Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Debra Roberts, here with another weekly episode of our latest true crime series, Blood and Water. Remember, you can get new episodes early by following Blood and Water on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening right now. Here's the next episode of Blood and Water.
The Montgomery County Cold Case Unit began reexamining Leslie Prier's murder in 2022. It was around this time that Lauren Prier, now in her 40s, ran into an old flame at a restaurant in D.C. There was some type of, not like a party, but just a gathering. And Eugene was there. Eugene Gligor, her high school boyfriend. The two had split up, amicably, some 25 years earlier. And this was when...
probably like three years ago. It wasn't that long ago, let me put it that way. This chance encounter was before detectives had the breakthrough we discussed in the last episode. Before genetic genealogy led police to a blog written in Romanian containing a family's history and the name Gligor. What was he like? Did he say anything to you? What was his demeanor?
He just came up and he was like, hi. I was like, hey, I haven't seen you in so long. Looked me right in the eyes.
Chapter 2: What prompted the reexamination of Leslie Prier's murder?
The conversation, Lauren says, was perfectly civil. A brief catching up between two 40-somethings who'd known each other a lifetime ago. And I was like, how have you been? He was like, I got married again. I said, well, that's great. You know, just casual conversation. And it wasn't a big deal. I didn't think anything of it.
Chapter 3: Who is Eugene Gligor and what was his relationship with Lauren Prier?
We hugged, like, good to see you. Bye. This would not be the last time Lauren Prier would see Eugene Gligor. And the next time would be under vastly different circumstances. Because not long after this chance run-in, detectives set their focus on Eugene Gligor.
He would put one persona out there and try to make himself look like one type of person, but behind closed doors, he was a different person. So who was Eugene Gligor? And did he kill Leslie Preer? From ABC Audio and 2020, I'm Stephanie Ramos, and this is Blood and Water. As I mentioned, Eugene Gligor and Lauren Prier broke up a few years prior to Leslie's murder.
Before the breakup, the two were inseparable. They were part of a close-knit friend group. Lauren and her high school friends still remember those times fondly, including one particular night in the spring of 1995. So here you are. This is the night of prom. Correct. And that's Bryce. Bryce Thomas, one of Lauren's friends from high school. Yeah, this was the night of prom, class of 95.
We got all gathered at Lauren's house. A couple of the parents were out front taking pictures. The photo shows three young couples. The boys are dapper, if a little awkward, in what might be rented tuxedos. The girls look pure 90s, with spaghetti-strapped mini dresses and face-framing curls. Lauren remembers Leslie playing cool mom that night.
My mom had got us, which she shouldn't have done, but she did, had gotten us a thing of wine coolers. So we were having fun, even though we were obviously under 21. I remember just getting in a limousine after then and dancing more than I've ever danced in my life. The song atop the Billboard charts for seven weeks that spring was Montel Jordan's This Is How We Do It. So yeah, lots of dancing.
We had fun. We stayed up all night. It was a beautiful evening. We had a blast. That was our prom night. And that's my best friend, Lisa. That's me. And that's Eugene. There were couples, and then there was Eugene and Lauren type of couple. And they were together always. The two began dating in Lauren's junior year. After that, Bryce says, they started seeing each other all the time.
It was always, let's go hang out. It was Eugene and Laura, not just Eugene. It wasn't hang out with Laura. It was let's go hang out with Eugene and Laura.
He just became part of the group. We just became a crew. It was us. It's like us against the world. Friends remember Eugene as a talker, a conversationalist, good with girls and good with parents. He was very charismatic. He was a ladies' man. All the girls loved him, but I got him. So we just became a thing. I mean, I loved him back then. I really did.
Another friend, Lisa Wood, saw this young love up close. I would say the relationship between Eugene and Lauren was as serious as one could be for high school. The couple stayed together, even after Lauren left for college. I know for her it was, you know, it felt very special and she loved him. They were in a long-term committed relationship for years.
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Chapter 4: What significant event happened after Lauren's encounter with Eugene?
We were kids. The two went their separate ways. Their lives went on. And then, Lauren lost her mom. By the time Leslie Prier was murdered, Lauren and Eugene had been broken up for about three years. For all intents and purposes, Eugene was out of the Prier's lives and had been for years. But as cold case detectives looked into Eugene Gligor's history, one date in particular stood out.
