Canadian Police Identify Serial Killer Responsible for 1970s Murders After Nearly 50 Years
After nearly five decades of investigation, Canadian police have finally identified the serial killer responsible for the murders of four young women in the 1970s just outside Calgary, in Western Canada.
The killer, Gary Allen Srery, made little effort to hide his tracks, dumping the remains of his victims in different spots over the course of a year. The women were fully clothed, had been strangled, and DNA evidence revealed they had been sexually assaulted.
Srery, who had fled to Canada while out on bail in 1974 after being charged with rape in Los Angeles, died at 68 of natural causes in an Idaho prison in 2011, where he was serving a life sentence for a rape in that state. Authorities believe he may have killed other women in Canada and the United States.
Despite the brazenness of Srery’s crimes, there were few witnesses to the killings, which occurred in 1976 and 1977. The investigation dragged on for several decades, with four separate task forces combing through leads.
A breakthrough in the case came with the help of genetic genealogy, a forensic technique that uses DNA samples to identify relatives of a suspect. DNA from the killings of the four victims was used to link them to Srery.
Detectives are now piecing together a detailed timeline of Srery’s life, tracing his movements between 1979 and 1998. His violent history and transient lifestyle suggest to police that he may have committed other killings.
While Srery was never questioned in connection to the Calgary killings, he was convicted in Canada in another rape case in 1998 and deported to the U.S. in 2003.
The police provided relatives of the victims with a detailed presentation of their findings and what led them to zero in on Srery. Despite the closure, the grief of the families has never stopped.
Genetic genealogy has become a powerful tool for law enforcement in solving cold cases, but its use is limited in Canada due to the lack of labs capable of conducting the necessary work.
The perseverance of investigators over many years has allowed them to bring answers to the families of the four young women who were robbed of their futures by a serial killer who evaded justice for nearly half a century.
