From the Washington Post:
Eugene Gligor took a seat on the steps outside his apartment building in Washington, D.C. He scrolled through his phone, drank a cup of coffee. It was June 18, 2024, sunny and 80 degrees.
“Hands up!” came a sudden voice moving toward him with rising volume. “Hands up!”
“What’s going on?” Gligor responded. “What is this about?”
Gligor, 45, stood in a courtroom Wednesday and finally acknowledged the dark secret he’d been hiding for half his life, the one that brought police to his doorstep last summer. He pleaded guilty to the 2001 beating and strangulation of Leslie Preer inside her home in the Chevy Chase area of Maryland.
The case had gone unsolved until last year, when Montgomery County detectives homed in on Gligor, who had dated Preer’s daughter in the 1990s. He’d quietly gone on to a professional career, most recently as an account executive for a nationwide firm operating video surveillance monitoring at commercial properties. To friends he was warm, gregarious, seemingly committed to personal growth and self-improvement — and living in Washington’s trendy U Street Corridor.
Leslie Preer in 1997 (Montgomery County Police Department)
Investigators got to Gligor using a relatively new form of DNA analysis that links genetic clues left by suspects at crime scenes to people who have submitted their DNA to ancestry research companies. The method doesn’t so much lead directly to the suspect, but can point investigators to possible relatives, even distant ones. In this case, that meant two women — completely innocent — in Romania, said Sgt. Chris Homrock, head of the Montgomery Police Department’s cold-case unit.
From there, and over about two years, Detective Tara Augustin built out a traditional family tree, eventually learning there were distantly related American family members with the surname “Gligor.”
The name caught investigators’ attention. Eugene Gligor had been mentioned by a former neighbor in the case file. The daughter’s ex-boyfriend.
“That was our aha moment,” Homrock said.
They needed to get a sample of his DNA but didn’t want to spook him.
The detectives learned that on June 9, 2024, Gligor would be flying back from London to Dulles International Airport, according to court filings. So they went to Dulles and put together a ruse, getting a U.S. customs officer to divert Gligor into a room for ostensible “secondary screening,” the court filings state.
On a table waiting for Gligor, positioned there earlier by Montgomery investigators, were several bottles of water. Gligor took the bait. He finished one of the bottles, put it down and left. Detectives entered a short time later, according to court filings, and bagged the evidence. Testing later confirmed the sample was a direct match to DNA found in Preer’s home and under her fingernails.
The investigation of Preer’s killing dates to the morning of May 2, 2001. When Preer didn’t show up to her job at an advertising production company, a co-worker grew concerned and called her family. A short time later, the co-worker and Preer’s husband, Carl, who’d left for his own job at about 7:30 a.m., walked into the house on Drummond Avenue, according to court filings. They saw dried blood, a knocked-over table, a moved rug.
“Mr. Preer called out his wife’s name and looked quickly throughout the home but could not find her,” Assistant State’s Attorney Jodie Mount said in court Wednesday.
Police were called. They eventually concluded that while Preer was alone, someone got inside and attacked her in the front foyer. The assailant strangled her and bashed her head into the floor, according to autopsy findings, before carrying her body upstairs, leaving it inside a shower and disappearing. Forensic investigators collected blood in the home and found the DNA of an unknown male.
When detectives finally closed in on Gligor last year, they charged him with first-degree murder. His attorneys launched an aggressive defense, filing motions to have key evidence tossed from the case. Their biggest battle — whether the judge would toss out the DNA findings — was scheduled to be argued in August. Gligor’s trial was set for nine days in October.
Instead, Gligor and his attorneys reached an agreement with Montgomery prosecutors. By pleading guilty to a lesser charge of second-degree murder, Gligor faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, compared to a possible life term for the first-degree murder count. Prosecutors avoided the uncertainty of the DNA challenge and a trial. Sentencing was set for Aug. 28.
Wednesday’s plea hearing mostly covered previously known basics of the case. But earlier court filings and hearings, taken together, reveal new details, such as body camera recordings that captured Gligor’s arrest and the contentious questioning that followed by two detectives.
“Well honey, your DNA was in the crime scene,” Augustin told Gligor, leading to more back and forth, with Gligor asking to speak with an attorney.
“I asked for legal representation and you guys are very smug looking at me like I’ve done something,” Gligor responded. “And of course it’s innocent until proven guilty, right? Am I wrong or right?”
“You are entitled to your due process, absolutely,” responded Detective Alyson Dupouy.
“This is insane,” Gligor said.
Gligor’s attorneys, Stephen Mercer and Isabelle Raquin, wrote in court papers that the scheme at Dulles to collect Gligor’s DNA — given that it wasn’t related to legitimate border security issues — violated his constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The evidence collected, they wrote, should thus be barred from the case. But Gligor’s guilty plea came before that argument could be settled by a judge.
The morning of his arrest last summer, a Montgomery County police surveillance team set up outside his apartment. When they saw him come outside and take a seat on the stairs, they made their move.
Gligor was taken to a D.C. police station, held in a locked room and given a bologna sandwich, according to Mercer and Raquin’s filings. Some two hours later, he was led into an interview room, where he was soon joined by the two Montgomery County detectives, Augustin and Dupouy. Augustin read Gligor his rights to remain silent and consult a lawyer. Then she began subtly asking questions.
“So we were working on a case that came from Chevy Chase,” Augustin said, “and when we were going through the case file, your name was in there as someone that was related to the family. We have a big list of people, but friends, family, something like that. So do you recall back in 2001, Leslie Preer?”
“Yes, that she was murdered,” Gligor said.
They spoke about him dating Preer’s daughter and how he had spent time at their house. Augustin said someone had left DNA at the crime scene, and asked if he had relevant information for them.
“I’m just, I’m a little confused,” Gligor said. “So to find out more and talk to me, why not just call me and ask me to come in and talk? … I mean, I feel a little bit trapped here.”
“Well, you’re under arrest,” the detective said. “You should feel trapped.”
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