninety.
Superintendent of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police of Alberta. Dave Hall said Friday that Gary Allen Srery may also be linked to other unsolved murders and sexual assaults in Western Canada and authorities are asking the public for more information that could link him to other unsolved cases.
“We are now announcing that we have linked four previously unsolved homicides in the 1970s to a now deceased serial sex offender,” Hall said at a news conference in Edmonton, Alberta.
Police released a video on social media about the four women while appealing for tips from the audience.
Srery died in 2011 in a state prison in Idaho while serving a life sentence for rape.
Hall said Srery was identified through the use of DNA and criminal databases that helped trace his family tree.
Alberta Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Hall said that in 1976, Eva Dvorak and Patricia McQueen were both 14-year-olds living in Calgary, Alberta, and attending elementary school. He said they were last seen walking together in downtown Calgary and that the next day their bodies were found lying in the road under an underpass west of the city.
He said 20-year-old Melissa Rehorek moved from Ontario to Calgary in search of new opportunities in the spring of 1976. He said at the time of her death, she was a housekeeper who lived at the YMCA of downtown Calgary and was last seen by a roommate before hitchhiking. Hall said the next day her body was located in a ditch in a municipality west of Calgary.
Hall said in 1977 Barbara MacLean was a 19-year-old Calgary resident from Nova Scotia who had moved west just six months earlier. Hall said MacLean worked at a local bank and was last seen leaving a hotel bar. He said her body was found six hours later on the outskirts of Calgary.
Hall said authorities at the time could not find a cause of death for the two 14-year-olds, but said the deaths of Rehorek and MacLean were attributed to strangulation.
Hall said that although semen from all four crime scenes was collected at the time, the technology did not exist at the time to develop profile DNA.
“If Srery were alive today, he would be 81 years old,” Hall said.
On a statement obtained by the Calgary HeraldMcQueen’s family said in part: “This evil monster has caused so much pain and suffering to countless families. He took a piece of each of us when he took our loved ones. We thank God he is no longer alive and can never harm anyone again.”
Alberta RCMP Insp. Breanne Brown said Srery had an extensive criminal record, including forcible rape, kidnapping and robbery, when he fled California to Canada in 1974. He lived illegally in Canada until he was arrested for sexual assault in New Westminster, British Columbia, in 1998. she said.
Brown said Srery used nine different aliases during his life and frequently changed his appearance, residence and vehicles. She said he obtained illegal identification and welfare through aliases and lived a transient lifestyle while occasionally working as a cook in Calgary from 1974 to 1979 and then in the Vancouver, British Columbia area from 1979 until his arrest and conviction for assault. sex in New Westminster in 1998.
Brown said Srery was deported to the U.S. in 2003, where he was convicted in Idaho of sexually motivated crimes and sentenced to life in prison.
At his sentencing in 2009, one of Srery’s victims gave emotional testimony and demanded that he look at her while she spoke in court, which Spokesperson review reported.
“You made me have a stroke, because of the stress and the damage you caused me in that bathroom. Do you understand me? A stroke, which caused irreversible damage to my entire left side,” she said in court, according to the newspaper. “You have wronged me…and I cannot be made whole. There has to be a life sentence for you, just as I am having to pay a life sentence for committing no crime.”
Srery died in prison in 2011.
“We know that Srery’s criminality spanned decades across multiple jurisdictions and numerous aliases. Alberta RCMP believe there are more victims and we are asking the public to help schedule S in Canada,” Brown said.
“It is particularly concerning that Srery appears to have had no meaningful contact with law enforcement agencies in Canada since entering the country illegally in the mid-1970s until he was arrested, charged and convicted of the 1998 New Westminster attack.”
