A Perfect Spring Morning

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Speaker 6 Tonight on Date Live.

Speaker 7 She was my very best friend.

Speaker 8 She was my person.

Speaker 8 My dad, he goes, I'm so sorry.

Speaker 10 Your mom is no longer with us. This is awful.

Speaker 12 I found the victim inside the shower. This was clearly not a stranger.
This is someone who knew the family.

Speaker 14 When did you first realize that police were eyeing your dad as a suspect?

Speaker 17 Day one. I'm not just telling you one thing.

Speaker 18 You got the wrong guy.

Speaker 12 Everything pointed to the husband's involvement.

Speaker 19 You were her boss.

Speaker 16 Correct.

Speaker 20 They just asked you point blank, did you kill Leslie?

Speaker 22 It was very direct. I couldn't believe they were asking.

Speaker 23 You're just grasping at straws.

Speaker 24 There was just this big mystery.

Speaker 26 I felt a lot of a connection to this case.

Speaker 28 You're a mom, and this is about a mother who was killed, taken away from her family.

Speaker 26 I said, I'm going to solve this.

Speaker 30 We were determined to finish this.

Speaker 30 She yells from the back of the room, I got it. I think I got it.

Speaker 8 Hazel! I almost fell off my chair. I'm surprised I'm still alive.

Speaker 6 A mom found dead in the shower, a killer hiding for decades. Could two other moms, both detectives, solve this mystery at last?

Speaker 22 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 6 Here's Blaine Alexander with a perfect spring morning.

Speaker 35 If there's truly such a thing as a perfect spring morning, May 2nd, 2001 in Chevy Chase, Maryland was it.

Speaker 13 Crisp, clear, the kind of weather that just begs for a walk.

Speaker 40 And that suited Leslie Prier just fine.

Speaker 39 Leslie's daughter, Lauren.

Speaker 10 Tell me about your neighborhood.

Speaker 8 Beautiful. Yeah, wonderful.

Speaker 8 Felt safe.

Speaker 36 It was a short drive to Leslie's office in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 45 But she liked taking a long walk through her upscale neighborhood to catch the bus.

Speaker 35 Maybe that's why she was late for work.

Speaker 29 Again.

Speaker 47 Was it starting to become something that interfered with work?

Speaker 22 Well, yeah, she's supposed to be there at 9 o'clock.

Speaker 48 And she couldn't...

Speaker 4 couldn't make it.

Speaker 35 Brett Reedy was Leslie's boss at Specialties, a small advertising and promotions firm.

Speaker 22 She was kind of on super secret probation, if you will,

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 51 So really, there was pressure to be there by 10 o'clock. Sure.

Speaker 9 So it was more alarming that she wasn't there.

Speaker 52 Leslie wasn't answering her phone.

Speaker 35 So Brett called her husband Sandy at his office.

Speaker 22 I just said, did Leslie have any doctor's appointments that I didn't know about?

Speaker 22 And he goes, no. And I said, well, she's not here.

Speaker 4 And he goes, that's not good.

Speaker 53 That was big. Something's wrong.

Speaker 54 The two men met at the Prier house to look for Leslie.

Speaker 35 Sandy unlocked the front door and went inside.

Speaker 22 I walked in with him and he's calling her name.

Speaker 22 Leslie, Leslie, he's looking everywhere for her.

Speaker 4 And I

Speaker 22 look right to my right, and there was a pretty good sized pool of blood.

Speaker 22 And he then goes upstairs.

Speaker 22 And while he's upstairs, I'm noticing blood splatter all along the wall.

Speaker 10 Oh, gosh.

Speaker 22 And it was alarming to me, which was like something really bad happened here.

Speaker 55 Then, in a moment that felt like something straight out of a horror movie,

Speaker 49 Brett noticed something moving.

Speaker 22 I look down the hall and a door slowly moves.

Speaker 2 I said, oh.

Speaker 38 You're thinking maybe someone's inside.

Speaker 22 I thought it was Leslie.

Speaker 22 Because we hadn't found her. Yeah.

Speaker 22 And it moved slow enough that I thought, uh-oh, I don't want to see this.

Speaker 59 Turns out it was Boomer, the family dog, cowering but unhurt.

Speaker 42 Still no sign of Leslie.

Speaker 60 As Sandy came back downstairs, all signs pointed to something horrific.

Speaker 22 I said, Sandy, look at look at this.

Speaker 22 In the kitchen, there's blood everywhere. There's blood on the back door, there's blood on the appliances.

Speaker 62 And he said, Well, she must have fallen down. She must be at the hospital.

Speaker 5 So he grabs the yellow pages and starts making calls.

Speaker 63 He thinks it's an accident. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 22 She must have fallen down.

Speaker 32 Blood went everywhere.

Speaker 62 Did that seem to make sense to you?

Speaker 22 Not exactly.

Speaker 59 brett called 911

Speaker 5 91 what's an emergency we just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer

Speaker 50 when wack 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 yeah another possibility the criminal was still inside Officer Jim Barnett with the Montgomery County Police Department was the first on the scene.

Speaker 68 With guns drawn, he and his partner went inside.

Speaker 69 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.

Speaker 69 There was a lampshade knocked over, as well as an end table.

Speaker 69 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.

Speaker 70 It was Leslie.

Speaker 71 Officer Barnett checked for a pulse.

Speaker 58 Nothing.

Speaker 72 She was dead, killed in a vicious attack.

Speaker 12 At that point, what we have to do is go outside and inform the husband.

Speaker 22 He walked up to Sandy and just very directly walked right up to him, sir, your wife is dead.

Speaker 10 Just like that.

Speaker 73 Yeah.

Speaker 72 Lauren Prier was 23 years old back then.

Speaker 36 She was at her apartment that morning, still mercifully unaware of what had happened to her mother.

Speaker 74 She was my person.

Speaker 7 And we talked every single day.

Speaker 8 As soon as I woke up, I would call my mom.

Speaker 51 And that's exactly what Lauren did that morning.

Speaker 44 She dialed her mom's work line. One of her co-workers answered the phone.

Speaker 8 And she was like, well, she's not here right now.

Speaker 75 And I said, what do you mean?

Speaker 8 And she goes, you need to call your father.

Speaker 26 Are you thinking?

Speaker 10 You know what I thought?

Speaker 8 I thought good things. I thought we won the lottery, or there was like a surprise vacation.
So I thought something positive happened.

Speaker 72 The truth revealed itself when Lauren saw a police car pull up in front of her apartment.

Speaker 77 The police officer

Speaker 8 and my dad came up to our apartment.

Speaker 8 It's okay.

Speaker 8 It was all in slow motion.

Speaker 9 He goes, I'm so sorry.

Speaker 9 Your mom is no longer with us here anymore.

Speaker 12 It was very traumatic. She was screaming and crying and dropped and fell to the floor.

Speaker 8 I went to my bedroom. I just like screamed to one of my pillows.

Speaker 8 It was awful.

Speaker 35 Something evil made its way into the Prier's peaceful neighborhood that morning.

Speaker 60 But what?

Speaker 24 It was really confusing and tragic. Didn't make sense.
It still doesn't make sense.

Speaker 8 He just talked to me straight in my eyes.

Speaker 9 Like nothing was wrong.

Speaker 38 And he was comforting you.

Speaker 79 Yes.

Speaker 8 And he is the one who did it.

Speaker 10 Ugh.

Speaker 80 I'm just tired and drained. I know what's going on.

Speaker 8 I'm surprised I'm still alive.

Speaker 37 Year after year, Chubby Chase is listed as one of Maryland's safest communities.

Speaker 10 That made the murder of Leslie Prier in her own home all the more shocking.

Speaker 39 Leslie's brother, Frank.

Speaker 48 Zoom out a second. What a nice little neighborhood.
Spring morning, cherry blossoms. Seven or eight o'clock in the morning.
Beautiful spring day.

Speaker 1 She's dead.

Speaker 17 And now a once welcoming Chevy Chase home was crawling with forensic teams.

Speaker 12 They responded there to collect blood and they came back at least two additional days to continue collecting any possible evidence they could find.

Speaker 55 The house was a mess inside, but outside nothing was disturbed.

Speaker 60 And the back door was left unlocked, a habit for the Preers.

Speaker 8 They never kept the back door locked ever. Front door is always locked, but our back door is always open because we had a fence and the dog would go out.

Speaker 12 There was no signs of forced entry that I saw.

Speaker 12 So the person, whoever it was, I felt knew the victim, knew the family, knew the routine, entered the home and went through this violent struggle and then took the time to try and clean it up.

Speaker 12 And I mean, no one would do that. if it was your first time in the home.
This was clearly not a stranger to victim homicide.

Speaker 35 Once Lauren Prier learned about her mother's death, her first call was to her best friend, Lisa Wood.

