How Othram and a Romanian Family Tree Broke a 23-Year Cold Case

When Montgomery County detectives submitted crime scene DNA from the Leslie Preer case to Othram, they were not running a long shot. They were using a methodology that has quietly become one of the most effective tools in cold case investigation — a methodology that most people have never heard of and, when they have, often misunderstand in ways that matter.

This post explains exactly what happened in the Leslie Preer investigation, and what investigative genetic genealogy actually is.

The basics first. Othram is a forensic genomics company based in The Woodlands, Texas. Its laboratory specializes in working with DNA samples that are too degraded, too small, or too contaminated to produce a standard STR profile suitable for law enforcement database searching. The crime scene DNA in the Leslie Preer case had sat untouched for more than two decades. Othram’s process involves sequencing that degraded material using next-generation sequencing technology, then using computational methods to reconstruct a usable genomic profile from what remains. That enhanced profile is what makes the next step possible.

The next step is investigative genetic genealogy, or IGG. This is where most public confusion begins.

IGG does not mean that police logged into AncestryDNA or 23andMe and searched for a suspect. Those platforms do not allow law enforcement to browse their databases. Their terms of service prohibit it, and there is no law enforcement access portal. When you hear that a case was solved using genetic genealogy, AncestryDNA and 23andMe were almost certainly not involved.

The databases used in IGG investigations are opt-in databases whose users have explicitly agreed to allow law enforcement use of their profiles. The primary ones are GEDmatch, FamilyTreeDNA, and DNASolves — the latter operated by Othram and accessible only to law enforcement. People who upload their DNA to these platforms understand they may be contributing to criminal investigations. That consent is the legal and ethical foundation that distinguishes IGG from any hypothetical unauthorized database search.

In the Leslie Preer case, Othram ran the enhanced DNA profile through these opt-in databases. The databases returned results indicating relatives of the unknown contributor — people who share enough DNA with the crime scene sample to be placed on the same family tree. These were not suspects. They were relatives. The database did not identify Eugene Gligor. It returned the genetic relatives who allowed investigators and genealogists to begin building a family tree.

That family tree was Romanian. The relatives identified through the opt-in databases shared Romanian ancestry, and genealogists — working from public records, family histories, and the database results — constructed a family tree that ultimately produced investigative leads. One of those leads pointed to a name that was already in the case file: Eugene Gligor, the teenage boyfriend of Leslie Preer’s daughter Lauren. He had been in the original investigative record since 2001.

This distinction — between what the database returned and who the database identified — is not a technicality. It is the entire structure of how IGG works. The database provides biological leads. Human genealogists do the investigative work of constructing family trees and narrowing the pool of potential contributors. Investigators then develop those leads through conventional law enforcement methods.

Which brings us to the confirmation step.

Once investigators had reason to look more closely at Eugene Gligor, they needed proof that the DNA from the crime scene was his. In othram genetic genealogy cold case investigations, the IGG result is an investigative lead, not a courtroom exhibit. It directs detectives toward a suspect. Confirmation requires a separate DNA sample, collected through independent means.

Montgomery County detectives obtained a discarded water bottle from Gligor. He had left it behind in a context where it was legally abandoned — no warrant required to collect it, because it was no longer in his possession. The DNA extracted from that water bottle was subjected to standard STR analysis, the same short tandem repeat profiling that has been used in forensic science for decades and is accepted in courts across the country. The STR profile from the water bottle matched the crime scene DNA.

That match is what made this case. Not the genealogy database, not the family tree — though both were essential steps in the pathway. The courtroom evidence rested on a conventional forensic match between a discarded item and the crime scene. The othram genetic genealogy cold case work was the engine that got investigators to the right person’s discarded water bottle.

Gligor pleaded guilty in May 2025 in Montgomery County Circuit Court. He was sentenced on August 28, 2025 to 22 years in prison plus 5 years of supervised probation.

For cold case investigators, the implications are significant. IGG makes it possible to develop investigative leads in cases where the traditional CODIS database search — which requires an existing criminal record — produces no results. A perpetrator with no prior arrests has no DNA in CODIS. But if a biological relative has uploaded a DNA profile to GEDmatch, FamilyTreeDNA, or DNASolves, that relative becomes a bridge. The genealogist builds the bridge; the detective walks across it; and STR confirmation closes the case.

Montgomery County called the Leslie Preer investigation its first-ever familial DNA cold case solve. That designation reflects both the novelty of the methodology at the county level and the significance of what Othram’s laboratory made possible: a viable DNA profile from a sample that had been cold for twenty-three years.

The genealogy was the lead. The STR match was the proof.

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