- today
In the late 1970’s, there was a series of mysterious deaths. First, two jr. high girls were found in an underpass west of Calgary. Seven months later, another young woman was found in a ditch, beaten and strangled to death, and just months after that, a fourth woman was found strangled to death. For decades, their families searched for answers to no avail. Join senior crime reporter Nancy Hixt as she shares how a team of cold case investigators uncovered shocking evidence nearly 50 years later that led them to a serial killer.
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00:00This program is rated 14 plus and contains scenes of violence and mature subject matter.
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00:15Their bodies were located very close together, almost like they were in place there.
00:18There was never a complete answer how the girls died.
00:25Two hunters discover her body lying inside of the ditch.
00:29There were signs that Melissa would have put up a struggle.
00:34The cause of death was manual strangulation.
00:37For nearly 50 years, investigators did not give up in their pursuit to identify the man responsible for these murders.
00:43We've identified a serial killer.
00:45This man was the kind of the poster boy for a sexual predator.
00:50He used at least nine different aliases during his lifetime.
00:54I can't help but keep thinking, even to this day, how many do we not know about?
00:59Welcome to Crime Beat.
01:03I'm Anthony Robart.
01:05In the late 1970s, a series of mysterious deaths left families and police searching for answers.
01:13Decades later, a team of tenacious cold case investigators took over using the latest forensic techniques.
01:20But no one was prepared for the horrors they discovered.
01:26Here now is Nancy Hickst with Uncovering a Serial Killer.
01:31Thursday, February 12th, 1976 was a typically snowy and cold winter day.
01:42Inside a southeast Calgary junior high school, the weekend seemed far away for best friends Eva Dvorak and Patsy McQueen.
01:51The teenagers skipped class, hid out in the girls' washroom, and cracked open a bottle of alcohol.
01:58The principal had caught them.
02:01She phoned the parents to come and pick up the girls because they were getting expelled and going home.
02:06They knew that they were going to be punished.
02:08Yeah, we'd get grounded for like a month.
02:11And Patsy and Eva went out the back door and left the school before Mom and Dad got there.
02:18We were phoning friends to see if we could find her anywhere.
02:23But back then, everybody was so tight that nobody would tell you anything either, right?
02:27Because they didn't want to get the girls in trouble.
02:29Their families tried not to panic.
02:33They figured the girls would show up later that night.
02:37Even if we did do something wrong and went and stayed at somebody's place, it would be just for that night.
02:46That's what we were all hoping for, that she would just come to one of our houses.
02:50And that didn't happen.
02:52I know Mom and Dad were up most of the night.
02:54The police were alerted.
02:56They showed up at the school, like into the classroom where Patsy and Eva were.
03:02And they asked everybody if what they had heard, if they knew where the girls were going to be, what was happening.
03:09And that's how they found out about the party.
03:12There was a party on a Friday night.
03:15And my brothers went there.
03:16But by the time my brothers got there, she was no longer there.
03:20Saturday came and went.
03:22And Eva and Patsy's families still hadn't heard from either of them.
03:27So panic did set in, and I felt in my heart something terrible happened to her.
03:34We all got called on Sunday morning, and we were all just told to come to my parents' house.
03:40At that moment, I knew something was very wrong.
03:43We felt it, that something bad had happened to her.
03:46My father's brother was one of the detectives that came to the house to tell my dad.
03:54The officer told them Eva and Patsy had been found dead that morning, west of the city.
04:00Just chaos and cries.
04:05I've never seen my parents, my mom, cry like that in my whole life.
04:10Everybody's screaming, like we couldn't believe that that actually happened to her.
04:15That she was gone.
04:16Eva and Patsy were found near an area they'd visited many times with their families to camp or picnic.
04:28But how Eva and Patsy got to the Happy Valley underpass, or how they died, was a mystery.
04:35This is a well-traveled road even back in 1976, and there was actually a Calgary Police Service officer
04:43had actually driven through that area on a completely unrelated call.
04:48He was actually looking for deer that were reported to be in the area and on the road.
04:52So we know that he drove by this area at 10.15 in the morning,
04:56and the girls were found by just another passing motorist at 10.50 in the morning.
