After more than 20 years, the identity of the man who killed a Maryland woman was revealed, bringing justice to a family who had long wondered who was to blame.
Lauren Preer, 50, was brutally attacked and murdered in her home in Chevy Chase, an upscale community outside of Washington, D.C., in 2001. Police investigated a number of suspects, including her husband, Carl “Sandy” Preer, who was mistakenly identified.
According to the Washington Post, Carl died of septic shock in 2017, but before that, he expressed concerns about an unlikely suspect: Eugene Gligor.
Leslie Preer, the couple’s daughter, told the Post that her father believed there was “something off” about Gilgor. Leslie Preer and Gilgor dated when they were both 15.
According to the Post, the couple eventually ended their relationship amicably and remained in touch. Gilgor was in his early twenties and attending college when the murder occurred.
It seemed unlikely that he would go to his ex-girlfriend’s house years earlier and murder her mother for no apparent reason.
“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, who contributed to News4, said.
According to Fox News, DNA extracted from Lauren Preer’s fingernails helped police link the crime to Gilgor. Police used databases to connect the DNA to publicly available profiles, eventually tracing it back to Gilgor’s relative in Romania. This link eventually led them to Gilgor.
Gilgor pleaded guilty this week 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,” said family attorney Benjamin Kurtz to 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.”
