TORONTO (AP) — Canadian police said Friday they have linked the deaths of four young men nearly 50 years ago to a deceased American fugitive who hid in Canada from the mid-1970s until the late 1990s. .
Superintendent of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police of Alberta. Dave Hall said Friday that Gary Allen Srery may also be linked to 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.
Srery died in 2011 in a state prison in Idaho of natural causes while serving a life sentence for sexual assault.
The break in homicides in Canada came when authorities began comparing the killer’s DNA with profiles on ancestry websites, which eventually led them to a match with Srery, Hall said.
Hall provided details of the four Canadian cases linked to Srery.
He 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.
In the spring of 1976, 20-year-old Melissa Rehorek moved from Ontario to Calgary in search of new opportunities, Hall said. He said at the time of her death she was a domestic worker living at the YMCA in 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.
In 1977, Barbara MacLean was a 19-year-old Calgary resident from Nova Scotia who had moved west just six months earlier, Hall said. He 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.
Semen was collected from all four crime scenes, but the technology did not exist at the time to find DNA matches, Hall said.
“If Srery were alive today, he would be 81 years old,” Hall said.
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.
Srery used nine different aliases during his life and frequently changed his appearance, residence and vehicles, Brown said. She said he obtained illegal identification and welfare through aliases and lived a transient lifestyle. He occasionally worked as a cook in Calgary, Alberta, from 1974 to 1979, and then in the Vancouver, British Columbia, area from 1979 until his arrest and conviction for sexual assault in New Westminster in 1998, she 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, where he died in 2011, Brown said.
“We know that Srery’s criminality spanned decades, across multiple jurisdictions and numerous aliases. The Alberta RCMP believes there are more victims and we are asking the public to help promote Srery’s timeline in Canada,” Brown said.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