Speaker 24 I've never heard that tone in her voice. That's got to be one of the most unfortunately memorable but defining moments of my life.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 24 What could be more traumatic, you know? It didn't make sense. It still doesn't make sense.

Speaker 83 Your mom must be taking these pictures.

Speaker 72 She was so.

Speaker 21 Lisa basically grew up in the Prier household.

Speaker 54 It became the sort of unofficial gathering spot for Lauren's friends.

Speaker 43 That's no small feat when you're talking about teenagers wanting to come over and hang out at their house.

Speaker 24 Her mom was just so vibrant. She wanted everyone to come over, feel welcome.
You knew that she wouldn't judge you and she would just be there for you.

Speaker 10 Leslie Prier grew up in Pensacola, Florida,

Speaker 68 one of eight children.

Speaker 85 Our dad loved the beach and when he finished with the Navy, he

Speaker 85 wanted to enjoy Pensacola Beach. So he would haul all eight children out to the beach, grill us flank steak sandwiches.
He brought snorkels and masks, and we all had a great time.

Speaker 35 All of Leslie's siblings had a soft spot for her. From Big Sister Robin.

Speaker 86 Leslie was kind and caring and generous to a fault.

Speaker 69 Closer to be.

Speaker 44 To little brother Scott.

Speaker 31 Leslie inherited the best qualities from our mom, who had an enormous heart. Trust me, each one of the eight of us have a lot of quirks, but Leslie, sweetest one of the eight, for sure.

Speaker 21 Leslie met Sandy Prier in Pensacola.

Speaker 70 They both came from military families and hit it off right from the start.

Speaker 8 They went in junior college, then went to the University of Florida, and they just stayed together.

Speaker 72 Sandy became a CPA, then an IT specialist.

Speaker 35 The couple married in 1974 and eventually settled in Chevy Chase.

Speaker 17 Their only child, Lauren, was the center of her mother's world.

Speaker 8 My mom loved me so much and thought I could do no wrong. Pretend I robbed a bank?

Speaker 8 Pretend.

Speaker 10 I would never do that.

Speaker 8 She would have gone. Lauren just needed a little money.

Speaker 72 She would have been there to bust you out of jail if necessary.

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 54 Leslie had a way of winning people over.

Speaker 55 Friends, family, and co-workers like Brett Reedy.

Speaker 77 What was she like in the office?

Speaker 22 Oh, she was a southern bell. She was fantastic.
Miss Leslie, she was very sweet. She was also very self-effacing.
Very much the southern charm.

Speaker 84 Sounds like she really was just a bright light in the office.

Speaker 22 Very much so, yes.

Speaker 42 Through the years, Leslie's big, boisterous family would gather for reunions in Pensacola, taking in the Gulf waters

Speaker 45 and making sure to catch a show by the Navy's legendary Blue Angels Aerobatic Team.

Speaker 13 Those reunions became a family staple, and Sandy fit right in.

Speaker 31 Sandy was, you know, he was, 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.

Speaker 38 Paint a picture for me of your parents' marriage.

Speaker 77 What was their relationship like?

Speaker 9 Best friends.

Speaker 8 Yeah, they were so sweet together.

Speaker 3 They loved each other.

Speaker 79 They had fun.

Speaker 10 We all had fun together.

Speaker 8 They had a wonderful marriage.

Speaker 52 Detectives were about to ask some tough questions about Leslie, her marriage, and the people closest to her.

Speaker 13 Did that question catch you off guard?

Speaker 4 Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 22 It will freak me out.

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Speaker 54 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 DuPois and Tara Augustin.

Speaker 53 They would eventually be among eight detectives to handle the case.

Speaker 26 This is such a nice neighborhood. Doesn't look like a place where something so terrible could happen.

Speaker 54 She said...

Speaker 35 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.

Speaker 74 Leslie said that

Speaker 111 he wanted to get control of her.

Speaker 26 He was one of the only sources of stress and tension in Leslie's life that Sandy could identify. She was always kind of complaining or stressed and worrying about her boss, Brett.

Speaker 28 Sandy recalled an incident about how Brett reacted when Leslie snapped at him after he pointed out a mistake she'd made at work.

Speaker 113 He blew up sky high about that, and she was kind of really under the gun for that one statement. Because she crossed him, she kind of had to pay for a period of time.

Speaker 26 Sandy, you know, listening to his wife talk about stories like that could say, well, you know, maybe she snapped at him and maybe he snapped.

Speaker 13 Brett had grown up in Chevy Chase and had been to the Prier's house.

Speaker 56 Still, Sandy wondered why he went there to look for Leslie the day of the murder.

Speaker 74 Brett coming to the house. Don't 100% understand that, but yeah.

Speaker 114 What do you mean, Brett coming to the house?

Speaker 48 Why didn't he just let me go to the house?

Speaker 52 That didn't sit right with Leslie's family either.

Speaker 86 Don't you think it's odd that a boss would go to someone's house

Speaker 86 when that person didn't show up for work?

Speaker 8 I did. He was the first person to show up at the house.

Speaker 8 So that was a little alarming. Suspicious to you?

Speaker 79 Yes.

Speaker 67 Brett insisted it was simply a gesture of concern for a colleague who had become a good friend.

Speaker 44 What was his relationship with your mom?

Speaker 8 Well, they worked together, obviously, and then

Speaker 27 they definitely had

Speaker 8 a closer relationship that I think beyond work.

Speaker 8 I mean, my mom thought he was attractive.

Speaker 28 Maybe Brett felt the same way.

Speaker 35 Lauren says he once sent Leslie a birthday card with some very kind words.

Speaker 8 He's like, you're the Audrey Hepburn of the office for her birthday.

Speaker 16 That's very flattering.

Speaker 115 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 59 What did your dad think about Brett?

Speaker 8 That he and my mom flirted together.

Speaker 101 Is it possible your mom could have been having an affair?

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 16 You thought, okay, this is her coworker.

Speaker 14 Maybe someone who's having an affair with my mom?

Speaker 8 It crossed my mind.

Speaker 14 And maybe someone who killed her.

Speaker 8 It crossed my mind.

Speaker 30 Was Leslie having an affair with anybody?

Speaker 30 You know, at the top of the list was Brett Reedy. He was pretty closely tapped into her day-to-day comings and goings.

Speaker 30 You know, the fact that he was so concerned when she didn't show up to work was also something that piqued the investigator's interest.

Speaker 58 Detectives brought Brett into headquarters for an interview.

Speaker 61 He described how, after calling 911, he walked around the house to do his own search.

Speaker 116 I went outside, went down the driveway, opened the gate, walked by the garage, kept walking in the backyard, walked to the backyard of the next house, and maybe the next house.

Speaker 61 A few days later, Brett came back to the scene, this time searching along the bike path and creek near the Prier home.

Speaker 22 I thought that path and that creek had something to do with this.

Speaker 22 If I could dump evidence, what would I do? Where would I do it? And it would be in that creek. You could hide it in the woods and then maybe get it later.

Speaker 22 And I said, well, I'm going to get that and find it.

Speaker 82 Investigators thought Brett's search was unusual and suspicious.

Speaker 21 And did you think that the police weren't looking back there?

Speaker 22 I have no idea.

Speaker 10 Because

Speaker 22 maybe they don't know the neighborhood. Like I know, I know the back of my hand.

Speaker 28 Brett then took his amateur investigation to Sandy's office.

Speaker 22 I went to his office, parking lot, and looked in his dumpster.

Speaker 10 What were you hoping to find?

Speaker 4 Evidence?

Speaker 42 Murder weapon, blade clothes.

Speaker 22 Yeah, let's find this.

Speaker 4 Let's get this over with.

Speaker 77 Many people wouldn't go out and actually start looking through trash for evidence themselves.

Speaker 78 Yeah. At some point, your partner said, okay, maybe you shouldn't go to his office.

Speaker 84 That could make police start to look at you.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 38 Do you see her point?

Speaker 22 Yes. She said, what are you going to do if you find something?

Speaker 4 I said, well, turn it in.

Speaker 78 I mean, you really inserted yourself in this investigation.

Speaker 117 Why'd you take such an interest?

Speaker 22 I want to find out what happened.

Speaker 21 And also, I just thought I could help.

Speaker 35 Brett also felt he was being helpful during his interview with police.

Speaker 44 He said the detectives were calm and cordial until the very end.

Speaker 118 And they said, we have one more question.

Speaker 22 I said, sure.

Speaker 22 Did you have anything to do with this? And it was very direct.

Speaker 31 And I just went, no,

Speaker 31 absolutely not.

Speaker 21 Did that question catch you off guard?

Speaker 4 Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 22 It a little freaked me out. I couldn't believe they were asking me.

Speaker 36 Brett says he was also caught off guard to learn what Sandy had said to police about him.

