Woman’s Ex-Boyfriend Charged With Killing Her Mom 23 Years Ago

Crime

A woman’s ex-boyfriend has been charged with first-degree murder in the killing of her mother in Maryland 23 years ago, authorities said.

Eugene Teodor Gligor, 44, was arrested on June 18 by U.S. marshals in Washington, D.C., in connection with the May 2, 2001, killing of Leslie Preer, 49, at her Chevy Chase home, the Montgomery County Police Department announced.

Gligor was linked to the crime scene through DNA evidence, the MCPD said.

Leslie Preer was brutally killed in her Chevy Chase, Maryland, home in 2001. Her daughter’s ex-boyfriend has been charged with first-degree murder in the 23-year-old cold case.

Leslie Preer’s daughter, Lauren Preer, and Gligor had dated for five years, she told The Washington Post. They were no longer a couple at the time of her mother’s death, when Lauren was 23, and hadn’t spoken for three years. While they were dating, she said, the couple’s families, who lived near each other, socialized together, and Gligor accompanied her on family trips.

She told the Post that Gligor had never shown any signs of violence, but her father, who died in 2017, repeatedly warned her that there was “something off” about him.

Her mother, however, had always been fond of Gligor, Lauren Preer said.

Her father and a co-worker of her mother’s found her body in her upstairs bedroom after she didn’t show up for work, authorities said. She had been beaten to death, The Washington Post reported.

“This was a pretty brutal crime scene with a lot of blood,” a Montgomery County police detective told Washington’s WTTG-TV, Fox 5, in August 2022, when authorities announced that a cold case team was investigating the case and seeking information from the public.

The Texas-based forensics lab Othram said that it had teamed with the MCPD in September 2022 to build a comprehensive DNA profile for the then-unknown suspect using blood evidence from the crime scene. Genetic genealogy analysis — which uses DNA databases to construct family history profiles — identified Gligor as a potential suspect, police said.

DNA evidence collected from Gligor was a positive match for DNA recovered from the crime scene, they said.

Investigators did not say how they had obtained Gligor’s DNA.

HuffPost reached out to the MCPD, the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office and Gligor’s attorney but did not get an immediate response.

Gligor is being held without bond, court records show. His next court hearing is scheduled for Monday.