from:
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/nassau/ny-liwals1912472921feb20,0,3890811.story
In William Walsh's version of events, what might have been a simple marital spat about his faithfulness turned deadly in the instant that his wife, Leah, slapped him in the face.
"I snapped," Walsh told police in a signed statement. "I grabbed her around the neck with my right arm and put her in a choke hold."
Walsh, 29, of Bethpage, described both details of his wife's slaying and its cover-up in three signed statements to police made in the days after his wife's killing last October. This week, the statements, which were written by detectives and signed by Walsh, were made publicly available for the first time, a week after he was indicted on a charge of murder.
Both prosecutors and Walsh's defense lawyer, William Petrillo of Rockville Centre, declined to comment. Leah Walsh's father, Howard Hirschel of Rockville Centre, also declined to comment.
In his first two statements after Leah Walsh disappeared, Walsh played the role of the attentive husband, telling how he spent the weekend with his wife watching the Giants game, going out to buy her takeout and searching the streets looking for a florist so he could buy her roses.
He also told police about text messages he and his wife sent to each other in the minutes before her disappearance, saying "I love you bunches," and "Mwah," messages he later told police he sent himself from Leah's phone.
In his final statement to police, Walsh told a much darker tale. He detailed how he came home late Oct. 26, 2008 after a day spent gambling in Atlantic City. He said he and Leah relaxed and were affectionate after he got home, but said that things turned ugly when she began questioning him about someone named Maryann.
Walsh told police it was after the two fell to the floor that Leah stopped struggling.
"As I was holding her down with my right hand to her neck, she stopped moving," Walsh said in the statement. "I knew she was dead, so I started crying. ... I didn't know whether to call the cops. I didn't know how they would perceive it."
Walsh then got two Hefty trash bags out of the kitchen closet, covered his wife's body with them and left her on the bedroom floor, the statement says.
The following night, he drove around with her body until he found a dark place, the statement says. He took Leah's body out and left it in the woods, the statement said.
The body was found two days later by a worker at the North Hills Country Club.
Walsh says in the statement that at some point he stabbed Leah in the neck with an ivory-handled paring knife, but it is not clear when. Prosecutors have not said whether they believe Walsh stabbed her before or after she died. Walsh said he threw the knife out of his car as he drove on the Long Island Expressway. It has not been recovered.
The next morning, Walsh let the air out of the front right tire of Leah's car, then drove it to the side of the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway to make it look like she'd gotten a flat, the statement says.
When he got home, he saw something that could put a finishing touch on his crime: A lunch that he had packed for his wife the previous Friday, the statement says.
"I wanted it to look like Leah was home in the morning and made herself lunch for work," Walsh said in the statement. "So I drove to her car ... and opened it up and then placed the lunch bag on the floor."
But as he turned to leave, Walsh saw something that authorities said would bring the perfect cover-up crashing down around him, according to his statement.
"I saw the emergency truck behind my car," he said.
It was the driver of that truck who later told police that he'd seen Walsh at the scene.