05:01So it's a very tight timeline from when we know for a fact the girls weren't there,
05:06and when they actually were found by a motorist.
05:08Their bodies were located very close together, almost, you know, when you look at the pictures,
05:12almost, you know, cuddled together.
05:15They were fully clothed at the time, although some of their clothing did appear to be somewhat disheveled,
05:21almost like they'd been placed there.
05:23A full-scale investigation was immediately launched into who were these girls,
05:28where did they come from, how did they end up here.
05:31And, of course, how and why did they die.
05:34They located a witness who recognized the girls and actually had interactions with them
05:39up to the point where they disappeared.
05:42They were able to confirm that the girls were in the Englewood area
05:45walking towards the downtown core of Calgary on 9th Avenue and 12th Street Southeast.
05:51The witness reported seeing Eva and Patsy alive at about 12 a.m. on February 15th,
05:59approximately 10 hours before they were found dead.
06:03But investigators were at a loss to determine what happened during those 10 hours.
06:09autopsies failed to give police any further insight.
06:14The medical examiner, he's still alive today, Dr. John Butts.
06:19They actually examined them twice and they could not find any type of cause or manner of death.
06:27They had some theories.
06:28They believed that could it have been an intentional or unintentional drug overdose.
06:34I remember there was some difficulty establishing the cause of death.
06:41We thought originally that it was a toxicologically related death.
06:46That is, by some chemical substance that they had perhaps even willingly ingested.
06:55Later on that year, in September 20th of 1976, they actually held a coroner's inquiry,
07:02which they held before a jury to try and see if they could have all the information known
07:06at the time reanalyzed to see if they could determine that manner of cause of death.
07:10At the end, the medical examiner determined that the cause of death would be asphyxia,
07:16but they could never put on any type of report what would have caused the asphyxia.
07:21I can tell you this, asphyxia, particularly smothering, is a difficult diagnosis to make.
07:29Undetermined means that it's not known whether it's a suicide, an accident, or a homicide.
07:35And so that's a good category for the deaths.
07:38But for Eva and Patsy's families, it wasn't enough.
07:43Well, we did have so many questions.
07:46But they always gave us so much runaround.
07:50Like, maybe they were suffocated, maybe they were this, maybe they were that.
07:55Nobody could ever give us an answer.
07:58Like, there was never a complete answer how the girls died.
08:03Mom and Dad always knew there was more to it.
08:05Always.
08:08In the spring of 1976, wanderlust led a young woman to move west from Ontario.
08:2820-year-old Melissa Rohorek had always been drawn to the splendor of Banff and the Rockies.
08:36So she packed up to live just over an hour away from endless mountain adventures.
08:41She was working, she was a housekeeper at a local hotel, she was staying at the YWCA, but she loved to travel and she loved to explore things.
08:51And she had a fascination with just kind of heading out and just being on her own.
08:55She was absolutely known to be an avid hitchhiker.
08:59She was even known that she liked being picked up by truck drivers.
09:04She kept a journal of her interactions and her adventures that she would have while she was out hitchhiking as she liked to do.
09:12A few months later, on the evening of September 15th, 1976, Melissa finished her housekeeping shift and made plans to leave town for her days off.
09:24From what she told her friends at the YWCA was that she was excited to go just adventure west of town.
09:34She took a bus to the western edge of the city, close to the Trans-Canada Highway, where she could easily hitch a ride to Banff.
09:44That was the last time Melissa Rohorek was seen alive.
09:49It's the following morning, it's September 16th, two hunters are actually in the area about 22 kilometres west of the city,
10:02when they actually discover her body lying inside of the ditch.
10:07The ditch was a little bit higher than most typical gravel roads with a long, steep embankment,
10:13but she was lying there by herself with her purse about 30 feet away.
10:16Police said the circumstances were suspicious.
10:21There was signs on this gravel road that Melissa would have put up a struggle,
10:27and what I mean by that is they could see footprints in the gravel and in the dirt that looked like two people were fighting, right?
10:36So like dragged foot impressions, multiple different directions.
10:40An autopsy was completed, and the cause of death was deemed to be asphyxia from manual strangulation.
