Blood and Water: Looking for Leslie

original podcast from 2020 and ABC audio, a shocking six-part series called Blood and Water,

“the story of loss, loyalty, and a family nearly shattered by tragedy. In 2001 Leslie Prear,”

a mom living in the suburbs of Washington, DC, was found murdered in the bathroom of her own home, suspicion fell on her husband Sandy, and investigators had him in their sights for years. But decades later, innovations in forensic technology give detectives a chance to re-examine the DNA of another unknown person at the scene of the crime. Finally, after more than 20 years, these cold case detectives were able to piece together evidence

that revealed the real killer and brought justice to Leslie's family.

Here's what really happened to Leslie Prear. We'll be sharing weekly episodes on Wednesdays

right here on the 2020 podcast feed over the next six weeks, starting right now with episode one.

“But if you want to get started, you can get new episodes early by following Blood and Water on”

Apple Podcasts Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening now. Now here's episode one of Blood and Water. May 2, 2001, was 25 years ago, but Linda Lyle still remembers what the weather was like that day. It was a beautiful, beautiful May day. The sun was shining. It was just a beautiful day. Back then, Linda was working at an

advertising company on the edge of Washington, DC. It was a small office. In Linda, you all

heard colleagues by name, including a woman named Leslie Prear. Leslie was a part-time employee. She had been brought in. We were desperate for someone to file. Leslie helped with the administrative side of the business. She'd been what the company for four

“years. She was in her late 40s, but looked a lot younger, a classic, Grace Kelly-esque beauty,”

with dark hair and fine features. Oh, she was beautiful. She had a quiet manner. She was dainty to me. But on this particular spring morning in 2001, Leslie was not at work as scheduled. She didn't show up. This was a problem from a business perspective. It was Leslie's job to mail invoices. If no invoices went out, no money was coming in. This was 2001, where the company had a lot of still paperwork if you will, because we weren't

quite the digital age. Brett Rady was the operations manager in the office. He was also Leslie's boss. Brett had recently had a talk with her about punctuality. Leslie lived nearby just a few miles away, but she had been turning up late a lot. It was odd that she wasn't there. Only because she was kind of on probation. If you will, with me, it wasn't a handwritten probation or anything like that. It was just like, "Look, you got to make it by 10."

So when 10 a.m. came and went, Brett took notice. When she didn't show up at 10, 15, I just assumed she had a doctor's appointment or something held her up in the bus or something like that. Brett Rady is a pretty even killed guy, but Leslie's absence that day. It clearly got his attention. At 10, 15, he asked her on the office. Did anyone know where Leslie was? Everyone said no. At 10, 30, Brett had his secretary

called Leslie's house. No answer. He said, "Don't you know where the hell is Leslie?" Linda says, Brett was annoyed, but he was also concerned. He wondered if Leslie's bus had broken down. I know it only takes about 20, 25 minutes for her to get to the office. So I said something must have happened. By 11, 15, Brett called Leslie's husband, Sandy Prear. That said, "Well, you know, I'm a colony because Leslie's not here and she have a doctor's appointment.

I don't know about." He goes, "No. Very quickly." He goes, "That's not good." So I'm like, "Wait a minute, okay." So now something's really wrong. So on that warm May morning, 25 years ago, Brett made the decision to go to Leslie Prear's home and try to find out why she hadn't shown up. It was a decision that would land Brett in the middle

"Well, what do you want to talk about? There's blood in the foyer and it looks like something

“possibly happened." What happened was a violent secret, carefully kept, for years,”

until a revolution in how crimes are investigated, finally brought the truth to light. From ABC Audio and 2020, I'm Stephanie Ramos and this is Blood and Water. Episode 1 Looking for Leslie Leslie Prear and her husband, Sandy, lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It's a prestigious suburb of Washington, DC, full of picturesque neighborhoods.

And it's a place I know well. When I first joined ABC News 11 years ago, I worked out at the DC Bureau just a few miles away.

Chevy Chase is a place that always seemed to radiate calm, quiet respectability, and wealth.

