A Main Line man’s wife disappeared 8 years ago. Now he will face a judge on murder charges.

A Malvern man accused of killing his wife, hiding her body, and living with the crime for nearly a decade as her family grieved, will face a Chester County judge on charges of murder and related crimes.

Allen Gould, 61, was held over for trial Wednesday in the death of Anna Maciejewska, his wife of 11 years. Maciejewska, 43, was reported missing in April 2017, and the mystery of her disappearance shocked her community and the region.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Michelle Frei said during Gould’s marathon, two-day preliminary hearing that he has long been considered the prime suspect in her death.

Gould, she said, showed little outward concern about his wife’s disappearance, and only reported her missing after her family and friends coerced him to do so. He told police he had last seen his wife on April 10, 2017, but evidence showed that all signs of Maciejewska’s life vanished weeks earlier, on March 29.

“Her existence had been extinguished to her friends, her family,” Frei said. “There was no sign of life for Anna past that day.”

Gould’s attorney, Evan Kelly, argued that Frei and her colleagues had built their case entirely on circumstantial evidence and inferences. Chief among the issues with the case, he said Wednesday, was that Maciejewska’s body has never been found.

“We’ve heard two days of testimony, and nothing about a murder, nothing about an autopsy, nothing about a weapon, nothing about a motive, ” Kelly said. “This man is sitting in jail without bail. They’re saying he planned this. How do they know that?”

Instead, Kelly proposed alternate theories: That Maciejewska, who was being treated for depression after a 2016 miscarriage, might have killed herself. Text messages shown in court showed that she was unhappy with her marriage, and Kelly said it’s possible she simply chose to leave.

But Frei was adamant that Maciejewska would not abandon her life, especially her then-4-year-old son, with whom she had an inseparable bond.

Her regular calls to friends, coworkers and even her husband, abruptly stopped after March 29, 2017. She made one final purchase at the Gap in Exton the day before. She left behind hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings and checking accounts, as well as equity in rental properties.

Maciejewska left without even the means to access her money: Her purse, containing her ID and credit cards, was found by police days later in her car.

Her longtime manicurist, a woman who had come to consider Maciejewska a friend over the previous 15 years, testified Wednesday that she was surprised when Maciejewska stopped showing up to their standing, biweekly appointments.

“This is about looking at all the pieces together in totality,” Frei said. “And when we put those pieces together, the picture is very clear: Anna is dead and the defendant killed her.”

In her final recorded days, Maciejewska made a “tremendous number of searches” about domestic violence resources, according to Trooper David Brodeur, who formerly was the lead investigator into her disappearance.

She was looking for advice, specifically, on how to divorce someone who was emotionally manipulative, according to evidence presented in court. Text messages from February 2017 showed she told Gould she was so unhappy, she feared she would harm herself, and lambasted him for not being a partner in raising their son.

Frei said Maciejewska had planned a trip to visit her father in Poland for his 80th birthday. Gould feared she would never return, taking his son, “his most prized possession” away from him, the prosecutor said.

Brodeur discovered Maciejewska’s searches and texts while serving a search warrant on the Malvern home she shared with her husband and their son. He also discovered two checks, one to Gould wrote to an attorney for $75,000 with the memo line “for trial defense, if needed.”

Also inside the home were a series of notes, seemingly handwritten by Gould, in which he was tracking the progress of the investigation. Some, Brodeur said, mentioned him by name.

The trooper said Wednesday that Gould was not shocked when he told him he was there to serve the warrant because they believed he killed his wife. He didn’t seemed surprised, Brodeur said, and only asked if they had found Maciejewska.

Maciejewska‘s car, which police had initially been unable to locate, was later found in the parking lot of a gated community not far from the couple’s home.

The car was immaculately clean, according to investigators, as if it had been recently detailed. Records from a digital monitor in the vehicle showed it had last been turned on days after Maciejewska was reported missing by Gould.

A state police K9 officer said his dog detected the presence of either blood, human tissue, or decomposition fluid in the trunk of the car, but the results were inconclusive.

That same dog also found “disturbed dirt” and pieces of a blue tarp in a wooded area behind the Malvern home, according to testimony. Gould had purchased three tarps from The Home Depot a year prior, and one was missing from the home.

Gould is scheduled to be arraigned in Chester County Court on July 3.