Leah Walsh Tribute

William Walsh Jr. choked his wife to death, staged her disappearance, and made "phony emotional pleas in the media," Nassau police said Thursday morning, explaining the circumstances that led to his arrest in a case that has riveted Long Islanders.

Leah Walsh, 29, was killed by her husband at their Bethpage home early Sunday after he returned home from a trip to Atlantic City and the couple argued over his possible infidelity, Nassau police said.

Walsh dumped her body in the woods in North Hills on Sunday night and then staged her disappearance Monday morning. His wife's body was found Wednesday.
Walsh "should not enjoy one nanosecond of freedom for the rest of his life," Police Commissioner Lawrence Mulvey said.

In handcuffs and stocking feet, Walsh was led Thursday morning from Nassau police headquarters to an unmarked police car that took him to arraignment in a Hempstead Village courtroom where he faced charges in the murder of his wife, a special education teacher who grew up in Rockville Centre and taught at a Glen Cove school for autistic children.

The 6-foot-2 inch mortgage broker, wearing a Navy pea coat and baggy pants, said nothing to reporters who shouted questions at him, and once inside the police car he rested his head against a front-seat headrest.

His appearance Thursday was a stunning public reversal of roles for the man who earlier this week held repeated news conferences in which he pleaded, teary-eyed, for the return of his wife of three years. He offered to give anything, even his yellow Ford Mustang and his other belongings, to ensure her safe return.

William Walsh enlisted his family's help distributing fliers with a wedding photo of his 5-foot-3 inch wife in a white gown, her brown hair swept up in a wedding veil and a strand of pearls around her neck.

Leah Walsh was reported missing Monday after her car, with a flat tire, was found on a shoulder of the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway. Then Wednesday a country club worker found her body in a ditch off the Long Island Expressway in North Hills.

Back in their hometown of Bethpage, neighbors of the Walshes said they felt they had been duped this week by the husband's well-publicized pleas on behalf of his missing wife.

Stanley Bralower, who lives across the street from the Walshes in Bethpage, said he first found the husband's emotional pleas sympathetic.

"The crying? It definitely, definitely seemed convincing," Bralower said. "I told my wife he was a great actor. He was a wonderful actor."

For a man who is now a suspect in his wife's death, Walsh had seemed drawn to reporters and cameras in his efforts to convey his concern for his missing wife's welfare.

In one of several sets of public comments before the body was found, Walsh sobbed as he walked from the couple's Bethpage apartment to his car, where a stack of missing persons posters sat in the passenger seat.

"I miss her more than anything," Walsh said. He urged any witnesses who may have seen something to "just let us know, call the cops," adding before he drove away, "I just wanna know where she is. I want my wife."

Earlier in the week, Walsh told police that his wife, a special-education teacher who worked with autistic children, left for work early Monday morning for her job at the School for Language and Communication Development in Glen Cove.

Walsh said in interviews that he last heard from his wife early Monday morning, when she sent him a text message.

Wednesday, police said they were interested in speaking with a Los Angeles man who reportedly text-messaged with Leah Walsh on Saturday night. In the exchange, she mentioned having a fight with her husband, according to media reports.

The school where Leah Walsh worked issued a statement Thursday morning saying she was "an extraordinary teacher. She loved her students and she was extremely dedicated to their families."