DNA Under Slain Woman’s Fingernails Solved Brutal Murder 23 Years Later, Police Allege

DNA collected from beneath the fingernails of a woman violently killed in her Maryland home in 2001 led cold-case investigators to a suspect — her daughter’s ex-boyfriend — according to a newly released arrest warrant obtained by HuffPost.

Eugene Teodor Gligor, 44, was arrested on June 18 in Washington, D.C., and charged with first-degree murder in the 2001 killing of Leslie Preer, 49. Montgomery County Police Department detectives said in the court documents that they had collected Gligor’s DNA on June 24 from a water bottle they saw him use and discard at Dulles International Airport on June 9. Authorities said his DNA was a match to crime scene evidence that could only belong to Preer’s killer.

Preer, 49, was attacked and brutally beaten in the foyer of her Chevy Chase home on the morning of May 2, 2001, investigators said. A medical examiner listed her cause of death as multiple blunt force trauma and strangulation. The blood found under her fingernails and bruising on her arms indicated that she had fought her suspected attacker, whose blood was also found in the dining room and a hallway and on the kitchen door leading to the backyard, authorities said.

Preer’s injuries were consistent with manual strangulation and her head “being battered onto the foyer floor,” authorities said. Some of the cuts to her head were V-shaped, authorities said, consistent with the sharp corners of the molding in the foyer and front door area.

Her body was found in the shower of her primary bedroom, where investigators believe her killer had carried her from the foyer so he could wash away the blood and prevent further bleeding in the house.

The killer tried to clean up the crime scene, investigators said, based on luminescence