10:49Samples were also gathered for forensic testing.
10:53So the forensic evidence that they're looking for at the time would be the seminal fluid
10:56that they're obtaining from Melissa's clothing and also through swabs off of her body.
11:02At that time, there was no DNA testing, and despite an exhaustive investigation, no suspects were identified.
11:11A little over five months later, police were called to an eerily similar scene.
11:22The area looks much different now, running parallel to the main north-south highway in the city of Calgary.
11:30In 1977, it was not yet developed and was north of the city limits.
11:36The man who found her was walking her dog, which we learned was a common activity.
11:43That's what would take people to the place back in the day before they'd finish the roads,
11:47but it was just a sad, cold gravel pit.
11:51She was fully clothed.
11:52Her jacket was also found to be inside out.
11:55The cause of death was manual strangulation.
11:58She had marks and abrasions consistent with being involved in a physical struggle or a fight.
12:03You know, it looked like she'd been punched in the mouth.
12:07It looked like she had wounds on her fingers, probably of her trying to fight off her attacker.
12:14There was no obvious signs of sexual assault, meaning there was no wounds or injuries to her body that would suggest that.
12:23But there was, once again, the presence of seminal fluid.
12:26The victim was identified as 19-year-old Barbara McLean.
12:30Barbara McLean, a young girl from Nova Scotia, you know, she moves out here in September of 1976.
12:38She comes out to Calgary.
12:40She gets a job working at a local bank downtown.
12:43She gets a boyfriend.
12:45And she just starts living her life in the city.
12:49Police retraced her steps.
12:52She ended up going to the Highlander Bar on February 25, 1977.
12:57She was there with her boyfriend and friends.
13:01It was a good night.
13:02But it ended up going downhill a bit.
13:05She got into a verbal argument with her boyfriend at the time, which led to her, you know, basically walking out of the cabaret that they were attending that night at the Highlander.
13:17That area has changed a lot over the years.
13:21But there's a Home Depot there now.
13:22But back in 1977, it would have been a completely different feel, completely different environment.
13:28The bustling TransCanada Highway was at that time a much quieter thoroughfare.
13:35Witness accounts varied.
13:37Some said Barbara walked off.
13:39Others thought she got into a cab.
13:42Hundreds of taxi cab drivers were interviewed trying to figure out that did one of them pick up Barbara?
13:48In the end, they could never conclusively say that a taxi cab had anything to do with Barbara's death.
13:55An autopsy revealed Barbara McLean died from asphyxiation by manual strangulation.
14:02The same manner as Melissa Rohorek.
14:05So Barbara and Melissa's cases, right from the moment that Barbara's body was found,
14:15investigators immediately thought that they were linked to one another.
14:18There were so many similarities that it was their investigational theory from the onset
14:24that the person responsible for Melissa's death was, in fact, the same person related to Barbara.
14:30Investigators gathered forensic evidence from both cases.
14:35But again, technology didn't exist to develop a DNA profile of the killer.
14:41Hundreds of persons of interest were looked at, but no viable suspects were identified.
14:47The murderers of Melissa Rohorek and Barbara McLean went cold.
14:53Welcome back to Crime Beat.
15:07Between 1976 and 1977, four young women were found dead, their bodies dumped on the outskirts of Calgary.
15:16Two were deemed undetermined deaths.
15:18The other two were homicides.
15:20And we would be nearly 50 years before there was a break in the case.
15:24And the truth was so much worse than anyone imagined.
15:30Here again is Nancy Hickst with Uncovering a Serial Killer.
15:36So we're just days away from the anniversary, eh?
15:46Yeah.
15:48Over the years, countless cold case investigators have looked into the murders of Melissa Rohorek and Barbara McLean.
15:56They've revisited each crime scene and reviewed even the most minute details.
16:02These trees would have changed, right?
16:05All these trees are new growth poplars.
16:08There's lots of bushes and shrubs.
16:10All the growth is new, but the road itself, I mean, like, literally, like, we're standing on the same gravel road, you know, that she was found in.
16:18Melissa's roommates knew that she was heading out for the weekend, and she had talked to them that she was planning to head out to the mountains.
