Transcript of Blood and Water: The Husband New

This is Deborah Roberts here with another weekly episode of our latest true crime series from ABC and ABC Audio, Blood and Water. Remember, you can get new episodes early by following Blood and Water on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening right now. Here's the next episode of Blood and Water.

At a crime scene, Blood can tell a story. When Lauren Prier was briefly allowed back into her parents' house on Drummond Avenue to collect some of her things while the investigation continued, the blood she saw offered a terrifying account of her mother's last moments.

She was running for her life. My parents had a long hallway between the front door and our kitchen. There was blood all over the hallway.

It looked like Leslie Prier had struggled against an attacker all across the ground floor until she couldn't.

They know she was killed by the front door. There was, like, this— like, her— the back of her head was smashed against the wall. And then there was, like, blood stains down the wall. I think she was just trying to escape.

When investigators started trying to piece together what had happened, they too followed the blood. They sprayed a chemical called luminol all over the house. It glows blue when it comes into contact with even the smallest amount of blood. Thanks to the luminol, investigators now saw new clues previously undetectable to the naked eye. Big blue swoops and smears where someone had seemingly tried to clean up even more blood. The luminol showed that Leslie was likely already dead when someone had dragged her body up the stairs and into the shower.

I had to walk through that. There was still luminol all over the hallway, all the way up the stairs, through the bedroom, my parents' master bedroom. And I stopped at their bed. I couldn't do it. I couldn't go in the bathroom. I couldn't do it. I couldn't.

Leslie's last moments were painfully clear to Lauren, but other parts of the story were still a mystery. Like, who was Leslie Prier trying to escape from?

And the scary part was, is that they tried to put it on my father. I said, no. I'm like, my dad loved my mom. Loved, adored her. I said my dad would never kill my mom.

In the days after Leslie's death, investigators turned their attention to Sandy Prier. And just as the luminol had uncovered new details about the story of Leslie's death, there were more revelations to come, this time about the Priors' marriage.

Was this a routine with her to get fairly well inebriated every night?

Uh, yes.

From ABC Audio and 20/20, I'm Stephanie Ramos, and this is Blood and Water. Episode 2: The Husband. At the time of her death, Leslie had been married to Sandy for 27 years. They met as students in Pensacola, Florida, and got married right out of college in 1974. Their daughter Lauren was born a few years later. She showed me family photos of those early days. Who's in this photo?

Well, that's me.

Oh. I know.

So we're talking, this might, must have been 1977 when I was born. And this is my Sandy. Gosh. And then my mom. So we were a happy family, the three of us.

Mm-hmm. In one of the pictures, Sandy and Leslie sit on a sofa together with baby Lauren on their laps. Leslie looks radiant. Sandy, with his big smile and thick-rimmed glasses, has his arm around her. They look happy.

This is Scott. Oh my God, he's so young there. And this is Harlan. So these are the 4 brothers and 4 sisters.

Leslie was one of 8 siblings, so Lauren grew up with a lot of cousins, and the family was close. They would go on vacation together. In-laws like Sandy were welcomed in and became part of the family too. Sandy would write long emails to Leslie's parents littered with jokes tailored to the recipient. He was funny in a goofy way. Lauren says her dad could be spontaneous. She showed me pictures of the two of them together.

This is the Montgomery County Fair. I was home from college and my dad and I just said, let's go to the fair.

So off they went, did all the rides. In the picture, Lauren's leaning on Sandy's shoulder. Both of them holding fried food and grinning.

That's the kind of father my dad was. He'd, on a dime, he would say, if I said, let's go to the fair, he'd be like, let's go to the fair.

Before she worked at the advertising company, Lauren's mom had been a court reporter. Sandy worked at a consultancy firm, a suit and tie job dealing with defense contracts. The three of them moved into the house on Drummond Avenue in 1993. When Lauren was in high school. What was Lauren like back then?

Uh, sweet, soft-spoken, outgoing, mischievous. Definitely mischievous.

Bryce Thomas was one of Lauren Prier's best friends back then. They're still close today. When Lauren was in high school, she and her friends would congregate at the Prier house. The whole gang got to know Leslie and Sandy Prier. The couple seemed solid. They were a rare mix, interested in their daughter's life, but cool enough to hang out with.

Mrs. Prew was always so engaging, you know, made you feel welcome, you know. You know, you, you don't think about these things too much as a kid, but now when you look back at it, you're like, yeah, she was more involved, really wanted to meet us and figure out who are these kids hanging out with my daughter, you know.