Even in 2001, the average house in Chevy Chase caused three times the national average. It's in one of the most educated, high-earning counties in the country.

“So how far are we from where you and Leslie worked at the time?”

Probably at the most two miles. About two miles away. Last year, I asked Leslie Prear's boss, Brett Brady, to show me the neighborhood where the prears lived. Now in his 60s, Brett drove me, retracing his journey from all those years ago. On that day, in 2001, when Leslie didn't show up for work, Brett had driven the long way to her house.

Checking side streets and Leslie's bus route. If her bus had broken down, perhaps she'd been stranded by the road. Yes. This is what it looked like back then. Well, absolutely. Like many other suburbs across the country, Chevy Chase is full of lush green lawns and lots of helpful signs, telling you to look out for children playing and neighborhood watch.

The prears lived on Drummond Avenue, where a row of large houses sit behind tall trees. It's an area, Brett Brady knows like the back of his hand. That's, and this is my house where I grew up in. Oh, right here. Next one on the right. Oh, it's lovely. This is, yeah, great neighborhood I had about probably six friends that lived on this street

from elementary school. And right here at this intersection, I was often a patrol for a elementary school right here for this crossing.

“I remember this. It's two. I was a patrol. I was a fifth grade patrol,”

troll kid. Right. I was six grade. I had to add the fold. The patrol belt a certain way. Leslie's daughter, the prears only child, had attended that same elementary school. Brett said the reason he went to Leslie's house that day is because he knew the neighborhood so well. Even the street they lived on was familiar.

Brett drove me the length of Drummond Avenue to where the cold second did.

This is where the house would have been. So you see it's obviously read done. The prears home was knocked down a few years ago and a different modern house. Now sits in its place. Crime scene picture show that the prears' house was a colonial style red brick home. Two stories tall with white columns flanking the front door. In the photos,

the house looks perfectly symmetrical, neat as a pin. Brett and I stopped right out front where the prears' house once stood. And then if I get right here, this is where I would think about Leslie. Brett's tour of the neighborhood had ended right where he was 25 years ago. Looking up at a perfect house on a perfect street,

totally unaware of what was lurking inside. And no one frees the entire thought off. In the hope-drawn huge Aquaman and Emma Thompson.

It's about 30 million dollars.

We have our motif. With the stem from Anke Engelgöl and Bastia Pastéfka, Glen Kiel, a chef's creville. Appearance in Mai, New York, Kino.

At Starbucks this girl came out to me and she was like, "Are you?"

“And I was like, "Yeah, she was like, "Where there's a bandaid in your hair?"”

Don't miss good girl now streaming on Hulu. Terms apply. Hello, darling. It's Lisa van de Pump. My Hulu original reality series van de Pump Villa is back in England. Where the standards are high and the chaos unavoidable.

And if you think our staff is all drama, wait until you meet the guests. Love Island, Bachelor Nation. The challenge is the white lotus of reality stars. Witness the reality star crossover event you won't want to miss. New season of Badapap Villa is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus.

For Bundle Subscribers, Terms Apply. On the morning of May 2, 2001, it was sunny, warm and approaching 11.30 a.m. When Brett Reidy pulled up at the prayer house and walked up to the front door. Brett recognized Leslie's husband when he pulled into the driveway just after him. Sandy Prayer was broad shouldered with reddish hair and thick glasses.

The two men weren't friends, but they met before. Sandy worked in an office nearby. When Brett told Sandy that Leslie hadn't shown up at work, Sandy told his boss he had a family emergency and left immediately to go to the house, arriving moments after Brett.

“He walked up to me and he said, hey Brett, how you doing?”

He opens the door and he's yelling Leslie, Leslie, Leslie, and as soon as I walk in, I look to my right and there's a large pool of blood. It's a significant amount of blood, maybe about a three-foot diameter of pooled blood. Brett later told police that he felt he saw the blood moments before Sandy. When Sandy did notice it, he said, oh my god, the men were standing in the fire.

From there, they had a view of most of the house. The living room was on their left.