16:24More than likely, she was going to hitchhike because that was her method of travel when she was kind of heading off on her own.
16:30And then, you know, 22 kilometers directly west is where we find her on this road.
16:3626 years after the two murders, advancements in science finally confirmed what police had always suspected.
16:44In 2003, the DNA samples that were recovered from Melissa and Barbara were tested, and they were both confirmed to be an exact genetic match to one unknown male offender.
17:00So what that tells us is the same person who had left their seminal fluid on Melissa was the same one with Barbara.
17:07We were looking for one person.
17:08But the killer continued to elude investigators.
17:14Despite having his DNA, his identity remained a mystery.
17:18And it makes you start wondering, why don't we?
17:20What happened to this person?
17:22How has it been decades without this person ending up on our national database for DNA?
17:29And it is, it's disheartening.
17:33But it keeps the investigators focused and still wanting to drive the file forward.
17:39Then there were the deaths of Patsy McQueen and Eva Dvorak.
17:44Their cases were not considered murders, but rather classified as undetermined.
17:50No, it was not painted as a murder.
17:52It was painted as these girls were out partying and had drugs in their system.
17:58Instead of compassion or sympathy, their siblings faced disdain and criticism.
18:04Very judgmental that they deserved what they got and all that kind of talk.
18:10Kids are the meanest.
18:12But Patsy and Eva's families never believed that they had overdosed.
18:17We just always knew something happened to them.
18:22Somebody did this.
18:23Somebody did this to them.
18:25I remember my dad saying, somebody has done something wrong to these girls.
18:33And I believe he feared that somebody had murdered them.
18:37So this is your sister?
18:39So yes, this is Eva.
18:41She might have been 10 or 11 at that time.
18:44As an adult, Anita Vukovic Kohut had Googled her sister's name many times.
18:51It was nagging at me.
18:53It always has been.
18:54It's always been at the back of my head.
18:55I looked up on the internet over the years to see if there was any updates that maybe would come out.
19:03Anita was only two months old when Eva Dvorak was found dead.
19:09My mom had three girls, Zhezha, Martha, and Eva.
19:14Martha was the oldest, Eva was the middle, and Zhezha was the youngest.
19:19And then after their father passed, she met my dad.
19:24I came along.
19:24I'm definitely the time stamp of when it happened.
19:30I only know life after.
19:33I just remember mom speaking about her.
19:37And, you know, Zhezha and Martha would talk about some memories about just playing and having fun.
19:43Mom would always talk about how cute she was.
19:46She described her like a little cherub.
19:49She was loving.
19:51She had the biggest, warmest heart.
19:53Growing up, Anita struggled with not knowing what caused her sister's death.
20:01The whole time, the story was that nobody knew how they passed.
20:06And I think people suspected that maybe it was an accident and they were last seen at a party,
20:12so maybe everybody freaked out and kind of left the body somewhere.
20:1746 years after their deaths in the fall of 2022, Anita reached out to police.
20:28I spoke to an officer and when I did talk to him, he was so kind and so understanding about everything.
20:38And he even said to me, I can't believe you're calling me right now because we're looking into this right now.
20:43I don't know what the trigger was that got them to start looking into it, but when I asked about it, they had already begun the process.
20:52The RCMP said just two months earlier, they had received a tip that spurred a review of Eva and Patsy's case.
21:03It certainly was investigated, but it turned out to be a dead end.
21:07What it was is an inmate, Correctional Services of Canada had found Patsy's name, written in the person's, some paperwork that they had.
21:15So they passed it on and were like, yeah, we'll definitely investigate it.
21:17No, it turned out the person certainly was not responsible for her death, but actually, for our understanding, did know her or at least have known of her.
21:24Really what it did is the investigator, you know, took that file, opened it up and said, you know what, there are exhibits that we have not analyzed in several years that we can send these off and maybe with the advances in technology, we're going to get a hit.
21:39But results of forensic testing would take months.
21:44Eva and Patsy's families had no idea what to expect, given their deaths were not considered homicides.
21:51Nothing could have prepared the two families for what they would soon find out.
22:12Here's the actual RCMP report.
22:14That's the original, I think.
