A Maryland family is reeling after DNA testing linked the woman’s ex-boyfriend to the 2001 murder of her mother.
“It’s been a tough day,” said Lauren Prior, Leslie Prior’s daughter. He told FOX5 This week. “He was my ex.”
Prior told the station she and Eugene Grigor, now 44, had been in a relationship since they were about 15 years old and that their families knew each other.
Leslie Prior was found dead in her home in Montgomery County’s affluent Chevy Chase neighborhood on the morning of May 2, 2001. She hadn’t shown up to work that day, the Montgomery County Police Cold Case Unit said in a release Tuesday.
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Eugene Grigor was arrested for the murder of Leslie Prior in 2001. Grigor had a relationship with Prior’s daughter, Lauren, when they were teenagers. (Montgomery County)
Blood evidence from the scene was sent to a lab for DNA analysis for genetic genealogy, and a match to Grigor was confirmed earlier this month, police said.
““Thanks to forensic genealogy, we were able to make name and DNA connections and link them to the victim,” Montgomery County Police Deputy Chief Nicholas Augustine told FOX 5.
“It’s going to take years, 20 or 40 years, to get to the bottom of past violence and hold people accountable,” he added.
Lauren Prior told FOX 5 she never suspected her ex-husband of murdering her mother. (FOX5)
Grigger was arrested by a US Marshals Task Force in Washington, DC on June 18 and charged with first-degree murder.
Prior said she never suspected him of her mother’s murder.
Leslie Prior was found murdered in her home in 2001. (FOX5)
“Not at all,” she told FOX 5, adding that she met him last year. “I’ve spoken to him. He didn’t seem strange to me and I find it hard to believe that you can look someone in the eye and know that you committed a crime and act like nothing happened.”
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Grigger is currently awaiting extradition from Washington, DC, to Maryland.
Police have not revealed a motive for Prior’s killing.
