N.S. doctor predicted decades ago his daughter's murder would be solved. Now it has been
CBC
In the months after his 19-year-old daughter was murdered in Calgary in February 1977, Nova Scotian Dr. Jim MacLean predicted the case would be solved.
"It may take two or three years but I'm confident that the murderer will be behind bars," he said in the July 27, 1977, edition of The Albertan newspaper.
"I know the man will be found. It's all a matter of time."
Dr. Jim MacLean died in 2000. But his prediction has finally come true.
On Friday, RCMP announced that Barbara Jean MacLean's death and that of three other women in Calgary in 1976 were at the hands of one man, an American named Gary Allen Srery. The violent drifter and sex offender lived in Alberta and B.C. from the mid-1970s until 2003, when he was deported. He died in an Idaho prison in 2011.
Srery was identified as the killer through DNA evidence and genealogy.
"Srery's criminality spanned decades, over multiple jurisdictions, under numerous aliases, and the Alberta RCMP believe there may be more victims," says an RCMP statement.
The families of the four victims asked not to be contacted, according to the statement, but the force provided statements from them.
"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," said the MacLean family statement.
It called MacLean "a daughter, sister, aunt, cousin and niece."
Newspaper records from 1977 say MacLean was friendly, outgoing and trusting.
MacLean had only been in Calgary for around six months before her death. She lived with her two brothers. She worked at a restaurant and later at a bank.
"She was ... full of life and smart as hell and just excited to be away from home for the first time," brother Jim MacLean told the Calgary Herald in the Feb. 28, 1977, edition.
Her father said there were a few reasons why she had left their home community of Inverness, N.S.
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