After more than 20 years, the identity of the man who killed a Maryland woman was revealed, finally delivering justice to a family that had long wondered who was responsible.
Lauren Preer was 50 years old when she was brutally attacked and murdered in 2001 in her home in the upscale community of Chevy Chase outside of Washington, D.C. Police looked at a variety of suspects, even erroneously turning attention for a time to her husband, Carl "Sandy" Preer. Carl eventually died of septic shock in 2017, according to the Washington Post, but before he died, he'd voiced his concerns about an unlikely suspect: Eugene Gligor.
Leslie Preer, the couple's daughter, told the Post that her dad said he thought there was "something off" about Gilgor. Leslie Preer had dated Gilgor when they were both 15. The couple eventually broke up amicably and stayed in touch, the Post reported. At the time of the murder, Gilgor was in his early 20s and in college. The notion that he would go to the house of his ex-girlfriend from years earlier and murder her mother for no apparent reason seemed unlikely.
"Both of these gentlemen with me were his friends as well, they knew him as long as I had known him as well, so never in a million years did we think that one of our people could hurt my mom like that," Lauren Preer, told News4.
DNA extracted from underneath the fingernails of Lauren Preer eventually allowed police to link the crime to Gilgor, Fox News reported. Police used databases to link the DNA to publicly available profiles, eventually connecting it to a relative of Gilgor's who lives in Romania. That linkage eventually led them to Gilgor.
This week, Gilgor pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.
"Lauren, her family, and friends have waited 24 years to finally get closure and justice for this horrific crime that tore her family apart," family attorney Benjamin Kurtz told Fox News Digital. "The fact that it turned out to be someone they allowed in their home with open arms, just makes it that much harder to understand."