22:15Calgary Police cold case detectives work to give closure to families of historical unsolved homicides.
22:23We do feel that all victims deserve answers.
22:28The two detectives were inspired by the investigators who caught California's Golden State Killer using investigative genetic genealogy and now use the same technique.
22:40There were a number of files where DNA existed, but there was no resolution.
22:46We have perpetrator DNA that is unknown.
22:50All reasonable leads have been taken in these investigations and we're at an end point.
22:55Rather than randomly, you know, selecting people to compare against that crime scene sample,
23:03it was time to take a more reasonable step and that led us to IGG.
23:09By about mid-2020, out of our office, my partner and I had already used this technique to solve two of our cases.
23:19And so we began looking at other Calgary cases and we found that there were a lot of Calgary victims
23:28who were dumped outside the city of Calgary limits.
23:32And those cases were RCMP files.
23:35And so we approached the RCMP in January of 2021 and we offered to conduct the IGG portion of their investigations to help them move these cases forward
23:46because we felt that we had obligations to the Calgary victims.
23:51And so began a partnership with the RCMP to look at the murders of Melissa Rihorek and Barbara McLean,
23:59which they knew were linked to the same offender nearly 20 years earlier.
24:04So we as in CPS uploaded that profile to the genealogical databases and we performed what we would call the traditional investigative genetic genealogy work in that case
24:14to develop a possible candidate for that DNA.
24:17IGG opens up opportunities because we're not looking for the offender in an IGG databank.
24:25What we're looking for is kinship to hopefully give a hypothesis or a lead as to who that person may be.
24:31The databank provided a long list of names, thousands of people who shared even the smallest amount of the killer's DNA.
24:40At Calgary Police headquarters, detectives worked with investigative genetic genealogists to build out family trees.
24:49It was an exhaustive work that ultimately created a tree with 6,400 people dating back to the early 1700s.
24:58After 11 weeks of digging, they identified the possible killer.
25:04We were able to provide enough information so that we can identify a person, actually a number of brothers, three brothers,
25:11that would be in the right location in the tree.
25:16And then from there, they are prioritized very quickly based on information from the media, truthfully,
25:22about one of the brothers being a serial rapist.
25:24And that, of course, led him to be the number one suspect.
25:29And we identified Gary Sreri on February 1st and provided that name to the RCMP on 2023.
25:36With a suspect identified, the work was far from over.
25:41The RCMP needed to verify that Gary Sreri was responsible for killing Melissa Rehoric and Barbara McLean.
25:49Gary Sreri became the number one focus on our investigation of figuring out who he was and where he was from and what type of person he was.
26:01We know that he was born in 1942 in Oak Park, Illinois, which is just outside of Chicago.
26:07And we know that he moved to California with his family in the mid-1950s when he was about 10 years old.
26:12He graduated high school. He was described as being charming, charismatic, good at drama.
26:19He was offered scholarships because apparently his IQ was incredibly high. It was said to be 160.
26:25However, he turned down these scholarships.
26:29He graduated high school, was almost immediately married, had four children,
26:33but struggled finding any type of meaningful employment.
26:37Working jobs as a cook or reportedly as a salesman, but like a traveling salesman in the 60s and 70s.
26:45As a young adult, Sreri got into crime.
26:49First, petty theft.
26:51Then he was convicted of rape, sodomy and kidnapping.
26:55By the time he was 23, he was classified as a mentally disordered sex offender in California.
27:02He was a prolific offender, and he spent time in and out of custody, including incarceration in San Quentin Prison.
27:12While facing charges of rape in the mid-70s, Gary Sreri posted bail.
27:18That's when police believe he fled to Canada.
27:22We don't know what brought him to Calgary, although I think it's safe to say that he was going to face a significant jail sentence
27:35for committing those sexual assaults in the United States.
27:39There's a couple of factors at play, and I think that it was very fortuitous for him to be living at that time,
27:45because in the 70s, it was very easy to come across the United States-Canada border.
27:51In some places, it was almost an open border, and even if there were border stations,
27:57sometimes they were unmanned at night, even after hours.
28:00So I think it was easy for him to come across the border, but also easy for him at that time to just go in
28:06and possibly say, I lost my ID or something along those lines.
