In the year since her son died, Janice Harshman Kraynak has repaired the broken, tarnished sterling silver necklace with the No. 20 charm that had dangled from Mark Kraynak’s throat ever since he played football at Laurel Highlands Senior High School.And, while she has retrieved the damaged belongings from his body, found in a Canadian rock quarry, she feels she has not received sufficient answers to explain his mysterious death.She has ordered police and coroner’s reports. Instead, she has gotten material things: a watch, a cell phone.The necklace.”At least I have that,” Janice Kraynak said in a telephone interview from her New Jersey home. “At least I have something that I know he had on his body.”Very little has been definitive since Aug. 22, 2005, when Mark Kraynak’s modeling agent reported to Montreal police that Kraynak, a 23-year-old Army veteran, and Steven Wright, 20, of California, were missing.Ten days later, the adult models’ fractured bodies were found more than 50 feet into the Demix Quarry in Laval, about a half-hour from Montreal. The quarry lies about 1,000 feet from the Red-Lite after-hours club, whose owners gave police surveillance video that appears to show the men running from a vehicle, believed to be a taxi, at 3:32 a.m. on Aug. 22, 2005.The car follows the men into an alley near the quarry, then leaves about 4{1/2} minutes later, according to the video. Kraynak and Wright never walked into the club.Janice Kraynak has criticized a Laval police theory that the men fell to their deaths after stiffing the cab driver. She said the men had enough money, and her son contributed to a generous tip for a Montreal waitress only hours earlier.Last week, police confirmed that they consider the case closed unless they receive more information about the taxi driver, who has never been found. “There’s no criminal matter unless we find something else,” said Pierre Desautels, a Laval constable. “We’re 99 percent sure this is an accidental death.”The Quebec Coroner’s Office has not issued final death certificates for Kraynak and Wright. The process averages eight months to a year, but is expected to be completed before Christmas in this case, said Christine Vallieres, an office spokeswoman.Kraynak’s family and friends say the Purple Heart recipient intended to leave Canada on the morning of Aug. 22 so he could return to Pennsylvania and resume business management studies at Penn State’s campus in Fayette County. He had spent the summer working in Toronto on a temporary visa.Janice Kraynak said she continues to believe that her son was coerced into doing pornographic videos after he expressed an interest in posing for fitness magazines. Kraynak’s agent, Stephan Sirard, of FCF Agency in Rohnert Park, Calif., repeatedly has denied that the men were intimidated into doing work they weren’t willing to do.”I believe with all my heart that he had second thoughts, and I really believe he didn’t know how to get out of it until he was in too far,” Janice Kraynak said.Wright’s father and stepmother initiated their own investigation into the deaths. Earlier this year, Frank and Tawni Wright asked a former California police officer to examine the surveillance footage.Some bloggers have circulated manipulated police and surveillance photos online that they contend show several people in the taxi. Gregg Stutchman, the chief forensic analyst for Stutchman Forensic Laboratory in Napa, Calif., said he was unable to identify who was in the vehicle.”There were some people — well-meaning people — that tried to do some stuff, but it turned the photos into blobs,” Stutchman said. “There just wasn’t enough resolution to work with to be definitive on that.”Stutchman, who has consulted for law enforcement, defense attorneys and insurance companies, said he was able to identify some distinctive marks that could indicate a particular taxi company. He said the Wright family passed the information along to a Canadian attorney.The Wrights, of Santa Rosa, Calif., could not be reached for comment.A Montreal crime behavior analyst and researcher rejected the hypothesis of some online posters who have speculated about a murder plot. Antonio Giannone reviewed the Kraynak and Wright case, although he said the details of his analysis are confidential.”To say the least, it is to state that there was no crime committed,” Giannone said in an e-mail. “The deaths were clearly accidents.”A bulletin board on Yahoo! has become the gathering place for friends, relatives and conspiracy theorists to share memories, information and debate the investigation. As of Monday, more than 530 messages had been posted since Sept. 5.Janice Kraynak said she has tried to stay patient while investigators work on the case, although she believes authorities were too slow to find her son and too quiet ever since.”I want them (investigators) to persevere until they do get an answer, but if they were just waiting for a year for everyone to forget and for it to all go away, I haven’t, and Mark’s friends haven’t forgotten,” Janice Kraynak said.”Your children are a precious gift. They are meant to last a lifetime. Twenty-three years is not enough.”

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