TORONTO (AP) — Canadian police announced Friday they have linked the deaths of four young women nearly 50 years ago to a now-deceased U.S. fugitive who hid in Canada from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s.

Alberta Royal Canadian Mounted Police Supt. Dave Hall said Friday that Gary Allen Srery might also be linked to unsolved murders and sexual assaults in Western Canada, and authorities are asking the public for more information that may link him to other unsolved cases.

“We are now announcing that we have linked four previously unsolved homicides from the 1970s to a now deceased serial, sexual offender,” Hall said at a news conference in Edmonton, Alberta.

Srery died in 2011 in a state prison in Idaho of natural causes while serving a life sentence for sexual assault.

A break in the homicides in Canada came when authorities began comparing DNA of the killer with profiles on ancestry websites, which eventually lead them to a match with Srery, Hall said.