Anna Maciejewska death: Family members testify as husband accused of murdering wife appears in court

MALVERN, Pa. (WPVI) -- A man accused of murdering his wife appeared in court on Monday in Chester County.

Anna Maciejewska has been missing since 2017. Although her body has not been found, her husband is facing murder charges in her presumed death.

Allen Gould, 60, is charged with first- and third-degree murder, abuse of a corpse, false reports and other offenses in the death of his 43-year-old wife.

Monday's preliminary hearing will decide if there's enough evidence to go to trial.

The prosecution has set aside at least two days for the hearing, signaling they have a lot of evidence to present.

Janina Maciejewska, Anna's mother, testified via Zoom about the text messages and emails that she received from Anna's accounts after she stopped communicating by phone with her family in Poland. The prosecution asserts the messages were written and sent by Gould in an attempt to make it appear Anna was alive in March of 2017.

Janina stated Anna was thinking of surprising her father for his 80th birthday in March of 2017, but then they could not get her on the phone, and she never called her father for his birthday, nor did she show up in Warsaw, Poland.

Her family never heard from her again. When they called Gould, the family said he was curt and angry.

Anna's brother-in-law, Leshick Wronski, also testified in person.

He described the family's growing frustration with Gould after they stopped hearing from Anna. Wronski described how they went so far as to travel to America and hire a private investigator. He also spoke about a concerning holiday when he said he witnessed Gould grab the couple's young son. Wronski stated he spoke up and Gould stopped.

In the afternoon, witnesses included employees from Voya Financial, where Anna worked. One employee stated she finally called 911 after she thought it was strange Anna missed work, and when she called Gould, he did not show concern over it.

Ellen Lee, a former co-worker and close friend of Anna's, also testified about what she described as Gould's strange behavior following Anna's disappearance.

Lee stated in court: "He had no concern looking for Anna, I had to step up and be her voice."

Lee also said she suggested creating a Facebook page for Anna to help find her. Gould did provide photos of Anna and her car.

During her testimony, Lee also described the heartbreak Anna suffered over a miscarriage, which led to Anna taking a leave of absence from work. In cross-examination, Gould's defense attorney, Evan Kelly, pointed out that everyone expresses grief differently.

The state trooper who responded to take the missing persons report, Corporal Everett, also testified and described Gould as "not forthcoming" and "uninterested." He saw a large amount of cleaning supplies and thought they could be used to clean a crime scene.

He also asked Gould to remove a tarp over a child's sandbox because the trooper was concerned a body could be under it. When the tarp was lifted, he saw children's toys.

Kelly asked the trooper if he had ever told Gould his concerns over the cleaning supplies and tarp, and the trooper stated no.

No evidence of a crime scene was discovered during that trooper's response.

The shocking arrest of Gould came down on May 15.

The Pennsylvania State Police stayed largely quiet over the past eight years. The day of Gould's arrest, Chester County District Attorney Christopher de Barrena-Sarobe, would only say the charges came down in 2025 in part due to new technology not available in 2017.

Gould reported Anna missing on April 12, 2017, after he told police she left for work on April 11, 2017, and did not return. Several weeks later, her blue Audi was found not far from the couple's Malvern home that they shared with their then-3-year-old son.

An affidavit of probable cause shows the vehicle was not even started on that date.

Documents also point to a potential motive: a divorce. Anna sought assistance in obtaining a divorce and had custody concerns over the couple's young son.

But the most revealing portion of the documents is from the July 2017 search of their Malvern home:

Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Brodeur stated that when Gould asked if they had found Anna, the trooper replied: "We are here because you murdered your wife."

He noted the defendant "did not have a visible reaction."

A K9 during the search showed "alert behavior to human remains in the northeast portion of the property ... and conducted a search of that area and found the soil to have been disturbed."

Gould told authorities he activated a burner phone in June to communicate with his sister, fearing his phone was bugged.

In a search of Gould's hard drive on April 24, 2017, the affidavit states, "The defendant clicked a link on an attorney's Twitter page that directed him to the definition of "violent crimes strangulation."

In court documents, state police note the search is "significant" because "there has never been an accusation that Maciejewska was strangled."

The documents also raise questions about a missing blue tarp that neighbors reported seeing in the backyard a week before Anna was reported missing.

The affidavit also revealed a timeline for investigators. They believe that March 29, 2017, Anna's life abruptly stopped, and the last phone conversation between the couple was on March 28.

Evan Kelly, Gould's defense attorney, spoke to Action News following the first day of the hearing, saying, "This is a case of assumptions and the government assuming that because we can't find her, she's deceased, because we don't have a body, she was killed. Because we don't have a body, he's the one who did it."

The preliminary hearing continues Wednesday, June 25, before District Justice James Kovaleski.