Oct 5, 2005 By Josh Krysak 6 min read

After Canadian officials released a theory calling the “accidental” death of a local man and his traveling companion in late August accidental, family friends of Mark Kraynak expressed their concern Tuesday that the investigation did not uncover the real story behind the 23-year-old’s death. And distraught area friends and family are not alone, as at least one international agency is calling the investigation into question and is working to try and find more concrete answers for the grieving families.

Kraynak’s body was found Sept. 1 at the bottom of the rock quarry along with the body of Steven Wright, 20, of Guernville, Calif. behind a local nighttime hotspot, the Red Lite, outside of Montreal in the city of Laval.

An extensive, 10-day search ensued following Kraynak’s disappearance in late August, led by Montreal police.

Kraynak of Uniontown had last been seen around 3 a.m. on Aug. 22 outside the Red Lite in Montreal with Wright.

After Kraynak and Wright were missing for 10 days, investigators were able to trace a cell phone transmitter from Kraynak’s cell phone to near the Red Lite, where the bodies were found by search teams and police helicopters at the bottom of the cliff.

Friday, Canadian officials released a statement that purported some family members of Kraynak and Wright believed a surveillance video obtained by Canadian authorities appeared to show the two men running from a taxi and being pursued by the driver.

Police theorized the men didn’t pay their $40 fare for the cab ride.

Guy Lajeunesse, a police spokesman for the city of Laval, near Montreal, where the deaths occurred, said the surveillance video taken outside the Red Lite nightclub, the bar Kraynak and Wright were headed to the night they disappeared, revealed that the two men never entered the club.

Lajeunesse said police are speculating the men may have entered the quarry through a barbed wire fence; not realizing the sheer drop was there.

But Betsy Hanzes of Uniontown, whose son Steven was one of Kraynak’s best friends since second grade, said the details of the case just don’t add up for Kraynak’s friends and family.

“No one in the Kraynak family believes that theory,” Hanzes said Tuesday.

“I knew Mark since he was 8 years old. The police trying to say that he ran from his cab fare is ludicrous. He lived with my family on and off his whole life and he isn’t like that. I mean, he bought his own laundry detergent. He always paid his way. I had to beg him to eat. He would never have done that.”

Hanzes also said other information in the investigation has not been given due diligence, including a 3:30 a.m. phone call from Kraynak’s cell phone.

Hanzes said she and family members still do not know who he was calling at the very moment he was running from the cab.

She said if Kraynak had one fault it was his trusting nature, a characteristic Hanzes said probably led him to trust the wrong people, including French Connection Francaise (FCF) owner Stephan Sirard, the modeling agency he was working for at the time of his death.

Kraynak and Wright were supposed to return to the United States the day they went missing, after spending a few months working for FCF, which also functions as a pornography-recruiting agency based in California.

“This man (Sirard) is a master manipulator,” Hanzes said. “Mark totally put his trust in him. He thought this was a legitimate modeling agency.”

Sirard, the owner of the California-based scouting company, was accompanying both men in Montreal at the time of the incident and offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to their discovery.

This is not the first time Sirard has been connected to missing persons.

In Feb. 2004, 23-year-old Natel King, a native of Canada and a Sirard associate, was murdered in a photo shoot near Philadelphia.

The porn star, also known as Taylor Summers, was reported missing by her family and was found nearly one month later, bound and gagged in a ravine near the Schuykill River.

The photographer from the shoot, Anthony Fredrick, pleaded guilty earlier this year to murdering King.

Hanzes said Kraynak went to Toronto for that final visit in August at the behest of Sirard who told the men the trip was to celebrate a successful summer.

“He (Kraynak) thought he could tie up any loose ends and be done with it. He never got that opportunity. I think he was set up. I don’t think it was a real taxi even. He was doomed from the minute he left.”

“This death is not accidental,” Hanzes said. “He was running for his life.”

The men were two of six Americans that obtained 90-day permits to work as exotic dancers at a Toronto male strip club called Remington’s, according to Gregory Carlin, director of the Irish Anti-Trafficking Coalition (IATC).

According to the press release from the IATC, “The Canadian government gave assurances to human rights advocates that ‘no new applications would be processed for any type of exotic performance until such time as the matter could be reviewed to eliminate the risk of extortion & injury’. They decided to break that promise.”

“Given the probable history associated with this scheme, the Canadian government would want this to just go away,” Carlin said of the suspicious deaths. “This is not the first time people have been tricked. These boys were basically recruited and there is no way that Mr. Kraynak had any idea what he would be getting involved in. He had no idea what Remington’s would be like. He thought he was getting involved in a legitimate modeling agency.”

He described the nightclub as “pretty sick and “not like the boy version of Chip n’ Dale dancers.”

Carlin said the IATC is “calling in all favors in Washington D.C.” to try and get the federal government involved in the investigation, noting he is unhappy with the current investigation into the incident and the alleged role of the Canadian government in the incident.

The U.S. Government updated their Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act in 2003 and noted “Corruption among foreign law enforcement authorities continues to undermine the efforts by governments to investigate, prosecute and convict traffickers.”

“The permit scheme authorized by Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew in 1998 has been connected to organized crime, slavery, & the trafficking of juveniles and the IATC now hopes the deaths of these two young men will see the permit program finally abolished,” Carlin said.

“We have particular problems with the police account in this case,” Carlin added concerning the Laval theory. “We have people on the ground investigating and we will have further details soon. Speculation and guess work is all this family has gotten.”

Kraynak was a 2000 graduate of Laurel Highlands High School and had been attending classes at Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus.

He returned home from the war in Iraq just a year ago after being injured in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division for which he received a Purple Heart.