Bodies found in Canada
The search for an area man who had gone missing in Canada took a possible turn for the worst Thursday after police found the bodies of two men at the bottom of a rock quarry behind a local nighttime hotspot in Montreal, near where the man and a friend disappeared last month. Mark Kraynak, 23, of Uniontown was last seen at 3 a.m. on Aug. 22 outside a nightclub in Montreal with friend Steve Wright, 20, of Santa Rosa, Calif.
Shortly after his disappearance, Kraynak’s family traveled to Canada to assist with the search and family and friends in Fayette County have been preparing a candlelight vigil for the Iraqi War veteran for this weekend.
Guy Lajeunesse, a police spokesman for the city of Laval, just north of Montreal, said the men’s parents, who have been working with police on the investigation, were able to make the identifications of the found men.
“We’re going to need an autopsy to show the cause of death,” Lajeunesse said. “Right now, we don’t know if they jumped, if they fell or if someone pushed them.”
Investigators traced a cell phone transmitter from one of the men’s phones to near the Red Lite, a club in Laval, north of Montreal, where the bodies were found.
Lajeunesse said in a recorded telephone statement that the police used search teams and helicopters to locate the bodies near the club and added that there are no other reports of a missing pair of individuals in the region.
Montreal investigators said Laval police have assumed the investigation.
Kraynak is a 2000 graduate of Laurel Highlands High School and has been attending classes at Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus, where a prayer vigil has been scheduled for this weekend.
Family friend Tina Allen of Uniontown would not comment on the found bodies Thursday. And other vigil organizers could not be reached for comment.
According to earlier interviews with Allen, Canadian police said that Kraynak and Wright hailed a taxicab from Club Vatican and called another friend on a cell phone to tell him they were going to an after-hours club in Quebec.
She also said officers told the family they reviewed surveillance cameras from the Red Light and were unable to spot either of the missing men in the tape.
Allen said police are trying to find the cab driver who transported the men, but said it’s estimated that as many as 30,000 people drive a taxi in the metro area.
Kraynak, who returned home from the war in Iraq just one year ago, was injured in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division and received a Purple Heart.
Kraynak and Wright were supposed to return to the United States the day they went missing, after spending the last few months working for the French Connection Francaise, a male model and pornography-recruiting agency.
Stephan Sirard, the owner of the California-based scouting company, was accompanying both men in Montreal and offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to their discovery.
And 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, pled guilty earlier this year to murdering King.
Editor’s note: The Associated Press contributed to this story.