More than 20 years after a woman was found dead inside her Chevy Chase home, a man pleaded guilty to her killing in Montgomery County, Maryland, circuit court Wednesday morning.
Eugene Gligor, 45, pleaded guilty to a charge of second-degree murder in the killing of Leslie Preer, which happened in May 2001.
He was arrested last June after forensic genetic genealogy testing helped link him to the cold-case killing.
“It doesn’t bring Leslie back, but now they know … who did it to her,” Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said during a news conference Wednesday. “There’s no such thing as closure, but I’m proud of what we do together, and I’m proud of our continuing search to find creative ways to make people in this community safer.”
Gligor had dated Preer’s daughter, Lauren, when she was a teenager. The two broke up years before the homicide, McCarthy said.
After Gligor’s first court appearance in June 2024, Lauren said, “Never in a million years would we think that one of our people could hurt my mom.”
Gligor was initially charged with first-degree murder and faced the potential of life in prison.
But he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge, second-degree murder, which carries a maximum of 30 years in prison.
Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said Gligor hasn’t given a motive for the killing. There’s no evidence to suggest the homicide was premeditated — which would be required for a first-degree murder conviction.
“It’s very hard to establish this, that a person necessarily premeditated the killing,” McCarthy said. “Now I will tell you this was a blunt force trauma case. There were multiple injuries. We’ve discussed this with the family internally, with some of the difficulties of going to trial and whether there would be a likelihood of a first-degree conviction.”
Several of Preer’s siblings are expected to testify during the sentencing hearing, which is scheduled for Aug. 28.
How DNA evidence unveiled a suspect 23 years after the homicide
DNA was found all over the house where Preer was killed that pointed to an unknown male who police, at the time, could not identify, McCarthy said.
In 2024, investigators looked at new methods to identify a suspect, which led police to look at available DNA samples to try to build a family tree.
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McCarthy said police identified a distant relative of the suspect who lived in Romania.
That led investigators to a familiar name — Gligor. One of his neighbor’s had tipped police off that Gligor may have been related to the homicide in January 2002.
While police were surveilling Gligor, they saw him toss away a water bottle he drank from at Dulles International Airport on June 9.
Investigators tested the sample and found it matched the DNA profile from the bloody crime scene, according to court documents.
He was taken into custody about a week later.
Gligor has no prior criminal history that otherwise may have led law enforcement to upload his DNA into the CODIS database, which holds DNA profiles from convicted offenders, unsolved crime scene evidence and missing persons.
In order to use the familial DNA database, McCarthy said police had to show that they’d exhausted all other avenues of investigation.
“It’s sort of a last resort,” McCarthy said. “These limitations were established by the legislature in Maryland. The limitations we have are different than some other states. In some states, familial DNA is more readily usable.”
Family says Wednesday’s plea is ‘justice’
When Preer didn’t show up for work on May 2, 2001, her employer contacted her husband Carl and daughter Lauren.
Carl Preer and his wife’s employer went to the family’s house on Drummond Avenue around 11:30 a.m. and found a bloody scene.
Officers arrived to search the house and found Preer dead inside the upstairs master bathroom shower stall. An autopsy later concluded that she’d been strangled and her head was “battered onto the foyer floor.”
Leslie and Carl Preer’s only child, Lauren, attended Wednesday’s hearing along with other family members. In addition to the couple’s daughter, Leslie Preer also had seven siblings.
When asked for a word to describe their feelings following the guilty plea, family members called out “justice” while standing alongside McCarthy.
“The family does not wish to speak today,” McCarthy said. “I think Lauren, in particular, just wanted me to mention that her mother was a spectacular, loving, wonderful person, loved by family and friends.”
WTOP’s Abigail Constantino contributed to this report.
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