RCMP release names of four Calgary women slain by serial killer in 1970s

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The now-dead serial killer responsible for the homicides of four Calgary women and girls in the 1970s could also be linked to many more deaths in Canada and the United States, Alberta RCMP revealed Friday.

“Between February 1976 and February 1977, four young females were found deceased outside of Calgary, Alberta. For 50 years, their murders went unsolved,” the Alberta RCMP historical homicide unit said in documents released Friday. “As of 2024, all four homicides have been linked to one serial killer.”

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Mounties have identified American Gary Allen Srery as the killer of Eva Dvorak, 14, Patricia McQueen, 14, Melissa Ann Rehorek, 20, and Barbara MacLean, 19. Police believe the crimes were sexually motivated.

And it’s believed Srery could be connected to more slayings, police said during media briefings Friday, pleading with the public to share information that could connect him to additional killings on both sides of the international border.

Particularly worrisome for Staff Sgt. Travis McKenzie, head of the Alberta RCMP historical homicide unit, is the period from 1974 and 1996 — when the convicted serial rapist was in Canada and dropped off police radar.

“He has a consistent pattern of regularly committing sexual-based offences (in the U.S.), getting charged, getting convicted,” McKenzie told a news conference in Edmonton. “And then when he comes to Canada, it’s almost like he disappears. So our biggest concern is there are other victims out there we don’t know about.”

“It pains us that he’s dead. I’d love nothing more than to be standing here before you and tell you we just put handcuffs on this guy,” he added. “But, unfortunately, that’s not the way this one ends.”

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Calgary police officers began working with RCMP in 2021 to shed light on a number of historical homicides, including those of Dvorak, McQueen, Rehorek and MacLean.

The officers assigned to the cold cases were especially driven to solve them, Calgary police Insp. Kevin Forsen said, in light of advancements in the use of genetics as an investigative tool.

“They couldn’t accept the fact that they might have skills or knowledge that would help solve these files and not do something for it,” Forsen said during a media briefing at Calgary police headquarters on Friday.

And while it’s not currently believed Srery is linked to other historical homicides in Calgary, that idea hasn’t been dismissed.

“We are very much alive to the fact that that’s a possibility,” Forsen said.

Serial killer was cross-border transient with long criminal history

Srery was born in Oak Park, Ill., in 1942 and moved to California with his family in the mid 1950s.

He had no steady employment and lived a transient lifestyle, taking on odd jobs as a cook and a salesman, according to information released by Mounties.

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“He had an extensive criminal record,” RCMP said. “He died (in 2011) while serving a life sentence for rape in an Idaho state prison.”

Srery lived illegally in Canada at the time of murders, calling Calgary home from 1975 to 1979, police said.

He fled the United States in 1974 after posting bail on a rape charge in California. He was also charged with a sex crime in New Westminster, B.C., in 1999 and sent back to the U.S. after serving a five-year sentence.

He used a number of aliases during his time in Canada, RCMP said, known over the decades as Michael James Costello, David Blackwell, Travis Blackwell, Willy Blackmen/Blackman, Rex Edward Long, Willy Long, Willy Rex Long and Gary Delorme.

He was also known to use the surname Morraele and the given names Peter, Ricky, Gerry, James and Jamie. At times, he identified himself using alternative spellings of his real name.

Police share details of Calgary historic homicides

Srery’s four confirmed victims in Calgary ranged in age from 14 to 20.

Eva Dvorak and Patricia McQueen, who were only 14 years old, were discovered lifeless, arm-in-arm under the Happy Valley underpass just outside Calgary city limits on Feb. 15, 1976.

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The girls had last been seen around midnight and appeared to be walking toward downtown. They had left school together on Feb. 12, and in the days before their deaths had been seen visiting friends together. During this time, McQueen’s parents had reported her missing.

An initial autopsy ruled there was no obvious cause of death for either girl. They had abrasions on their faces, but were both fully clothed and there were no overt signs of sexual assault, according to the RCMP brief released Friday.

Follow-up examination by chief medical examiner John Butt revealed the manner of death to be asphyxiation.

“The possibilities of homicide in this case, includes strangulation, smothering, homicidal poisoning, vagan inhibition secondary to an attempt at strangulation, and rarer cause, such as cyanide or carbon monoxide that has already been ruled out,” his report states. But the deaths were categorized as sudden deaths, not homicides.

Investigation did find seminal fluid on the girls’ bodies.

Melissa Ann Rehorek, a 20-year-old chambermaid, was found murdered, her body dumped in a ditch about 20 kilometres west of Calgary near the Trans-Canada Highway on Sept. 16, 1976.