The stairs to the second floor were straight ahead and the dining room was to the right

with the view of the kitchen toward the back of the house. In the fire, blood was smeared around the floor as if someone had tried to wipe it up. It was also spattered on the walls. A small welcome mat stained with blood laying a heap in the living room. A table that usually stood in the entrance way had been knocked over.

They noticed a lot of blood on the steps leading upstairs, splattered blood, all urban steps. Something's happened here. It looked bad, like the aftermath of something violent. Brett didn't want to move. He didn't want to find Leslie, he said, in some kind of compromised position.

So he stayed in the fire while Sandy walked up to the second floor, calling for his wife.

Brett looked into the dining room and saw something peculiar, a pool of water on the floor. He bent down to take a closer look. And I'm still kind of knelt down. And as I'm knelt down, I noticed something moved down the hall. It was the door to the basement.

And that door was slowly opening. I don't say, oh, no, you know, it's the way it's slowly open again.

“I think, oh, it's Leslie, she's probably hurt, and something's happened.”

But it was not. He was the dog. The prayer is elderly black lab, Boomer. The dog had pushed its nose open the door, and then started walking towards me.

So there was a little bit of that hurt palpitation there for a second.

Sandy went down the basement steps to check things out. But soon came back up, still no sign of Leslie. Brett started pointing out the blood smears to Sandy. Blood on the floor, blood on the walls, blood on the stairs. Sandy had noticed them, but he kept insisting that there had been an accident.

Perhaps on the stairs, and that Leslie had been hurt. To Brett, it felt like Sandy hadn't grasped the seriousness of the situation. And he goes, she must have fallen. Well, that's, you know, my reaction probably was, it's a hell of a fall. Where Brett found the situation shocking, he says Sandy seemed calm.

Sandy did not seem to react to what I was pointing out.

So I think intuitively, I just, somebody hurts somebody and tried to clean it up.

“Sandy's reaction was, she must have fallen down, he kept going that route.”

Sandy later told police he believed Leslie had injured herself at home, and a neighbor had taken her to a hospital. He thought she was hurt, but being taken care of. Sandy said that a few minutes after entering the home, he decided to call local emergency rooms to see if Leslie had been brought in. Sandy and Brett went into the kitchen. Where Sandy opened up the yellow pages on the counter, but they soon noticed the kitchen also showed

evidence of Leslie being injured.

Blood everywhere, blood on the appliances, blood on the back door, blood, a little bit on the table, but what I noticed was the back door was a jar a little bit. It wasn't fully closed, so something that remembered really well thought it was odd. By this time, the men had been in the house for around 15 minutes from the top floor to the basement. They found no sign of Leslie, but plenty of blood. At 11.46 a.m. Brett called 911.

Well, what was emergency? I worked for a company, and we didn't have a call from employee. We just walked in the door. I was better and I, and there's blood in the

“four-year, and it looks like something possibly happened. So, are you not in the house anymore?”

I'm in the warehouse right now. The husband's looking around. You hear what the husband? I'm with the husband, yes. Is there a lot of blood? Well, it looks like there's possibly, you know, you just drug a couple of things knocked down. Can I ask you guys to step out of the house?

I said, okay. All right, I said to Sandy, we have to get out. Brett and Sandy waited in the front yard. It only took 10 minutes for the police to arrive, and by then,

“it was approaching midday. When they showed up, Sandy, uh, well, it kind of greeted them,”

again a little odd, and they pulled their guns, and Sandy goes, whoa, you guys mean business, like, kind of a joking way. The officers asked Sandy if the door was unlocked, and when he said it was, they entered. I'm outside talking to Sandy. I said, you know, could there's something, you know, anything else that maybe she's, you don't know about, or, you know, just trying to figure this out. And I asked him directly. I said, Sandy, you were upstairs, awfully quick.

