Chapter 1: What happened on that fateful spring morning in Chevy Chase?
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Tonight on Dateline. She was my very best friend. She was my person. My dad, he goes, I'm so sorry. Your mom is no longer with us. It was awful.
I found the victim inside the shower. This was clearly not a stranger. This is someone who knew the family.
When did you first realize that police were eyeing your dad as a suspect?
Day one. Everything pointed to the husband's involvement.
You were her boss?
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Chapter 2: Who were the initial suspects in Leslie Prier's murder?
Was it starting to become something that interfered with work? Well, yeah. She was supposed to be there at 9 o'clock, and she couldn't make it. Brett Reedy was Leslie's boss at Specialties, a small advertising and promotions firm. She was kind of on super secret probation, if you will, because I had to push her back to 10 o'clock. You can't make it at 9 and let's make it at 10.
So really, there was pressure to be there by 10 o'clock. Sure. So it was more alarming that she wasn't there. Leslie wasn't answering her phone, so Brett called her husband Sandy at his office. I just said, did Leslie have any doctor's appointments that I didn't know about? And he goes, no. And I said, well, she's not here. And he goes, that's not good. That was big. Something's wrong.
The two men met at the prayer house to look for Leslie. Sandy unlocked the front door and went inside. I walked in with him, and he's calling her name. Leslie, Leslie. He's looking everywhere for her, and I... Looked right to my right, and there was a pretty good-sized pool of blood. And he then goes upstairs. And while he's upstairs, I'm noticing blood splatter all along the wall.
And it was alarming to me, which was like something really bad happened here. Then, in a moment that felt like something straight out of a horror movie... Brent noticed something moving. I look down the hall and the door slowly moves. I said, oh. You're thinking maybe someone's inside. I thought it was Leslie. Because we hadn't found her. Yeah.
And it moved slow enough that I thought, uh-oh, I don't want to see this. Turns out it was Boomer, the family dog. Cowering, but unhurt. Still, no sign of Leslie. As Sandy came back downstairs, all signs pointed to something horrific. I said, Sandy, look at this. In the kitchen, there's blood everywhere. There's blood on the back door. There's blood on the appliances.
And he said, well, she must have fallen down. She must be at the hospital. So he grabs the yellow pages and... Starts making calls. He thinks it's an accident. Oh, yeah. She must have fallen down. Blood went everywhere. Did that seem to make sense to you? Not exactly. Brett called 911. 911, what's your emergency?
We just walked in the door, and there's blood in the foyer.
Okay.
When I called 911, the operator says, get the hell out of the house. Get out of the house. Don't touch anything and get out of the house. Because they're saying it's very possible you're standing in the middle of a crime scene.
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Chapter 3: What led detectives to focus on Sandy Prier as a suspect?
Yeah.
Another possibility, the criminal was still inside. Officer Jim Barnett with the Montgomery County Police Department was the first on the scene. With guns drawn, he and his partner went inside.
It was clearly obvious there had been a violent struggle. There was blood on the floor.
There were red swirl marks where someone had tried to obviously clean up blood. There was a lampshade knocked over as well as an end table. I went into the master bedroom area. The door to the shower was closed.
And when I opened it, the victim was curled up in the corner of the shower stall. It was Leslie. Officer Barnett checked for a pulse. Nothing. She was dead, killed in a vicious attack.
At that point, what we have to do is go outside and inform the husband.
He walked up to Sandy and he just very directly walked right up to him. Sir, your wife is dead. Just like that? Yeah. Lauren Prier was 23 years old back then. She was at her apartment that morning, still mercifully unaware of what had happened to her mother. She was my person. And we talked every single day. As soon as I woke up, I would call my mom.
And that's exactly what Lauren did that morning. She dialed her mom's work line. One of her coworkers answered the phone. And she was like, well, she's not here right now. And I said, what do you mean? And she goes, you need to call your father. Are you thinking, you know what I thought? I thought good things. I thought we won the lottery or there was like a surprise vacation.
So I thought something positive happened. The truth revealed itself when Lauren saw a police car pull up in front of her apartment. The police officer asked, And my dad came up to our apartment. It's okay.
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Chapter 4: What role did DNA evidence play in the investigation?
She was also very self-effacing, very much the Southern charm. It sounds like she really was just a bright light in the office. Very much so, yes. Through the years, Leslie's big, boisterous family would gather for reunions in Pensacola, taking in the Gulf waters and making sure to catch a show by the Navy's legendary Blue Angels aerobatic team.
Those reunions became a family staple, and Sandy fit right in.
Sandy was, you know, he was a man's man. He was fun to hang with. He would drink beers with you.
He had all the jokes, and he was just funny. He was very engaging with everybody. Paint a picture for me of your parents' marriage. What was their relationship like? Best friends. Yeah, they were so sweet together. They loved each other. They had fun. We all had fun together. They had a wonderful marriage.
Detectives were about to ask some tough questions about Leslie, her marriage, and the people closest to her. Did that question catch you off guard? Oh, absolutely.
It a little freaked me out.
The investigation into Leslie Prier's murder was picking up steam, and her husband, Sandy, was about to become a familiar figure to Montgomery County detectives, including Allison DuPoy and Tara Augustine. They would eventually be among eight detectives to handle the case.
This is such a nice neighborhood. Doesn't look like a place where something so terrible could happen.
During an interview at police headquarters, Sandy told detectives Leslie was fine the last time he saw her. But he had a lot to say about her boss, Brett Reedy.
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Chapter 5: How did Lauren Prier cope with her mother's murder?
Especially women. Yes. There was another case on the detective's radar, a few years older, but just as frightening. The Potomac rapist, a serial offender who had murdered one of his victims. Eight women were sexually assaulted in Montgomery County in their homes or in private residences.
