Canadian Police Link Decades-Old Murders to US Fugitive Gary Srery

Four unsolved killings from the 1970s have been attributed to Srery, who spent over two decades hiding in Canada after fleeing a string of crimes in the US.

Canadian police announced Friday that they have linked the deaths of four young women nearly 50 years ago to Gary Allen Srery, a now-deceased US fugitive who lived in Canada under aliases from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s.

Alberta Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Supt. Dave Hall stated that Srery could be tied to additional unsolved murders and sexual assaults in Western Canada and urged the public to provide any information that could connect him to other cases.

"We are now announcing that we have linked four previously unsolved homicides from the 1970s to a now deceased serial, sexual offender," Hall said at a news conference in Edmonton, Alberta.

Srery passed away in 2011 in an Idaho prison due to natural causes while serving a life sentence for sexual assault.

The breakthrough in the Canadian homicides came when authorities compared the killer's DNA with profiles on ancestry websites, leading them to a match with Srery, Hall explained.

He provided details of the four Canadian cases connected to Srery. In 1976, 14-year-olds Eva Dvorak and Patricia McQueen were spotted walking together in Calgary, Alberta, but disappeared. Their bodies were discovered the next day under a highway underpass outside the city.

The following spring, 20-year-old Melissa Rehorek relocated to Calgary for new opportunities. As a housekeeper living at the YMCA, she was last seen by a roommate before hitchhiking. Her body was found in a ditch in a township west of Calgary.

In 1977, Barbara MacLean, a 19-year-old from Nova Scotia who had moved to Calgary just six months earlier, vanished after leaving a hotel bar. Her body was found six hours later just outside the city.

Hall noted that the 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 samples did not exist initially.

Alberta RCMP Insp. Breanne Brown revealed that Srery had a lengthy criminal record involving forcible rape, kidnapping, and burglary when he escaped to Canada from California in 1974. He resided in Canada illegally until 1998 when he was apprehended for sexual assault in New Westminster, British Columbia.

Brown added that Srery used nine different aliases throughout his life and frequently changed his appearance, address, and vehicles. He acquired illegal identification and social assistance under assumed identities and led a transient lifestyle, working as a cook in Alberta from 1974 to 1979 and in Vancouver from 1979 until his arrest.

After being deported to the US in 2003, Srery was convicted of sexually motivated crimes in Idaho and sentenced to life in prison, where he remained until his death 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 furthering Srery's timeline in Canada," Brown stated.

Anyone with information that could connect Srery to other unsolved crimes is urged to contact the RCMP.