Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
Brian Walshe is found guilty of the first-degree murder of his wife, Anna Walshe, whose body was never found.
Walshe became emotional in a Massachusetts courtroom on Monday as the jury reached the verdict after only a few hours of deliberations. He will be sentenced on Wednesday and faces life in prison.
Ana Walshe, a 39-year-old Serbian immigrant and real estate executive, was last seen in the early hours of January 1, 2023, following a small New Year’s Eve gathering at the couple’s home in Cohasset.
Her 50-year-old husband has admitted dismembering his wife and lying to police, but says he did not kill her. In November, he pleaded guilty to two lesser charges of misleading police and improperly transporting a human body.
Walshe claimed that she had flown to Washington, D.C., for an emergency work trip, and had ordered a car to take her to Boston’s Logan International Airport. But her company, which first reported her missing, said there was no work emergency.
Prosecutors said Anna never hitched a ride and there was no evidence she boarded any flights. His cellphone, as well as his credit and debit cards, remained inactive after his disappearance.
“Anna Walshe is dead because he murdered her, and he intended her death,” prosecutor Anne Yes told the court during closing arguments Friday. “She was not going to D.C. for any emergency; there was no emergency. This is just a story the defendant told people.”
Walshe claimed that after leaving his wife’s house, he visited his mother in Swampscott, went shopping at CVS and Whole Foods, and spent time with his children.
But prosecutors said he spent New Year’s Day traveling to multiple pharmacies and hardware stores, purchasing bulk-filled cleaning supplies, a Tyvek protective suit and a utility knife — purchases they say were made before online searches such as “how long does it take for body odor to go away?” and “Best methods of dismemberment and body disposal.”
Over the next several days, he searched for “how to dismember a body with a hacksaw,” investigators said. He did not report his wife missing until January 4, when his employer contacted the police after failing to contact him.
Surveillance footage later showed a man resembling Walshe throwing heavy trash bags into trash bins. A search of a trash bin near her mother’s house found bags containing a hatchet, a hacksaw, towels, a protective suit, cleaning agent, a Prada purse, shoes similar to the ones Anna was last seen wearing and her COVID vaccination card. Prosecutors said several items tested positive for his DNA.
“The defendant did not want anyone to find Anna’s body and find out how she died,” Yes said in court. “So the defendant purchased cutting tools … and he cut up the body of Anna, the woman he claimed to love, and threw it in the trash,” she said.
He didn’t just want her dead, “he wanted her dead,” Yass said. “It was a marriage in crisis.”
Before becoming a murder suspect, Walshe was awaiting sentencing in a federal fraud case after pleading guilty to a scheme to sell counterfeit Andy Warhol paintings.
In 2024, Walshe was sentenced to 37 months in prison and three years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $475,000 in restitution.
Yes reported that at the time of Anna’s disappearance and murder, Walshe had “no assets” and was under home confinement pending his federal case.
“The marriage was beginning to deteriorate” so Anna began moving in, Yass told the court, adding that she had built rooms for their children in a D.C. townhome she owned.
Yet Walshe needed the children with her so she could be the primary caregiver in an effort to avoid prison, Yes said. At that time, Anna also took out $2.7 million in life insurance, naming her husband as the sole beneficiary, prosecutors said.
In a move that surprised court observers, the defense rested earlier this week without calling any witnesses. Brian Walshe did not testify, despite speculation that he might take the stand to explain his version of events.
During closing arguments, defense attorney Larry Tipton repeatedly called Brian Walshe “a loving husband and a loving father” who had “no motive” to kill his wife. He previously told the court that his client was terrified after her “sudden unexplained death”, claiming that Walshe found Anna unresponsive after their New Year’s Eve celebrations.
Tipton recalled Walshe’s claim, “When he entered the bedroom and started to get into bed, he felt something was wrong.”
“You have a sudden unexpected event that results in confusion, panic and fear,” Tipton said Friday. Referring to Walshe’s disposal of her body, Tipton said, “All those things are very disturbing, horrific” and it could be argued that they were showing a consciousness of guilt. But Tipton insisted he did not kill his wife.
Tipton also addressed Walshe’s Internet searches, claiming that if he made them “with murder in his heart”, why does the first search referencing the murder occur “six hours later” on January 1, 2023?
“Context matters,” Tipton said. “The word murder is used for the first time in these horrific discoveries six hours after they began”.
Tipton also argued that the discoveries about dismemberment and cleaning did not mean that he murdered her, claiming that there was nothing that referenced a plan or intent to kill Anna.
“Even though they don’t talk about murder, they’re equally disturbing,” Tipton said. “He’s thinking about how you clean a concrete floor in a basement”.
“Ask yourself, if that man intended to kill his wife why is he looking for it now?” Tipton asked.
The defense acknowledged that Walshe lied to investigators but argued that his actions reflected fear, not crime. Tipton emphasized that because there was no body, “investigators have been unable to determine the cause of death.”
“Mr. Walshe loved Anna Walshe, the mother of his three children,” Tipton said. “Mr. Walshe is not guilty. He is not guilty.”
During the closely watched trial, the court heard from William Fastow, the man whom prosecutors identified as Anna Walshe’s boyfriend.
Fastow said he met Ana in March 2022 when he sold her a townhouse in Washington. Their relationship soon turned into an “intimate relationship”. They shared dinners, spent nights on her sailboat, stayed the night at her house, and even shared a Thanksgiving trip to Ireland.
“Ana felt it was really important that Brian hear from her when he found out about the relationship,” she said. “She expressed a lot of concern and I think she felt it would be an attack on her integrity if she took a different path.”
Fastow said they planned to celebrate the New Year together on January 4 and talk about the future. She last heard from him on New Year’s Eve. His follow-up messages and calls remained unanswered.