Did you check everywhere? And as soon as I said that, what's this hand to his head and he goes, oh, I forgot to check the bathroom. Sandy told Brett that when he had gone upstairs, he'd briefly looked into the doorway of each of the rooms, but hadn't gone all the way in. But Brett didn't have long to dwell on that. I would say, uh, within a minute. The police came back out, and when they walked out, the policeman was wearing gloves,

and he was taking them off, and I knew right then, and you, you walked right up to Sandy, and said, "Sir, your wife is dead." Brett says that Sandy seemed completely shocked. "This belief, what? I don't understand. How can I be?" Leslie Prears' body was found lying in the shower of the upstairs bathroom. The her head was a large pool of blood. The police report from that day described it as a sudden death

undetermined. An autopsy would be needed to figure out the exact cause of death.

Now, first thing I thought of was Lauren, the daughter. This was going to be tough.

Roll to the NBA finals is happening now on ESPN and ABC. It's make a break now. Best on best now. Watch 'em sit with us. Chest now.

“Braidness is up for grabs. And the world is watching.”

On the hall of the NBA finals. The NBA player, presented Baguette, continued. ESPN and ABC. Hi, this is Mike Ferguson, and I'm Mike Morford, and we're the host of the True Crime Podcast Criminology. Launched in 2017, we've covered a variety of cases, both solved and unsolved. For missing persons, to mysterious merch, some of the cases we cover were well-known in

historic ones that you may be aware of. While other ones may be intriguing ones from small towns

that you've never heard of. A lot of the cases we explore currently breaking in the news.

We have 400 episodes for you to binge on right now. New episodes drop every Saturday night.

“Subscribe today so you don't miss an episode. ESPN presents the Stanley Cup Playoffs,”

the most exciting playoffs out there. A two-month roller coaster filled with sudden death over times and good old-fashioned chaos. Every shift matters. Every series is a statement and everyone gets their shot at the cup. The Stanley Cup Playoffs presented by Guy Go, continue on ABC, ESPN and the ESPN app. Lauren Prier was 23 years old when she got the news that her mother had died.

So talk to me a little bit about your childhood. How's that for you? Growing up in Maryland with your mom and dad? It's just wonderful. I see. I knew it was going to be guy. It's okay. When I sat down with her last year to talk about her mom's death,

“Lauren was almost exactly the same age her mom had been when she died in her late 40s.”

She says until that day in 2001, the Prier's family life had been idyllic.

We're on Drummond Avenue. It's a beautiful neighborhood. Extremely safe. I never felt scared

there. And we just would have barbecue and my friends would come over. Like I said, my parents would my dad would cook. My mom was actually not the best cook. Not to be mean, but she was just wonderful. We had a huge backyard and my mom and I would plant tulips in the front of the house and they would grow. So Lauren said Leslie was always there when she needed her. When I was very young, I always had sleepover parties from my birthday and I had like eight to ten, you know,

there was like a bunch of girls. We had all sleeping bags and we sleep downstairs in the living room. That's like a girl's dream. Yes. But anyways, my mom, for some bizarre reason, let me rent the exercises. Actually, it was my dad. It was not my mom. And so my girls and I all watched the

exercises. And then after that, I never slept alone. My mom slept in my trundled bed with me.

So it was like the pull out thing. You know, so I had my top part and she would sleep with me until I fell asleep. So she always stayed with me. And that's a scary but wonderful memory. Lauren said that she and her mom spent a lot of time together. Even after Lauren moved out of the house and into an apartment in nearby Silver Spring, they would take trips to DC to visit the museums. Lauren said her mom is specially liked to the National Portrait Gallery.

Susan, do you guys sleep both had a very good relationship? Oh, yeah. My mom and I were best friends. She was everything to me. Everything. I just couldn't believe it. On May 2, 2001, in the afternoon, Lauren tried to call Leslie. My mom and I talked in the phone every single day. That was a routine. I mean, seriously, I would call her office and her friend gal worked there. And it called the office and gal answered the phone. And I was like, hi,

gal is Lauren. I was like, can I talk to my mom? And she was like, oh, she's not any yet. But I was told to tell you that if you called to call your father. And then I knew something was weird. Lauren called Sandy on his cell. I said, Daddy, I was like, hi, I was like, where mama sounded work, what's going on? I was confused. And I looked out the window and I saw a police car pull up.

