Blood and Water: The Husband

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 story. When Lauren Prier was briefly allowed back into her parents' house on Drum and 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 her kitchen. There was blood all over the hallway. It looked like Lesley 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, the back of her head was smashed against the wall, and then there was, like, blood stains. Don't walk. 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 Lumino all over the house.

It glows blue when it comes into contact with even the smallest amount of blood. Thanks to the Lumino, 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 Lumino showed that Lesley was likely already dead when someone had dragged her body up the stairs and into the shower. I had to walk through that. There is still Lumino all over the hallway all the way up the stairs. Through the bedroom, my parents messed her 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.

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

And the scary part was that they tried to put it on my father. I said, "Now, I'm like, my dad loved my mom, loved a door to her." I said, "My dad would never kill my mom."

In the days after Lesley's death, investigators turned their attention to Sandy Prear, and just as a luminal had uncovered new details about the story of Lesley's death, there were more revelations to come. This time, about the Prear's marriage. Was this a routine with her to get fairly well and made read at every night? Ah, it will be us. From ABC Audio and 2020, I'm Stephanie Romos, and this is Blood and Water. Episode 2, The Husband.

“At the time of her death, Lesley had been married to Sandy for 27 years. They met a 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 must have been 1977 when I was born, and this is my Sandy Kush. And then my mom. So we were a happy family of three of us. In one of the pictures, Sandy and Lesley sit on a sofa together with Baby Lauren on their laps. Lesley 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 four brothers and four sisters. Lesley was one of eight 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 email to Lesley's parents, littered with jokes tailored to the recipient. He was funny. Now 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."

That's the kind of father my dad was, he'd on a dime, he was, say, "By 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? Sweet, sauce-boken, outgoing, mischievous, definitely mischievous. Bryce Thomas was one of Lauren's best friends back then. They're still close today. When Lauren wasn't high school, she and her friends would congregate at the prayer house. The whole gang got to know Leslie and Sandy prayer. The couple seemed solid. They were rare or mixed, interested in their daughter's life, but cool enough to hang out with.

Mispre was always so engaging. It made you feel welcome. 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 who were these kids hanging out with my daughter. 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 being 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.”

You see, photos like these, welcome to mind that they were the best parents. We just had so much of luck for each other and we had so much fun together, and a lot of people or friends don't have the same relationship with their parents, journey me. Lauren remembers her family as closer than most, and their red brick house and 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 luminous smears and blood drops, and as the investigators began to piece together the facts of the case, it became clear.

Sandy and Leslie Prayer were far from picture perfect. The Stanley Cup playoffs presented by Guy Go. Continue on ABC, ESPN, and the ESPN app. The double-worse product, too, is the perfect sequel that has audiences talking. She knows how, what did you plan?

It exceeds all expectations.

“I always knew that you would end up doing something great.”

See the movie that's fun, fierce, and well-worked the way.

This is what Runline does best, and now the double is back in all her glory. My boss is better than your boss. Don't miss the iconic movie event, now playing Omy and beaters. That's all. The double-worse product, too, is pretty beatier, too.

Maybe inappropriate for children under 13, now playing everywhere. Sunday nights on ABC. What happens when the person you love the most? Turns out, not to be who you think they are. Everything he told me was alive.

I was betrayed from the number one true crime podcast, The Trail. He's been living a secret double-life. My marriage ended with a 911 file. The tape is blood curdling. The trail, secrets and lies.

So many people are living with their own portrayal. Sunday nights at 10, I central on ABC, and stream on Disney Plus and Lulu. From the crime scene, it seemed clear that Leslie Prear was murdered, but investigators hadn't announced it officially yet. Two 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 Prear. Chase Day is a May 4th, 2001, and it is 11.05 a.m. This is Jim Jury with the County Police. And also Michael Turner, and we're talking with them.

Investigators interviewed Sandy Prear in his hotel room.

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. Now, I went to the mall. My government 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... It hit him. Okay.

I know what I did. I... I was taking some computer stuff to the...to the dump Tuesday, because I was members.

I got to get there by eight o'clock.

I got to get there by eight and I said, "Okay, I need to leave here by seven." Or seven, fifteen 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 p.m.

I was really beat, I went to bed, I went to bed around 9.30 that night. It was Tuesday night. The wife was home when I got there. She kissed me good night. You had dinner.

No. No. You know she had dinner. She would cook. She would cook on...

“Like every other day, every third day or something like that.”

She would always cook pasta or some chicken or something like that.

But... That night I didn't have dinner. I'm not sure if she cooked it. I'm not sure if she had. I just came around just wasn't 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, "I'm not just one glass." How many? Uh... Is this important? I'm just...

She would have a lot. She would have a lot. And in all honesty, it's one of the reasons why it kind of come home late. Because I... I just really...

It was just kind of just... It was kind of just getting hard to deal with. Sandy told detectives that he would often come home to find Leslie at 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 Osir? Sure. Definitely.

“I think we talked just briefly the other day.”

And the driveway. And we were asking about the staying on the ceiling. Right. You said that was from wine. It was from wine.

And what that came from was she had too much to drink that night. And there was a glass of wine on the counter. And you know, just flustered. Just slung it like just slung the wine. The glass.

I didn't let go of the glass. I just slung the liquid. I said something long gone. You don't need any more of this. Oh, I'm going with that.

I would say that was within two weeks. It was just been pretty great. It was been pretty recent. Sandy described how these arguments were getting worse. And the weeks leading up to Leslie's death.

He said that her drinking had to 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 you whatever you said because she could take it any, any other way. When she got cranked up.

And it was a, it was a, it was a, you could shot it. You couldn't shot it. You couldn't shot it. Get away from whatever that subject she may be on. She, but just keep just, just bam, bam, bam. Just keep coming out. Just keep coming out.