28:10It was easy probably to obtain ID in another name at that time, and once he did that,
28:17he was off to the races with getting Social Security in that name
28:22and establishing an identity for himself in Canada.
28:25Police learned Sreri was a chameleon.
28:29He had beard, no beard, sometimes a mustache, long hair, short hair.
28:34So he changed his appearance quite a bit over the course of several years.
28:37He changed his vehicles, he was able to change his job because he worked at Transient Jobs.
28:43We were able to piece together, through interviewing his family and former partners,
28:49that he was living in Calgary in the mid-1970s.
28:54In fact, we know that he was living almost directly straight downtown at the time as well,
28:5916th Avenue and Centre Street.
29:01We know that he was able to maintain relationships with females, some even long-term.
29:10Police believe Sreri spent 20 years in Canada before he was arrested and convicted
29:16for a violent sexual assault in New Westminster, British Columbia.
29:22Following his sentence in 2003, Sreri was ordered deported to the USA.
29:28He was escorted to the Peace Arch border crossing and met by his own family,
29:34who drove him to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.
29:37Just five years later, in 2008, he violently raped another woman
29:44and was sentenced to life in prison.
29:47Throughout his lifetime, we know for a fact that he sexually assaulted eight women
29:53who survived their attacks.
29:56These attacks, of course, started in 1965 and continued up to the year 2003.
30:02These women who were able to survive were able to identify him as their attacker
30:07and their accounts were incredibly important for us trying to determine
30:12the criminality associated to Gary Allen Sreri.
30:16This photo here was taken in 1972.
30:17As investigators in Alberta continued to retrace Sreri's movements,
30:24the RCMP received results of forensic testing from Eva Dvorak and Patsy McQueen's case.
30:31We were able to actually show that the same seminal fluid that was found on Eva and Patsy
30:37were linked to two other homicides that happened in the area later on in 1976 and early 1977.
30:43Eva Dvorak and Patsy McQueen did not die from an overdose.
30:51DNA results confirmed Eva and Patsy were murdered.
30:57And the killer was the same man who killed Melissa Rohorek and Barbara McLean.
31:03It's truly significant.
31:06It's at this point we've identified a serial killer
31:09who was operating within the city of Calgary in the province of Alberta in the mid-1970s.
31:25Welcome back.
31:27Nearly 50 years after four young women were murdered,
31:31investigators learned one man was responsible for all four homicides.
31:35In an exclusive interview, the killer's family provides insights on the aliases,
31:40manipulation and charm he used, and why there are likely more victims.
31:47Here now is Nancy Hixt with a conclusion of uncovering a serial killer.
31:54In the spring of 2024, the RCMP gathered the families of Eva Dvorak and Patsy McQueen together
32:07to tell them their loved ones were murdered, and they were victims of a serial killer.
32:15That's something you never thought you'd hear.
32:18Especially when they used the word serial killer and then proceeded to tell us about the other two women
32:25that were involved.
32:26We had no idea.
32:28It was a big shock to the system.
32:30It was a shock to find out then not only how they died but how brutal it was.
32:36I pray to God in my brain that they were drugged and they were unaware of what happened to them.
32:44That's what I'm hoping for and that's what will get me through it.
32:50Until then, Eva and Patsy's siblings had no idea there were bodily fluids found on their clothing
32:58and that the two teens had been raped and murdered.
33:02Like, we were in shock because when they said they were sexually abused that there was semen on their clothing
33:11it was like we didn't know any of that.
33:15That was the furthest thing from my thoughts is that they were sexually assaulted and strangled.
33:24I just can't believe how he could go under the radar all the time and move from here to there.
33:30And I'm sure that he's, there's going to be more cases come up.
33:36Were Sereri alive today, he would be 81 years old.
33:39The RCMP announcement that Sereri was responsible for the murders of Eva Dvorak,
33:44Patsy McQueen, Melissa Rohorek and Barbara McLean made international headlines.
33:51Sereri fled from the U.S. sometime during 1974 after posting bail for a rape charge in California.
33:58He lived under the aliases in Calgary in 1976 and 1977 that included, but were not limited to,
34:08Willie Blackman and Rex Long.
