She was 46 now, with good friends and a good job, a 9mm Taurus pistol at home and pepper spray in her purse, and she still held out hope that one day there might be an arrest, a closure, or something like it.
On Tuesday, just like in the movies, the phone call finally came. Instead of freedom, I found shock, betrayal and anger.
“We have evidence,” she recalled the detective saying. “It’s Eugene Griger.”
He was the boy she fell in love with when she was 16 years old.
“No,” Prior said. “No.”
The Grigor she knew was a sensitive, gentle man. He is now charged with first-degree murder and awaits arraignment in Montgomery County, but court records show he has not yet entered a plea. His lawyer did not respond to a request for comment Friday evening. A family member declined to comment.
Prior was in high school. Grigor liked her good looks (dark brown hair and a big smile) and how everyone liked her. He was outgoing and kind. He was close with her friends, both of whom attended Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. They liked going to hip-hop shows and sneaking out to the country club to sled down snowy hills. He wanted to be a computer engineer.
Prior said their families lived nearby and they spent time at each other’s houses: Her father would host a barbecue, her mother would make pasta, and they would eat together around the kitchen island.
She said he had accompanied her family on trips to lakes near the Outer Banks and to beaches in Delaware and Maryland. The four of them then played games like The Game of Life and Patchsy.
She didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.
“We were just kids,” she said.
Prior said that during the five years they were together, Watching Grigor suffer through his parents’ divorce, He said he knew some of his relatives had violent tempers, but he had never been violent with them, nor had he ever suspected that he could be violent.
Prior said her mother always spoke fondly of Grigor, but it was her father who repeatedly insisted, “There’s something wrong with him, Lauren.”
The two had been in a long-distance relationship for two years, breaking up shortly after Prior’s sophomore year of college. The conversation took place outside Madame’s Organ, a bar in Northwest Washington.
She remembered saying something like, “We’re still young. Let’s see what’s going on in the outside world,” and that Grigor had agreed.
They didn’t speak for three years.
Then, on a Wednesday in May 2001, Leslie J. Prior didn’t show up to work at Specialties Inc., an ad production company in Washington, D.C. A concerned co-worker and her husband went to their home in the 4800 block of Drummond Street. There was a blood stain on the front door. Police found Leslie Prior dead in her bedroom a short time later. A detective later told a reporter that the scene was “a pretty brutal crime scene.”
Prior said police asked her for a list of close family members, which she said included Grigor.
On Thursday, Montgomery County police spokeswoman Sheila Goff said the department “received a call from a neighbor regarding a suspect, Eugene Griger,” and that the initial case file included “the details of the call, an interview with the caller, and an incident report that included the suspect’s criminal history and the suspect’s name.”
He was not interviewed or examined, according to police, and police would not say when they received the report.
Hundreds of Lauren Prior’s friends and family came to support her mother’s funeral, but Prior said Griger was not there.
Lauren Prior recalled running into him at a bar in Bethesda, Md., shortly after the funeral. She told him her mother had died, and he looked at her and replied, “I’m so sorry.”
Years passed. The two high school friends remained close — she said she’d met him a few times at events with mutual friends — and then, three years ago, his brother texted her to say he was worried that Grigore would hurt him.
Prior said she decided not to respond because she didn’t know what to do and was focused on protecting herself.
Reached by phone Thursday, his brother declined to comment.
She said she last saw Grigger in 2019 at a restaurant in Washington, D.C., after a memorial service for a mutual friend. She said the two spoke one-on-one and that her mother did not come up in the conversation.
Meanwhile, she is facing an investigation into her mother’s murder. The case was solved quickly: Police immediately suspected her father, Carl “Sandy” Prior, but Lauren Prior was convinced of his innocence.
He died of septic shock in 2017, a loss that Ms Prior said was truly heartbreaking.
She also said her father had repeatedly named Grigor as a suspect.
So she She kept calling detectives, she kept begging for answers, she kept praying to God, she kept talking to her mother in her sleep.
Police said in September 2022, investigators submitted blood from the crime scene to a lab for “forensic genetic genealogical DNA analysis,” which has become an effective tool for investigators in recent years.
Police did not provide details about how the blood provided to the lab helped detectives identify Griger, but it did.
Earlier this month, investigators “collected DNA evidence from Griger and compared it to DNA recovered from the crime scene. Analysis revealed a match,” police said.
Detectives obtained an arrest warrant Saturday and arrested Griger in Washington on Tuesday. A bail hearing is scheduled for Monday.
“I want to meet him,” she said. “I want to tell him what I think.”
Because right now, all she wants to do is scream, she said.
