A missing woman’s husband and a former Massachusetts art fraudster A few days before her disappearance, she Googled how to dispose of a female corpse.
In spite of telling authorities he had been home around the time his wife, Ana, 39, was last seen alive, Brian Walshe, 46, was charged with deceiving a police inquiry when he was seen on surveillance footage purchasing heavy duty cleaning products.
When it was discovered that Walshe had looked up “how to dispose of a 115-pound woman’s corpse,” the inquiry into Ana’s disappearance took a dark turn. After going missing, Ana’s height and weight were given to the public as being 5’2 and 115 pounds, respectively.
On January 1, Walshe reported to authorities that the mother of three disappeared after traveling to Boston Logan Airport by automobile. According to WCVB, ride-share services don’t indicate any pickups at the family home, but Ana’s cellphone continued to ping from there for two days after she reportedly departed.
After missing work on January 4, Ana’s office contacted the police and the case was officially declared missing.
Since then, police have searched Cohasset, a beach village, for any indication of her whereabouts.
The inquiry was initially focused on a missing-persons case, but when Walshe’s online searches for dismembering a human corpse were uncovered, the focus was changed to murder.
According to the prosecution, Walshe misled police about his and his wife’s behavior around the time of her disappearance in order to give himself plenty of time to clean up a potential murder scene.
According to prosecutor Lynn Beland, “These different statements delayed the inquiry to the point where at the period when he didn’t report his wife and offered different stories, it afforded him time to either clean up evidence or dispose of evidence, causing a delay.”
Those were the statements, along with a muddled and meandering alibi. Walshe disclosed to the police his activities on the day that he said his wife departed for the airport.
He claimed to have left his phone at home and driven 40 miles to Whole Foods and a CVS on January 1 before taking one of his boys out for ice cream the following day.
But none of those establishments had any security footage of him, and on January 2, instead of heading out for ice cream, he was seen on camera entering a Home Depot and purchasing $450 worth of cleaning materials, including mops, buckets, tarps, tape, and other items. Throughout the journey, he donned gloves and a mask.
Blood and a bloodied and broken knife were found in the basement after obtaining a search warrant for the Walshes’ residence.
Walshe has not yet been prosecuted in connection with his wife’s disappearance and has entered a not guilty plea to a charge of deceiving police. He’s being jailed right now on a $500,000 bail.
Walshe was already in custody for accusations of wire fraud stemming from a 2018 scheme in which he obtained $80,000 by selling a pair of phony Andy Warhol artworks on eBay.
In 2021, he admitted guilt to the plot.
Walshe had set hours for when he could leave the house while under house arrest.
He claimed to be driving his children to school on his trip to Home Depot on January 2, even though the school was closed that day.
»Missing mom’s husband googled “how to murder a 115-pound woman”«