Mostly from CNN, but this picture is from the Boston Globe:
Ana Walshe was 39, a Serbian immigrant who worked for a real estate company in Washington, D.C. She made $300,000K a year (which wouldn't be that outrageous in our capitol city). Ana had over $1 million in insurance policies and substantial amounts of money in her bank accounts.
Brian, on the other hand, had pled guilty to federal crimes over a scheme to sell counterfeit Andy Warhol paintings, and was awaiting sentencing at the time of Ana’s disappearance.
The Walshes and their 3 children lived in Cohasset, Mass., but Ana worked in DC and stayed in a townhouse there. Brian claimed Ana left for work on Jan.1 between 6 and 7 am he hadn’t heard from her after sending a text message that her plane landed in Washington, D.C. Ana’s phone last interacted with Verizon on Jan. 2, at 3 am near the Walshe home. Brian and a coworker alerted authorities on Jan. 4, 2023, that Ana was missing.
Cohasset Police Department Detective Harrison Schmidt, the lead investigator on the case, responded to the Walshe home on Jan. 4, 2023, where he found Brian with his three children (ages 2, 4 and 6) eating McDonald’s. He testified that Brian claimed Ana left early Jan. 1 for an emergency work meeting in DC, and showed him texts and photos Ana sent about her JetBlue flight. Brian also claimed he lost his phone New Year’s Eve but his son found it later in the son’s room.
BTW, the detective conducted a walkthrough, they drained the pool, and probably the most interesting feature was that the trunk of the family's Volvo was lined in plastic.
And now, Brian Walshe's Google search history on multiple devices including his son's iPad: [my emphasis, because that's just plain COLD]
January 1:
4:55 a.m. - How long before a body starts to smell.
4:58 a.m. - How to stop a body from decomposing.
5:47 a.m. - 10 ways to dispose of a dead body if you really need to.
6:25 a.m. - How long for someone to be missing to inherit.
6:34 a.m. - Can you throw away body parts.
9:29 a.m. - What does formaldehyde do.
9:34 a.m. - How long does DNA last.
9:59 a.m. - Can identification be made on partial remains.
11:34 a.m. - Dismemberment and the best ways to dispose of a body.
11:44 a.m. - How to clean blood from wooden floor.
11:56 a.m. - Luminol to detect blood.
1:08 p.m. - What happens when you put body parts in ammonia.
1:21 p.m. - Is it better to put crime scene clothes away or wash them.
January 2: Walshe went to a Home Depot and paid $450 in cash for supplies, including mops, a bucket, goggles, tarps, a hatchet and baking soda.
12:45 p.m. - Hacksaw best tool to dismember.
1:10 p.m. - Can you be charged with murder without a body.
1:14 p.m. - Can you identify a body with broken teeth.
January 3:
1:02 p.m. - What happens to hair on a dead body.
1:13 p.m. - What is the rate of decomposition of a body found in a plastic bag compared to on a surface in the woods.
1:20 p.m. - Can baking soda mask or make a body smell good.
No grisly searches about how to dispose of a body or clean up blood occurred before the morning of January 1, 2023. (HERE)
Items found in a dumpster included Ana’s Hunter boots, a hatchet, and a hacksaw with DNA evidence linking to both Ana and Brian.
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| Evidence recovered from dumpster in January 2023 shown during Brian Walshe's murder trial. — Pool |
Now the defense attorney, Larry Tipton, admitted that Brian lied to the police and made incriminating searches, but said he didn’t kill his wife and only panicked to dispose of her body, because Brian thought that no one would believe he didn’t cause her death (which is a very nice euphemism for 'kill her').
NOTE: Whatever you do, do not "dispose" of a body the way Brian Walshe did, because it's illegal. He pled guilty to illegally disposing of his wife's body and misleading police after her death - something, BTW, that the jury (so far) doesn't know.
He said there were loving text messages between the couple, and while there was stress, it was from the fraud case, not Ana's affair (with William Fastow, who helped her buy the townhouse in DC), which Brian knew nothing about. The defense attorney also declared that Ana died of Sudden Death Syndrome (at which point I nearly spit my hot tea across the room), and that he would bring medical experts to inform the jury and all the rest of us just what that is. [I can hardly wait to hear that…]
BTW, I can't help but think of the married Colorado dentist who fell in love with another woman & started looking up things on the internet like, “is arsenic detectable in an autopsy?” and “how to make murder look like a heart attack." And not only left a suspicious internet trail a mile long (PRO TIP: never use your own computer, cellphone, or your child's cellphone), but he actually ordered a rush shipment of potassium cyanide that he told the supplier was needed for a surgery. To his office. Where, of course, an employee opened it and went, "Wait, what does a dentist need with cyanide?" And that wasn't the only poison he ordered delivered. Sadly, all of this did not come out early enough to save his wife's life. (AP News) (Originally cited in my blogpost, "Great Mistakes in Criminal History" HERE.)
MY QUESTIONS:
- Isn't Sudden Death Syndrome just a fancy term for murder?
- And how can you prove that it is or isn't SDS if you can't find the body?
- And if the only way to prove SDS is to look at the body, or at least the parts that might be recoverable (ugh…) then why won't Brian Walshe provide that, and prove himself stupid and panicky, but inherently innocent, albeit with a strong stomach?
- My standard question whenever people murder their spouses - isn't it easier, cheaper, and safer to just get a damn divorce?
- What part of "dying in prison" do they not understand?
Pertinent list of questions, Eve. I'm wondering: Doesn't crib death require a crib? And a young age measured in weeks? Enquiring minds want to know.
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