Dead End

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colliding in one multinational boomed level. Listen, anywhere you get podcasts. In the days after his wife's murder, Sandy Prears spoke to detectives several times. Leslie's body was found on May 1st, 2001. On May 4th, he met with detectives, and he told them intimate details about his marriage.

He described arguments and told them how much Leslie's drinking bothered him. On May 8th, Sandy asked to see detectives again.

“Sandy said he remembered detectives telling him if you think of anything, let us know.”

Well, now he was back, and he was thinking about Leslie's boss, Brett Brady. She thinks Brent's a control freak, especially with her. According to Sandy, Leslie had told him about arguments she said she'd had with Brett. He said she described one in particular, where she said things had gotten heated. I'm not sure what the incident was, but afterwards, Leslie turned around and said something

along the lines of saying, "And you're going to do what Brett." Sandy wondered to police, "Why was Brett who wasn't a close friend of theirs so interested in

“coming over to the house the day Leslie did in turn up for work?"”

But the detectives didn't see all that interested in Sandy's questions about Brett Brady. Exactly, exactly. Like I said, I feel kind of... It's good to talking about this glitchy. Sandy told detectives that Leslie said she felt Brett singled her out at work. If Sandy was trying to shift to some of the suspicion off of him, it didn't seem to be working. And just by being there, back in the presence of the detectives, Sandy opened himself up to another

route of questions about his marriage. There's no problem. What she's like when she starts trying to think that she can be, how much she must have inferred is. What she can be, the demand. I would say argumentative, but just demanding of my time where I've been.

Here's what detectives weren't telling Sandy prayer. He wasn't just the number one suspect in the

case. He was the only suspect. The investigation was leading detectives toward a common true crime trope. The husband did it. That is, until the evidence said otherwise. From ABC audio and 2020, I'm Stephanie Romos, and this is Lunt and Water. There were three formal sits-down interviews between Sandy and the detectives. The first was two days after Leslie's death, which we talked about in our last episode.

The second was the one you've just heard a few days later.

And the third interview came three weeks after Leslie's death.

In this last interview, Sandy wore a white shirt and black tie. It was a little after five 30 in the afternoon and he'd come straight from work. In the weeks since that second interview, and as the target on his own back grew bigger and bigger, Sandy kept responding to the investigators' requests, and there were a lot. The detectives' notebook from the prayer case is littered with calls to Sandy, visits to his work, and lists of information the police wanted

from him. He'd given them everything they'd asked for, but everyone has their limits, and Sandy

messages on the prayer's answering machine. They wanted Sandy to bring in the tapes.

"And have you erased that or any of the stuff that's on there for the past few weeks since it's still there?" "You guys, I don't mean to show me this respect, but I've been cooperating with you since day one, and I think I've answered enough questions." "Just about the answer of a machine?" "I don't understand." "My attorney said not to answer any more questions." "You can hear in the tape. This isn't what detectives expected. Sandy, their number one

suspect was an eager to cooperate for weeks. Suddenly, mentions a lawyer and declines to say anything.

The change in Sandy brought a change in the detectives too. They finally spelled out what had gone

unsaid in all their other conversations. We think you killed your wife. They asked Sandy to come clean.

“"It's a terrible thing. It is a terrible thing. And you have to be able to face it.”

And the war needs to know. It's going to hurt her, but she needs to know. She has to the closure on it, man." "I want closure on it." "You're the only one that can give it." "I repeat what happens." "See, I would disrespect." "No, don't let me find out because there's no result. I'll disrespect." "Take me, Sandy. Sometimes I answer any questions. Just be a man and tell

us what happened. I told you exactly what happened. But you haven't told us the truth. I told you

exactly what happened." Here, the investigators ramp up the pressure. As if they know, this might be their last chance to try to get Sandy prior to confess. "You're the only one that has to keep you along this. And why won't you help yourself, Sandy? Why won't you just talk to us? Just tell us what happened." Sandy eventually says, "He'll answer questions. If his lawyer can be present." "Okay," the detective said, "seizing the opportunity." Call him and ask.