The core group that was often together included Lauren, Bryce, Lauren's best friend Lisa, and Lauren's boyfriend Eugene, a kid from the neighborhood. The pictures Lauren showed me include awkward teen group photos, but also a lot of her and her parents. Lauren says that as a teenager, she had some rebellious moments, but her relationship with her parents was always good. When you see photos like these, what comes to mind?

That they were the best parents. We just had so much love for each other and we had so much fun together. I mean, a lot of people or friends don't have the same relationship with their parents. Do you know what I mean?

Lauren remembers her family as closer than most and their red brick house on Drummond Avenue as the setting for a lot of these happy scenes. But what had been Lauren's home was now a crime scene with new pictures taken by investigators. Instead of a smiling family inside, there were luminal smears and blood drops. And as the investigators began to piece together the facts of the case, it became clear Sandy and Leslie Prier were far from picture perfect.

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From the crime scene, it seemed clear that Leslie Prier was murdered, but investigators hadn't announced it officially yet. 2 days after the 911 call, the police were still grappling with what the blood was trying to tell them. They wanted to establish a timeline of the days before Leslie's death. And for that, they turned to Sandy Priore.

Okay, today is May 4th, 2001, and it is 11:05 AM. This is Jim Drury with the county police and also Michael Turner, and we're talking with—

Investigators interviewed Sandy Priore in his hotel room. Their tone in the recordings from that day is calm, but not warm. They asked Sandy to tell them about what he'd been doing the day before the body was found. It was a Tuesday, and Sandy said he'd gotten up and gone to work as usual. Afterwards, he said he didn't go straight home. He had some errands to run.

I went to the mall, uh, Montgomery Mall, to Circuit City Express. And did I go someplace else, or did I just go to the mall?

At first, Sandy didn't seem to remember the evening all that clearly, but then it all came back to him.

Oh, wait.

I—

Okay, I know what I did. I was taking some computer stuff to the dump Tuesday because I was— remember, I got to get there by 8 o'clock. Got to get there by 8. And I said, okay, I need to leave here by 7. uh, or 7:15 in order to make sure that I get out there. So we had some spare computer equipment.

Sandy told detectives in detail about needing to find camera parts and recycle electronic waste. He said he didn't get home until late, around 9 PM.

I was really beat. I went to bed— I went to bed around 9:30 that night. It was Tuesday night. Your wife was home when your wife was My wife was home when I got there. Um, she kissed me good night.

Um, you have dinner?

No, no.

Do you know if she had dinner?

She would— she would cook. She would cook, um, like every other day, every third day or something like that. She would always cook pasta or some chicken or something like that. Um, Uh, but, um, that night I didn't have dinner. I'm not sure if she cooked it, and I'm not sure if she, she had it. I just can't remember. Just went right to bed.

Sandy said that he recalled Leslie coming to bed after him and waking in the night. Lately, he said, she'd been having trouble sleeping. The detectives asked him about another part of Leslie's daily routine. Alcohol. Sandy said she would have wine when she got home, and he said not just one glass.

How many?

Uh, is this, is this important? She would have a lot. She would have a lot. And in all honesty, It's one of the reasons why I'd kind of come home late because I just really, um, uh, it was just kind of, it was kind of, it was getting hard to deal with.

Sandy told detectives that he would often come home to find Leslie had had a lot to drink. He said she would slur her words and that her personality would change. He found her difficult to be around.

Were these a source of arguments between you two? Oh, sure, sure.

Definitely.

I think you— we talked just briefly, uh, the other day in the driveway, uh, and we were asking about the stain on the ceiling, right? You said that was from wine.

It was from wine. And what that came from was, uh, she had too much to drink that night, and there was a glass of wine on the counter, and, you know, I just Just flossed it. Just slung it like, just slung the glass. And I didn't let go of the glass. I just slung the liquid. And I said something along the line, you don't need any more of this.

How long ago was that?

I would say that was within 2 weeks. It was, it's been pretty, it was been pretty recent.

Sandy described how these arguments were getting worse in the weeks leading up to Leslie's death. He said that her drinking had put a strain on their relationship.

I just didn't enjoy being with someone who, in that condition, who had too much to drink. I mean, you had to make sure whatever you said, because she could take it any other way. And when she got cranked up, man, it was a— it was shut it down. You couldn't shut it. You couldn't shut. Get away from whatever that subject she may be on.

She just keep—

just, just bam, bam, bam, just keep coming at you, just keep coming at you. And it was, it was, uh, uh, it wasn't fun.