And it was it. So it was, uh, uh, it wasn't fun. 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 hit right in his back. Did that ever remember?

You have that's what you're going to ask me.

Well, I know. I mean, I never, um,

The most violent ever got was I, I grabbed her and just, you know, you got to snap out of. Like grabbing her by her shoulders and, you know, you got to snap out of it. Uh, that, uh, I, uh, did that, um, you know, one time. And it, you know, really, you know, hit the wall. I'm nothing, you know, smashing her anything.

Hit the wall. She's burst in tears and I'm thinking, "God, what am I doing?" So, um, so I'm pretty much controlled myself to register. Well, 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 is to look to investigators.

The gender of you ever discussed a divorce or separation,

we never seriously discussed it because we loved each other, dearly.

They were times where I'd say, "I didn't screw you, I'm divorcing you." To me, that's not a discussion. It's not when we sit down like this and talk about seriously getting a divorce. Even though things were really starting to really start escalating. If detectives thought these revelations about the prior relationship were surprising,

they hit 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 we both got up about 7 a.m. You just did you shower? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

We're shower, do you?

Usually I always use the one in the masturbation.

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 a.m. He remembered specifically because he had a board meeting that day. I don't want it to be there early.

He got to his office at around 7.50. At 9 a.m., he said his secretary put a call from Leslie through to his office phone. Did she sound not distressed? No, I said not anyway. Nope, nope, not in the room.

Where did she sound? She wanted to know if I had taken or put up the formula for role to a paper pack. That she that was odd the stairways, stairway going up 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 Ready called him to say she hadn't shown up at work.

And in our after that, Sandy described standing outside the house waiting for police to finish their search.

“An officer, Barnett came out and I'll never forget.”

I came reverse in Mr. Prey or Sir. He said your wife's dead. And you know, of course, broke up right there. But there's a finality of it. Right. It wasn't expecting us.

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.

And yet, as the interview wrapped up, it was clear that Sandy had done little to ease the detectives' suspicions,

or eliminate himself as a suspect.

“And evidence from the crime scene was about to make things even worse for Sandy Preyre.”

Road 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 his chest now. Greatness is up for grabs. And the world is watching. On the home of the NBA Finals.

The NBA Playoff presents a baguette continue, ESPN and ABC. No, no. Welcome to Get Real. I got something to say.

A weekly talk show for the reality TV of Sess.

Oh my god. This could be deliciously desperate. The final day's broadcast for Get Real. She has a soft spot for trouble, man. Boom, Patty.

This is your show.

“Find Get Real wherever you get your podcasts.”

Love runs deeper than we know. And stream new episodes Thursdays on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. Whoa. We need some water. I need a martini.

Yeah.

I love just son of cooking.

I'm Stanley Tucci. And I want to invite you on a journey through the country that I love. Italy. Join Stanley Tucci for a new season. You're a good cook.

I'm not bad. Of National Geographic, Tucci and Italy. All right. Should we eat? Tucci and Italy.

New season premieres Monday, May 11 on National Geographic. Streaming next day on Disney+ and Hulu. We know what happened right after this interview from entries in the detectives 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 Preer 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 undi-justed food in Leslie's stomach. Pasta. If 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 estate's attorney John McCarthy, he's worked in Maryland law enforcement for 45 years. He says he understands why investigators were focused on Sandy prayer. Quite canily, if you look at the cataloging of homicides over the time that I've been in the office here, I wouldn't say that, particularly if you're a woman,

“we're 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, you're in them in partner.”

That's been McCarthy's professional experience and it's supported by national statistics. According to the Department of Justice, women are five times more likely to be killed by an intimate partner than male murder victims. And the marriage that Sandy had described was volatile. Sandy insisted to investigateers 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."

Even before word spread that Sandy prayer was a suspect, Leslie's death had rocked to 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 ten or twenty 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. The 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 prayer house at 2 a.m. 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 735 a.m. 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. It was he trying to call attention and was he trying to create some kind of that you think through these things to determine whether or not in some way does that play into someone trying to cover up the velvet 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 a.m. 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 the 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 met 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 or a question. Could he really go that far?”

Nothing they ever had, but 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 come home?" He said, "No." And I believed him. Lauren's moment of doubt passed, but to pretty much everyone else, Sandy Prier 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 if I've just had you look at them, you've got the wrong guy. New evidence will throw Sandy Prier a lifeline. But if he didn't kill Leslie Prier, who did?

Blood and water is a production of ABC audio and 2020, hosted by me, Stephanie Robos, produced by Madeline Wood, Shane McKin, and Kira Powell, with help from Emily Schatz and Katelyn Schiffer, edited by Gianna Palmer, our supervising producer is Susie Lou, music by Evan Viola, mixing and mastering by Bob Mallory, scoring by Kira Powell, special thanks to Katie Den Doss, Janis Johnston, Sean Dooley, Chris Donovan, Camille Peterson,

Christina Corbin, Gale Doich, Amanda Carr, Ellie Joe Stad, Angie Adam, and Michelle Margulus.

Amen McNiff is our executive producer.

There was only one Richard Simmons. It's Sweat in Time!

“Megastock, a doard by millions, then one day he disappeared for a decade.”

Where in the world is Richard Simmons?

Now his closest family and friends speak out for the first time to die in Sawyer.

We had to be the one paying. We had to pay a lot of payment.

“And what does Richard's live in housekeeper?”

The last person to see him alive, now say happened behind closed doors.

This is the first time I've talked about his mystery of Richard Simmons, a Diane Sawyer special,

From years Tuesday, May 12 on ABC and stream on Disney Plus in Hulu.