More than twenty years after Bethesda resident Leslie Preer was killed in her own home, a Montgomery County judge has sentenced the man responsible — a man once close to the victim’s family.
On Thursday, Eugene Teodor Gligor was given 22 years in prison for the May 2001 murder, a punishment that exceeded state sentencing guidelines but stopped short of the 30-year maximum. Prosecutors had pressed for the harshest penalty. Gligor’s attorneys had argued for 10 years.
The case haunted the Preer family for decades. Leslie was found dead in the bathroom of her suburban Washington, D.C., home after she failed to show up for work. For years, investigators held DNA evidence from the scene that pointed to an unknown attacker but no clear suspect. The case went cold, leaving her husband, Sandy, to live under a cloud of suspicion until his death in 2017.
It wasn’t until 2022 that investigators turned to an emerging forensic tool — genetic genealogy — to find a match. After tracking down a distant relative in Romania and creating a family tree, authorities zeroed in on Gligor, who had once dated Leslie’s daughter, Lauren, when they were teenagers. A DNA test tied him to the crime.
In court, Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said the most damning evidence was DNA found under Leslie’s fingernails, proof she had struggled with her attacker. The case marked the first time Maryland investigators used familial DNA technology to solve a murder.
Gligor, now in his 50s, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder this spring. His defense attorney, Isabelle Raquin, described him as a man shaped by childhood trauma, substance abuse, and addiction. She said the killing followed a night of cocaine and alcohol use, and she insisted there was no motive. Friends testified on his behalf, describing him as kind.
But the Preer family saw only betrayal. Six family members addressed the court, speaking of the hole Leslie’s death left behind. Her daughter Lauren, who had once trusted Gligor, broke down as prosecutors displayed crime scene photographs. She called him “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
When given a chance to speak, Gligor told the judge he blacked out the night of the murder and has no memory of it. He said he felt remorse and wanted to “be of service” to Leslie’s daughter in the future.
The judge rejected both the defense’s request for leniency and the prosecution’s push for the maximum term, citing the brutality of the crime and Gligor’s efforts to clean the scene before fleeing. At 22 years, the sentence fell outside Maryland’s standard 10- to 18-year guidelines.
For Lauren Preer, the revelation of her mother’s killer was, in her words, “unreal.” She had spent more than two decades wondering who could have done it — never imagining it would be someone from within her own circle.
“Never in a million years did we think that one of our people could hurt my mom like that,” she told NBC 4 last year after Gligor’s arrest.
Now, with a sentence finally handed down, the family can close a painful chapter — though the loss remains just as sharp.
