Canadian police say dead US rapist was a serial killer

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

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

Police say Srery may be responsible for other unsolved murders and sexual assaults in western Canada.

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

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

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

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

Dvorak and McQueen were in middle school in February 1976 when they disappeared while walking together in downtown Calgary. The following day, police said their bodies were found on Highway 1 west of Calgary.

Rehorek was a housekeeper who had recently moved from Ontario to Calgary for work. Police said her body was found in a ditch 22 kilometers (13.6 miles) west of Calgary in September 1976, also a day after she disappeared.

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

Superintendent Hall said if Srery were still alive he would be charged with murder over the four deaths.

Srery was an American citizen who was in Canada illegally at the time of the murders and had fled the United States after being charged with rape in California, police said.

He has an “extensive criminal record for sexual offenses” in the United States, including rape and kidnapping, said Alberta RCMP Inspector Breanne Brown.

After arriving in Calgary in 1975, Srery lived under several aliases and used fake IDs to apply for welfare, according to police.

He later moved to the lower mainland of British Columbia and lived there undetected by law enforcement until he was convicted of sexual assault in 1998 in New Westminster, a city southeast of Vancouver.

Srery served five years in prison for this crime and was deported back to the United States, where he was arrested again 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 in the rape of a 44-year-old woman in Coeur D’Alene, near the Idaho-Washington border.

The RCMP has asked for the public’s help in reconstructing Srery’s life in Canada, saying it is “particularly concerning” that he evaded police for more than 20 years, from his illegal entry to his arrest in British Columbia .

They also gave comfort to the families. “Identifying the perpetrator will not bring back Eva, Patsy, Melissa or Barbara,” said Superintendent Hall.

“But it is my true hope that their families will finally get answers to what happened to their loved ones all those years ago.”