Man arrested in unsolved murder of Leslie Preer, 23 years ago

The alleged ex-boyfriend of a Virginia woman is in prison for the 2001 murder of her mother. The murder case puzzled Maryland authorities for 23 years.

Eugene Teodor Gligor, 44, was arrested for the suspected murder of 50-year-old Leslie Jennings Preer, who was found murdered in her Chevy Chase, Maryland, home after she failed to show up for work on May 2, 2001, Montgomery County police said in a news release Tuesday.

According to the department, investigators recovered DNA evidence from the crime scene in 2001. In September 2022, “blood samples from the crime scene were sent to a laboratory for forensic genetic and genealogical DNA analysis,” which identified Gligor as a possible suspect, police added.

When investigators collected DNA evidence from Gligor and compared it to DNA from the crime scene, they determined on June 9 that the “analysis revealed a positive match,” the agency said.

After police obtained an arrest warrant on June 15, the U.S. Marshal’s Task Force in DC arrested Gligor on June 18 and charged him with first-degree murder, the press release said.

“That was a hell of a day!”

Gligor appeared to have ties to the Preer family, as Leslie Preer’s daughter, Lauren Preer, told Fox 5 that the two were together since they were 15 years old.

“That was a really hard day!” Lauren Preer said, according to Fox 5. “He was my ex-boyfriend!”

According to Lauren Preer, Gligor grew up in the same neighborhood as the Peers and their families knew each other, the television station said.

USA TODAY reached out to Lauren Preer, who lives in Fairfax, Virginia, according to her social media profiles, but has not received a response.

Lauren Preer and Eugene Gligor met last year

Lauren Preer and Gligor even met by chance at a restaurant in DC last year, she told Fox 5.

“I talked to him,” she said, according to the television station. “He didn’t seem strange, and how you can look someone in the eyes and know that you committed this crime and then act like nothing happened,” she said.

Gligor is currently being extradited from DC to Maryland, police said.

Only two days after Leslie Preer’s body was found, the death was ruled a homicide

Police found Leslie Preer’s body in an upstairs bedroom, the Washington Post reported in 2001. Preer was found with “obvious injuries to her body,” police said in a May 2022 press release.

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