I said, oh, God, what the hell's happening? My dad was like, talk. He was just talking, but everything

“was in slow motion. He's like, Lauren, your mom has been in an accident. I think we're seeing”

like a bus accident or she got in a car. Like, you know, I wasn't thinking the work or that. And then he said, she's no longer with us anymore. I was like, what? And so I ran into my bedroom and he screamed, like, screamed. Like, the way you hear on the horror movies, I get deep down in your stomach scream. And I just waited for a few minutes, almost an hour or so. Sandy told Lauren that Leslie had died in an accident,

but investigators didn't actually know what happened. The scene at the prayer home was full of details that didn't make sense. No signs of forced entry, Leslie dead in an upstairs shower.

“Her blood downstairs. Some of it hastily cleaned up. Lauren said she and her dad were in shock.”

And when they went home, they weren't allowed in. But I saw her, the the gurney,

with her body going out and never saw her dead body. Think God, I'd be in an institution right now.

Until investigators could find answers, they told Sandy he'd have to find somewhere else to stay. He moved in to a nearby hotel while Leslie's body was moved to the county coroner's office. The three days later on May 5th, Lauren got news about her mother's autopsy. The detective came to my place and said this was not an accident. The homicide authorities would determine that Leslie prayer was killed in the

“foyer of her home. She had been beaten and strangled with multiple blunt force trauma injuries.”

A large v-shaped wound on her head matched the outline of the bay sports near the front door. After her death, investigators believed that her body had been dragged upstairs and put into a scalding shower. The water had been so hot, it caused a thermal burns. Detectives believed that this was an attempt to clean up the scene. Shock and fear spread throughout the neighborhood. Leslie had been murdered in her own home,

and the killer could still be out there. But something else spread too, intense curiosity. Soon, the police would be inundated with tips from Leslie Pierce neighbors, co-workers and friends, all trying to help solve this murder. A murder that seemed from the outset not to make any sense at all. Detectives didn't believe that this crime committed in one of the safest counties in the country was random. By the time they told Lauren Prear on May 5th, that her mother was the victim

of homicide, they already had a number one suspect in mind. 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 a door her." But under questioning, Sandy showed that there were secrets in the prayer house, arguments between husband and wife that had been getting worse.

"You're being a being, just keep coming out. Just keep coming out. You're never sick. There wasn't fun."

This was not an open and shut case. The investigation was riddled with unexpected revelations and dead ends that would prevent justice from coming for a very long time. "It makes you paranoid in a way to think that there is somebody that could commit this brutal crime and then just be walking free." "You're eyes, it's guilty, it's appropriate. You're DNA, it was in the crime scene."

Blood and water is a production of ABC audio and 2020 hosted by me, Stephanie Robos, produced by Madeleine Wood, Shane McKin, and Kira Powell, with help from Emily Schutz and Caitlyn Schiffer, edited by Gianna Palmer, our supervising producer is Susie Lou, music and mixing

Sean Dooley, Chris Donovan, Camille Peterson, Christina Corbin, Gale Doicch, Amanda Carr,

“Ellie Joe Stad, Angie Adam, and Michelle Margulis. Josh Cohen is our director of podcast programming.”

Amen McKinif is our executive producer.

The tape is blood curdling. The trail, secrets and lies. So many people are living with their own betrayal. Sunday nights at 10 a.m. Central on ABC and stream on Disney Plus and Lulu. He knows, how did you blow? No. The devil wears prodded to. He's the movie event 20 years in the

“making. Honestly, can't but the secrets anymore, so I think we just need to tell her.”

Were you too pleased to tell her that? Despite that, be the first to experience it only in theaters.

In light of the recent scandal, I'm here to restore your credibility. Oh, because we're a team now,

“that's a nice story. The devil wears prodded to, where you PG-13 may be inappropriate for”

children under 13 in theaters Friday.