Brian Walshe Guilty of First-Degree Murder

Jurors in Massachusetts needed just six hours to decide that Brian Walshe killed his wife, even though her body has never been found. A Norfolk County jury on Monday convicted Walshe of first-degree murder in the death of 39-year-old Ana Walshe, who vanished on New Year's Day 2023. The verdict followed deliberations spread over Friday and Monday, ABC News reports. Walshe, 50, had previously admitted lying to police and illegally disposing of a body, but insisted he did not kill his wife and pleaded not guilty to murder.

• Prosecutors argued that Walshe carried out a planned killing, dismembered Ana's body, and dumped the remains in trash containers. Jurors saw surveillance footage of a man resembling Walshe buying a hacksaw, cutting tools, a Tyvek suit, shoe covers, and cleaning supplies with cash at a Lowe's on Jan. 1, 2023.
• Other video showed someone discarding trash bags in multiple dumpsters in early January. DNA experts testified that bloodstained items recovered from the trash—including a hacksaw, towel, rug fragment, hairs, and tissue—matched Ana's DNA, and blood was also detected in the basement of the family's rental home.

• Investigators also highlighted Walshe's online searches on Jan. 1, 2023, including queries like "best way to dispose of a body," "how long for someone to be missing to inherit," and "best way to dispose of body parts after a murder." Prosecutor Anne Yas said the searches and the hardware store trip were part of a "methodical" effort to conceal a killing amid what she described as a marriage in crisis, marked by arguments over Ana's Washington, DC, job and an affair she was having. Defense lawyers claimed Walshe didn't know about the affair.

• Defense attorney Larry Tipton told jurors Walshe was a "loving father and loving husband" who woke up to find Ana dead in bed of an unexplained cause, panicked, and then lied and disposed of her body. He conceded the lies and the disposal, but said there was no proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Walshe killed her or planned any violence, calling the disturbing internet searches evidence of shock rather than premeditation. The defense rested without calling witnesses, and Walshe ultimately chose not to testify.
• In her closing argument, Yas said Ana Walshe was in good health and it was extremely unlikely that she would have suddenly dropped dead, Boston25 reports. "The defendant didn't want anyone to find Ana Walshe's body and to know how she died, so the defendant cut up Ana's body—the woman that he claimed to love—and he threw her in dumpsters," she said.
• Ana Walshe was reported missing by her employer on Jan. 4, 2023; at the time, Brian Walshe was living in Massachusetts with their three young children while awaiting sentencing in a federal art fraud case.
• Walshe was sentenced to 37 months in the art fraud case last year. He will face a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole when he is sentenced in the murder case on Wednesday.