May 11th, 2001, the day of Leslie Preer's funeral. I remember the church service and my dad and I were obviously sitting together and we sang Beatles songs. Lauren and her dad were surrounded by loved ones that day. Just the amount of people there, the amount of friends from high school. It was very well attended, very well attended.
Lauren's friend Bryce was there, along with droves of others, friends, family, acquaintances, all there to pay their respects. But Bryce noticed one person was missing from the church.
I remember asking Lauren specifically, I was like, where is Eugene?
Chapter 5: How did detectives start focusing on Eugene Gligor?
and her saying to me that it was too much for him to handle.
And I just remember being so upset, just being, I can't believe that he would make this about him. That's the most selfish thing I've ever heard. It just rubbed me so wrong. I was like, where the hell is Eugene? Sure, Eugene and Lauren had broken up a few years earlier, but other members of the Gligor family did attend the funeral. Eugene's parents and brother were there.
Two decades later, when cold case detectives were looking into Eugene, his absence on this day was suspicious. Detective Tara Augustine. His mom and dad and brother went to the funeral, felt compelled because their families had this close relationship at one point, but yet Eugene decided he didn't want to go. It made no sense. So where had Eugene been?
Just a few days after the murder, he had been pulled over by police in a state in the middle of the country, nowhere near here. And later on, after talking to some of his friends, we realized that he took a spur-of-the-moment trip to Oregon, all the way across the country, to visit a friend that had moved there. And he called him while he was on the way and said, oh... I'm in Iowa.
I'll be there in however many hours and caught the friend by surprise. So he took off right after the murder. He was on the road, headed west. Yep. It was a troubling detail, and there would be others. Authorities scrutinized what Eugene Gligor had been up to in the years after Leslie Preer's death. What kind of man had he become? And what exactly was he capable of?
This is what everyone's talking about.
Everything's on the table.
This is what champions come to take. This is what everyone came to see.
And the slam!
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Chapter 6: What did friends say about Eugene's character during high school?
Without that, they couldn't be sure that his DNA matched what was at the scene. But as Detective Augustin points out, getting a suspect's DNA is no easy task. It can quickly go sideways.
In similar cases to this, when a suspect has been identified, there have been a couple of times where it hasn't worked out well, where a person who thinks they've gotten away with a crime for 20, 40 years, the police are coming to finally ask them for their DNA. They know why, because they killed someone, and then it turns into a bad situation sometimes.
So we wanted to try to do it in the safest way possible before we confronted Eugene with any of the evidence. So we decided that we were going to have some officers follow him and try to obtain a discarded DNA sample. Toothbrushes, discarded chewing gum, flicked cigarette butts. Police have surreptitiously recovered DNA from all these objects and used them to crack cold cases.
Detectives Augustin and Dupuy decided to do something similar to obtain a sample of Eugene Gligore's DNA. Doing our research, I realized that he was a frequent traveler, and we got information that he was actually overseas and that he would be returning to the United States on a certain date, and we had the flight information.
Detectives learned that Gligor would be flying into Dulles Airport in Virginia. I relayed that information to our officers, and they decided, okay, well, we'll pick up on him at the airport and see if we can get him getting rid of anything. According to court documents, when Gligor arrived at Customs, he was pulled out of line by Customs and Border Patrol officers.
They took his passport and escorted him to an interview room. The room was mostly bare. There was a couch and a coffee table stocked with snacks and miniature bottles of water. Gligor sat on the couch while a CBP officer interviewed him. At some point, Gligor drank one of those bottles of water and left it on the coffee table. Sometime after that, the officers let Gligor leave.
He disappeared among the throngs of anonymous travelers, seemingly unaware that Montgomery County Police had collected a potentially key piece of evidence. They were able to obtain a discarded water bottle, and we collected that, submitted it to the lab. We obtained the sample on a Sunday, and by Friday, we had a report saying that it was a match.
Finally, after more than two decades, you finally have a DNA match. Yeah. What was that like? I mean, it's always a huge sense of satisfaction when you can finally say, oh, we solved it. We know who did it. For detectives, there was no longer any doubt. Eugene Gligor had killed Leslie Prier. The DNA proved it. The news spread to the county prosecutor's office. State's attorney, John McCarthy,
The lead prosecutor, she literally was jumping up and down. My God, we got a hit on this case. If you put two years of your life as an investigator and as a prosecutor into building probable cause for an arrest, it's a pretty joyful moment to realize you've got your guy. Being able to give that answer to the entire family, to Lauren, and to clear her dad's name is huge.
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