It wasn't just the arguments. Sandy described one time when he and Leslie had been in an argument, and he said he turned away from her he felt Leslie's fist hit him right in his back.

Did that ever—

No, I didn't react to it, if that's what you're gonna ask me.

Right.

No, I mean, I never, um, the most violent I ever got was I'd grab her and just say, you know, you gotta snap out of it, by grabbing her by her shoulders, her shoulders, you know, you know, you gotta snap out of it. But, uh, that I, I Uh, did that, um, you know, one time, and it, you know, really— and she, you know, hit the wall. I'm nothing, you know, smashing or anything. Hit the wall and she's burst in tears. And I'm thinking, God, what am I doing? So, um, so I pretty much controlled myself to where I just— I wasn't going— I was not going to go there.

You can see how Sandy's reactions to what was happening around him might have looked odd to investigators. Remember, right after Sandy had first seen the blood in the foyer and the officers had arrived at the house to investigate, Sandy had made a joke. "You mean business," he'd said. And now in a police interview about his wife's death, Sandy was volunteering descriptions of heated arguments he'd had with Leslie, some in the weeks before her death. And at this point, Leslie's death had not been formally announced as a homicide. 48 hours out, the official language was that the case was being treated as suspicious. But it's hard to believe that Sandy didn't realize how his description of his marriage must have looked to investigators.

Did either of you ever discuss divorce or separation?

Um, we never seriously discussed it because we loved each other dearly. Um, there were times where I'd say, 'I'm screwing you, I'm divorcing you.' To me, that's not a discussion. It's not where we would sit down like this and talk about seriously, seriously getting a divorce. And I don't think there would be, um, even though things were really starting to really start to escalate.

If detectives thought these revelations about the Priors' relationship were surprising, they hid it well and kept on moving through the timeline of events. They zeroed in on the morning of Wednesday, May 2nd, the most important window for the investigation. Sandy said it was just like any other day.

Okay, so you both got up about 7:00 AM. Uh, you just— did you shower?

Oh yeah, yeah.

Which shower did you use?

I always, always use the one, uh, in the master bedroom.

Sandy was just as detailed about Wednesday morning as he had been about Tuesday evening. He said that after he showered, he left for work. It was around 7:35 AM. He remembered specifically because he had a board meeting that day and wanted to be there early. He got to his office at around 7:50. At 9:00 AM, he said his secretary put a call from Leslie through to his office phone.

Did she sound distressed? Not sad in any way?

Nope, nope, not in the least. And what did she say? She wanted to know if I had taken or put up the 4-roll toilet paper pack that she had put— that was on on the stairways— stairway going up to the room.

In Sandy's telling, this conversation about toilet paper was the last conversation of their 27-year marriage. At around 11:30 that morning, Leslie's boss, Brett Reedy, called him to say she hadn't shown up at work. And an hour after that, Sandy described standing outside the house waiting for police to finish their search.

And Officer Barnett came out, and, uh, I'll never forget. I can't remember if he said Mr. Pree or sir. He said, uh, your wife's dead. And, you know, of course broke up right then, but, um The finality of it right there. I just wasn't expecting that.

In his hour and a half interview with the detectives, Sandy broke down twice. Once when he talked about the scene inside the front door at Drummond Avenue, and once about being told that his wife was dead. In those moments in the interview, Sandy's emotions seemed to match his situation— a husband who'd lost his wife just 2 days earlier. And yet, as the interview wrapped up, it was clear that Sandy had done little to ease the detective's suspicions or eliminate himself as a suspect. And evidence from the crime scene was about to make things even worse. Worse for Sandy Prayer.

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We know what happened right after this interview from entries in the detective's notes from that day. Just after the recording stopped, Detectives received word their department would be giving a statement on the case to the press. Leslie's cause of death was officially going to be reported as strangulation and blunt force trauma. According to investigators, the autopsy had also said that it was possible that Leslie Prier was killed on Tuesday night, the night before her body was found. Leslie's body was left under hot running water in the shower after her death, likely as part of an attempt by the perpetrator to clean up the scene. The temperature of the water had sped up the decomposition process, making it hard to be sure of the exact time that Leslie died. And there was undigested food in Leslie's stomach, pasta. It fit with Leslie being killed a short time after eating the very dinner that Sandy had just told detectives his wife often made. Sandy's recollection of his Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning was now in question. If Leslie had been killed on Tuesday night, and it was still an if, had Sandy driven around town to give himself an alibi?

