Daily Voice
By Zak Failla From Daily Voice
After 24 years of silence and questions, justice has finally been served for a Maryland family.
A DC man who admitted to murdering his ex-girlfriend’s mother inside her Chevy Chase home more than two decades ago — a cold case that stunned a quiet Montgomery County neighborhood and baffled detectives for years — is heading to prison for decades, authorities announced.
Eugene Teodor Gligor, now 45, pleaded guilty in Montgomery County Circuit Court on Wednesday, May 7, to second-degree murder in the 2001 slaying of 50-year-old Leslie Preer, who was found face-down and bloodied in her shower after failing to show up for work.
Eugene Teodor Gligor and Leslie Jennings
Gligor — who had once dated Preer’s daughter — was sentenced this week to 30 years in prison, suspending all but 22 to serve, followed by five years of supervised probation upon his release.
The morning of May 2, 2001, started with concern when Preer didn’t show up to work.
Her boss and husband went to check on her at their home on the 4800 block of Drummond Avenue and found a chilling scene — blood spattered on walls, a toppled table, and signs of a violent struggle.
Police arrived to find Preer dead in an upstairs bathroom, her body partially in a shower stall with her legs protruding, her head covered in lacerations.
She had been strangled and beaten.
Investigators later concluded her head had been slammed against the floor and sharp baseboard moldings in the foyer.
“The cause of death was listed as multiple blunt force trauma and strangulation,” detectives wrote in charging documents. “The manner of death was homicide.”
DNA was collected from under Preer’s fingernails — indicating she fought for her life — and blood was found in multiple rooms, but for more than two decades, the DNA belonged to an “unknown male.”
Gligor's name came up in a 2002 tip from a neighbor, but no samples had ever been obtained from him.
That changed in 2024.
After traditional leads ran dry, Montgomery County Cold Case detectives turned to forensic genetic genealogy. They submitted the unknown male’s DNA into a private database — and hit on a family tree.
The surname Gligor stood out.
Gligor, who had been in a relationship with Preer’s daughter, suddenly became a viable suspect.
In June 2024, detectives watched as Gligor drank from a water bottle at Dulles Airport. He discarded it — and that bottle held the answers investigators sought for decades.
Lab results confirmed that the DNA on Gligor’s bottle matched the DNA under Preer’s fingernails and the blood found in three separate rooms of the home.
“It is highly probable that the individual who left their blood within the crime scene and whose DNA was found underneath the victim’s fingernails is the individual who murdered Leslie Preer,” detectives wrote in court records.
He was arrested months later in Washington, DC by the US Marshals Task Force and extradited back to Maryland to face charges.
Eugene Teodor Gligor
Nearly 9,000 days after Preer's death, Gligor is heading to prison.
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