Garmin, I'm still here, and did you say you want the lawyer to come down?" "Yes." I didn't want to know what the lawyer could have, the of Howard can come down. "It might be detained?" "No, no, I'm not." "No." "Can the attorney come in at another time?" "Sure."

“"Fring yes, though." "I mean, yes, if you want to talk, if you want to tell us what happened. Okay,”

then have your attorney here." "Get my three together?" "Yes." "Yes." "Well, I've got to know that." The detectives have no choice but to let Sandy leave. But not before he made one last bid for connection. "Well, you said one time, I hope one day, and we'll be able to sit down and have a great trip." "And I honestly hope so, but it's not looking through his right hands." Sandy walked out the door, taking any hope of a confession with him.

Now, all the attention was on the crime scene evidence. Investigators wondered if that would prove that Sandy prior killed his wife, but what it proved wasn't what detectives expected at all. [Music]

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"On the home of the NBA finals." "All the work. All the soccer players." The NBA player presented Baguio, who continued. ESPN and ABC. As we've covered in previous episodes, there was blood visible throughout the pre-airhouse. In the days after the murder, investigators meticulously combed through the crime scene, collecting samples of that blood to test for DNA. States Attorney John McCarthy says his

county was uniquely equipped to handle it. "We hear in Montgomery County were blessed,

because when DNA first began, there was only one DNA lab in the United States of America.

It was cell mark. And it was on Golden Rod Lane and it was in Gathesburg in the middle of my county." DNA was first used in criminal cases in the late 1980s, but many people got a crash course on how it actually worked in the mid-1990s. "May 18, 1995." Tonight, the state versus O.J. Simpson, the continuing skirmish over DNA. "6 years before Leslie Pierce murder, the lab director of cell mark was called to the stand in the so-called trial of the century."

" Cell mark became very famous, because they were the ones who performed the DNA in the infamous O.J. Simpson case." "This is the DNA evidence. The best evidence the prosecution has to link O.J. Simpson to the murders." In O.J. Simpson's trial, the cell mark lab in Maryland was asked by the prosecution to verify the DNA results of the LAPD crime lab, which they did,

pointing to a one in 530 billion chance of error. And despite the fact that O.J. was acquitted by

the jury, the case still proved just how compelling DNA evidence could be. In 2001, that same lab,

“cell mark analyzed the DNA samples found in the prior home, and they discovered something important.”

A lot of the blood found at the scene came from Leslie Prear, but not all of it. Three blood samples came from someone else. One was found on a baseboard in the dining room. One was taken from the door to the kitchen, and one was discovered on the back door, leading to the yard. And crucially, these three samples all matched DNA that had been found on Leslie Prear's fingernails. Whoever's DNA this was was likely the person Leslie had struggled with right before her death,

and that person could be her killer. On June 18th, detectives got a warrant to take samples of Sandy Prear's blood and hair, which would be analyzed to see if they were a match with the blood

found at the crime scene. Investigators waited. And then, the results finally came back in

late July. Steve's attorney John McCarthy again. The blood that was on the scene, that was not the victims blood came from a male, and it was not Mr. Prear. This information changed everything. Investigators had been laser focused on Sandy Prear for weeks, but this crime scene DNA belonging to an unknown male was not in fact from the number one

“suspect in the Leslie Prear case. And if it wasn't Sandy's DNA, who's was it?”

Initially, I did not think that I was going to be a suspect in all of this. This is Leslie's boss, Brett Rady. Sandy and some of Leslie's relatives found it odd, even suspicious that Brett had turned up at the Prear's house. The day Leslie's body was discovered. So they brought up the idea, well, what was Brett doing there? And who was Brett? Well, okay, I'm just, I'm just somebody who cared.

