Brian Walshe has been convicted of murdering his wifeand the mother of their three kids after New Year’s Day 2023 — and then hacking her up and dumping her remains across the Boston area.
A jury of 12, that oversaw the Norfolk County Superior Court trial in Dedham, Mass. for the past two weeks, convicted Walshe, 50, of murder, the only charge he still faced after pleading guilty to dismembering the 39-year-old mom and then lying to cops. He faces life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Prosecutors argued that Walshe killed Ana after he found out she was cheating on him with another man, the breaking point for their already strained marriage owing to the financial and emotional toll Walshe’s federal art fraud conviction had taken on the family.
But Walshe’s defense team claimed he didn’t know that Ana was having an affair and wasn’t the jealous type anyway.
Instead, they alleged that Ana died after New Year’s festivities at their Cohasset, Mass. home of “sudden unexplained death” and Walshe, fearing he’d be blamed, sought to cover it all up.
Prosecutor Anne Yas, during closing arguments Friday, said the defense’s theory that she died of natural causes, “defies common sense.”
A few weeks prior to trial, Walshe pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the cops and one count of disposing of Ana’s body after dismembering it and disposing of it in dumpsters. But he maintained his innocence of murder.
Prosecutors say Walshe carried out a slew of alarming web searches in the hours and days after Ana’s death, including looking up how to dismember a body, searching how long DNA lasts, and even researching serial killer Patrick Kearny who earned the nickname the “Trash Bag Killer” for putting his victim’s remains in trash bags.
He then went to a handful of stores in Massachusetts, like Home Depot, Lowe’s and Walmart where he picked up tools and cleaning supplies for his grisly task of taking Ana’s body apart, prosecutors allege.
Ana’s remains were never recovered.
Jurors saw video of Walshe by the dumpster near his mom’s home, where investigators recovered a Tyvek suit, pieces of a blood-stained rug, a hatchet, hacksaw and other items that experts testified had Ana’s DNA on them. The panelists were also shown the photos of the items retrieved from the trash.
The jury also heard from three key witnesses, including William Fastow, the man Ana had a romance with.
Fastow told jurors Ana was “despondent” that she wasn’t more involved with her kids as she was living and working in Washington DC and traveling back and forth to Massachusetts on the weekends to be with Walshe and their three sons.
Walshe was stuck in the Bay State on house arrest because of the criminal fraud case for which he owed nearly $500,000 in restitution and was facing prison time. And couldn’t move to DC with the boys to join Ana, jurors learned.
Two other close friends of Ana testified Wednesday about how she was unhappy about being apart from her kids and their family being in a state of limbo until Walshe was sentenced.
Best friend Alissa Kirby said when she saw Ana just a few days before her disappearance, “she was really hitting a breaking point.”
“She really wanted to be with her kids, their marriage had been really strained for a long time,” Kirby said of Ana.
And Ana wanted Walshe to “take responsibility” for his crimes, even if it meant he would get prison time, because Ana wanted him to get it over with so the family could live together again, Kirby testified.
Kirby said Ana also confided in her that she hadn’t slept with Walshe in over a year because of the pressure they were under.
Walshe family friend Gem Mutlu testified that Walshe told him on New Year’s Eve that he’d only made around $50,000 or $60,000 that year while Ana made $300,000 with her bonuses. And Ana told Mutlu on a call a few days prior, that it was difficult for her to spend so much time away from the kids.
Walshe didn’t testify in his own defense and his team didn’t call any witnesses or put on any evidence.
The post Brian Walshe guilty of murdering, dismembering wife Ana appeared first on New York Post.
