A fraudster has pleaded guilty to disposing of his wife’s body. Now a jury will decide if he killed her.
Opening statements in the murder trial of a convicted fraudster accused of killing his wife and dismembering her body are set to begin Monday in a Massachusetts courtroom.
Brian Walshe, 50, pleaded guilty in mid-November to two lesser charges related to the 2023 disappearance and death of Ana Walshe, 39 — misleading a police investigation and improper transportation of a body.
The trial, in Norfolk County Superior Court, is expected to last two to three weeks.
Prosecutors alleged that Walshe was motivated by money — he was the sole beneficiary of his wife’s $2.7 million life insurance policy — and that he believed she was having an affair when she disappeared on New Year’s Day nearly three years ago. His body was never found.
A lawyer for Brian Walshe has denied the allegations.
Ana Walshe, a mother of three, was reported missing after her employer asked Massachusetts police to conduct a welfare check at the family’s Cohasset home on January 4, 2023.
During an interview with authorities that day, Brian Walshe said his wife left their home between 6 and 7 a.m. on Jan. 1 for a work emergency, according to an affidavit supporting an arrest warrant. He told police she kissed him and told him to go back to sleep, according to the affidavit.
Prosecutors say Ana Walshe was already dead by the time officers spoke to Brian Walshe.
Evidence presented during pretrial hearings included detailed Internet searches Walshe allegedly made on Jan. 1 and 2 — “hacksaw, the best tool for dismembering” and “what happens when you put body parts in ammonia” were among them — and purchases he made at Home Depot on Jan. 2.
Wearing a surgical mask and gloves, he paid $450 for a Tyvek suit, buckets, a hatchet, goggles, baking soda and other cleaning supplies, prosecutors said.
Authorities later found a bloody knife in his basement, along with a hacksaw, a hatchet, a Tyvek suit and other items that prosecutors accused him of discarding in an area south of Boston.
Walshe’s attorney, Tracy Miner, questioned the state’s physical evidence and suggested that Ana Walshe may have intentionally disappeared. Miner accused the media of tempting and condemning his client.
“It’s easy to charge a crime and even easier to say a person committed that crime,” she said. “That’s a much harder thing to prove, and we’ll see if the prosecution can do it.”
Walshe changed his plea on the two less serious charges on Nov. 18, the day jury selection was scheduled to begin. Documents filed by his lawyers admit that he “disposed of Ana Walshe’s body and transported it after her death” and that he intentionally made false statements to police during four interviews in January 2023.
In a separate case, Walshe was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison last year after pleading guilty to charges related to what federal prosecutors called a “multi-faceted arts fraud scheme that lasted for years.”
Prosecutors said Walshe sold two fake Andy Warhol paintings that he claimed were authentic for $80,000. He pleaded guilty in 2021 to one count each of wire fraud, interstate transportation for a fraudulent scheme, and illegal monetary transaction.