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Rehorek had moved to Calgary in the spring of 1976 from Windsor, Ont. She had been living at the downtown YWCA, and, as was common in the ’70s, hitchhiked to get around.

She was last seen by her roommates in the evening of Sept. 15, 1976, and a bus driver recalls dropping her off in west Calgary. Her body was found just before 11 a.m. the next morning.

Signs of a struggle were noted at the scene. Her purse, its contents untouched, was found not far from her body.

Butt ruled the cause of death as asphyxiation due to manual strangulation. Seminal fluid was also found on her body.

Five months later, Barbara Jean MacLean, 19, was found strangled beside a gravel road near 80th Avenue and 6th Street N.E. MacLean — who had only been living in Calgary for a few months after moving here from Nova Scotia in September 1976 — had reportedly had an argument with her boyfriend after closing time at the Highland Hotel Tavern and stormed off in search of a ride home.

Like the other three victims, MacLean was found fully clothed, though her jacket was inside out. Her fingertips showed evidence of a struggle before her death.

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Her death was also ruled to be caused by asphyxiation due to manual strangulation, and seminal fluid was also detected.

Investigators find link between victims and serial killer

In 2003, analysis of DNA evidence showed the same offender was responsible for the deaths of Rehorek and MacLean.

The DNA from MacLean’s case was re-tested in 2006 and 2012 without a match.

With the emergence of investigative genetic genealogy in 2018, the Calgary Police Service began exploring its use as an investigative tool for current and historical investigations, working alongside RCMP, said city police Insp. Forsen.

In 2022, evidence from Dvorak and McQueen’s crime scene was resubmitted for analysis, and in 2023 an unknown male DNA profile was identified. This DNA matched the DNA from the Rehorek and MacLean cases.

The DNA was sent to Convergence Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG), and RCMP finally had a suspect name — one they say had “never surfaced in the investigation before.”

The name that came up was Gary Allen Srery.

That information sparked a cross-border investigation between Canadian and American authorities. RCMP learned Srery was a “serial sexual offender who had victimized women in the United States before fleeing to Canada in the mid-1970s.”

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“In February of 2023, with the assistance of convergence investigative genetic genealogy, the CPS historical homicide team was able to develop the investigative hypothesis that Gary Srery was the likely culprit for these homicides,” Forsen said.

Mounties requested that Srery’s DNA be tested against their DNA samples. Last Sept. 13, it was confirmed that Srery’s DNA matched evidence collected at the scenes.

‘Forever grateful that they never gave up on the girls’

In an interview in 2011, Melissa Ann Rehorek’s brother, Jim Rehorek, told the Calgary Herald: “I gave up a long time ago that they would ever really find anybody . . . After a while you start to think ‘What are the odds?’ ”

But with Friday’s revelations from Alberta RCMP about who killed Rehorek, McQueen, Dvorak and MacLean, the victims’ families expressed relief and gratitude.

“We would like to thank the team of investigators who have worked to find the person responsible for these crimes,” the Rehorek family said in a statement shared by the RCMP.

Similarly, the McQueen family had believed they would never fully learn what happened five decades ago.

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“We would like to thank from the bottom of our hearts the team of individuals who worked so many days and countless hours on solving this cold case,” the McQueens said. “Without them we would still not know today what happened to our sister Patsy (Patricia) and her friend Eva. We will be forever grateful and thankful that they never gave up on the girls.

“This evil monster has caused so much pain and suffering for countless families. He took a piece of everyone of us when he took our loved ones. We thank God that he is no longer alive and can never harm anyone else again.”

Meanwhile, MacLean’s family expressed hope it would find some “measure of peace in the coming days” given the new information about her death.

“The pain of losing Barbara so tragically has been a constant presence in our lives, but recent developments have finally brought us answers to questions that we’ve had to live with all these years,” her family said.

And the Dvorak family thanked police investigators for their dedication.

“It does help in providing us with some answers to our long unknown questions and giving us some closure,” the Dvorak family said.

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Retired Calgary homicide Det. George Bushell said during his time in the unit, which he joined in 1989, there weren’t any cold-case murder investigations so he would not have been involved in looking into the four victims’ killings.

He said with six officers and a high murder rate at the time, there just weren’t the resources to investigate historical homicides.

But Bushell said as a former homicide investigator, he’s always pleased to see such cases solved, even after half a century.

“There’s a lot of satisfaction regardless of when you retired. If you served with these units, it never leaves you,” said Bushell, who finished with the Calgary Police Service 23 years ago.

“Unsolved cases haunt you.”

— With files from Jonny Wakefield, Hiren Mansukhani, Kevin Martin, Monica Zurowski, Mary-Ellen Southwick, Steve Jenkinson and Ricky Leong

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