Breakthrough in 23-Year-Old Cold Case: Suspect Arrested is Ex-Boyfriend of Victim’s Daughter
Authorities in Maryland say they have arrested a guy in connection with a 23-year-old murder case. The victim’s daughter says the suspect is her ex-boyfriend.
On Tuesday, June 18, Montgomery County Police said that Leslie Preer’s body was found in her Chevy Chase home on May 2, 2001. When she didn’t show up for work, the police went to her house.
In their statement this week, police said that DNA evidence was first gathered from the crime scene in 2001.
In 2022, decades later, blood evidence was used in a genealogical DNA study that was finally matched to Eugene Teodor Gligor, who police had been looking at as a possible suspect.
TV station WTTG reports that Preer’s daughter Lauren Preer now says the suspect was her boyfriend before her mother died.
“What a crazy day,” Lauren told the news source, adding that she had seen Gligor just last year.
The station reported that she said they grew up in the same area and started dating when she was 15. When her mother died, she was 24 years old.
Since then, Lauren said she hasn’t thought of Gligor as a possible suspect or as having anything to do with the murder.
She said, “Not at all.”
The two of them ran into each other at a restaurant a year ago, and she said that nothing seemed strange.
“I talked to him.” “He didn’t seem strange,” she said. “It’s hard to believe that you can look someone in the eye and act like nothing happened while knowing that you did this crime.”
In their statement, the police did not say anything else about motivation or the cause of death.
Gligor, who is now 44 years old, was caught by U.S. Marshals in Washington, D.C., and Montgomery County Police say he is waiting to be sent to another country. He’s been charged with killing someone in the first degree.
It wasn’t clear right away if Gligor had made a plea or hired a lawyer to speak for him.
