The cold case murder of a mom who was killed more than two decades ago in an affluent Maryland neighborhood was cracked Tuesday when authorities arrested the former boyfriend of the victim’s daughter, according to police.
Eugene Gligor, 44, was taken into custody by the US Marshals Task Force and charged with the first-degree murder of Leslie Preer, 50, who was found dead inside her Chevy Chase home on May 2, 2001, Montgomery County police said.
While the case went cold, DNA evidence recovered from the crime scene in 2001 was sent to a lab in 2022 to undergo a forensic genetic genealogical analysis, police said.
Investigators were able to collect DNA evidence belonging to Gligor on June 9 that turned up a match from blood collected inside Preer’s house, according to police. It’s unclear how they got DNA from the murder suspect.
Gligor once reportedly dated the victim’s teen daughter, Lauren Preer.
Preer told Fox 5 DC that she and Gligor lived in the same area and started going out when she was 15 years old. The two families knew each other.
“It’s been a hell of a day,” the daughter told the station. “He was my ex-boyfriend.”
The two even ran into each other at a DC restaurant last year.
“He didn’t seem weird and how you can look somebody in the eye and knowing that he committed this crime and act like nothing happened is pretty unreal,” she added.
Preer’s body was found inside her home after she failed to show up to work.
The crime scene was described as “brutal” with “a lot of blood,” Montgomery homicide detective Tara Baione told Fox 5 DC in 2022.
Gligor is being held in DC, though an extradition process is expected to get underway to bring him back to Maryland, Montgomery police said.