The body of 29-year-old Christine Mirzian was found near the Whitehurst Freeway.
They looked into the Chandra Levy case as well as some other reports throughout Montgomery County where women were attacked.
However, none of them matched exactly to what Leslie had in her case. They quickly ruled out that any of those other cases were related. With those notorious cases no longer a factor in the Prier investigation, detectives did a deep dive into anyone who might have had contact with Leslie, no matter how innocent it might have seemed.
They looked into anybody that was doing work in the neighborhood or anyone that had done any work on the Prier's house. Anyone that was in the neighborhood that didn't live there, that there could have been a chance interaction with Leslie, they looked into. Dead ends. All of them. But Lauren had her own idea about what might have happened and told police.
My mom loved to take public transportation. Because Leslie preferred taking a bus to work, Lauren came up with a theory. Maybe her mother's killer was someone she met during her commute. She talked to everybody. She lived the world through rose-tinted glasses. Like, no one does any harm. I said, Mama... Not everyone's perfect. She takes Never Met a Stranger to a whole new level. Correct.
Were you thinking that this could be somebody maybe who met her on the bus, who followed her home? Yes, it was definitely a possibility in my head. An attack by someone Leslie met on a bus was an interesting theory, but without any witnesses or revealing security camera footage, it remained just that, a theory. What did police ask you for?
The list of names that knew my mom and knew me and were present at my parents' house. So this could be a pretty long list. At least 25. Kind of describe who was on that list. Friends. My Jennings side of the family, which is my mom's side. Basically anybody that you knew that had come to the house. Yeah.
Lauren says she assembled the list and included people she never thought could be involved in her mother's death, like her boyfriend at the time, Scott Kendall. You would never hurt my mom. That I truly believe. And there was an earlier boyfriend, Eugene Glee Gore, someone she dated back in high school. What first attracted you to him? He was smart.
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Chapter 6: What new evidence emerged years after the case went cold?
No. Another neighbor said Sandy waved hello as he left for work that morning.
He made a point to wave to her, and she thought it was kind of odd because he had never done that before. And he looked back at the house and started talking, and the neighbor presumed it was Leslie in the doorway. And he was like, okay, babe, I'll see you later.
But the neighbor couldn't tell if Leslie was even there. After hearing this witness statement, it seemed like it was possible that Sandy was kind of creating a witness for himself and a bit of an alibi saying that he left for work when he did and that maybe Leslie was still there and still alive.
When Sandy first met with detectives at headquarters, they noticed he had a few small cuts and they took pictures. When they talked to him, Sandy said the last time he saw Leslie, he kissed her goodbye, like he always did.
We always kiss each other goodbye and wave goodbye.
But when detectives asked some pretty straightforward questions, Sandy fumbled the answers. He didn't do himself any favors by kind of the way he answered questions. Talk to me about some of the things the detectives noticed about Sandy.
They interviewed him numerous times throughout the investigation, and they realized that a lot of his answers just didn't add up. Like, where were you the night before Leslie was found?
I could guess, but I don't know for sure.
Not remembering where he was or what he did was a problem for Sandy. But the things he did remember about his whereabouts seemed even more suspicious.
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Chapter 7: How did the detectives finally identify the killer?
We got notified by the detectives. They would like us to follow Sandy. You know, is he meeting up with another woman? Maybe some kind of relationship there.
So Golian started surveillance on Sandy. For several days, he followed him as he drove to work, went to lunch, did a little shopping, and went back home. Turned out to be a pretty boring assignment. But two things did pique his interest, like Sandy's use of a payphone.
The question was brought up, does he have a cell phone? Of course, the answer was yes. Yeah, we know he has a cell phone, but he's using his payphone.
That seemed strange. So did another incident just a few weeks after the murder. Sandy, parked and sitting in his car, opened an envelope and cracked open a beer.
I could see clearly what's going on inside the car using binoculars. He's sipping his beer, and I could see that he's laughing.
And my thought is, his wife's a victim of a murder, and he's reading this, whatever it is, and he's laughing.
At this point, detectives were suspicious over just about anything Sandy did or said. But he had cooperated with police from the very start. He volunteered to take a polygraph. He volunteered? Yes. That's usually a good sign.
Usually. But he came in and took the polygraph and failed.
He failed. Yes. That's not a good sign. No. The polygraph examiner found him to be deceptive when asked about Leslie's murder, asked about Leslie's death, asked about knowing information about Leslie's death. Detectives brought Sandy in for another interview, and this time they didn't hold back.
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Chapter 8: What was Eugene Gligor's motive for the murder?
It turns out he was just what he said he was, a helpful guy. Detectives also ran the unknown DNA through the national database CODIS to see if it matched any offenders in the system. Nothing. As you're going through this, all of these tests being done, not a match, not a match, not a match. What was that like for you? A nightmare. Horrifying.
couldn't sleep that had to have been deflating yes to be able to say oh we have dna this is going to be huge and to not get a match in codis and every person that is related to leslie in one way or another was not a match it i think was a huge dead end for them
So detectives hit reset and came up with a new theory. Sandy Prier may not have killed Leslie himself. Instead, they surmised, he paid someone else to do it. They thought that perhaps he was working with someone, and the other person is the one who killed Leslie. So where do police go from there? At that point, I think that they had exhausted all of their resources.
But Lauren Prier wasn't giving up. Every month, without fail, she checked in with detectives.
So here we are.
A year after her mother died, Lauren met with them. And it was clear their theory hadn't changed.
My gut feeling is that your dad had something to do with this. It is so bizarre to think that this could be someone else.
They pressed Lauren for anything that could point to Sandy's guilt.
You know, I think after a year, they were maybe hoping that, you know, something had come out, something had slipped. Maybe Sandy was acting differently around her.
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