CALGARY 1976 Cold Case Solved After 48 Years — Four Young Women, Nine Aliases, One Man
Cold Case Reckoning
61,929 views
#ColdCase #Calgary #DNA
For 48 years, his name was never in the file.
Eva, Patsy, Melissa and Barbara.
🔔 Subscribe to Cold Case Reckoning for Canadian cold cases, forensic breakthroughs and investigations that refused to be forgotten.
On the morning of February 15th, 1976, a man driving toward Cochrane found two fourteen-year-old girls lying side by side on the road beneath the Happy Valley underpass west of Calgary. Eva Dvorak and Patsy McQueen had last been seen walking toward downtown around midnight on Valentine's Day. Both had died of asphyxia. A medical examiner leaned toward a drug-related accident, a coroner's jury could not decide how they died, and a judge at the inquest said the real problem was that girls so young were allowed to run so free.
Seven months later, twenty-year-old Melissa Rehorek was found in a ditch 22 kilometres west of the city, holding a clutch of long black hairs that were not hers. Five months after that, nineteen-year-old Barbara MacLean was found near the Calgary airport with her jacket inside out and the fingers of her left hand bloodied.
More than 800 tips. 500 statements. 853 suspects and persons of interest. More than 600 black-haired men gave hair samples for comparison under a microscope. None of them matched.
In 2003, DNA confirmed that one unknown man had killed both Melissa and Barbara. He became Profile A, and the profile sat in the national DNA data bank without a hit for more than twenty years.
Then a tip arrived from a prison, an investigator noticed untested exhibits, and genetic genealogy built a family tree of more than 6,400 people reaching back to the early 1700s. On May 17th, 2024, the RCMP named Gary Allen Srery, an American fugitive who crossed into Canada illegally in the mid-1970s and lived here under nine aliases.
He had died in an Idaho prison in 2011, thirteen years before anyone in Calgary learned his name.
Four young women. Forty-eight years. One man with nine names.
#ColdCase #TrueCrime #GeneticGenealogy #Canada #ColdCaseReckoning
📚 REFERENCES & FURTHER READING
Alberta RCMP, Historical Homicide Unit
Calgary Police Service
Convergence Investigative Genetic Genealogy
Idaho State Police Forensic Services
Interpol
CBC News (Wallis Snowdon, Colleen Underwood)
The Globe and Mail (Jana G. Pruden, "Death comes to Happy Valley")
Global News / Crime Beat (Nancy Hixt)
Calgary Herald and The Albertan archives
Edmonton Journal
The Spokesman-Review and Coeur d'Alene Press
National DNA Data Bank of Canada
A note on the channel name: your earlier prompt called the show Cold Case Redemption, and the script's sign-off uses that name. The example description says Cold Case Reckoning. I've matched the description format you gave me, so swap the two subscribe lines if Redemption is correct.
20 Comments
Much 💜 from 🇨🇦
were talking about one of the victims’ father but - it later turns out - showing the killer. Sloppy.
CALGARY 1976 Cold Case Solved After 48 Years — Four Young Women, Nine Aliases, One Man
Cold Case Reckoning
61,929 views
#ColdCase #Calgary #DNA
For 48 years, his name was never in the file.
Eva, Patsy, Melissa and Barbara.
🔔 Subscribe to Cold Case Reckoning for Canadian cold cases, forensic breakthroughs and investigations that refused to be forgotten.
On the morning of February 15th, 1976, a man driving toward Cochrane found two fourteen-year-old girls lying side by side on the road beneath the Happy Valley underpass west of Calgary. Eva Dvorak and Patsy McQueen had last been seen walking toward downtown around midnight on Valentine's Day. Both had died of asphyxia. A medical examiner leaned toward a drug-related accident, a coroner's jury could not decide how they died, and a judge at the inquest said the real problem was that girls so young were allowed to run so free.
Seven months later, twenty-year-old Melissa Rehorek was found in a ditch 22 kilometres west of the city, holding a clutch of long black hairs that were not hers. Five months after that, nineteen-year-old Barbara MacLean was found near the Calgary airport with her jacket inside out and the fingers of her left hand bloodied.
More than 800 tips. 500 statements. 853 suspects and persons of interest. More than 600 black-haired men gave hair samples for comparison under a microscope. None of them matched.
In 2003, DNA confirmed that one unknown man had killed both Melissa and Barbara. He became Profile A, and the profile sat in the national DNA data bank without a hit for more than twenty years.
Then a tip arrived from a prison, an investigator noticed untested exhibits, and genetic genealogy built a family tree of more than 6,400 people reaching back to the early 1700s. On May 17th, 2024, the RCMP named Gary Allen Srery, an American fugitive who crossed into Canada illegally in the mid-1970s and lived here under nine aliases.
He had died in an Idaho prison in 2011, thirteen years before anyone in Calgary learned his name.
Four young women. Forty-eight years. One man with nine names.
#ColdCase #TrueCrime #GeneticGenealogy #Canada #ColdCaseReckoning
📚 REFERENCES & FURTHER READING
Alberta RCMP, Historical Homicide Unit
Calgary Police Service
Convergence Investigative Genetic Genealogy
Idaho State Police Forensic Services
Interpol
CBC News (Wallis Snowdon, Colleen Underwood)
The Globe and Mail (Jana G. Pruden, "Death comes to Happy Valley")
Global News / Crime Beat (Nancy Hixt)
Calgary Herald and The Albertan archives
Edmonton Journal
The Spokesman-Review and Coeur d'Alene Press
National DNA Data Bank of Canada
A note on the channel name: your earlier prompt called the show Cold Case Redemption, and the script's sign-off uses that name. The example description says Cold Case Reckoning. I've matched the description format you gave me, so swap the two subscribe lines if Redemption is correct.