Eugene Gligor, 45, faces sentencing for the 2001 murder of Leslie Preer in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Photo / Montgomery County Police Department
Eugene Gligor has carried a relaxed and studious bearing since being locked up for a case that took police two decades to solve. He helps teach jailhouse yoga, leads “trauma talks” and has completed 106 online classes, including two on Buddhism.
On Thursday, the 45-year-old returns to a courtroom in Montgomery County, Maryland, to learn his punishment for a crime he now admits he committed, but claims he doesn’t fully remember: the brutal murder in 2001 of Leslie Preer, his ex-girlfriend’s mother.
Prosecutors are seeking the maximum sentence, 30 years, in new court filings that reveal details of the “unrelenting attack” Gligor unleashed inside Preer’s home just north of Washington in Chevy Chase.
Gligor slammed Preer’s head seven times on to the foyer floor, beat her repeatedly and strangled her so hard and for so long her eyes bled. “This was painful, protracted, and terrifying,” said Assistant State’s Attorneys Donna Fenton and Jodie Mount.
Preer fought back, clawing and scratching at Gligor. And she tried to shield her face, as shown by bruises to her hands. “He kept going and going until she was dead,” the prosecutors said.
Amid the awful details, one element remains unknown to authorities: a motive. At the time, Gligor hadn’t dated Leslie Preer’s daughter, Lauren Preer, for two years.
“Eugene has little to no recollection of the events which occurred in the home of Leslie Preer on May 2, 2001,” his attorneys stated. “He remembers going out and drinking heavily the night before. He remembers taking drugs and believes – although he cannot say for sure because of his intoxication level – that the drug was cocaine.”
Gligor said he was due to work in the morning and stopped at the Preer residence at 9.30am on the morning of May 2, 2001, according to a recent psychological evaluation cited in court records.
“Why? Eugene does not know,” his attorneys say. “Eugene vaguely remembers getting into some sort of physical struggle with Leslie. He does not remember why or how. Eugene has no recollection about the cleanup of the home, how Leslie ended up upstairs, or how he left the home. Eugene does remember bleeding. Eugene had no motive and no intent to kill Leslie Preer.”
Prosecutors blasted Gligor’s limited-memory claims, noting he could remember the time he arrived at the home but not why he went in or what he did. And they cast doubt on Gligor’s description of the case as a crime without motive.
“That is untrue,” the prosecutors said. “Rather, this is a crime without a motive that the defendant is willing to admit.”
“Even now,” they added, “he will not give Ms Preer’s family the answer to the question they have asked for 24 years: Why?”
After killing Preer, Gligor quickly started covering his tracks. He carried her bloodied body upstairs to a shower stall to wash away evidence. Scalding water rained down for so long it left burns on Preer’s skin.
He cleaned up blood throughout the house, then slipped out the back door and into a life of successful jobs and friendships. He had married twice, and when officers came to arrest him, he was living in the trendy U Street Corridor with his new girlfriend. To many, he gave off the same vibe now seen by others in jail.
“His peacefulness, mindfulness, and conflict-resolution skills are what made most people who knew him be in extreme state of shock upon learning of Eugene’s involvement in this case,” Gligor’s attorneys, Stephen Mercer and Isabelle Raquin, stated in their own recent court filings.
They described Gligor’s substance abuse in 2001 – he’d consume more than 15 drinks while fuelled all night by cocaine – his subsequent efforts to get sober, work that included maître d’ at a high-end New York restaurant and positions in the Washington area in business development. Gligor’s attorneys asked for a 10-year sentence.
Thursday’s hearing was set in motion by Gligor’s earlier decision to plead guilty to second-degree murder, which in 2001 carried a maximum of 30 years in Maryland – a statute still applied to crimes that happened when it was in place. State sentencing guidelines, while not binding, call for a term of 10-18 years, an indication of Gligor’s relatively clean record before his arrest last year.
“The offence in this case, while very serious, is an aberration in the life of Mr Gligor,” his attorneys stated.
Having pleaded guilty to killing Leslie Preer, Gligor maintains he doesn’t remember much about it.
In 2001, during their early search of the crime scene, police in Montgomery County found DNA evidence presumably left by the killer. But they could never find a match.
In 2022, detectives from Montgomery’s cold case squad took another look at the evidence. They turned to a relatively new form of DNA analysis that analyses genetic clues found at crime scenes to match them with elements of DNA profiles that were created by ancestry research companies. The method doesn’t so much lead directly to the suspect, but can point investigators to possible relatives, even distant ones, who share genetic markers. In this case, the distant relatives were two women in Romania.
From there, and over two years, detectives built out a traditional family tree, eventually linking the women to American family members with the surname “Gligor”.
They wanted to get a sample of Eugene Gligor’s DNA so they could compare it to the old DNA left at the crime scene, but they didn’t want to spook him.
The detectives learned Gligor would be flying home from London to Dulles International Airport. So they put together a ruse, getting US customs officers to divert Gligor into a “secondary screening room,” where they had earlier placed sterile water bottles on a table. Gligor took the bait, drinking from a water bottle and unwittingly leaving behind his DNA before leaving the room.
Gligor was booked into the Montgomery County Correctional Facility in June 2024.
“Eugene meditates daily and writes a daily gratitude list,” his attorneys said in the court filings. “He has also been helping other men in jail, leading a study group on trauma [“Trauma Talks”], yoga class, and in-pod AA group meetings.”
Among the 44 letters of support they submitted to the judge, many came from others locked up in jail.
“We discovered a mutual interest in yoga, which we now share with our colleagues twice a week,” one of them wrote. “I teach Fridays. Eugene teaches Sundays.”
The letter’s author was Jorge Landeros, 55, a longtime yoga teacher awaiting trial for murder on allegations that he killed a woman who was alone inside her home. That slaying, of American University accounting professor Sue Ann Marcum, occurred 15 years ago. Landeros was identified as a suspect within a year, but it took authorities more than a decade to track him down in Mexico, where he was living under a different name and teaching yoga.
“Affable, patient, with an easy smile,” Landeros said in his letter about Gligor. “Eugene rapidly became my light in darkness.”
Gligor’s attorneys, in their court filings, said he has completed more than 100 classes in jail, including the Buddhism courses as well as “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence”, “The Power of Mindfulness” and “Banish Your Inner Critic to Unleash Creativity”.
Montgomery County’s Department of Correction and Rehabilitation has long stressed education and other programmes designed to help people re-enter society, including those being sent off to state prison for more time. As for yoga classes, they can impart methods of “coping with the stressors of incarceration and in maintaining a more balanced perspective overall”, according to Kendra Jochum, the deputy warden for programmes and services at the Correction and Rehabilitation department.
She declined to speak specifically about Gligor, citing long-standing policies designed to protect inmate personnel matters.
Even as Gligor talks about his own trauma inside jail, Leslie Preer’s family has lived daily over 24 years with the trauma he inflicted.
For Lauren Preer, the murder of her mum broke her heart and left her terrified.
“Lauren was consumed with fear and anxiety,” prosecutors said in their filings. “For months, she could not shower alone, traumatised by the knowledge of where her mother’s body was found. She bought clear shower curtains. To this day, Lauren and [her best friend] both check behind closed shower curtains whenever they enter a new place.”
Lauren’s relationship with Gligor allowed him to get to know her mother. “She opened her home to him and welcomed him into her family,” prosecutors said.
On that point Gligor’s defence attorneys agreed. “Eugene only has positive memories of Leslie,” they wrote.
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