Remember, when Sandy mentioned Brett, back in his second police interview in May, detectives had been skeptical. Now, a few months later, the Brett Rady theory sounded a lot more interesting to them. The police came to us in August telling us there was a DNA found in Leslie's

to eliminate you all. All right, well, my first thought was, they're probably want to

“eliminate me, only because I was there. And I said, fine. And they took swabs of, you know,”

our cheeks, and then off they went. Soon, the DNA would reveal to investigators whether Brett was somebody who cared or somebody who may have killed. And Brett wasn't the only person detectives we're taking a closer look at. For the rest of 2001, investigators cast their net wider and wider. The interviewed Leslie Prears former colleagues and friends,

almost everyone with a connection to the family was now scrutinized. Lauren Prier had been heartbroken by the investigators' focus on her dad as the possible killer. And even when the police expanded their investigation, Sandy wasn't officially let off the hook.

Once the DNA came back and it wasn't Sandy, my dad, they never really contacted us.

“Sandy wasn't called into the station for any more interviews, but he wasn't clear either.”

And Lauren thought some of the people investigators were now speaking to seemed far-fetched. My uncle Frank was the interview, which is ridiculous. I mean, I understand, because he would travel a lot, but he would stay at my parents house when he was coming through. I mean, everyone was on the list. Uncle Frank wasn't their guy, but in order for Sandy's name to be cleared, the police needed another strong suspect to focus on.

And Lauren felt she had one. An older neighbor around her mom's age. As Lauren explains it, right before her mom's death, the two of them were walking together in the neighborhood when they bumped into this neighbor. His like, "Hi Lauren, I was like, this is my mom." And he's like, "Oh, no wonder you get your good looks from that kind of thing."

And my mom was always loved to be charmed. She was just that kind of moment.

But she was an arrogant, she was just, she'd like to be flattered. So that's just how she was. People's a very, very handsome. Anyways, so time went on. Or he was like, "Maybe we should go walk the dogs together sometime." Lauren could see that her mom was flattered by this handsome neighbor. And after her mom was murdered, she wondered if something had happened between them.

“The only thing I could thought of was that they have an affair, and then my mom tried to cut it off.”

And like, end the affair, and he murdered her. Lauren told police about this neighbor, "Lawn for Spent would later get a sample from him. It didn't match, and he was eliminated as a suspect." Meanwhile, investigators were entertaining another idea that this case could be bigger than Chubby Chase. If you lived in Washington DC, you knew about Chandra Levy. It was in the news constantly.

I guess in any who done it murder, any buddy in homicide would have to see if there were any relationships between what happened there, and then in this case. Chandra Levy was a 24-year-old student at the University of San Francisco, who moved to Washington DC for a federal internship. "She had told her parents, she was about to return home, but mysteriously, she disappeared,

and now she's the focus of a nationwide search." When she went missing in 2001, Chandra's parents appeared on national television, begging for information about their daughter. "If anyone has any way of returning her, they get to reward money. There's returning her, please." Chandra was last seen on May 1st, just one day before Leslie Prizbody was discovered.

Chandra's apartment was in downtown DC, but her laptops browser history showed that she had been researching rock-creek park, a large wooded area that extended past the neighborhood of Chubby Chase, within a few miles of the Prizhome. Detectives and Leslie's family had talked about a possible connection between the two cases. But as the months ticked on, the investigation into Leslie's murders slowed. In the detectives' notebooks and trees went from multiple notes a day to having

a month-long stretch between them. By October of 2001, Brett Reedus DNA results were back. He wasn't a match with the DNA from the crime scene. None of his colleagues were either.

sent to codice. The national DNA database that holds records of convicted offenders,

“but it didn't get a match there either. And when Chandra leaving his body was found in May”

of 2002, it didn't reveal any new information about Leslie's murder. Detectives determined there was no connection between the two cases. The investigators increasingly wider search for answers had turned up nothing. The detectives had gone quiet. And Lauren Prier soon got tired of waiting for them to call. Hey, Felice and Walter. My new stand-up special, it was an accident,

