Official seeks answers in Kraynak’s death
In the first public move in more than a year regarding the 2005 death of a Fayette County man in Canada, a Northern Ireland assemblyman is planning to address the Canadian prime minister regarding the mysterious death. The bodies of Mark Kraynak, 23, of Uniontown, a veteran of the war in Iraq, and Steven Wright, 20, of Guernville, Calif., were found in a rock quarry Sept. 1, 2005, in Laval, a suburb of Montreal, behind the Red Lite After Hours Discotheque after an extensive, 10-day search following the men’s disappearance in late August.
Investigators were able to trace a cell phone transmitter from Kraynak’s phone to near the Red Lite, where the bodies were found at the bottom of a cliff.
Now, more than 1 1/2 years after Kraynak’s death, Dr. Esmond Birnie of the Ulster Unionist Party of Ireland is planning to meet with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to discuss several topics including Kraynak’s death, according to Irish Anti-Trafficking Coalition (IATC) Director Gregory Carlin.
“The Irish Anti-Trafficking Coalition does not accept that the deaths were properly investigated,” Carlin said in a press release. “Dr. Birnie will address that concern.”
Following the men’s deaths, Carlin helped spearhead concerns about lax controls for Canadian worker permits in regard to the case as well as the suspicious nature of the men’s deaths and the investigation into their deaths.
Laval authorities have not been able to track down the taxicab driver who took the men to the Red Lite, which they never entered, and concluded that the men were likely running from their $40 cab fare when they fell to their deaths in the quarry.
According to Kraynak’s mother, Janice, the case has been closed and ruled an accident.
However, Janice Kraynak, Carlin and a host of Internet-based theorists have raised concerns that the Laval “fare-cheat” theory is unfounded because the cab driver never was identified and the men had enough money on them to pay for the cab fare.
In January 2006, chief investigator Guy Lajeunesse said Laval police had considerably narrowed their search for the cab driver, but never have revealed their findings. Last March, Lajeunesse said that there was “no doubt” that their fare-cheat theory is correct and closed the case, calling it an accident.
Kraynak and Wright were supposed to return to the United States the day they went missing after spending a few months working for the French Connection Franchaise, a pornography-recruiting agency in Toronto.
Speculation about the permits issued to Kraynak and Wright to work outside the country has surrounded their deaths.
Kraynak and Wright were two of six Americans who obtained 90-day permits to work as exotic dancers at a Toronto male strip club called Remington’s.
Carlin alleges the permits were part of a larger government scheme.
He said the IATC petitioned the Canadian government in a letter regarding the permits prior to the men’s deaths.
“I am therefore writing to ask that under no circumstances should any permits be issued to any agency with a general modeling and exotic dancing or pornography portfolio,” Carlin wrote in the letter to then Canadian Immigration Minister Joe Volpe in June 2005.
Following the deaths, Carlin also wrote to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about the case.
“I would be grateful if you could ask Canadian officials why the police officers of Laval have chosen to denigrate the characters of the two dead men with allegations of far evasion. The petty crime speculation does not seem to be evidence based and it has caused particular distress to the family of Mr. Mark Kraynak,” Carlin wrote prior to a visit to Canada by Rice in October 2005.
In addition to Carlin, The Future Group, a nonpartisan, non-governmental Canadian organization, admonished the country for human trafficking issues and the lack of focus by Canadian lawmakers to rectify the situation.
The study graded eight developed countries that were part of the analysis. While the United States received a B plus grade from the Future Group and countries such as Australia and Sweden received B grades, Canada received an F, the only country to receive the lowest possible grade.
According to the U.S. Trafficking in Persons Report in 2005, Canada has been battling to bring illegal permitting under control.
The Canadian government revised its immigration policy to discontinue a blanket employment waiver that had permitted adult entertainment establishments to hire foreign women as exotic dancers – a type of program that Carlin said has been abused and exploited by traffickers in many other countries.
Carlin said the visa program still has not been entirely suspended.