Brian Walshe found guilty of wife’s first-degree murder : NPR

Brian Walshe admitted to disposing of his wife’s body but denied killing her, in a case that has drawn significant national attention for the last two years. On Monday, a Massachusetts jury found him guilty of first-degree murder.

Ana Walshe was 39 years old when her employer reported her missing in early January 2023. That sparked a search that led to her husband’s arrest on murder charges, but never yielded a body.

Last month, shortly before jury selection began, Brian Walshe abruptly switched to a guilty plea on two lesser charges of misleading police and willfully disposing of a human body in violation of state law. His trial, which lasted roughly two weeks, focused solely on the charge of first-degree murder.

Prosecutors alleged that Brian killed Ana on New Year’s Eve, motivated by anger over her undisclosed romantic affair and mounting stress over his own unrelated legal troubles.

They pointed to physical and forensic evidence, from stores’ surveillance footage of Brian buying items including cleaning supplies and new rugs in the days after her death, to DNA matching both Walshes on bloodstained items later recovered in several dumpsters in the area.

Brian Walshe’s internet search history from that time yielded dozens of queries, including “best ways to dispose of a body,” “Can I use bleach to clean my wood floors from blood stains,” and “can you be charged with murder without a body.”

There can be no autopsy or official cause of death without a body, prosecutor Anne Yas said in her closing statement, in which she described Ana’s killing as premeditated.

“The defendant did not want anyone to find Ana’s body and to know how she died,” Yas said. “So the defendant bought cutting tools at Lowe’s and Home Depot and he cut up Ana’s body, the woman that he claimed to love, and he threw her into dumpsters.”

Defense attorney Larry Tipton argued that Brian did not kill Ana, maintaining she died a “sudden, unexplained death” in her sleep after New Year’s Eve celebrations.

Tipton did not deny that Brian dismembered Ana’s body and disposed of her remains, but said he had acted out of panic and concern for their three sons, the oldest of whom was 6 years old at the time. Brian was awaiting sentencing for a federal art fraud case at the time of Ana’s death, and feared losing custody if circumstances appeared suspicious.

“He never thought anybody would believe that Ana Walshe was alive one minute and dead the next,” Tipton said in his opening statement. “All he could think about was their three boys: What will happen to their three boys now that Ana is no longer here? What will happen if they think he did something bad to Ana? Where will those three boys go?”

The Walshes’ kids were placed in state custody after Brian’s arrest in late January 2023.

Despite Tipton’s opening-day promises of evidence proving Brian’s innocence, the defense rested its case without calling any witnesses. Prosecutors had called about 50 witnesses over eight days, including Ana’s friends, co-workers and the man with whom she was having an affair.

The jury delivered its verdict after roughly six hours of deliberation spread across two days. Brian stared straight ahead as the verdict was read, the Associated Press reports. He faces life in prison without the possibility of parole and is due to be sentenced on Wednesday.

Prosecutor describes “a marriage in crisis” 

The Walshes — who married in 2016 — had navigated a stressful few years in the lead-up to Ana’s death.

Ana, who emigrated to the U.S. from Serbia, got her start working in hospitality in the Washington, D.C., area before eventually settling down with Brian in the affluent Massachusetts town of Cohasset.

She transitioned into real estate and in February 2022, a year before her death, got what prosecutors called her “dream job” as an executive at the firm Tishman Speyer, based out of D.C. She bought a townhouse in D.C. and furnished it in the hopes her family would join her.

But that was not possible, because Brian was under house arrest in Massachusetts.

He had pleaded guilty to federal art fraud charges in 2021 for selling two fake Andy Warhol paintings five years earlier. Yas, the prosecutor, said he wanted the kids to stay with him because “being the primary caregiver allowed him to avoid prison.” (Brian was sentenced to three years in prison for the scheme in 2024, after Ana’s death.)

Brian was on the hook for over $400,000 in restitution, while Ana was the family’s primary breadwinner, commuting back and forth between the two cities. William Fastow, the real estate agent who had sold her the D.C. condo, testified during the trial that they began having an affair in March 2022.

Fastow said their relationship quickly intensified from friends to “intimate,” with the two spending time on his sailboat, staying at his home and taking a Thanksgiving trip to Ireland. He also said Ana felt strongly that she should be the one to tell Brian about the affair, but had not discussed any plans to do so when she went home for the holidays in 2022.