34:10He used at least nine different aliases during his lifetime.
34:15The Alberta RCMP have not associated him to any other unsolved homicides,
34:20either through forensic evidence or witness accounts.
34:23One of the places RCMP say Gary Sereri lived is Standard, Alberta,
34:32a tiny farming community of only a few hundred people northeast of Calgary,
34:38a place put on the map by a shocking kidnapping and murder in 1981.
34:44That case remains unsolved and news of Sereri's history in Alberta prompted immediate questions from the victim's family.
34:55Yeah, it's bizarre.
34:56And if he lived in Standard in 1977 or 78, he provenly had already killed four girls.
35:07But police say that's simply a coincidence.
35:10So mom got a call from the RCMP to specifically tell her that he was not responsible for Kelly.
35:20And honestly, in 43 years, we'd never received a phone call like that.
35:28They said it was hitting the news the following day and to
35:32basically relax about the fact that he was not responsible.
35:39Early in the morning of Wednesday, April 22nd, 1981,
35:47a man who identified himself as Bill Christensen
35:51phoned to ask Kelly Cook to babysit for him that night.
35:56Hours later, a car pulled up to the house.
35:59Kelly ran out, got into the vehicle, and the car drove away.
36:03That was the last time she was seen alive.
36:07The man who abducted Kelly Cook, he may very well live in this area.
36:11The days that followed were consumed with frantic searches.
36:16Just over two months later, Kelly's body was found on the shore of Chin Lake.
36:27Beyond the fact that Sreri had previously lived in Standard, there are other details, including
36:34a sketch of Kelly's killer, that make it hard for her family to believe it's all just a coincidence.
36:40It's eerie how there is resemblance, and I've never seen that with anybody else that maybe
36:51has been a suspicion to anybody.
36:54But RCMP do not believe it was him.
36:58They maintain there's holdback evidence, details of the crime that have never been released,
37:04and that they say will eventually help them to identify the killer.
37:09The pattern of criminality that Gary Sreri presented over, you know, the course of his life
37:17with, of course, eight victims who survived the attack, and of course our four victims who didn't,
37:24is very different than with Kelly Cook.
37:27So when we take a look at the pattern of behavior, number one, all of Sreri's crimes seem to be opportunistic.
37:35Whereas the difference with Kelly Cook is there seemed to be a lot of planning and premeditation.
37:40Sreri didn't ever take any attempts to hide or conceal his victims, where with Kelly Cook,
37:45we do know that significant effort was made to conceal her after her abduction.
37:50I disagree with that.
37:53If he wanted the first girl that he phoned, when she told him she wasn't available,
38:01he would have hung around and waited for an opportunity or a time that he could take her.
38:11But instead, he, that morning, he phoned Kelly that morning and took her that night.
38:17Short of grabbing her off the street, that's the only point of it not being an opportunity.
38:26A hundred percent it was an opportunity.
38:27She's a victim of an opportunity.
38:30Until Kelly's case is solved, her family will always wonder who was responsible.
38:37And without the DNA evidence that solved the other four cases, they may never know for sure.
38:43I'm not aware of any actual DNA that has actually ever been recovered on this file.
38:50Unfortunately, the man who had the answers is no longer alive.
38:56Gary Sreri died of natural causes while serving a life sentence at Idaho State Correctional Center.
39:05But one man knows Gary Sreri all too well.
39:09His son.
39:10He is one of the most charismatic, convincing, intellectual people I have actually ever encountered.
39:20Knowing all the things I know now and looking at that, it's kind of eerie.
39:24Because part of me says, God, what a waste of an intellect, obviously.
39:28But at the same time, it's like he utilized that intellect and that charm to coerce people to doing things that became then his victims.
39:38And that's horrific.
39:39I can't help but keep thinking, even to this day, how many do we not know about?
39:45Gary Sreri's son helped police come up with several known aliases.
39:51He saw many growing up used in letters sent to his family.
39:56He says one of those is the name Kelly Cook's killer used.
40:00Well, Dan and Bill Christensen would be two of them for sure.
40:04Willie Long I saw a lot of, as well as Rex Long.
