Pennsylvania man arrested on suspicion of murder 8 years after wife vanished from Philly suburb

By Danny E Freeman, CNN

(CNN) — Pennsylvania State Trooper David Brodeur wanted to see Allen Gould’s reaction as investigators and detectives swarmed his house.

“We have search warrants for your residence in relation to the homicide of your wife,” Brodeur told Gould in July 2017.

Gould’s wife Anna Maciejewska had been missing for nearly four months at that point.

“We are here because you murdered your wife,” Brodeur told Gould, according to a new affidavit of probable cause obtained by CNN.

Gould “did not have a visible reaction” to the trooper’s accusation that day, according to the new court documents. “There was no proclamation of his innocence, denial of accusations, or even a request for more information,” Brodeur observed.

And yet no arrest was made that day, or the week after, or even that year.

Maciejewska’s case went cold for eight years, captivating an idyllic affluent community outside of Philadelphia and in her home country of Poland in the process.

All that changed this week, when Gould was arrested, taken into custody, and charged with Maciejewska’s murder with police citing, among other evidence, Google searches and a grammatically incorrect birthday wish.

Gould has maintained his innocence from day one and has not yet entered a formal plea to the charges.

“Allen has been living under the specter of this investigation for eight years,” Gould’s attorney Evan Kelly told CNN. “It’s a horrible situation for everyone involved, but the benefit of it is at least now he gets to tell his side of the story in court.”

“To this day, Anna’s body has not been found,” said Chester County District Attorney Chris de Barrena-Sarobe at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.

“But we still have substantial evidence that proves Gould killed his wife.”

Who was Anna?

Anna Maciejewska immigrated to the United States from Poland in 1997 to study actuarial mathematics at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.

She married Gould in 2006, and the couple welcomed a son seven years later.

Maciejewska, who was 43 when she disappeared, was incredibly hardworking, detail oriented, and kind, according to her former coworker and friend Ellen Lee.

“(Maciejewska) was a very sweet girl, and she was very smart and generous,” Lee told CNN.

“She was an organizer, and she was also a problem solver,” Lee added.

Maciejewska worked as an actuary for Voya Financial in West Chester, Pennsylvania for about 17 years “with no known troubles or issues,” according to court documents.

In 2017, she lived a normal life in the Philadelphia suburb of Malvern with her husband and young son, and enjoyed many hobbies including cycling, Pilates, a movie club and a book club.

“She’s very predictable, that’s one thing about Anna, she was very predictable,” said Lee, noting that her son gave her tremendous joy.

“She was a devoted mom for sure.”

But new court documents reveal internally at the time, Maciejewska was deeply upset about her marriage and the couple’s differing views on how to raise their son.

She had started going to a ‘Divorce 101’ class in March 2017 and she discussed with members of a women’s therapy group her desire to leave Gould. But she “worried that she would lose her son in a custody battle,” according to the affidavit.

Maciejewska felt she was getting no support from Gould while she experienced depression and tried to discuss divorce with Gould to little success.

“I am a shell of a person and walking on eggshells in my own home,” she texted Gould in February.

“Why I didn’t see all the red flags before we had children?” she wrote to a group chat with her friends the same day, per court documents.

“I feel like such a loser,” she added.

Anna Goes Missing

When Maciejewska didn’t show up to work for two days in a row, one of her coworkers was the first to report her missing on April 11, 2017.

That behavior was “out of character” the coworker told police, according to court documents.

The same day, a neighbor who was close with Maciejewska’s family called police to report her missing after she cancelled a planned trip home to Poland to celebrate her father’s 80th birthday.

Police did a welfare check that day, but the couple’s home was dark.

Then on April 12, at around 12:30 p.m., Gould called police.

“Um, yea, my my name’s Allen Gould. And and I was calling, and again I’m not sure if this is the right number,” Gould told a state police dispatcher according to new court documents.

“But, uh my, I’m not sure where my wife is. She, she uh, didn’t come home from work on Monday night uh as expected.”

Later that day, Gould told a state trooper that after taking the previous week off work for a “stomach illness” Maciejewska left Monday morning – April 10th – for work “in a panic” in her blue Audi and never came back.