Brian’s attorney, Tipton, maintained he didn’t know about the affair at the time of Ana’s death. But prosecutors said digital forensic experts found divorce-related searches on his devices between Christmas and New Year’s, including: “best divorce strategies for men” and “Washington, D.C. divorce lawyers.”

Tipton spent much of his opening argument defending the strength of the Walshes’ marriage and finances — pointing to their texts about potential investment properties in D.C. — and said the topic of divorce only came up in the context of “preserving the family assets” in case Brian was sentenced to prison.

A life insurance representative testified that Ana had more than $1 million in life insurance, with Brian as the beneficiary.

Defense says Google searches were taken out of context

Both sides agree that the Walshes celebrated New Year’s Eve at home with a friend, who left around 1:30 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2023. But accounts differed about what happened next.

Prosecutors recounted the story Brian told to investigators, which is that Ana left the house around 6 or 7 that morning to catch a flight back to D.C. for a work emergency — wearing Hunter boots, a black jacket and a Hermes watch.

But they said the Walshes’ dinner guest maintained that the topic of a work emergency never came up.

“She wasn’t going to D.C. for a work emergency,” Yas said. “There was no emergency.”

Investigators found no data from rideshare apps showing she traveled to the airport, and confirmed that her phone was last active in the early morning hours of Jan. 3 in the area of their Cohasset home.

In the days after Ana was reported missing, investigators searched nearby wooded areas, interviewed Brian and examined devices from his home. He told them he had misplaced his phone. But on an iPad belonging to his son, synced to the same Apple ID, they found Google searches about cleaning bloodstains, disposing of body parts and wiping electronic devices. They were made between about 5 a.m. on Jan. 1 and the evening of Jan. 3.

“Ana was dead, the defendant killed her, and he began researching how to get her money, how to inherit, how to get away with a crime,” Yas said. “And he might have gotten away with it, but he didn’t know his MacBook would sync with his son’s iPad.”

The defense painted a different picture. Tipton said about an hour after the couple turned in on New Year’s Eve, Brian went downstairs to clean the kitchen and check his email. When he returned to bed, Tipton said, “he sensed something was wrong.”

“He nudged Ana, his wife, she didn’t respond, he nudged her again, a little harder, she didn’t respond,” he said. “He nudged her now in a frantic and panicked reaction to where she actually rolled off the bed.”

Tipton blamed “sudden unexpected death.” A doctor testified that such a phenomenon is theoretically possible, but prosecutors say it is highly unlikely because Ana was active and in good health — and there is no autopsy to confirm it.

Tipton said Brian’s Google searches in the hours that followed were “conducted by a man that is in disbelief and confusion.” In closing arguments, he said the fact that the searches happened after Ana’s death showed that Brian didn’t kill her, let alone plan to.

“Ask yourself: Why is the man searching now if he had intended to kill his wife?” he told jurors.

What the dumpsters revealed

Brian shopped at a number of stores — including Walgreens, CVS, Stop & Shop and Lowe’s — in neighboring towns in the days after Ana’s death, according to surveillance footage.

Prosecutors said the video shows him — in many instances wearing a face mask over his mouth and nose and paying with cash — buying Band-Aids and antibiotics, hydrogen peroxide, ammonium, a Tyvek suit (disposable full-body coveralls) and cutting instruments including shears and a hacksaw.

On Jan. 2, they said, he bought scented candles and area rugs, as well as cleaning supplies including a mop and 20 pounds of baking soda. Prosecutors allege that one of the rugs was meant to replace one that was later found with blood on it in a dumpster, before authorities visited his house.

Cell phone data showed Brian in the area of dumpsters and trash cans near his mom’s apartment, about an hour away, in the days that followed. Investigators later took the contents to a facility for searching, where they found the clothing items Brian said Ana was wearing when she left, as well as a COVID-19 vaccination card with her name on it, rugs, the Tyvek suit, a hammer, shears, a hatchet and hacksaw.

Prosecutors said some of those items had DNA on them matching one or both of the Walshes. For example, the rug recovered from the dumpster was embedded with blood and a piece of the Gucci necklace Ana regularly wore, Yas said.

Yas described Brian’s manner as methodical and not panicked in the days after Ana’s death, including having records ready for investigators and informing loved ones of her disappearance. She said he even sent texts to Ana asking about her whereabouts on Jan. 2, “even though he knew she would never see them.”

One of them read: “I still love you!!! Haha.”