A man from Pennsylvania has been charged with the murder of his missing wife in 2017, prosecutors said.
Anna Maciejewska, born in Poland, immigrated to America in 1997 and married Allen Gould in 2006, the criminal complaint reported. Maciejewska’s 4-year-old son disappeared with her.
Maciejewska, 43, was missing after being reported missing on April 11, 2017, by a friend and co-worker, and Gould also reported her missing the next day, the Chester County District Attorney’s Office said on Wednesday.
But evidence like phone records, bank accounts and witness testimony show Maciejewska ended her habitual course of conduct on March 29, and no one heard from or saw her since March 28, prosecutors released.
On March 30, Maciejewska’s father in Poland got a text on his daughter’s phone with a birthday greeting in Polish with grammatical mistakes, prosecutors stated. “Police later found the same message was researched using Google Translate, even though Maciejewska was a fluent Polish speaker,” prosecutors added in a statement.
A copy of the same Google Translate message was discovered in Gould’s house, the criminal complaint said.
Gould told police he last saw his wife on April 10 in the morning when she had left for work, but the internal system of the car was checked and found not to have been used that day, the complaint said. Maciejewska’s vehicle was discovered in May in the parking lot of an apartment complex short of 2 miles from their home, the complaint said.
When police visited their home to take the missing persons report, they noticed that 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 the morning she vanished but took too long to finish updating and she took it home with her when she rushed out the door for work, the filing said. All else was left behind except keys to her truck, the filing said.
Police found divorce papers at the couple’s residence, the complaint states, and Maciejewska took a “Divorce 101” course.
Maciejewska’s friend reported to police that Maciejewska was unhappy in her marriage and the couple disagreed on how to raise their son, according to the criminal complaint. Maciejewska said she wanted a divorce but her husband did not consent, and she also allegedly told the friend that she and Gould “set a firm date to discuss a divorce,” the criminal complaint said.
A friend of Maciejewska told police that the dual citizenship and Polish passport their son possesses was an “area of contention” because Gould “feared she would have no parental rights” if she took the child to Poland, according to the complaint.
Maciejewska “logged onto over 150 websites having to do with divorce, signs of emotional abuse, psychological abuse, emotional blackmail, emotional abuse, narcissistic personality disorder, domestic abuse vs. healthy martial conflict, and divorce an emotionally abusive husband,” the complaint read.
Gould informed police “they had talked about a divorce” but decided to use their townhouse “as a place to relax rather than completely apart,” the complaint reads.
After Gould reported Maciejewska missing, he supposedly “stopped cooperating with the police in an attempt to locate his wife, wrote a check to a criminal defense attorney, clicked on a strangulation story” and obtained a second cellphone, the complaint alleges.
Gould, 60, was arrested Wednesday and is being held without bail on charges that range from first-degree murder to tampering with physical evidence, prosecutors said. His initial hearing is May 27.
“He’s carried this for eight years,” Gould’s defense lawyer, Evan Kelly, told ABC News. “Now he just wants to have his name cleared in the court of law.” Kelly declined to comment on any part of the case.