Speaker 35 And despite ongoing issues with Leslie being late for work, they remained good but platonic friends.

Speaker 84 Did you have a relationship with Leslie?

Speaker 72 No.

Speaker 38 Romantic relationship at all?

Speaker 10 Not at all.

Speaker 66 No question, detectives had their hands full with what was quickly becoming a high-profile case.

Speaker 54 Turns out, the load would soon get even heavier.

Speaker 119 The search is on in the district for a missing woman. Her name is Chandra Ann Levy.

Speaker 26 A lot of people in the the neighborhood were concerned and scared that there was some guy going around killing people.

Speaker 10 Especially women.

Speaker 26 Yes.

Speaker 33 It's textbook detective work.

Speaker 21 Start with the people closest to Leslie Prier.

Speaker 70 Then check to see if there were any other similar crimes in the area.

Speaker 10 Sadly, there were.

Speaker 119 The search is on in the district for a missing woman. Her name is Chandra Ann Levy.

Speaker 66 The day before Leslie Prier was found dead in her home, a woman named Chandra Levy disappeared.

Speaker 30 She was a young woman who worked on the hill in D.C., which wasn't very far from the Prier household.

Speaker 32 Local police and the FBI are looking for clues in a high-profile disappearance where a California woman vanished without a trace just after she'd completed an internship.

Speaker 14 That becomes a huge national story, and police are looking and saying, okay, could these possibly be connected?

Speaker 26 Yes. A lot of people in the neighborhood were concerned and scared that there was some guy going around killing people.

Speaker 16 Yeah, especially women. Yes.

Speaker 35 There was another case on the detectives' radar, a few years older, but just as frightening.

Speaker 33 The Votomac rapist, a serial offender who had murdered one of his victims.

Speaker 111 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 They quickly ruled out that any of those other cases were related.

Speaker 54 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.

Speaker 26 They looked into anybody that was doing work in the neighborhood or anyone that had done any work on the Prier's house.

Speaker 26 Anyone that was in the neighborhood that didn't live there, that there could have been a chance interaction with Leslie, they looked into.

Speaker 29 Dead ends, all of them.

Speaker 58 But Lauren had her own idea about what might have happened and told police.

Speaker 8 My mom loved to take public transportation.

Speaker 67 Because Leslie preferred taking a bus to work, Lauren came up with a theory.

Speaker 54 Maybe her mother's killer was someone she met during her commute.

Speaker 8 She talked to everybody. She lived the world through rose-tented glasses.
Like no one does any harm. I said, Mama,

Speaker 8 not everyone's perfect.

Speaker 47 She takes never met a stranger to a whole new level.

Speaker 7 Correct.

Speaker 38 Were you thinking that this could be somebody maybe who met her on the bus, who followed her home?

Speaker 8 Yes, it was definitely a possibility in my head.

Speaker 70 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.

Speaker 77 What did police ask you for?

Speaker 8 The list of names that knew my mom and knew me and were president at my parents' house.

Speaker 42 So this could be a pretty long list.

Speaker 38 Just at least 25.

Speaker 81 Kind of describe who was on that list.

Speaker 8 Friends.

Speaker 24 My Jennings side of the family, which is my mom's side.

Speaker 58 Basically, anybody that you knew that had come to the house.

Speaker 77 Yeah.

Speaker 35 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.

Speaker 29 You would never hurt my mom.

Speaker 121 That I truly believe.

Speaker 35 And there was an earlier boyfriend, Eugene Glegore, someone she dated back in high school.

Speaker 122 What first attracted you to him?

Speaker 8 He was smart. He was from a good family.
And he was extremely attractive.

Speaker 50 Leslie's brother Frank made the list too.

Speaker 35 Even though he owns a bike shop in Massachusetts, and was hundreds of miles away when Leslie died.

Speaker 8 My uncle Frank used to stay at my parents' house sometimes, so he was on the list, but everyone is on the list.

Speaker 60 Lisa helped Lauren with that list, but it felt like an exercise in futility.

Speaker 21 After all, these were friends, family.

Speaker 24 No, it's like you just try to rack your brain to try to make any sense of any of the details because it's like a puzzle and you're just trying to put it together. You're just grasping at straws.

Speaker 24 There was never anyone that was like, oh, yeah, it's got to be them or it would make like

Speaker 24 none of it made sense

Speaker 33 it seems detectives felt the same way because some of the people on that list were never contacted and so they turned back to someone who is always on a detective's list when a spouse is murdered the husband is usually the one you're gonna look at first okay

Speaker 28 all right how about yourself not bad not bad it was time to circle back to sandy prier

Speaker 111 I told you everything

Speaker 104 exactly how it happened.

Speaker 30 He didn't do himself any favors by kind of the way he answered questions. There were a lot of signs that did point to Sandy.

Speaker 88 During his interview with police, Sandy Prier pointed detectives in the direction of Brett Reedy.

Speaker 87 And when they talked to Brett, he pointed the finger right back at Sandy, suggesting there was something about his behavior that morning that just didn't seem right.

Speaker 62 Sandy gets out of the car and comes up to me and says, Hey, Brett, how are you doing?

Speaker 22 I'm doing okay, but we're here to, in my head, I'm thinking we're here to find

Speaker 4 your wife.

Speaker 42 Inside, the scene was brutal.

Speaker 62 To Brett, it seemed obvious there'd been a struggle.

Speaker 84 What do police do when they get there?

Speaker 22 Well, as as soon as they walked up, they drew their guns.

Speaker 22 And Sandy went, oh, you guys mean business.

Speaker 22 I thought that was a lot.

Speaker 22 You know, I like the joke a lot, but not at that moment.

Speaker 42 Did it seem, what, flippant to you?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 82 Officer Jim Barnett got the same strange vibe from Sandy.

Speaker 12 He didn't run up to me and say, I can't find my wife. There's been a violent struggle.
There's blood in the house. He just calmly stood in the yard and waited for me to walk up.

Speaker 48 And when I said, what's going on?

Speaker 12 His response was, I've looked all through the house and can't find her.

Speaker 44 Remember, when Barnett went upstairs, he found Leslie almost immediately.

Speaker 12 I was surprised that he didn't find her in the shower stall, especially after you've seen, you know, all that

Speaker 12 blood and disturbance in the foyer area and your wife's missing. I would think you'd be looking under beds, in closets, everywhere.

Speaker 12 And then to find the victim upstairs in a shower, you know, that's bizarre, you know?

Speaker 12 So I'm thinking, like, man,

Speaker 2 this is really, really strange.

Speaker 44 Barnett says Sandy remained calm after learning his wife was dead.

Speaker 12 I was fully expecting him to bullrush me to run upstairs and see his wife in the shower stall, but he did not do that. He stood right there, and there was kind of no, no, no response.

Speaker 12 From what I've seen and his reactions, it just didn't look realistic.

Speaker 70 Barnett kept a close eye on Sandy.

Speaker 12 My main concern was keeping him right there in the front yard and not letting him back into the house.

Speaker 35 Then Barnett had Sandy sit with him in the front seat of his cruiser and waited for backup.

Speaker 12 And from that point forward, the detectives showed up to take over.

Speaker 55 As crime scene techs processed the house that morning, detectives went door to door talking to neighbors one reported seeing something strange the lights on inside the preer house in the middle of the night all the blinds were drawn in the house and that was what was weird about it and that wasn't their normal pattern no

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 70 But the neighbor couldn't tell if Leslie was even there.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 41 When Sandy first met with detectives at headquarters, they noticed he had a few small cuts and they took pictures.

Speaker 60 When they talked to him, Sandy said the last time he saw Leslie, he kissed her goodbye like he always did.

Speaker 123 We always kiss each other bye up and wave goodbye. Is she at the doorstep?

Speaker 117 But when detectives asked some pretty straightforward questions, Sandy fumbled the answers.

Speaker 30 He didn't do himself any favors by kind of the way he answered questions.

Speaker 14 Talk to me about some of the things the detectives noticed about Sandy.

Speaker 26 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?

Speaker 57 I could guess, but I don't know for a fact.

Speaker 16 Not remembering where he was or what he did was a problem for Sandy.

Speaker 81 But the things he did remember about his whereabouts seemed even more suspicious.

Speaker 3 Oh, wait.

Speaker 3 Okay, I know what I did.

Speaker 124 I was taking some computer stuff to the dump.

Speaker 26 He went to the dump to dispose of some computer parts.

Speaker 33 He went to the dump.

Speaker 26 Yeah, and that caught their attention a lot.

Speaker 16 That's raising a red flag.

Speaker 78 Yes.

Speaker 45 Sandy told detectives he got home late that night and didn't know if Leslie had eaten.

Speaker 44 But the medical examiner's report was more bad news for Sandy.

Speaker 26 They looked at her stomach contents in the autopsy, and there was undigested pasta in there, which would indicate that she died within a certain amount of time of eating that.

