A killer nobody expected has pleaded guilty in the 2001 murder of a Chevy Chase, Maryland, mother.
Eugene Gligor, aged 45, a defendant from Washington, D.C., roamed freely in the nation’s capital for over two decades before being linked by DNA evidence to the murder of Leslie Preer in 2001 when he was 50.
Preer’s daughter, Lauren Preer, told FOX 5 D.C. that she dated the suspect when they were both 15 years old. She was 24 when her mother was killed.
The authorities in Montgomery County connected the DNA recovered from Preer’s fingernails at the time of her death to a “distant relative from Romania,” who willingly provided her DNA to an online database. This crucial link led the authorities straight to Gligor last year, as stated by Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy in a press conference on Wednesday.
“We both said, there is no way Eugene would have done this,” Preer recalled to the Post.
No motive for Preer’s murder has been disclosed by the authorities. McCarthy mentioned that it would be the defendant’s decision to reveal the motive behind Preer’s killing, clarifying later that there was no proof indicating that the murder was planned beforehand, and Preer had no criminal history.
McCarthy, speaking on Lauren’s behalf during the Wednesday press conference, remembered Preer as a “spectacular, loving, wonderful person.”
Gligor faces up to 30 years in prison, which was the maximum penalty for second-degree murder in 2001 when the incident occurred. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for Aug. 28, 2025, at 9 a.m.
