By 2021, Hope was running out for answers in Leslie's unsolved murder.

Leslie's parents were now deceased.

Carl had passed away in 2017, never having fully been cleared of killing his wife and still

suspected by some of Leslie's siblings.

He had never remarried.

A case file review was conducted by the missing person cold case unit supervisor during the week of February 27, 2021.

It was determined that all the investigative strategies in the Pereer case had been exhausted.

That was about to change.

In early 2022, Detective Tara Augustine was transferred from robberies to the cold case unit, joining forces

with another veteran officer, Detective Allison DuPoy. In February of 2022, Detective Augustine reviewed

the Prere case file and the investigator's theories. She noted that early investigators

very strongly suspected Carl. After they finally moved on from him, they thought it was unknown

whether Leslie knew her attacker, but they didn't believe the crime was sexually motivated or

an attempted burglary or robbery gone wrong. Then why the heck had someone repeatedly bashed Leslie's

head into the baseboard molding? Detective Augustine wanted to find out, and luck was on her side.

She discovered that there was plenty of evidence still in the evidence boxes. A lot of it was

Harris found on Leslie and in the house. But swabs from the blood samples containing foreign

male DNA were still sealed up in evidence envelopes ripe for testing. Two swabs were selected

to be sent to the lab,

the swab from the kitchen dining room doorframe, and the swab from the interior rear kitchen door.

The samples were sent to Parabon on April 25, 2022. Meanwhile, Detective Augustine did all the things

cold-case detectives do when they reopen cases.

...