January 24, 2023
Incriminating reports of suspected killer Brian Walshe’s internet search history, after his wife vanished on New Year’s Day, has recently emerged and reached viral status online. Here are the details and timeline of the case so far.
Massachusetts mother of three, Ana Walshe, 39, went missing sometime after the early hours of New Year’s Day 2023. On New Year’s Eve of 2022, she and her husband, Brian Walshe, hosted a dinner at their home in Cohasset, Massachusetts, and invited a close friend, Gem Mutlu, to attend. The friend arrived around 8pm that evening and left several hours later between 1:00am and 1:30am.
Ana Walshe was reported as missing by her employer, Tishman Speyer, on January 04, 2023, and The Cohasset Police Department were requested to make a welfare check at the home she shared with her husband and children. Brian Walshe was questioned about the last time he saw his wife, to which he responded that after the pair retired to bed after their dinner party, Ana had gotten up and dressed, and said she had to fly to Washington, D.C for a work-related emergency. He told officers that Ana said he should go back to sleep and bid him goodbye, leaving between 6:00am and 7:00am.
Ana was a regional general manager at Tishman Speyer. The family were unable to move closer to the company due to Brian Walshe being bound to Cohasset on probation.
Brian said he got up at around 7:00am to make breakfast for the kids. He claimed he went out to do some errands at around 3:00pm and called in a babysitter to watch his sons while he was gone. These errands consisted of going out to buy orange juice and milk, and returning home before going out again at around 4:00pm to visit his mother.
Brian did not return to the family home again until 8pm. He also neglected to take his cell phone, which he claimed he couldn’t find because one of the children had likely been using it. He claims he did not find the device until January 2nd.
Ana's phone had been powered off, although it did ping near Cohasset on January 2, 2023, at 3am, when Ana had supposedly left for Washington D.C the day before.
Brian Walshe was on a pre-sentencing probation period after being convicted in Federal Court of Felony Fraud by Wire. Because of this, he had to request leave from his home in allocated time blocks and state the reason for the leave, these requests would be submitted for approval in advance. The probation came after Walshe pleaded guilty to wire fraud, unlawful monetary transaction and additional charges in 2021.
The suspect was allowed to drop his children off to school and pick them up between 8:00am and 10:30am and 3:15pm to 6:45pm each school day. He was also allocated a block of 2.5 hours for shopping on January 4, as well as a 6 hour block of time to visit his mother on January 1, 2023. Initially, this time was approved because Walshe claimed his mother was having surgery to remove cataracts on her eyes. He requested the time so he could drive her home after the procedure but later stated she had been able to drive herself home and lied about going grocery shopping for her.
According to an affidavit, on January 1, 2023, the first day Ana had been missing, what would have usually taken Brian Walshe a journey of approximately 60 – 70 minutes to drive to his mother’s home in Swampscott, took him around 1.5 hours. He claimed he stayed at her condominium for only 15 minutes before driving to a nearby CVS to get groceries for her. When investigators later reviewed the CVS and Wholefood tapes from the day that Brian Walshe said he had been there, they found no trace of him ever visiting the store.
Although Brian Walshe seemed to comply with the allotted time approved for travel each day, he did not stick to the reasons. On January 2, 2023 for example, which was a holiday on which the kids did not attend school, he used his allotted hours, which were approved for dropping off his children at school to instead take his son out for ice cream in Norwell. Later that afternoon, he used the time allotted for picking his children up from school to drop into a Home Depot Store where he covered his face with a surgical mask and paid in cash. Data extracted from his cell phone GPS also indicated that he had driven through towns that were not approved as per the agreements of his probation.
Media outlets have reported that Walshe allegedly spent around $450 on cleaning supplies.
Brian Walshe had lied to the police about his whereabouts after his wife’s disappearance and it has been speculated that he may have been gambling on the hope that surveillance footage from the stores he had visited would have been deleted before investigators had time to retrieve it.
Police later discovered a bloody knife stashed in the basement of the Walsh family home.
When questioned about the last time she saw Ana Walshe, Gem Mutlu said: “She was sitting next to me at the barstool at their kitchen. There was absolutely no indication that any modicum of a tragedy, of disappearance, or anything else could have happened that night.”
Brian Walshe was arrested on 8 January, 2023, for hindering the investigation, a charge to which he pleaded not guilty.
Last week he appeared in Quincy District Court and pleaded not guilty to murder and improper transport of a body.
The Independent, UK, reported: Prosecutors believe Ms. Walshe’s remains were thrown into a dumpster in Abington before being shredded and incinerated. They later discovered that several days before the murder, Brian Walshe had Googled “Best state for divorce for a man,” leading them to believed that Walshe chose to murder his wife as an alternative to divorce.
Investigators discovered trash bags at a waste transfer station in Peabody containing damning evidence, including both the victim and suspect's DNA, the victim's Covid-19 vaccination card, the victim’s Prada bag and rainboots, what appeared to be a bloody hatchet, garden shears and a hacksaw. These bags had been transported from a dumpster outside of Brian Walshe's mothers apartment in Swampscott, just a few miles from the waste station.
Search history evidence retrieved from his son’s iPad revealed that Walshe made some shocking searches after his wife’s disappearance, including the following phrases:
“10 ways to dispose of a dead body if you really need to”, “how to stop a body from decomposing”, “how long for someone to be missing before you inherit?”, and “how long before a body starts to smell”.
Brian Walshe has pleaded not guilty to the charges of murder and improper transport of a body. He smiled as he left the court.
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