After surprise guilty plea to lesser charges, Brian Walshe goes on trial for wife’s murder

Brian Walshe appears in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Massachusetts, on Nov. 18 after pleading guilty to two of three charges filed against him. (Mark Stockwell/Pool/Boston Herald/AP via CNN Newsource)

Warning: The following story contains graphic content.

A jury in a suburban town south of Boston is set to hear the murder case against Brian Walshe in the death of his wife, Ana Walshe, nearly three years after her disappearance garnered national attention.

In a stunning move on the first day of jury selection earlier this month, Walshe admitted that he illegally disposed of Ana’s body and misled police after her disappearance. He did not admit to her murder.

After pleading guilty to two of the three counts against him, Walshe still faces a life sentence if convicted of first-degree murder in the death of his wife, a real estate manager and the mother of their three young children.

Walshe’s defence team is expected to reveal its trial strategy in opening statements scheduled to begin Monday morning in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Massachusetts.

How we got here

Ana Walshe, who lived and worked in D.C., commuted to the Boston suburbs to see her family on Dec. 30, 2022. Her former boss joined the family to celebrate New Year’s Eve around 8 p.m. and told authorities he left around 1 a.m. the following day.

A massive search for Ana Walshe, 39, was launched after her employer reported her missing on Jan. 4, 2023, and her husband told investigators he’d last seen her leaving their Cohasset home for a work trip on New Year’s Day.

Walshe was arrested on Jan. 8, 2023, for misleading police in connection to Ana’s disappearance. He was charged with her murder later that month, and he has been in commonwealth custody since his arrest.

Brian and Ana Walshe and their three young children are the only people said to have been in their home after ringing in the New Year. At this point, there is no publicly released evidence to suggest how Ana Walshe died and her body was never found.

Brian Walshe could take the stand to offer the jury a narrative of what happened after their dinner guest left around 1 a.m. on New Year’s Day to explain how he could’ve disposed of her body without being responsible for her death.

Walshe acknowledged his wife was dead when he pleaded guilty to illegally disposing of her body – a fact that was not officially established before the shocking plea change on Nov. 18.

Prosecutors have said they will argue that Walshe planned to kill his wife, warranting the first-degree murder charge he faces.

If the defence wants to explain Ana’s death at trial, it’s likely Walshe will testify, Harvard law professor Ronald Sullivan said in an interview with CNN.

“I think that’s the only way you’re going to get his story in evidence, if he testifies … unless there’s some secret witness,” Sullivan said. “You can imagine some set of circumstances where he wouldn’t, but the strong likelihood is that he has to in order to spin this theory.”

If Walshe testifies, it’ll be up to the jury to decide if he’s a credible witness, Sullivan said.

“He gets to testify to that, right, because there are no contrary facts there and, you know, no one else was around, and that’s the evidence. The jury can credit it or not credit it, but that’s on the record at (that) point.”

The problem with defence strategies like that, according to Sullivan, is there’s no corroboration for the defendant’s story.

According to court records Walshe used his young son’s iPad for dozens of Google searches on the morning of Jan. 1, 2023, like, “How to get blood out of hardwood floors,” “how to dispose of a body in the trash” and “how to stop a body from decomposing.”

When the search for Ana pointed law enforcement to her husband, investigators searched a dumpster at the complex where Walshe’s mother lived and recovered a number of items Walshe allegedly threw away, including a Tyvek suit, a hatchet, a hacksaw and several items with Brian and Ana Walshe’s blood and DNA on them. They also found some of Ana’s belongings, including her Hunter boots, a Prada purse and her Covid-19 vaccination card, according to court documents.

Ana’s blood was also found in the basement of the Walshe family home, prosecutors have said.

The commonwealth has suggested Walshe had a financial motive to kill his wife to cash in on substantial life insurance policies that would help him pay restitution tied to a federal art fraud conviction he was dealing with at the time.

Jurors are also expected to hear about Ana Walshe’s ongoing affair with a man in Washington, D.C., through their text messages and from his own trial testimony.

Prosecutors say Brian Walshe could have been motivated to kill his wife over the extramarital romantic entanglement.

Walshe’s attorneys have argued there is no proof he knew about the affair before Ana’s disappearance. But pretrial court records allege Walshe Googled the man days before Ana vanished.

The judge may limit some trial evidence about Brian Walshe’s acts to dispose of Ana’s body in the wake of his guilty pleas. And the commonwealth’s witness list will also likely be trimmed because they won’t need to establish that Walshe disposed of his wife’s body or that he lied about his activities in the days after her disappearance.

The trial – now expected to take two to three weeks – was originally slated to begin last month, on Oct. 20.

Judge Diane Freniere granted a delay for Walshe to undergo a mental health evaluation.

Walshe’s attorneys lobbied for the delay after he was stabbed in jail in September, expressing concern their client could not adequately assist in his defence following the attack. He was deemed competent to stand trial Nov. 14 after a 40-day stint in a state hospital.

Walshe’s attorneys also have argued he can’t get a fair trial in the jurisdiction because of continued prolific media coverage, but the judge denied a defence motion to move the trial to another area in Massachusetts.

A panel of 12 and four alternates was seated November 20 after a three-day selection process. Freniere opted to begin the evidentiary portion of the trial after the Thanksgiving holiday.

The judge ordered the chosen panelists to stay off social media and avoid the news and media to reduce their risk of exposure to coverage of Walshe’s case.

Karen Read’s controversial trials were held in the same courthouse, drawing crowds of her supporters that at times could be heard in the building.

Though Walshe faces a first-degree murder charge, his attorneys could ask Freniere to allow the panel to consider less severe homicide charges before the jury begins deliberating.

First-degree murder carries a mandatory life prison term without parole eligibility, but a conviction on a lesser charge like second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter could give 50-year-old Walshe the hope for an eventual release.

Walshe could see up to 10 years in prison for the one count of misleading police he pleaded guilty to, which could be enhanced up to 20 years if he is convicted of Ana’s murder. He also faces up to three years in prison for pleading guilty to the improper conveyance – or illegal disposal – of a human body stemming from the death of his wife.

Under Massachusetts law, a defendant cannot plead guilty to first-degree murder. Walshe pleaded guilty to the lesser charges without a deal with prosecutors.

Separately, Walshe is serving a 37-month prison sentence tied to a federal case from 2018, in which he pleaded guilty to charges connected to selling forged Andy Warhol artwork. That sentence is set to run concurrently with his prison time for the state case connected to his wife’s death.

By Lauren del Valle, CNN

CNN’s Jean Casarez contributed to this report.