Canadian police say dead American rapist was serial killer

A man who died in a US prison where he was serving time for rape has also been identified as a serial killer.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said Gary Allen Srery, who died in 2011 in an Idaho prison, strangled four girls or women in the 1970s in Alberta.

Srery may be responsible for more unsolved homicides and sexual assaults in Western Canada, police said.

The victims were Eva Dvorak, 14, Patricia “Patsy” McQueen, 14, Melissa Rehorek, 20, and Barbara MacLean, 19.

All four lived in Calgary and disappeared between 1976 and 1977. Their deaths were investigated at the time as either suspicious or homicides, but remained unsolved for nearly half a year. century.

“For nearly 50 years, the Alberta RCMP have exhausted all investigative means in an attempt to identify the person responsible for these tragic deaths,” Superintendent David Hall said at a news conference Friday.

A suspect was ultimately identified using advanced DNA technology, which allowed investigators to construct a family tree using data from public DNA sites and samples found on the victims’ bodies.

Eva and Patricia were in college in February 1976 when they disappeared while walking together in downtown Calgary. The next day, police said their bodies were found on Highway 1, west of Calgary.

Ms. Rehorek was a housekeeper who had recently moved from Ontario to work in Calgary. Police said her body was found in September 1976 in a ditch 22 km west of Calgary, also a day after she disappeared.

Police said Ms MacClean, who worked at a local food bank at the time of her death, was last seen in February 1977 returning home after a night out at a bar with friends. Her body was found six hours later, just outside Calgary’s city limits.

Supt Hall said if Srery were still alive he would face murder charges for all four deaths.

Srery was a U.S. citizen who was in Canada illegally at the time of the killings, having fled the United States after being accused of rape in California, police said.

He already had “a lengthy criminal record in the United States for sexual offenses,” including rape and kidnapping, said Alberta RCMP inspector Breanne Brown.

After arriving in Calgary in 1975, police say Srery lived under several aliases and used false identification to apply for welfare.

He then moved to the Lower Mainland of British Columbia and lived there undetected by law enforcement until he was convicted of sexual assault in New Westminster, a town south of east of Vancouver, in 1998.

Srery served five years in prison for the crime and was deported to the United States, where he was rearrested in Idaho and sentenced to life in prison.

According to a 2008 news article from an NBC affiliate in Idaho, Srery was charged and later convicted of raping a 44-year-old woman in Coeur D’Alene, near the Idaho-Washington border. .

The RCMP have called on the public to help piece together Srery’s life in Canada, saying it is “particularly concerning” that he eluded police for more than 20 years, from the time he entered the country illegally until upon his arrest in British Columbia.

They also offered comfort to families. “Identifying the offender does not bring back Eva, Patsy, Melissa or Barbara,” Superintendent Hall said.

“But I sincerely hope that their families can finally have answers about what happened to their loved ones all those years ago.”