He said his wife left her phone at home so it could update.

That evening, police submitted Maciejewska’s information to the National Crime Information Center as a missing person.

No one ever reported seeing her again.

The Search

In the following weeks, investigators and community members would conduct searches around the Malvern neighborhood, checking wooded areas, train stations, airports and more to try and find any sign of Maciejewska.

Missing person posters blanketed the small Chester County borough.

“Everyone was pouring in and asking if we needed help in any way,” explained Lee, who created the “Finding Anna Maciejewska” Facebook page.

“The whole community wanted to know what happened to her,” she said.

State police investigators were quickly able to paint a picture of Maciejewska’s marital challenges through interviews with friends and family.

But during those early months investigators say they also uncovered three crucial pieces of evidence.

First, state police realized it appeared no one had heard from Maciejewska for two weeks before coworkers, family, and her husband reported her missing.

“In fact, the last time someone physically saw Anna or actually heard her voice was on March 28th,” the district attorney said.

An unusual birthday message

Second, on March 30, 2017, Maciejewska’s father received a text from his daughter wishing him a happy birthday, but the text was in abnormally broken Polish.

“The Polish grammar doesn’t make sense. It’s off,” said de Barrena-Sarobe.

During the July 2017 search of Gould’s home when Brodeur confronted Gould, the investigator found printouts of Google translations of the message sent to Maciejewska’s father, according to the affidavit.

“Anna had no reason to use Google Translate,” added de Barrena-Sarobe, as she was a native Polish speaker.

Third, on May 8, 2017, police finally located Maciejewska’s blue Audi in a parking lot of a private community two miles from her home, the affidavit states.

While police found Maciejewska’s purse in the trunk, there was no sign of her or her body in or around the car.

Investigators did find the driver’s seat appeared to be pushed back too far for someone of Maciejewska’s height, according to the affidavit, and data obtained by police from the vehicle suggested the car wasn’t driven at all on April 10 – the date Gould said he’d last seen his wife driving away “in a panic.”

• Timeline of Anna Maciejewska’s disappearance
• March 29, 2017 – Maciejewska’s life patterns “came to an abrupt halt,” police say
• April 11, 2017 – A coworker reports Maciejewska missing after she fails to show for work
• April 11, 2017 – A friend of the family also reports Maciejewska missing
• April 12, 2017 – Allen Gould reports his wife missing
• May 8, 2017 – Maciejewska’s blue Audi is found, with no sign of Maciejewska
• July 12, 2017 – State Police confronts Allen Gould and searches the couple’s home
• May 14, 2025 – Gould is arrested on suspicion of Maciejewska’s murder

What Happens Now?

On Wednesday officers once again swarmed Gould’s picturesque home, searching for evidence.

He’s facing several charges including first degree murder, abuse of a corpse, making false reports, and evidence tampering.

Gould was arrested at a different location, and a preliminary hearing is scheduled for May 27, according to court documents.

Lee told CNN Maciejewska’s aging parents in Poland were shocked when they heard the news.

“Anna’s mom didn’t sleep last night,” said Lee, who spoke with her Thursday.

“They thought it was a cold case, it was never going to happen,” Lee added.

Yet a conviction may still be an uphill climb.

“This is a unique case,” explained Chester County DA de Barrena-Sarobe.

“(Of) almost all of our homicides in this county’s history I can’t remember a case where we have not found the physical body of the victim.”

And neither the district attorney nor the affidavit of probable cause pointed to physical evidence indicating Gould killed Maciejewska.

“I suggest and we plan to argue at trial that the direct evidence is all of his lies about her disappearance that don’t make sense,” said de Barrena-Sarobe.

“When you take the totality of this evidence it just demonstrates…that he was being incredibly deceptive about where his wife was and the only reason for that is that he killed her,” the DA asserted.

For Ellen Lee and other friends who loved Maciejewska, she’s optimistic there will be justice.

“(It was) a sigh of relief that it was finally happening,” she told CNN, while acknowledging the story is not over yet.

“The trial is something I’m not looking forward to.”

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