Looking for Leslie

I'm Vanessa Richardson.

Every morning I'll bring you the latest crime stories developing across the country,

“with the key facts, updates, and headlines you need to know.”

Because in true crime, every detail matters. New episodes of Crime House 24/7 release every weekday. Listen on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts. May 2nd, 2001 was 25 years ago. But Linda Lyle still remembers what the weather was like that day.

It was a beautiful, 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, D.C. It was a small office. And Linda knew all her colleagues by name, including a woman named Leslie Prier.

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's 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.

And this was 2001, where the company had a lot of still paperwork, if you will, because we weren't in 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'd 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, "Darn it, you know where the hell is Leslie?" Linda says, "Bret 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 1115, Brett called Leslie's husband, "Sandy Prayer." 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." And he goes, "No." Very quickly, and 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 Prayer's home and try to find out why she hadn't shown up. It was a decision that would land Brett in the middle of a gruesome scene and a bewildering mystery

that would take decades to solve. "Now, well, what much mercy, there's blood in the ... in the ... 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 Prayer and her husband, Sandy,

It's a prestigious suburb of Washington, DC,

“full of picture-esque neighborhoods, and it's a place I know well.”

When I first joined ABC News 11 years ago, I worked out of 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 Prayer's boss, Brett Brady,

to show me the neighborhood where the prayer's 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.

Basically, 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 prayers 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. I don't know where the next one on the right. Oh, it's lovely.

But 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, he's two.

I was a patrol. I was a fifth grade patrol, troll kid. Right, I was six grade. I had to fold the patrol belt a certain way. Leslie's daughter, the priest's 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 drum and avenue,

to where the cold second did.

This is where the house would have been. So you see, it's obviously read done. The priest home was knocked down a few years ago, and a different modern house. Now sits in its place.

Crime scene pictures show that the priest's 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 priest's 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.

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On the morning of May 2, 2001, it was sunny, warm, and approaching 11.30 a.m. When Brett Reedy 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'd 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 is yelling, Leslie, Leslie, Leslie. And as soon as I walk in, I look to my right and there's a large pool of blood. I mean, 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 foyer. 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 foyer, 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 foyer 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 foyer. He bent down to take a closer look. And I'm still kind of melt down. And as I'm melt down, I notice 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 slowly opened the can.

“I think, oh, it's, 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. A dog and 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 at the 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. Little strange, I remember saying to him, look, Sandy, they tried to clean this up.

“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

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. I 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. Okay. Are you not in the house anymore?”

I'm in the warehouse right now. The husband's looking around. Can you hear what the husband? I'm with the husband, yes. Is there a lot of blood? But it looks like there's possibly, you know, you just drug a couple things knocked down. Okay. 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, 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 officer's 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 just 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, put 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 that be?”

Leslie Prears' body was found lying in the shower of the upstairs bathroom. Your 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. The only daughter, and that's all I've talked about.

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“Just be my dad. At Starbucks this girl came up to me and she was like, are you?”

And I was like, yeah, she was like, oh, where there's a bandaid in your hair? Don't miss good girl now streaming on Hulu. Terms apply. Lauren Prier was 23 years old, which 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 the mom and dad? Just wonderful. See, I knew it was a big car. 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 drum and avenue. It's a beautiful neighborhood, extremely safe. I never felt scared

there. And we just would have barbecuees and my friends would come over. Like I said, my parents would my dad would cook. My mom was actually not the best cook. That'd be me, but she wasn't. I'm our strengths. But so it was just wonderful with 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 sleep over parties from my birthday

and I had like eight to ten, you know, there was like a bunch of girls, but all the 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 pullout 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 especially like

“to the National Portrait Gallery. So did you guys sleep both had a very good relationship?”

Oh yeah, my mom and I were a 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 on the phone every single day. That was a routine. I mean, serious. 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, it's Lauren. I was like, can I talk to my mom?" And she was like, "Oh, she's not any at, 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, how are you?" I was like, "Mom, I was on a work with Woody. What's going on?" I was confused and I looked out the window and I saw a police car pull up and I said, I said, "What's going on?" And I saw my dad and a police officer

gal at the car. 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 was like, "Mom, it's been an accident."

“I think we were 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 any more." 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

in an accident, but investigators didn't actually know what happened. The scene that 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. I never saw her dead body.

Think God, I'd be in a 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.”

Oh, damn, I said. 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 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 Laura in a prayer 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 hurt." 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 abandoned, being just keep coming out. Just keep coming out. You never said it was

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 it is."

"You're DNA was in the crime scene." Blood and water is a production of ABC audio and 2020 hosted by me, Stephanie Ramos, produced by Madeline Wood, Shane McKin and Kira Powell, with help from Emily Schutz and Katelyn Schiffer, edited by Gianna Palmer, our supervising producer is Susie Lu, music and mixing by Ebenevaila, scoring by Kira Powell. Special thanks to Kady Dendos, Janis Johnston,

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