Husband 'used translator to send text from missing wife' - but made key error
A man has been arrested on suspicion of killing his wife who disappeared eight years ago after he made a mistake when allegedly sending a text from the missing woman's phone using Google Translate.
60-year-old Allen Gould has been arrested for allegedly murdering his wife, Anna Maciejewska, a Polish native, after she disappeared in 2017. Gould, from Pennsylvania, was charged with first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence and other charges. Anna moved to the US from Poland in 1997, and married Gould in 2006. The 43-year-old mother of a son who was just four-years-old at the time of her disappearance, was reported missing on April 11, 2017 by a co-worker and friend.
The next day, Gould also reported her missing, according to the Chester County District Attorney's Office. However, evidence including phone records, financial records and witness accounts indicate that Anna's usual routine stopped on March 29, with prosecutors saying the last time she was seen or heard from was March 28 - two weeks before Gould reported her missing.
On March 30, Anna's dad in Poland received a text from his daughter's phone number wishing him a happy birthday in Polish. However, prosecutors say it had grammatical errors, adding in a statement: "Police later determined the same message was researched via Google Translate, despite that Maciejewska spoke Polish fluently."
A printed out version of that same Google Translate message was found in Gould's home, according to the criminal complaint. He told police he had last seen his wife on the morning of April 10 when she left to go to work - however, her car's system showed it was never driven that day.
A month later, her car was found in an apartment complex car park, almost two miles from the home she shared with Gould and her son. When police turned up at Gould's home for the missing persons report, they spotted Anna's iPhone and iPad were on the kitchen table, with her phone "in a startup/update status, as if it had been reset".
Gould allegedly told police his wife was updating her phone the morning she went missing, but it was taking too long so she decided to leave it behind as she rushed out the door to work. The criminal complaint added that all of her belongings were left at home, excluding her car keys.
Officers searching the home found divorce paperwork, and evidence that Anna was taking a 'Divorce 101' class. A friend told police that Anna wasn't happy in her marriage and that she and Gould had disagreed on how to raise their son. Anna had allegedly told the friend she wanted a divorce, but her husband disagreed.
She also allegedly told the friend that she and her husband had "set a firm date to discuss a divorce". The couple's son having dual citizenship and a Polish passport was reportedly a "point of contention" between their pair, as Gould "feared he would have no parental rights" if Anna were to take the child to Poland, according to the criminal complaint.
Anna had also "visited over 150 website pertaining to divorce, signs of emotional abuse, psychological abuse, emotional blackmail, emotional abuse, narcissistic personality disorder, domestic abuve vs normal marital conflict, and how to divroce an emotionally abusive husband," the complaint stated. Gould allegedly told police the pair "had spoken about a divorce" but deicded to use their townhouse "as a place to decompress rather than separate completely."
After reporting his wife missing, Gould allegedly "stopped helping police attempt to locate his wife, wrote a check for a criminal defence attorney, clicked on an article about strangulation" and got a second mobile phone, according to the complaint. Gould was arrested last Wednesday and is being held without bail on charges including first-degree murder and tampering with physical evidence. His preliminary hearing is set for May 27.
"He's been living under the specter of this for eight years," Gould's defence attorney, Evan Kelly, told ABC News. "At this point he just wants to clear his name in the court of law."
Kelly declined to comment on any details of the case. Anna's body has never been found, according to the criminal complaint. Chester County District Attorney Chris de Barrena-Sarobe said at a news conference that all the interviews police carried out over eight years showed Anna was a "devoted mother" who "loved her family."
"There's nothing to indicate that she would stop corresponding with her family, stop spending any amount of money to go visit htem and essentially abandon her son," the District Attorney said. "It simply doesn't make any common sense."
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