Suspicion Leads to Charges: Prosecutors Say Man Killed Wife Over Infidelity

The husband of a Massachusetts woman who vanished on New Year’s Day thought his wife might be having an affair, so he asked his mom to hire a private detective to check it out.

In December, Brian was snooping around the Instagram page of one of Ana’s male friends from D.C., which made her parents suspicious. As a result, they hired an investigator on December 26th with Brian’s help to keep an eye on their daughter. The day after that, Brian’s oldest child did a search for “divorce” on their iPad.

47-year-old Walshe was arrested on charges of murder and hiding evidence. If he gets convicted of murder, he will have to spend the rest of his life in prison with no chance of parole.

He is suspected of killing Ana Walshe, cutting her body into pieces, and then disposing them away. He denied these accusations during a court hearing Thursday, where the judge also decided that Walshe should stay in jail without bail.

Ana Walshe, a 39-year-old mom of three from Serbia, disappeared after having dinner with her husband and a family friend on New Year’s Eve at her Massachusetts home. Her husband claimed that she had gone back to Washington for an urgent work issue yet he waited until the fourth day to inform her employer about the situation which pointed out that there wasn’t any emergency at all according to her employer.

She had two homes: one in Washington D.C., where she worked for a real estate company, and another in Cohasset, which is about 15 miles away from Boston. Brian Walshe has been serving some home confinement while he was waiting to be sentenced for selling fake Andy Warhol paintings.

Ana Walshe went out with a friend on December 28, feeling unusually unhappy. She explained to her friend that she believed her husband was going to get arrested because of his legal issues so she had been planning to move with their three children from the town they lived in now to Washington D.C. and live without him there.

Brian Walshe’s lawyer, Tracy Miner, said that normally it is not assumed a person is dead until seven years have passed. She explained this is because it is possible for someone to hide and disappear if they want to. There has been no evidence like the discovery of a body or murder weapon found, so there is no clue what kind of death occurred or who committed it. Apparently Brian Walshe’s mom asked a private detective to look into her disappearance but Brian thought she was being “crazy”.

The person said to his friend, “Ana’s a good girl, but you’ll be proven wrong.” But they couldn’t prove it because Ana had gone missing before they could do any investigations. During the New Year’s Eve dinner, the couple and their friend drank champagne and put a note in the box that came with the bottle saying 2023 would be their best year ever.

Miner reported that he waited three days before calling Ana’s boss, because she used to disappear and not be available for several days ever since Thanksgiving.

Prosecutors declared that Brian Walshe started searching the internet with Ana’s iPad right after the new year, looking up how to cut a body apart, when a body starts to smell and which saws are best for dismemberment.

Mr. Miner said there were other searches too, like “how to create a charity company so that you can give away large lottery winnings tax free” and the best places for a vacation in 2023.

The investigators figured out that on Jan 3rd they saw someone who looked just like Brian Walshe throwing some heavy bags into a trash container at an apartment complex near Cohasset.

The police searched a recycling center close to Brian Walshe’s mom’s house and found some trash bags with items inside. Inside the bags, they discovered a hatchet, saw, towels, special protective clothing named Tyvek suit, cleaning supplies, a Prada purse, Ana Walshe’s boots that she was last seen wearing and her COVID-19 vaccination card.

Prosecutors said that Ana Walshe had taken out 2.7 million dollars insurance and made her husband the only one who can get the money if something happens to her. The prosecutor also said that Brian does not need money as his mother – who is very rich – has given a lot of it to the couple in the past.