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me and you said that you wanted to come by and talk to some boards. So, here we are. Here we are. A year after Leslie's murder, Lauren Prayer met with the two detectives in charge of the case. She'd come to find out what was new in the investigation, but they only wanted to rehash an old theory. The detectives were still convinced Sandy was the killer. And it's frustrating for us because I just like that feeling is that your dad had something to do with it. I've just been a cop

too many years. It worked too many cases. It is so bizarre to think that this could be so well. The unknown male DNA hadn't shifted the suspicion from Sandy at all. It had just added another layer of complexity. Detectives had a whole timeline of how they imagined Sandy had carried out Leslie's murder. Their theory was that on Tuesday, May 1, 2001, after eating pasta for dinner, Leslie Prayer had an unknown male guest over. When Sandy got home, there was a confrontation,

during which the unknown male had been injured and left through the back door. This would explain the unknown man's blood being found in those three locations and his DNA on Leslie's fingernails. According to their official report, the detectives believed that Sandy had then turned his anger on Leslie, killing her in the FOIA area, and spending the early hours of Wednesday morning cleaning up, before leaving for work as usual. The report also speculated that

the biggest wrinkle in Sandy's plan was Brett Breedy. He didn't expect Brett to insist on coming over and see the blood that Sandy hadn't finished cleaning up. This was all speculation, based on key pieces of evidence that for Lauren, didn't add up to the same result. The pasta, for example.

“All the time, see in the morning, you should have had it in the morning.”

If Leslie ate the pasta for breakfast, as Lauren said she often did, it was totally plausible she'd been killed on Wednesday morning. And Lauren said they still hadn't found the person who left the mystery DNA in the house.

more questions than answers. They still felt Sandy was the most likely option.

“That idea that anyone is capable of losing it. Lauren had thought about it.”

Lauren was adamant. Her dad just wasn't capable of killing. Investigators told Lauren the case was at a sort of holding pattern. The cloud of suspicion over Sandy would stay until new information could clear him or confirm him as the killer.

And detectives weren't the only ones holding on to their suspicions about Sandy.

Leslie's large family devastated by the loss of their sister and daughter had turned on

“Sandy too. They basically cut him out of which is sad and I know it hurt him very much,”

but my dad and I had each other. So we worked through. And I'm sure behind closed doors, he was a mess. And sad and cry, but in front of me, again, we worked through, but he tried to be strong. Sandy moved away from Chevy Chase to Virginia. Lauren visited him about once a week.

They would go out to dinner and talk. She never asked him about Leslie's murder again. But

she kept reaching out to the detectives, hoping for some update or new lead in her mom's case. So I just kept calling. I knew someone knew something. You know what I mean? So I just didn't give up. And as the years went on, Lauren started to wonder if she would ever learn the truth.

“I thought I was going to die without knowing. I really truly thought that. And that's what we talked”

about. I came to a term where Lauren, you can't do this every single day. You can't. What's going to kill you? And then I got the phone call. It took 24 years for Lauren to get the call she'd been waiting for. By the time it came, a whole new generation of detectives was on the line. They reached out because they had new ideas, new investigative methods, and a new mindset about how to solve the crime. And they said,

they knew who killed Leslie Prior. He almost got away with it. Now he almost got away with it. Blood and water is a production of ABC audio and 2020, hosted by me, Stephanie Ramos, produced by Madeleine Wood, Shane McKeon, and Kira Powell, with help from Emily Schutz 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 Kady Den Doz,

Janis Johnston, Sean Dueling, Chris Donovan, Camille Peter-Sent, Christina Corbin, Gale Doeach, Amanda Carr, Ellie Joe Stad, Angie Adam, and Michelle Marulus. Josh Cohan, is our director of podcast programming. Amen Mcniff is our executive producer. 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.

The Stanley Cup playoffs presented by Guy Go, continue on ABC, ESPN and the ESPN app.