Speaker 26 And they looked at it like, well, that would have been dinner the night before

Speaker 55 the night before when sandy would have been home alone with leslie it seemed nothing in sandy's police interview was helping his cause until he mentioned that leslie called him at his office the morning her body was found she called around nine o'clock now does that come through the switchboard does that come from so you dial the main number uh ask sandra who you need to speak to and she transfers the call

Speaker 27 a nine o'clock call from Leslie would have given Sandy an airtight alibi, but that alibi hit a snag.

Speaker 26 Investigators were never able to verify that that conversation happened, so that was just Sandy's word saying that that phone call happened.

Speaker 35 And investigators were not going to take him at his word.

Speaker 12 Everything pointed to the husband's involvement at that point in time.

Speaker 60 It was time to up the pressure on Sandy Prier.

Speaker 18 You've got the wrong guy.

Speaker 76 Facts don't lie, Sandy. You're gonna be a man, you're gonna stand up, and you're gonna accept the responsibility for what you did.

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Speaker 25 Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 103 Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile.

Speaker 57 You know, one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north.

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Speaker 41 Detectives had cast a wide net.

Speaker 54 Talking to Leslie's friends, family, co-workers, they had also looked for a connection to other crimes in the area but it all went nowhere

Speaker 30 the investigation was now all about sandy prier and his relationship with leslie so as they started talking to family members more and more about leslie and sandy's relationship it became apparent that it you know had had its struggles

Speaker 28 Sandy said as much during his first interview with detectives at headquarters.

Speaker 123 Leslie and I had our arguments and we had some pretty nasty ones at Kai.

Speaker 42 When detectives brought Sandy in for another interview, he seemed to blame Leslie for some of those arguments.

Speaker 112 She can be,

Speaker 74 I hope I must, she must have a foot on this one, but she can be

Speaker 112 demanding.

Speaker 60 Sandy and Leslie lived in an upscale neighborhood.

Speaker 45 Both had solid jobs.

Speaker 62 But money was tight.

Speaker 26 Leslie had an operation without any health insurance, so they owed a lot of money for that. And they had credit card debt and student loan debt from their daughter Lauren going to college.

Speaker 26 So they were struggling to keep up financially.

Speaker 113 I noticed that you've had some pretty substantial bills with your credit cards, Visa, MasterCard.

Speaker 112 We were trying to work those down.

Speaker 128 But yes,

Speaker 113 there's some debt here, no question about it.

Speaker 77 So that was a source of tension between the two of them, too.

Speaker 87 Yes.

Speaker 26 And that was one aspect that the investigators looked at to see if there was a reason that that could lead to Leslie's murder.

Speaker 55 Was it possible that tension led to violence?

Speaker 61 When they first spoke to Sandy, he did describe an incident where he lost control and got physical with Leslie.

Speaker 124 The most violent I ever got was I'd grab her and just say, you know, you got to snap out of

Speaker 113 grabbing her by her shoulders.

Speaker 124 Her shoulders. You know, and she, you know, hit the wall.
Nothing, you know, smashing or anything. It hit the wall and she's burst in tears and i'm thinking god what am i doing

Speaker 48 detectives also wondered if there was any infidelity that could have triggered a confrontation so they reached out to their colleague ed golean who worked in the undercover unit we got notified by the detectives they would like us to follow sandy you know is he meeting up with a say you know another woman and maybe some kind of relationship there

Speaker 44 So Golian started surveillance on Sandy.

Speaker 61 For several days, he followed him as as he drove to work, went to lunch, did a little shopping, and went back home.

Speaker 35 Turned out to be a pretty boring assignment.

Speaker 42 But two things did pique his interest, like Sandy's use of a payphone.

Speaker 48 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 this payphone.

Speaker 94 That seems strange.

Speaker 35 So did another incident just a few weeks after the murder.

Speaker 10 Sandy, parked and sitting in his car, opened an envelope and cracked open a beer.

Speaker 48 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.

Speaker 48 And my thought is his wife's a victim of a murder and he's reading this, whatever it is, and he's laughing.

Speaker 53 At this point, detectives were suspicious over just about anything Sandy did or said.

Speaker 50 But he had cooperated with police from the very start.

Speaker 26 He volunteered to take a polygraph.

Speaker 8 He volunteered.

Speaker 78 Yes.

Speaker 16 That's usually a good sign.

Speaker 26 Usually.

Speaker 26 But he came in and took the polygraph and failed.

Speaker 10 He failed.

Speaker 16 Yes. That's not a good sign.
No.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 88 Detectives brought Sandy in for another interview, and this time they didn't hold back.

Speaker 76 There's some things that you got to try to do to set things straight, especially for other folks, because we all know what happened.

Speaker 76 And I think it'd be a travesty for Lauren for her to go through the rest of her dog online, trying to figure out just what the hell happened.

Speaker 18 And I'll just tell you one thing, you got the wrong guy.

Speaker 76 Facts don't lie, Sandy. Just be a man and tell us what happened.

Speaker 113 I told you exactly what happened.

Speaker 76 But you haven't told us the truth. You got an an obligation there

Speaker 76 through your daughter you're gonna be a man you're gonna stand up and you're gonna accept the responsibility for what you did

Speaker 76 do the right thing sandy

Speaker 74 i'm not saying anything unless my lawyer's here

Speaker 8 they had pictures of myself my mom and the three of us together in the interrogation room to see if he would crack to plead guilty but he didn't what did your dad say to you about that experience well we've talked obviously obviously, and cried together, but I think he kept a lot of it inside because he knew how much I was going through.

Speaker 21 For Lauren, it was heartbreaking knowing her father was the prime suspect in her mother's murder.

Speaker 29 Knowing he loved my mom, knowing he loved me.

Speaker 8 I knew he didn't do it. He never caved.
He stayed strong.

Speaker 53 But detectives were locked in.

Speaker 70 Sandy was their guy.

Speaker 19 Then a new report came in from the crime lab.

Speaker 30 The blood swabs that were taken from the scene came back to Leslie, but there were several swabs that were not Leslie's. They were an unknown profile.

Speaker 30 And that same unknown profile was also found underneath her fingernails. I mean, that's a huge break in the case.

Speaker 23 That is your killer.

Speaker 21 What looked like the big break would become an even bigger mystery.

Speaker 45 Could he have really killed her?

Speaker 48 You can just snap, and then there's no telling what'll happen after that.

Speaker 30 She yells from the back of the room. She's like, I got it.
I think I got it.

Speaker 26 You're just kind of shocked. Like, is this really happening?

Speaker 8 I almost fell off my chair. It's insane.

Speaker 51 The detectives working to solve Leslie Prier's murder were methodically building their case against her husband, Sandy.

Speaker 26 They looked into: did Sandy kill her for a life insurance policy payout, or was Sandy having an affair and killed her so that he could be with his lover? Or did the lover come and kill Leslie?

Speaker 26 Looked at a lot of different possibilities, but most of them revolved around Sandy.

Speaker 35 As the weeks passed, detectives shared their suspicions about Sandy with people close to the case.

Speaker 13 They told Leslie's boss, Brett Reedy, that Sandy had failed a lie detector test.

Speaker 10 There was a lot of chatter about that around the office.

Speaker 38 That information, combined with what you had seen that day, what are you starting to think?

Speaker 22 Yeah, I'm starting to think, well, their focus is on him. It'll be a matter of time, then they'll probably prove it.

Speaker 33 Detectives also shared their findings with Leslie's family.

Speaker 61 There were members of your family

Speaker 4 that fully believed he was involved.

Speaker 77 Because of what the police said.

Speaker 44 Scott Jennings, Leslie's younger brother.

Speaker 31 Could he have done it? Yes. My mom,

Speaker 31 who died in 2019, she made no bones about it that she thought Sandy did it.

Speaker 72 He speculated about what happened.

Speaker 31 Leslie liked to drink a lot of wine at night. She probably could have gotten a little combative.

Speaker 48 You can just snap.

Speaker 3 And then there's no telling what'll happen after that.

Speaker 39 Frank Jennings, another of Leslie's brothers.

Speaker 120 To me, it wasn't a stretch to think, oh,

Speaker 11 he could have killed her.

Speaker 67 Detectives also explained their thinking to Lauren.

Speaker 54 She told them her dad loved her mom and would never kill her.

Speaker 94 Although she had heard her parents arguing.

Speaker 8 I would be upstairs in my room, but I could hear theirs,

Speaker 26 not all the time, but sometimes.

Speaker 90 Were they intense arguments?

Speaker 10 Were they little spats?

Speaker 24 It was arguments. Yeah.

Speaker 8 It wasn't spats.

Speaker 35 These were kind of intense arguments.

Speaker 79 Fights.

Speaker 109 Yes.

