A man remained in jail Thursday after federal authorities arrested him in connection with the 2001 Maryland cold case death of a former girlfriend’s mother.
A U.S. marshals task force arrested Eugene Teodor Gligor, 44, in neighboring Washington on Saturday based on a warrant alleging he killed Leslie Preer.
In a statement this week, the Montgomery County Police Department said the man has been charged in its jurisdiction with first-degree murder.
It wasn’t clear whether Gligor has retained legal counsel, and a spokesperson for the public defender’s office in Montgomery County said it was most likely too early to determine whether it will represent him. A woman listed online as a possible relative of Gligor’s didn’t respond to a voicemail seeking comment.
Gligor was being held by the Washington Corrections Department on Thursday, according to its inmate information. Montgomery County police said in their statement that they requested that he remain in custody in Washington pending extradition to Maryland.
Preer’s murder shocked a region that includes well-to-do communities such as Chevy Chase and Bethesda. Preer was reported dead just before noon on May 2, 2001, at her Chevy Chase-area home after her employer called her husband to say she failed to report to work that day, police said.
Her employer and her husband went to the family’s residence to check on her, found her body and called police, authorities said in a previous statement.
Preer’s body appeared to have suffered trauma, police said, but the exact way she was killed hasn’t been shared so it could be used in court should anyone be tried.
Montgomery County Police Chief Marcus Jones told NBC Washington the attack was felt far and wide in his county. “There were a lot of people on edge,” he said.
In 2022, county police announced that cold case detectives would take over the two-decade-old investigation with fresh eyes.
Jones told NBC Washington that DNA from the scene of the homicide at first indicated only that the killer might be male. But the technology used to extract and identify DNA has become more exacting in 20 years.
In recent years, investigators have thawed cold cases by checking familial DNA databases for near matches with crime scene DNA. If they find near matches, they can then use other clues and common sense to eliminate relations until they stop at one relative they believe fits a case.
In the case of Gligor, police said, investigators “collected” DNA evidence from him but otherwise wouldn’t elaborate. A sample collected from him is a match for DNA left at the crime scene 23 years ago, police said.
Preer’s daughter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jones said the motive was still being investigated. He said his detectives spent hours interviewing Gligor over the weekend, trying to determine why he might have attacked Preer.