By Nate Raymond
BOSTON, Dec 15 (Reuters) – Jurors found Brian Walshe guilty of murdering his wife on Monday, nearly three years after she vanished on New Year’s Day in a case that grabbed headlines when prosecutors said he searched online for “dismemberment and best ways to dispose of a body.”
Jurors in Dedham, Massachusetts, rejected Walshe’s assertion that his wife Ana, a real estate executive, died suddenly in their home before he began the internet search. Her disappearance and death drew global attention as details emerged.
Her body has never been found. The day jury selection was to begin, Brian Walshe, 50, pleaded guilty to misleading police and illegally disposing of a body, but his lawyers argued he was not responsible for her death.
He faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Sentencing was scheduled for Wednesday.
Ana Walshe, a 39-year-old Serbian immigrant, worked in real estate company Tishman Speyer’s office in Washington, D.C., which she commuted to from Cohasset, Massachusetts, where she lived with her husband and three children.
At the time, Brian Walshe was awaiting sentencing for engaging in a scheme to sell Andy Warhol art forgeries.
He was charged in January 2023 with his wife’s murder days after her employer reported her disappearance. Walshe initially told police she took an Uber or Lyft on New Year’s Day to fly to Washington for a work emergency.
At the beginning of the trial on December 1 this year, Assistant District Attorney Gregory Connor told jurors that Walshe killed his wife and, on the day she disappeared, Walshe searched online for “best way to dispose of body parts after a murder” and “can you throw away body parts?”
Surveillance video showed Walshe visiting pharmacies and a hardware store to buy cleaning supplies, a Tyvek suit, a hacksaw and cutting shears.
Authorities later recovered trash bags that contained items stained with blood, including a rug from his living room, as well as a hacksaw and Ana Walshe’s COVID-19 vaccine card.
Prosecutors said that before Ana Walshe died, the federal art fraud case was straining the family. They said she had begun an affair, and his online searches revealed he was researching divorce.
Defense attorney Larry Tipton argued there was no evidence of violence, claiming Ana Walshe died a “sudden unexplained death” in their home, which Brian Walshe, awaiting sentencing, believed no one would believe.
He was ultimately sentenced in February 2024 to more than three years in prison in the art fraud case.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by Diane Craft and Howard Goller)
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