Speaker 10 But they would be short and loud.

Speaker 46 Lauren made an excruciating decision.

Speaker 54 She confronted her dad.

Speaker 10 I had

Speaker 45 a minute where I said, could he have really killed her?

Speaker 25 So you went to your dad and you asked him, did you kill mom?

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 117 What did he say?

Speaker 8 He said, I'm only answer this one time. And he said, no.

Speaker 8 And then I believed him.

Speaker 13 Was there ever any time that you thought that maybe he did do it?

Speaker 24 No.

Speaker 117 Maybe there are questions here.

Speaker 10 No. Yeah.

Speaker 24 I mean, not for one second.

Speaker 68 Because you knew him.

Speaker 24 I did. And that,

Speaker 24 it just, there's no way.

Speaker 70 The detectives knew their strongest evidence were those DNA lab results showing the material under Leslie's fingernails and the blood in the house belonged to one man, clearly the killer.

Speaker 26 So they look at everyone that was close to Leslie in her daily life that would have interacted with Leslie and obtained voluntary DNA samples from those people to be able to eliminate them.

Speaker 14 So we're talking about more than a dozen people. Yes.

Speaker 41 First on their list, prime suspect Sandy Prier.

Speaker 87 A DNA match would cement their case against him.

Speaker 70 So it was a huge jolt when the results came in.

Speaker 55 And Sandy was not a match.

Speaker 56 Was that DNA evidence the only thing that kept Sandy out of prison?

Speaker 87 Yes.

Speaker 78 You believe he would have easily gotten arrested otherwise? Yes.

Speaker 44 Detectives regrouped and tried again.

Speaker 35 They got a sample from Leslie's boss.

Speaker 72 Brett realized his overzealous efforts to look into Sandy may have fueled suspicion, but he wasn't worried about that. In fact, he was relieved to give his DNA.

Speaker 22 Actually, I felt good doing it because I said, fine, take mine. You can eliminate me.

Speaker 58 And they did eliminate Brett.

Speaker 87 It turns out he was just what he said he was, a helpful guy.

Speaker 55 Detectives also ran the unknown DNA through the national database CODIS to see if it matched any offenders in the system.

Speaker 29 Nothing.

Speaker 14 As you're going through this, all of these tests being done, not a match, not a match, not a match.

Speaker 8 What was that like for you?

Speaker 10 A nightmare, horrifying,

Speaker 14 cut in sleep that had to have been deflating.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 It, I think, was a huge dead end for them.

Speaker 60 So detectives hit reset and came up with a new theory.

Speaker 52 Sandy Prier may not have killed Leslie himself.

Speaker 70 Instead, they surmised he paid someone else to do it.

Speaker 26 They thought that perhaps he was working with someone and the other person is the one who killed Leslie.

Speaker 10 So where do police go from there?

Speaker 26 At that point, I think that they had exhausted all of their resources.

Speaker 50 But Lauren Prier wasn't giving up.

Speaker 27 Every month, without fail, she checked in with detectives.

Speaker 124 So here we are.

Speaker 51 A year after her mother died, Lauren met with them, and it was clear their theory hadn't changed.

Speaker 76 My gut feeling is that your dad had something to do with this.

Speaker 113 It is so bizarre to

Speaker 115 think

Speaker 76 that

Speaker 127 this could be someone else.

Speaker 88 They pressed Lauren for anything that could point to Sandy's guilt.

Speaker 3 Is he wrestling with any kind of demons?

Speaker 115 You know, a guilt of remorse.

Speaker 127 I don't feel

Speaker 115 guilt and suspicion and hide anything at all.

Speaker 30 You know, I think after a year, they were maybe hoping that

Speaker 30 something had come out, something had slipped. Maybe Sandy was acting differently around her.

Speaker 67 But Lauren had nothing for them, and the investigation came to a standstill.

Speaker 102 We want to identify who this person is.

Speaker 56 More than two years after the murder, investigators appealed to the public for help finding the owner of that mystery DNA.

Speaker 125 I know that some people are afraid to come forward with information. What we request is that these people call us.

Speaker 28 But there were still questions about the detective's prime suspect.

Speaker 33 And when a reporter from NBC4 Washington asked Lauren if her father was the killer, she defended him fiercely.

Speaker 26 My father never in a tri-billion years could ever, like...

Speaker 10 like kill his wife and leave her in a shower and go to work like nothing happened.

Speaker 48 It would be years before new detectives jumped on the case, but when they did, she seems to be describing like a stalker.

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Speaker 103 Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile.

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Speaker 45 The investigation into Leslie Prier's murder ground to a halt in 2003, and the case went into the cold files.

Speaker 35 years passed and for lauren those years were tough she got married then divorced she learned to live with fear and anxiety knowing the killer was still out there you almost edit the way that you live a little bit because you just have this thing looming over you i mean i guess because

Speaker 24 Lauren's mom was found in the shower, Lauren developed a lot of anxiety around showering.

Speaker 24 And every time she needed to take a shower, she would call me and I would walk down the street and I would sit in there with her

Speaker 24 because she was terrified of being alone.

Speaker 13 You kept a gun in your house.

Speaker 10 I do. I have a loaded gun.

Speaker 33 Lauren still checked in with detectives every month.

Speaker 10 Like clockwork.

Speaker 14 You were picking up the phone to say, do you have anything new?

Speaker 44 What's going on?

Speaker 7 Nothing new.

Speaker 10 Nothing.

Speaker 14 That had to have just been crushing every time you hung up the phone.

Speaker 8 I'm surprised I'm still alive.

Speaker 21 Finally, 2010, almost nine years after Leslie was murdered, a spark of something.

Speaker 67 A new detective joined the Montgomery County Cold Case Squad.

Speaker 70 Someone who knew the case well, Detective Ed Golian.

Speaker 70 He'd surveilled Sandy in the early days of the investigation.

Speaker 33 Now, he was on the case again.

Speaker 36 And soon he heard from Lauren.

Speaker 35 She had spent years mulling over the killer's identity, and she had a suggestion.

Speaker 48 She wants to follow up with a guy by the name of Jim.

Speaker 62 His name had been in the original file.

Speaker 54 Detectives never spoke with Jim back then, nor did they run his DNA.

Speaker 44 Lauren says she went to a party at Jim's house months before her mother died and had a rather unsettling conversation with him there.

Speaker 8 I saw a picture of

Speaker 8 him and a woman and I said, is that your wife? And he's like, yeah. I was like, where is she? And he was like, we're separated right now.
And I was like, oh, what happened? And he was like, she said,

Speaker 8 I'm too rough in bed. And I was like, huh?

Speaker 8 Okay, so that freaked me out.

Speaker 68 So when Lauren and her mom ran into Jim one day at the bus stop, Lauren introduced the two reluctantly.

Speaker 48 And Lauren notices like there's a glance.

Speaker 48 There's like they're giving each like a quick guy, and she had an opinion about that, that maybe there was some kind of sexual attraction between the two of them.

Speaker 48 And then Jim makes a comment

Speaker 48 directed at Lauren, but is, well, I could see where,

Speaker 48 you know, you, Lauren, get your good looks from.

Speaker 68 Lauren says Jim suggested that he and Leslie could get together to walk their dogs since they lived in the same neighborhood.

Speaker 10 And what are you thinking?

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 47 You wanted to shut it down immediately.

Speaker 8 Immediately.

Speaker 48 And she talks about a time after the murder. She's at the restaurant bar and she's there with a friend of hers and Jim's there.
He's by himself.

Speaker 48 They talk and Jim mentioned how sorry he is to hear about her mother. So here's a guy that's, you know, about 50 years old.
It's in there by himself.

Speaker 48 She and her friend, I think they thought it it was a little odd.

Speaker 10 After that, Lauren ran into Jim several times.

Speaker 8 He would show up at the local bars where I was, different restaurants and bars, but places where

Speaker 8 that age of a person didn't hang out. And he would come up to me and be like, hi, Lauren, how are you? And my friends would be like, what is that? Who's that?

Speaker 10 How did he know where you were?

Speaker 8 That's what my question was.

Speaker 91 Thought he was following me.

Speaker 38 This is just kind of sending off alarm bells. Yes.

Speaker 4 In your mind.

Speaker 4 That really is weird.

Speaker 48 She seems to be describing like a stalker. She wants to

Speaker 48 interview him.

Speaker 35 So Golian went to Jim's house.

Speaker 33 He didn't ask him if he'd been following Lauren, but did ask for a DNA sample to see if it matched the mystery DNA.

Speaker 27 The results came back a few weeks later.

Speaker 48 It's not him. He's eliminated.

Speaker 33 Yet another dead end.

Speaker 53 Lauren suggested a couple of other men she thought might be worth looking into, including her old high school boyfriend.

