Unbeknownst to Eugene T. Gligor, investigators were quietly watching him as he walked through Dulles International Airport earlier this month. They saw him open a water bottle, drink from it and throw it away. Only after Gligor had moved on did they go grab the bottle.
The affidavit also reveals the full brutality of the crime scene. Police found blood on the walls and floor near the front door. Preer’s body was found in an upstairs bathroom shower, face down with her legs partially extending out — a sign to investigators that someone had tried to wash the body. An autopsy showed deep bruising to Preer’s neck, indicating strangulation, and seven lacerations to her skull, according to the affidavit.
“It was apparent that the perpetrator had attempted to clean up the blood from the crime scene,” Augustin wrote, “and physically carried the body from the foyer area upstairs to the shower stall and ran water over the body to wash away the blood and prevent the body from bleeding further on the floor of the residence.”In those opening days of the case, investigators collected DNA evidence from the home and from under Preer’s fingernails — the latter a sign she’d tried to fight off her attacker.
In the Preer case, the genetic genealogical analysis yielded the surname “Gligor” as having possible links to the DNA thought to be left by the assailant.Then on June 4, 2024, as Augustin was going through case records, she found the tip submitted in 2002 about Eugene Gligor.That is why, according to the new records, they put him under surveillance at Dulles and why they grabbed his used water bottle.