Confession challenged

By ALEX COSTELLO
William Walsh was in handcuffs when he was led into the courtroom of Nassau County Court Judge David Ayres on Sept. 10 for the start of a preliminary hearing on the admissibility of evidence in the murder case against him.

Walsh is accused of killing his wife, Leah, at their home in Bethpage the morning of Oct. 26, 2008, after the two had a fight. Leah, a special education teacher at the School for Language and Communication Disorders in Glen Cove, grew up in Rockville Centre, where her family still lives.

The preliminary hearing focused on a seven-page confession William Walsh wrote that his lawyer, William Petrillo, claims was coerced from his client by police officers. As the Herald went to press, Ayres had yet to decide which evidence collected by the prosecution, led by Assistant District Attorney Michael Walsh, could be presented at the trial, which is still pending.

Leah Walsh’s family declined to comment on the case.

Officer Richard Mauro of the Nassau County Highway Patrol, who testified on the first day of the hearing, was assigned to Route 135 that day, and was the first to respond. According to Mauro’s notes, he looked through Leah’s school bag, and then walked down an embankment, where, leaning against a tree, he said, was a purse. Mauro said the purse contained no wallet, money, phone, identification or car keys, but Walsh identified it as his wife’s.

According to police, after Walsh murdered his wife, he dumped her body in a ditch off the Long Island Expressway. On the morning of Oct. 27, police say, he drove Leah’s Ford Focus onto Route 135, pulled over to the side of the road, let the air out of one of the tires and walked home. When Leah failed to show up for work that day, her employer called her father, who called her husband. Walsh then drove down Route 135 to her car, and called police.

At first, Leah Walsh was considered a missing person. But on Oct. 29, her body was discovered in the ditch where Walsh allegedly dumped it by a worker at a nearby country club, and the case became a homicide. Around 9:30 on that same morning, police arrested Walsh and charged him with strangling his wife and then staging an elaborate cover-up. If convicted, he faces 25 years to life.

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