Speaker 48 She says, oh yeah, by the way, I dated this guy. He's a drug user.
He acts a little weird.

Speaker 36 His name was Eugene Glegore.

Speaker 35 Lauren says she included him on that list she gave detectives in the early days of the investigation.

Speaker 53 Golian was interested.

Speaker 48 The main reason is because he knows the family. He's been to the house.
It's something that,

Speaker 48 you know, you probably want to pursue.

Speaker 53 He discovered that Eugene was living in New York and another potential suspect Lauren had named lived even farther away.

Speaker 67 Interviewing them would require time and money.

Speaker 10 So he held off.

Speaker 48 If nothing changes, if there's still an unknown suspect in this case, if CODIS hasn't hit on anyone, we're going to have to go back and talk to these people.

Speaker 42 And then Boleon was reassigned to another cold case.

Speaker 39 A year later, he retired.

Speaker 45 So the Prier case went back into the cold files until one day when Lauren's phone rang.

Speaker 8 I almost fell off my chair.

Speaker 67 By 2017, it seemed almost everyone had forgotten about the unsolved murder of Leslie Prier 16 years earlier.

Speaker 34 Everyone, of course, except her family and friends.

Speaker 122 What was it like for you, Lauren?

Speaker 20 Living life for those years with just this not knowing?

Speaker 8 Haunting. Yeah.

Speaker 8 But on the flip side, it also made me

Speaker 75 stronger.

Speaker 8 And being like, we're not going to forget. We're going to keep pursuing.
I was never going to give up.

Speaker 88 Lauren's father, Sandy, didn't forget either.

Speaker 54 He couldn't.

Speaker 33 Even though his DNA had cleared him as the killer, detectives still thought he had a hand in the murder. What were those 16 years like for him?

Speaker 14 Not knowing who killed his wife, but also himself existing under this cloud of suspicion.

Speaker 84 I mean, initially, he was really

Speaker 8 obviously he didn't tell me. I know he was hurt.

Speaker 36 Sandy, once the life of the party at family reunions, became a shell of himself.

Speaker 82 At one point, Leslie's brother Scott had a heart-to-heart with him.

Speaker 31 Said, Sandy, the guys in the family, most of the guys, do not think you murdered Leslie. Unfortunately, the women in the family, especially my mom, feel like you did.

Speaker 31 And Sandy just said one phrase to me. He goes, I'm getting a bad shake on this.

Speaker 29 And the fact that police hadn't cleared Sandy had an impact.

Speaker 81 Bill Jennings, Leslie's older brother.

Speaker 11 He came down to see us a couple times, but it wasn't the same. I think he felt that he was still under a bit of a cloud of suspicion.
I do think that was the case.

Speaker 8 I think he always kind of felt betrayed from the Jennings family. And then it's just, it was

Speaker 7 a betrayal.

Speaker 10 Sandy retired early.

Speaker 49 He withdrew to his home.

Speaker 7 You could tell it was just so stressful.

Speaker 8 And just, I mean,

Speaker 10 no one can really handle that.

Speaker 47 And at the same time, he's grieving.

Speaker 10 Completely.

Speaker 10 I know for a fact that when he was home, he was crying.

Speaker 45 He tried counseling, read the Bible from cover to cover.

Speaker 47 You saw the toll that took on him.

Speaker 24 Absolutely. He was always just this carefree

Speaker 30 person.

Speaker 24 I think the combination of the tragedy of losing his wife, as well as the scrutiny that he was put under, I think that it just changed him.

Speaker 35 Sandy Prier died in June 2017. The official cause of death was septic shock.

Speaker 60 Lauren has her own thoughts.

Speaker 10 What ultimately killed your father?

Speaker 79 Broken heart.

Speaker 29 He died of a broken heart.

Speaker 54 In the years that followed, there was no shortage of broken hearts.

Speaker 24 It just seems like, you know, after you cross over like the two decade mark, you know, what could possibly come up and happen now

Speaker 24 that didn't happen back then?

Speaker 16 Had you just given up hope at that point that they would ever solve it?

Speaker 8 I had come to a point where I was going to probably die before it was solved.

Speaker 54 But then, in 2022, everything changed.

Speaker 62 That's when Detective Tara Augustin joined the Montgomery County Cold Case Unit and began looking into the Prier case.

Speaker 44 That spring, she called Lauren.

Speaker 8 I almost fell off my chair. I said, my mom? And she's like, yes.

Speaker 46 For Detective Augustine, hearing Lauren's response on the phone was all the boost she needed.

Speaker 26 Kind of sounding in her voice like, I can't believe this is really happening. Someone's actually looking into her case.

Speaker 88 That has to be an experience for you too.

Speaker 122 It's one thing to go through an old box and look through old files, but when you actually hear a daughter's voice on the other end of that phone, kind of feeling that hope.

Speaker 26 Yeah, it makes it more real and you get more of a personal connection to the case and to the family members. And that's also a motivating factor because you want to solve it for them.

Speaker 30 Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 66 Detective Allison DuPois was also on the case.

Speaker 44 The two partners are working moms and felt an immediate connection to a daughter's decades-long search for her mom's killer.

Speaker 110 If we could help bring closure for Lauren and her family, that was really important.

Speaker 26 When I came to the unit, I told our captain, I said, I'm going to solve this. And he's like, okay.

Speaker 84 Where do you start?

Speaker 26 You look at all of the notes, all of the reports, and just go through everything all over again with a completely open mind, not

Speaker 26 trying to focus too much on what the original detectives thought, because that's the big thing here is a fresh set of eyes.

Speaker 54 They used those fresh eyes to draw their own conclusions.

Speaker 70 And unlike the six detectives before them, they concluded that Sandy Prier had nothing to do with his wife's murder.

Speaker 26 Lauren was always adamant. My mom and dad, you know, they would argue, but they would never be violent with each other.

Speaker 14 Did her word mean a lot in this investigation?

Speaker 26 I I think it did. And, you know, we look into it.
And

Speaker 26 again, it just kind of goes where the evidence leads. And it just didn't lead to Sandy.

Speaker 62 All along, Detectives DuPoi and Augustine knew the key to the case was the mystery DNA.

Speaker 30 It was a really strong DNA case, meaning they collected a lot of DNA from the scene.

Speaker 26 If it was going to be solved, it was going to come down to this DNA finding a match somehow.

Speaker 81 So they had plenty to to work with, and this time they had an exciting tool in their belt.

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Speaker 39 When Detective Tara Augustin began reviewing Leslie Prier's case in 2022, she had a word of caution for Leslie's daughter, Lauren.

Speaker 8 She said, we're going to look into it and we're going to go from there. And she said, it's going to take a while.

Speaker 10 By then, waiting was old hat for Lauren.

Speaker 37 Lisa Wood hated to see it.

Speaker 24 Lauren deserves justice. She deserves healing and closure.

Speaker 26 So we just need the DNA report.

Speaker 8 from the lab that has his profile.

Speaker 70 For years, the owner of the male DNA founded the crime scene and, under Leslie's fingernails, had eluded investigators.

Speaker 53 But technology had come a long way since Leslie Prier's murder in 2001.

Speaker 35 Now, investigators have access to new genealogy services to search for a killer's relatives and, hopefully, the killer himself.

Speaker 77 How much of a game changer is that for you in the work that you do?

Speaker 14 This technology?

Speaker 26 It's huge. This was my first case using genealogy.
The blue is Sandy's DNA. The pink is Leslie's.
And then this green is the unknown male.

Speaker 117 These genealogy searches can be tedious and time-consuming.

Speaker 10 But oh, when they work.

Speaker 26 When something happens and it clicks, it's just like

Speaker 26 amazing.

Speaker 10 It can change everything.

Speaker 79 Yes.

Speaker 35 It takes a lot to get started, a lot of rules, and a lot of money.

Speaker 62 And at first, the detectives didn't even know if they could proceed.

Speaker 26 We have to prove that the case has been investigated and there's no other avenues that we can explore and it has to be a homicide or a rape or unidentified human remains or a threat to public safety.

Speaker 26 And then we have to go and in front of a judge and they have to sign off on us being allowed to send off the DNA.

Speaker 84 Wow.

Speaker 33 So you literally have to build a case to be able to explore this avenue.

Speaker 16 Yes.

Speaker 30 We were determined to finish this and we had the DNA and it was just a matter of narrowing it down and finding that needle in a haystack.

Speaker 27 Finally, they got the go-ahead.

Speaker 94 Here's how it works.

Speaker 35 Investigators compare the DNA profile from the crime scene to public databases that people use to trace their own family histories.

Speaker 62 If they find a link, they build a family tree using other information they find online.

Speaker 60 A few times, they came close.

Speaker 26 One individual was in the area around the same time and had a pretty violent criminal history. So we thought that was a good possibility.

Speaker 58 And it came up that that DNA possibly matched what was found at the scene?