40:07Sreri's son is convinced his father killed Kelly Cook.
40:13When I first interviewed with the Canadian police, so after I had agreed to talk to them,
40:21they eventually flew down here and met with me in person and did an interview and got some information from me as well.
40:26They had told me about the four people they were investigating.
40:32Well, before they got here, I had went online and started researching deaths in Canada.
40:39Because I didn't know at the time before they got here who they were talking about.
40:43And I came across the documentary on Hulu about this person and watched the whole documentary on her.
40:53And I was convinced from watching it, this is him.
40:56This is the one that they're going to talk to me about.
40:57And when they came here, and they didn't mention her name at first, they were talking about these four other victims.
41:03I even said, well, what about her?
41:06And they said, well, we haven't made the connection yet, is what they told me.
41:09I said, I can't imagine why not.
41:12He lived there.
41:15There is the aliases.
41:17I mean, everything about it just adds up.
41:19It's like, okay, I understand you're doing your job and you're an investigator.
41:23You might look at things slightly different.
41:25But it looks like a duck.
41:27It walks like a duck.
41:28It quacks like a duck.
41:29It's got feathers like a duck.
41:31I mean, how much more of a duck do you need to draw this conclusion?
41:34I mean, I've seen people on television, on the news, being convicted of things, uncircumstential evidence,
41:39far weaker than what is pointing here.
41:42And I'd be hard-pressed unless you had some specific DNA evidence at some point that said it wasn't him, right?
41:53That would be the only way I'd be convinced it's not him at this point.
41:56The RCMP claims there's no mention of the alias Bill Christensen in the Sreri file
42:03and maintains there's no evidence that connects Sreri to Kelly Cook's murder.
42:08I'll always be open-minded.
42:10I have one of those guys who, like, never say never.
42:12But at this point in time, we don't believe that he would be connected to her death.
42:19The RCMP's lead criminal investigative psychologist, Dr. Matt Logan,
42:26conducted a posthumous forensic behavioral analysis on Sreri.
42:30There were a number of key findings.
42:32I think one of the most key findings was his level of psychopathy.
42:35This man was kind of the poster boy for a sexual predator.
42:40He had way more than three or more offenses that included sadism.
42:44And one of the elements of sadism for Sreri was his need to humiliate.
42:51He would do things to the victims that were very humiliating.
42:54And after he would finish with them, he would actually tell them to get dressed,
42:59or in the cases of the women that he actually murdered,
43:02he would dress them again, which we don't see that often.
43:07Dr. Logan said it was challenging for him to figure out why Sreri killed some of his victims
43:13while others survived.
43:16In this case, we don't have those answers.
43:20And I'm convinced that he probably had murder victims south of the border as well.
43:26Historical homicide detectives in Canada continue to work through unsolved cases
43:32to determine if Sreri is connected to any other murders.
43:37To be honest, the day that we found out, it was like burying her all over again.
43:44Both Eva and Patsy's parents passed away years before DNA confirmed
43:53their daughters had been murdered by Gary Sreri.
43:56He took a piece of all of us when he took her.
44:01And that will never heal.
44:05That part of it will never heal for any of us.
44:07But after years of speculation, they've found some peace in finally knowing the truth.
44:16I'm glad you're doing this with us today,
44:19because now we can tell them that they were just typical teenage girls.
44:26I think the only good thing that came out of this for all the families
44:30was that he could no longer hurt anybody else.
44:40Police say Gary Sreri would go for long drives,
44:44cruising to find his next victim.
44:47They believe there could be more survivors of sexual assault,
44:51as well as other murder victims.
44:54Anyone who knew him or has information is asked to contact the RCMP.
45:01Thank you for joining us tonight on Crime Beat.
45:04I'm Anthony Robart.
45:05Want more episodes of Crime Beat?
45:09Listen to the Crime Beat podcast,
45:11now for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
45:14or wherever you find your favourite podcast.
45:17And for past episodes of Crime Beat,
45:19go to the Global TV app,
45:21visit globaltv.com,
45:23or check out our Crime Beat YouTube page.
45:26Crime Beat.
45:27We'll see you next time.
45:28Bye.
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