His entire story depended on Leslie being alive on Wednesday morning, and detectives thought that the evidence suggested otherwise. In his hotel room, detectives told Sandy what would soon be public information. Leslie was murdered. They wrote in their notes that Sandy hung his head for around a minute and then said, "I think I know where this is going." Unfortunately, when it comes to homicides, domestic partner homicides are not rare. This is State's Attorney John McCarthy. He's worked in Maryland law enforcement for 45 years. He says he understands why investigators were focused on Sandy Preer.

Quite candidly, if you look at the cataloging of homicides over the time that I've been in the office here, I would say that, uh, for particularly if you're a woman, more than 50% of the time, if you're a homicide victim in this county, the person who's responsible for taking your life is your intimate partner.

That's been McCarthy's professional experience, and it's supported by national statistics. According to the Department of Justice, women are 5 times more likely to be killed by an intimate partner than male murder victims. And the marriage that Sandy had described was volatile. So when Sandy insisted to investigators that Leslie had been alive when he left her on Wednesday morning, the detectives weren't convinced. In their notes, they wrote that Sandy told them "I have been honest with you. To the best of my knowledge, I didn't kill my wife." The phrase "to the best of my knowledge" was underlined twice. From this moment on, the focus on Sandy would be much more pointed. What they wanted from him now was a confession. Even before word spread that Sandy Preer was a suspect, Leslie's death had rocked their quiet suburban community.

The town of Chevy Chase has zero homicides, and that you probably could count on one hand the number of homicides maybe over a 10 or 20-year period of time in a town like Chevy Chase. So as you can imagine, when something like this does become public, it sometimes comes with a lot of panic.

Detectives had questioned the neighbors along Drummond Avenue on the day Leslie's body was found. At the time, none of them reported anything unusual, just shock at what had happened. With the increased scrutiny of Sandy, things started to change. One month after the murder, a neighbor told police that he remembered seeing all the lights on in the Prier house at 2:00 AM the day the body was found. He thought it was odd. Two months after the killing, Another neighbor told investigators that she remembered Sandy leaving the house around 7:35 AM, as he told detectives, but she thought Sandy seemed like he was making an effort to have eye contact with her, which she said seemed out of character.

Was he trying to call attention? Was he trying to create some kind of— you think through these things to determine whether or not in some way Does that play into someone trying to cover up, develop a timeline, and things like that?

There were two more pieces of the puzzle that detectives thought looked bad for Sandy. The first, phone records. Back in 2001, call records were harder to verify, so investigators couldn't confirm that 9:00 AM call Sandy said Leslie had made to him about the toilet paper And then there was the polygraph. In the days after Leslie's death, Sandy cooperated with everything the police asked of him. He gave them access to his work computer and his phone. He allowed them to take photographs of small cuts on his body, and he volunteered to take a polygraph test. Perhaps he thought it would help with the suspicions growing around him. But it didn't, because Sandy failed. Investigators told me that failing a polygraph test by itself might not have meant much. Polygraphs are, after all, notoriously unreliable. But taken with all the other odd details from Sandy's interactions with police, his position as number one suspect was assured. It wasn't just the detectives. A lot of people were looking at Sandy and wondering what he was capable of. Even his daughter, Lauren.

I mean, I had my moment where I questioned, could he really go that far? Not that they ever had any major—

you know, every married, long-term married couple has their arguments.

But they never argued in front of me, but I could hear them sometimes when I was upstairs in my room. I asked him, 'Did you kill Mom?' He said no, and I believed him.

Lauren's moment of doubt passed, but to pretty much everyone else, Sandy Preer looked guilty. The story the blood told wasn't finished, though. There was one more piece of evidence, one small detail that would change the entire narrative of this case. The police came to us in August telling us there was DNA found in Leslie's fingernails.

And I'll just tell you one thing. You got the wrong guy.

New evidence will throw Sandy Preer a lifeline. But if he didn't kill Leslie Preer, who did? Blood and Water is a production of ABC Audio and 20/20, hosted by me, Stephanie Ramos, produced by Madeline Wood, Shane McKeon, And Kiara Powell. With help from Emily Schutz and Caitlin Schiffer. Edited by Gianna Palmer. Our supervising producer is Susie Lu. Music by Evan Viola. Mixing and mastering by Bob Mallory. Scoring by Kiara Powell. Special thanks to Katie Dendaz, Janice Johnston, Sean Dooley, Chris Donovan, Camille Petersen, Christina Corbin, Gail Dwyer, Deutch, Amanda Carr, Ellie Joestad, Angie Adam, and Michelle Margulis. Josh Cohan is our director of podcast programming. Eamon McNiff is our executive producer.

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