Speaker 26 There was a relationship. Yeah, it was, he was in the family tree and it was a match to our suspect DNA as a relative.
So what did you do?

Speaker 26 We located a family member of his, actually, and approached them and they provided their DNA. And with that, we were able to rule out that branch because it was not a match.

Speaker 10 Strike one.

Speaker 26 And then there was another individual that at the time lived pretty close by where Leslie lived. And

Speaker 26 we ended up just talking to that person and got his DNA and he was not a match.

Speaker 77 That's got to be frustrating.

Speaker 26 It is.

Speaker 37 Strike two.

Speaker 35 The best prospect was the one farthest away in Romania.

Speaker 26 And it was the highest match.

Speaker 78 So meaning the highest probability that that person is related to the suspect.

Speaker 26 The higher the number means they are more closely related, which means less family tree to build.

Speaker 77 Less degrees of separation.

Speaker 26 Yes, and less time spent on it.

Speaker 35 They decided to pursue it.

Speaker 45 More tree building.

Speaker 62 Detective Augustine took the lead.

Speaker 30 She was relentless. She sat there and built family trees for days.
And I was working on other cases, on missing people. And she would go back to these family trees and didn't give up.

Speaker 41 And then one day,

Speaker 30 she yells from the back of the room. She's like, I got it.
I think I got it. I kind of brushed it off.
I was like, yeah, we've said that before. It's probably not going to be him.

Speaker 30 But then I walk over and she starts telling me who she has and how she found it.

Speaker 58 You're looking at all of these names and then suddenly there's a name that stands out.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 35 And you'd seen it before.

Speaker 26 Yes. At first I was just kind of like, am I making this up? Like is this, did I really recognize that name?

Speaker 26 And when you look in the case file and you see it and it is a match to what you're building with these other names that you've never seen before, it's kind of like...

Speaker 26 eye-opening and you're just kind of shocked like is this really happening?

Speaker 30 It was a pretty awesome moment. There were lots of expletives, I believe, because we just couldn't believe that we found this guy.

Speaker 26 We were all excited, so we called our sergeant. We were like, Get down here now, I think we got it.

Speaker 55 This is big, this is a name. Yeah,

Speaker 67 his name had been in the pre-er murder files from the very beginning, overlooked, collecting dust.

Speaker 80 Hey, it's up.

Speaker 62 That was about to change.

Speaker 67 As she searched ancestry websites looking for the owner of the mystery DNA, Detective Tara Augustin had come across a name, Glegor.

Speaker 90 That's a pretty distinctive name.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 90 Did you recognize that name immediately?

Speaker 26 I did, and I was trying to figure out why. I had to go back to the case file to figure out where I'd seen it, and there was a folder with the name Eugene Glegor.

Speaker 76 Hmm.

Speaker 26 So this was one of Lauren's high school boyfriends.

Speaker 44 It was the break detectives had needed for more than two decades, the one that kept eluding them.

Speaker 90 When you made that connection, that had to have been huge.

Speaker 26 Yeah, it was, it was like bells went off. Like, how did we not see this before? This is crazy.

Speaker 70 Lauren says Glegor's name was on that list she gave the original detectives.

Speaker 35 And just nine months after the murder, one of Glegor's neighbors actually called in a tip, suggesting police look into him.

Speaker 26 He was a troublemaker in the neighborhood, and she just had a weird feeling about him. So the police created a file.

Speaker 26 They pulled up any reports that had his name in them as a suspect or as a person that was charged with something.

Speaker 28 Detectives drove past Eugene Glegor's house, but didn't see his car there.

Speaker 35 After that, according to the case file, there was no concerted follow-up.

Speaker 13 So let me ask, Eugene Glegor's name had been in the case file the entire time. Had police ever gotten a DNA sample from him?

Speaker 14 No.

Speaker 10 Why? I don't know.

Speaker 29 Should they have?

Speaker 26 There was nothing pointing to him as an obvious suspect at the time.

Speaker 16 Was that an oversight?

Speaker 26 I don't think so. I mean, other than

Speaker 26 people saying his name is, you know, Lauren's ex-boyfriend, there was really no link to Leslie and it just didn't make sense. Like, why would he hurt Leslie?

Speaker 42 The detectives dug into Eugene Glegore's past.

Speaker 19 What do you learn about him?

Speaker 26 He had some instances where he was mentioned in reports where homes had been broken into and money was stolen.

Speaker 26 And there were people that we interviewed that went to high school with Lauren and with Eugene and said that, oh, he, you know, he would break into cars and steal money and things like that.

Speaker 26 So we knew that the possibility possibility of him breaking into houses was

Speaker 9 there.

Speaker 35 Lisa told Detective Augustine about another incident.

Speaker 82 In the mid-90s, she said, Eugene was questioned about an assault on a woman on a neighborhood path.

Speaker 54 But she and Lauren were so convinced it couldn't be him that they personally vouched for him.

Speaker 24 We knew him and we were like, there's no way that he would ever hurt anybody. This is crazy.
One of the things that we thought of was, you know, his appearance and the sketch that the police had.

Speaker 24 It actually resembled multiple other people that we knew that were the same age and the same grade, going to the same school.

Speaker 24 And so we actually took my school yearbooks down to the police station and we showed the police, like, here's Eugene, here's this guy.

Speaker 24 And we left the yearbooks with the police to see if the victim could differentiate.

Speaker 24 And she couldn't. Wow.
So it effectively cleared him because it created doubt.

Speaker 72 That seemed to be the end of it.

Speaker 62 Lisa never heard anything more, and Detective Augustine found no record of it.

Speaker 33 The detectives learned that over the years, Eugene Glegor had lived a seemingly unremarkable life.

Speaker 87 He'd worked in restaurants, some high-end, and in real estate.

Speaker 19 He'd been married and divorced twice.

Speaker 10 Lisa remembers a moment years after Leslie was killed when Lauren ran into him and the two had a long conversation.

Speaker 24 He had gone on about how he had gotten sober, he had been to rehab. He was talking about, you know, all the benefits of sobriety.

Speaker 24 So at the time, I remember she noted that it was like this very pleasant conversation.

Speaker 71 If Eugene Glegor did indeed murder Leslie Prier, the detectives wondered how he got away.

Speaker 51 When they walked the path near the Prier's old home, they had their answer.

Speaker 50 The path connected Glegor's neighborhood to the Priers.

Speaker 54 On a weekday morning, it would have been practically empty. Eugene knew it well.

Speaker 110 It was obvious that this would be the best escape route for him.

Speaker 26 Leaving out of the back door, going through the backyards here, cut through a couple of yards, jump on the trail, walk around, go under that little bridge, and you're in your dad's neighborhood.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 42 And this is somebody who's familiar with the home.

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 67 Would have known

Speaker 78 theoretically that the back door is always kept unlocked.

Speaker 16 Yes.

Speaker 10 Still, they needed one more puzzle piece, the trickiest one of all.

Speaker 26 We needed to get a confirmatory DNA sample from him

Speaker 90 to see if it matched the DNA from the crime scene.

Speaker 58 And they wanted to do it without letting him know they were on to him.

Speaker 67 They learned Eugene was now living in the DC area.

Speaker 30 That was when we reached out to our plainclothes unit and they created a plan.

Speaker 53 They discovered Eugene was out of the country and would soon fly into Washington's Dulles Airport.

Speaker 36 Working with federal agents, they created a ruse.

Speaker 88 Eugene would be pulled aside for an extra custom screening to an area where they'd placed sanitized water bottles.

Speaker 26 So there was a trash can that was completely empty there, and the water bottles were provided so that he would would drink out of it and throw it away

Speaker 52 it worked the detectives took the bottle bagged it and sent it for dna testing days later bingo confirmation that this is our guy this is the killer yes

Speaker 70 it was so big it was hard to grasp irrefutable evidence that they finally had the right man 23 years after leslie prier was murdered two detectives who were college students when she died had found her killer.

Speaker 67 What are you thinking in that moment?

Speaker 26 It's just kind of like a goose bumps situation where you're just thrilled and there's an adrenaline rash and you're like, I can't believe I solved this.

Speaker 10 I can't believe it.

Speaker 62 But before they could break the news to Lauren, they had to arrest Eugene Glegore.

Speaker 10 Our plainclothes officers went down very early that morning.

Speaker 30 They were watching his house and he was sitting out on his front stoop having a cup of coffee.

Speaker 37 The arrest was captured on body can.

Speaker 10 Hands off!

Speaker 80 Hands up!

Speaker 30 And the officers walked up pretty quickly.

Speaker 109 Probably startled him a lot.

Speaker 30 When the officers approached him, you know, they have to do it in a very swift movement. They want to do it quickly.

Speaker 30 They don't want to give anybody an opportunity to flee or fight or reach for any weapon that they may have. He was shocked.

