Man arrested for murder of wife who vanished in 2017, allegedly faked birthday text to her dad
A Pennsylvania man has been arrested for allegedly killing his wife who vanished in 2017, prosecutors said.
Anna Maciejewska, a Poland native, moved to the U.S. in 1997 and married Allen Gould in 2006, according to the criminal complaint. The couple's son was 4 years old when she disappeared.
On April 11, 2017, Maciejewska, 43, was reported missing by a co-worker and a friend; the next day, Gould also reported her missing, the Chester County District Attorney's Office said Wednesday.
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But evidence including phone records, financial records and witness accounts point to Maciejewska stopping her normal routine on March 29, and the last time anyone saw her or heard from her was March 28, prosecutors said.
On March 30, Maciejewska's dad in Poland received a text from his daughter's phone with a birthday message in Polish that had grammatical errors, prosecutors said. "Police later determined the same message was researched via Google Translate, despite that Maciejewska spoke Polish fluently," prosecutors said in a statement.
A printout of that same Google Translate message was found in Gould's home, according to the criminal complaint.
Gould told police he last saw his wife on the morning of April 10 when she left for work, but her car's internal system showed it was never driven that day, according to the criminal complaint. Maciejewska's car was discovered in May in an apartment complex parking lot nearly 2 miles from their home, the complaint said.
When officers responded to their home for the missing persons report, they noticed Maciejewska's iPhone and iPad were on the kitchen table and her phone was "in a startup/update status, as if it had been reset," according to the criminal complaint. Gould allegedly told police his wife was updating her phone on the morning she went missing but it was taking too long to finish updating so she left it at home when she rushed out the door to work, the document said. All of her belongings were left at home besides the keys to her car, the document said.
Officers found divorce paperwork at the couple's home, the complaint said, and Maciejewska was taking a "Divorce 101" class.
Maciejewska's friend told police that Maciejewska wasn't happy with her marriage and that the couple disagreed on how to raise their son, according to the criminal complaint. Maciejewska allegedly told the friend she wanted a divorce but her husband disagreed; she also allegedly told the friend she and Gould "set a firm date to discuss a divorce," according to the criminal complaint.
A friend of Maciejewska told police that their son having dual citizenship and a Polish passport was a "point of contention" because Gould "feared he would have no parental rights" if she took the child to Poland, the complaint said.
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Maciejewska "visited over 150 websites pertaining to divorce, signs of emotional abuse, psychological abuse, emotional blackmail, emotional abuse, narcissistic personality disorder, domestic abuse vs. normal martial conflict, and how to divorce an emotionally abusive husband," the complaint said.
Gould allegedly told police "they had spoken about a divorce" but decided to use their townhouse "as a place to decompress rather than separate completely," according to the complaint.
After Gould reported Maciejewska missing, he allegedly "stopped helping police attempt to locate his wife, wrote a check for a criminal defense attorney, clicked on an article about strangulation" and got a second cellphone, according to the complaint.
Gould, 60, was arrested Wednesday and is being held without bail on charges including first-degree murder and tampering with physical evidence, prosecutors said. His preliminary hearing is set for May 27.
"He's been living under the specter of this for eight years," Gould's defense 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.
Maciejewska's body has never been found, according to the criminal complaint.
Man arrested for murder of wife who vanished in 2017, allegedly faked birthday text to her dad originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
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