Discarded bottle in Dulles helps solve 2001 murder, police say

“The DNA from Gligor’s water bottle,” police wrote in the files, “was a positive match.”

The 44-year-old is now charged with the premeditated murder of Leslie J. Preer in 2001. His first court date is scheduled for Monday, when a judge in Montgomery County, Maryland, will decide whether he should remain in custody without bail. His lawyers Isabelle Raquin and Stephen Mercer declined to comment Sunday evening.

The new documents, submitted as an affidavit, describe how investigators tracked down Gligor 23 years after Preer, then 50, was found dead in her home. As a teenager, Gligor had dated Preer’s daughter when the two were students at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. He was still living in the Washington area when he was arrested last week.

The affidavit also reveals the full brutality of the crime scene. Police found blood on the walls and floor near the front door. Preer’s body was found in the shower of an upstairs bathroom, face down with her legs partially outstretched – a sign to investigators that someone had tried to wash the body. An autopsy revealed deep bruising on Preer’s neck, consistent with strangulation, and seven lacerations on her skull, according to the affidavit. Investigators attributed these head injuries to the sharp edges of the home’s baseboards, leading them to believe Preer’s head had been “slammed onto the foyer floor.”

The affidavit does not indicate that Gligor was close to being arrested after the murder. However, the document does show that on Jan. 30, 2002 – nearly nine months after the murder – an informant reported concerns about him to police. The informant, a former neighbor of Gligor’s, “thought he might be somehow connected to the murder of Leslie Preer,” investigators wrote in the affidavit. He was 21 when the murder occurred, according to public records.

The document describes the case from the beginning.

At about 10 a.m. on May 2, 2001, when Preer didn’t show up for work at an advertising production company, a co-worker became concerned and called her family. A short time later, the co-worker and Preer’s husband, Carl, who had left for his own work at about 7:30 a.m., entered the house, according to court records.

They saw dried blood, an overturned table, a shifted carpet.

“Carl Preer called her name and searched the entire house but could not find Leslie,” Detective Tara Augustin wrote in the affidavit.

The colleague called 911 and was told to leave the house.

When officers arrived, they found Leslie Preer’s body upstairs. Investigators examined the blood stains and concluded that Preer’s killer had tried to cover his tracks.

“It was obvious that the perpetrator(s) had attempted to clean up the blood from the crime scene,” Augustin wrote, “and had forcibly carried the body from the upstairs foyer area to the shower stall and run water over the body (through the shower) to wash away the blood and prevent the body from bleeding further to death on the floor of the residence.”

In the early days of the case, investigators collected DNA evidence from the house and from under Preer’s fingernails – the latter a sign that she had tried to fight off her attacker. But they were unable to match the DNA to anyone – including men who knew Preer and who were asked to provide DNA samples. “All of these samples were compared and eliminated, eliminating them as suspects,” police wrote.

The case was not pursued further. In 2022, investigators tried using genetic genealogical analysis, a relatively new technique in which an unknown suspect’s DNA from a crime scene can be compared to millions of DNA samples that clients send to genealogy companies. This can lead investigators to possible connections in the suspect’s DNA family tree. From there, investigators look for someone connected to the family who might otherwise be linked to the crime – for example, because they lived in the area at the time of the crime. These connections are often made through a relative who doesn’t really know the suspect and lives far away from them.

In the Preer case, genetic genealogical analysis revealed that the surname “Gligor” may be linked to the DNA presumably left behind by the attacker.

Then, on June 4, 2024, as Augustin was going through the case files, she found the 2002 tip about Eugene Gligor.

However, the investigators did not have his DNA.

That’s why he was put under surveillance at Dulles, according to the new records, and why his used water bottle was confiscated. (Investigators and crime labs can extract DNA from objects touched by suspects or from their saliva.)

After matching DNA from the water bottle to DNA from the crime scene, police obtained a warrant for Gligor’s arrest on a charge of first-degree murder. He was arrested by a U.S. Marshals Service task force in Washington, D.C., on June 18. He was taken to the Montgomery County Jail on Friday, according to court records.