Speaker 10 So you didn't know anything about this warrant?

Speaker 30 Okay.

Speaker 30 He wasn't expecting this.

Speaker 16 You tell me we're still off here.

Speaker 21 Eugene Glegor was charged with the first-degree murder of Leslie Prier.

Speaker 62 So, what would he say when detectives Augustine and DuPois got him in the chair?

Speaker 26 If somebody was not involved, it would be an adamant I didn't.

Speaker 126 Oh, I didn't do it.

Speaker 62 I did, I definitely didn't do it.

Speaker 21 Minutes after Eugene Glegor was arrested for the murder of Leslie Prier, Detective Augustine was on the phone to Lauren to break the news.

Speaker 8 She asked me, Do you know someone named Eugene Glegor?

Speaker 10 And I.

Speaker 10 I lost it. I used to date him.

Speaker 8 I was like, Yes. And she's like, He's the one who did it.

Speaker 8 I mean, I lost my.

Speaker 7 and I was shocked.

Speaker 36 They'd been so close in high school. He was always at the Prier house in those days.

Speaker 49 He even joined the Priers on vacation.

Speaker 13 Once Lauren and Eugene broke up, they drifted apart.

Speaker 54 But after Leslie's murder, Lauren remembered how he comforted her.

Speaker 8 He was working in a restaurant in Bethesda, and I saw him and I said, My mom died. And he was like,

Speaker 8 oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. All that kind of, yeah i'm so sorry but he just talked to me straight in my eyes like nothing was wrong and he was comforting you yes

Speaker 8 and he is the one who did it

Speaker 76 hi jean hello

Speaker 70 later that day when detectives augustin and depois breezed into glegor's police interview room they were the picture of confidence i am detective augustin this is detective depois

Speaker 44 glegor in ankle shackles was a model of injured innocence.

Speaker 129 I'm sure you're wondering what this is all about.

Speaker 128 Really like to know. This has been really,

Speaker 128 really hard about whatever's happening.

Speaker 60 They were happy to tell him.

Speaker 129 Do you recall back in 2001, Leslie Prier?

Speaker 128 Yes, that she was murdered.

Speaker 74 Yes. Okay.

Speaker 129 So that's the case that we are investigating.

Speaker 128 They told him they had DNA from the crime scene that had never been matched, and they asked if he'd been at the Prier house that morning for any reason, if he had anything to tell them about Leslie's murder why not just call me and ask me to come in and and talk to me versus have marshals come and arrest me and bring me in because there's a little bit more to it than what we've told you so far could could you tell me while we're getting there i'm trying to give you an opportunity to be a little bit forthcoming before we i mean i i i i feel very i feel a little bit trapped here like well you're under arrest so you should be able to do it.

Speaker 127 Right, right.

Speaker 128 And so I think, you know, I mean, probably asking for a lawyer is my best course of action.

Speaker 129 That's totally fine. And we don't have to ask you any more questions, but we are going to just tell you some stuff.

Speaker 82 The detectives did want to share a few things.

Speaker 129 From the crime scene, the DNA that was taken, we actually have a sample of your DNA, and it was compared to the crime scene DNA, and it matched. So

Speaker 129 we know that you were there at the time when Leslie died.

Speaker 128 But I never gave a sample of DNA.

Speaker 129 That's correct. We obtained a sample from a discarded water bottle that you drank out of.

Speaker 129 So your DNA matches the crime scene DNA.

Speaker 45 A shocked silence.

Speaker 10 And then?

Speaker 128 I don't know what to say.

Speaker 114 I have not

Speaker 74 no recollection.

Speaker 128 I have no memory. I have no.

Speaker 74 I don't know what to say.

Speaker 41 He sputtered, lashed out, cried.

Speaker 127 I don't know.

Speaker 115 I don't know.

Speaker 68 Or tried to.

Speaker 115 There's no tears coming out of your face.

Speaker 115 I'm very dry right now.

Speaker 130 You're dry?

Speaker 115 I'm very dry.

Speaker 127 I'm parched, like dehydrated.

Speaker 115 You can probably see my eyes are bloodshot red because I'm just tired and drained.

Speaker 127 I don't know what's going on.

Speaker 129 I'm just trying to say that this seems a little put on.

Speaker 127 Are you kidding me?

Speaker 113 It's you know, it's in your eyes, it's guilty until proven innocent.

Speaker 115 I get it.

Speaker 129 Well, honey, your DNA was in the crime scene. That's why, like,

Speaker 127 there's a reason.

Speaker 115 There's just for, there's, there's, there's due process, right? So you're saying I'm guilty before I've even been put into a court of law?

Speaker 127 Like,

Speaker 127 there's probable cause

Speaker 115 to believe that you were there when I think what you're saying was the contrary to that. So, okay.

Speaker 115 But I don't remember.

Speaker 127 I don't know.

Speaker 115 I don't know who.

Speaker 129 You keep saying you don't remember and you don't have any recollection.

Speaker 127 But if somebody was not involved, it would be an adamant I didn't.

Speaker 115 Oh, I didn't do it.

Speaker 112 I definitely didn't do it.

Speaker 68 Eugene Glegor spent almost a year in jail, charged with first-degree murder.

Speaker 64 We have an update now to a cold case murder that rocked a Montgomery County neighborhood more than two decades ago.

Speaker 33 Then his story changed, and he was ready to admit that he had murdered Leslie Prier.

Speaker 44 In May, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, avoiding a possible life sentence and a trial.

Speaker 120 There are questions that go unanswered in many, many cases.

Speaker 70 John McCarthy, the Montgomery County state's attorney, admits they'll probably never know Glegor's motive.

Speaker 28 His theory, that Glegor went to the Prier house that morning to steal money to feed his drug habit.

Speaker 70 He was surprised to find Leslie Prier still at home, and he turned on her.

Speaker 120 As for Glegor's claim that his memory of the murder is a blur read the crime scene the viciousness the cover-up the hiding this guy knew exactly what he had done

Speaker 35 and the state's attorney had this to say about the original detective's fixation on sandy prier despite the dna results and despite the neighbor's tip i think that police investigations sometimes become myopic.

Speaker 120 They seized upon a theory I think they were convinced it was Sandy. Maybe to the exclusion of a lot of other potential leads.

Speaker 29 At Glegor's sentencing hearing in late August, prosecutors described the savage nature of the crime and pointed out that Glegor confessed only after he was caught.

Speaker 131 And this defendant is now finally at his data record.

Speaker 33 Glegor's defense attorneys argued the murder took place when their client was a heavy user of drugs and alcohol. Now, they said he was a changed man and deserved leniency.

Speaker 130 Eugene brings the best in people.

Speaker 130 And I think this is a trait that fundamentally defines him.

Speaker 63 That's the person you will be sentencing today,

Speaker 131 not the 21-year-old that committed this offense.

Speaker 35 Gligor addressed the court too.

Speaker 130 The greatest regret of my life is taking Leslie's wife.

Speaker 130 I'm so sorry for the pain that I caused.

Speaker 130 I can't express that.

Speaker 10 I wouldn't have done it.

Speaker 68 Leslie's family wasn't buying it.

Speaker 11 I thought his words were empty,

Speaker 11 impossible to believe.

Speaker 66 The state's attorney had harsh words of his own.

Speaker 120 Where were you for 23 years when Sandy was under the specter of being a suspect in the case? Where were you for 23 years where Lauren, your former girlfriend, was without her mother?

Speaker 120 Where were you if you cared for any of these people?

Speaker 46 In the end, Ligor got 22 years.

Speaker 21 Outside the courtroom, Lauren could finally exhale.

Speaker 26 I can't believe it's over.

Speaker 80 It's been so long.

Speaker 46 The family, grateful to be spared the ordeal of a trial, paused for a group photo.

Speaker 11 The tragedy will always be there. Nothing's going to bring my sister back, but at least we know

Speaker 19 the murderer is starting to pay for the crime.

Speaker 88 Eugene Glegor claimed three victims on that spring morning in 2001.

Speaker 17 Leslie, of course, and Sandy, who died before he was cleared.

Speaker 35 The final victim, Lauren, sentenced to live with anxiety and fear for decades.

Speaker 122 But now she says she's ready for a new life, knowing there has been justice for the mother she adored, and finally, peace for the parents she calls the best of the best.

Speaker 8 The Prier family.

Speaker 110 Well, they're lucky to have you carrying on their name.

Speaker 110 Forever.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 10 And they're together.

Speaker 16 Yeah, that's the silver lighting that they're together.

Speaker 6 That's all for this edition of Dateline. And don't forget to check out our Talking Dateline podcast, which will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode.

Speaker 6 Available Wednesday in the Dateline feed wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 Central.

Speaker 4 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 6 For all of us at NBC News, good night.

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