RCMP link Calgary death to serial killer who died in prison

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RCMP have linked the deaths of four Calgary girls and women to a killer who died in prison while serving time for rape.

At a press conference Thursday at RCMP K Division headquarters in Edmonton, police said Gary Allen Sreri was in the Calgary area for a year between February 1976 and February 1977.

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The four victims were Eva Dvorak, 14, Patricia McQueen, 14, Melissa Rehorek, 20, and Barbara McLean, 19.

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Eva Dvorak and Patricia McQueen

Dvorak and McQueen were found dead around 11 a.m. on February 15, 1976, in the Happy Valley Underpass west of Calgary. They were last seen around midnight and appear to be heading towards the city centre. They left school together on February 12 and were seen visiting friends together before their deaths. During this time, McQueen's parents reported him missing.

An initial autopsy found no specific cause of death for either girl. According to an RCMP summary released Friday, they had abrasions on their faces, but both were completely covered and there were no obvious signs of sexual assault.

A post-mortem examination by Chief Medical Examiner John Butt determined the death was asphyxiation.

“Possibilities for homicide in this case include suffocation, suffocation, homicidal poisoning, vagus inhibition after asphyxiation, and rarer causes such as cyanide or carbon monoxide, which have already been ruled out,” his report said. But the deaths were classified as sudden deaths, not homicides.

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During the investigation, seminal fluid was found in the body of the girls.

Melissa Rehorek

Rehorek moved to Calgary in the spring of 1976 from Windsor, Ont. He lived at the YWCA downtown and, as was common in the 70s, hitchhiked for rides.

She was last seen by her roommates on the evening of September 15, 1976, and a bus driver recalled dropping her off west of Calgary. At 11 a.m. the next morning, his body was found in a ditch 22 km west of Calgary.

There were signs of a fight at the scene. Not far from his body was found a wallet with its contents intact.

Butt ruled the cause of death to be suffocation due to manual strangulation. Seminal fluid was also found in his body.

Barbara McLean

McLean, who moved to Calgary from Nova Scotia in September 1976, organized a cabaret on February 25, 1977 in a bar north of Calgary.

He was last seen leaving a bar around 2 a.m. on February 26. Just six hours later, his body was found outside the border in what was then the northern suburbs of the city.

Like the other three victims, Barbara was fully clothed, but her jacket was inside out. His fingertips showed evidence of the struggle leading up to his death.

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His death was also determined to be asphyxiation due to manual strangulation, and seminal fluid was also identified.

Finding the killer

In 2003, DNA evidence analysis revealed that the same criminal was responsible for the deaths of Rehorek and McLean.

DNA from McLean's case was retested in 2006 and 2012 without a match.

In 2022, evidence from the crime scene of Dvorak and McQueen was sent back for analysis, and in 2023, the DNA profile of the unidentified man was determined. That DNA matched DNA from the Rehorek and McLean cases.

The DNA was sent to Convergence Research Genetic Genealogy (IGG) and the RCMP eventually named the suspect. “Never been under investigation before,” they said.

The name that came up was Gary Allen Sreary.

The information sparked a cross-border investigation between Canadian and American authorities. RCMP learned that Sreri, born in 1942 in Oak Park, Illinois, was a “serial sex offender who victimized women in the United States before fleeing to Canada in the mid-1970s.”

The Mounties requested that Sreeri's DNA be tested against their DNA samples. On September 13 last year, it was confirmed that Sreeri's DNA matched the evidence collected at the crime scene.

Sreri died in an Idaho state prison serving a life sentence for rape.

One more time.

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