Brian Walshe suspected Ana Walshe of affair before her murder, prosecutor says

The man accused of murdering and dismembering his wife, Ana Walshe, earlier this year had his mother hire a private investigator to follow her before her death because he suspected that she was having an affair, prosecutors said Thursday.

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Brian Walshe, who is suspected of killing his wife and disposing of her body in January, pleaded not guilty Thursday to first-degree murder and other charges. He shook his head in court as the charges against him were read.

Ana Walshe vanished early on New Year’s Day. She was not reported missing until three days later when her employer contacted authorities, officials said.

Investigators believe Ana Walshe was killed, although her body has not been recovered. On Thursday, prosecutors shared several possible motives behind her apparent death.

“In December of 2022, it had become evident that Mr. Walshe was suspecting his wife of having an affair,” Assistant District Attorney Gregory Connor said in court. “He was routinely visiting the Instagram page of one of her male friends and on Dec. 26, his mother — with his input and direction — obtained and hired a private investigator to surveil Ana Walshe in Washington D.C.”

Connor said an iPad belonging to the couple’s eldest son was later used to research the best and worst states to get divorced in. During a later dinner with a friend in Washington, Ana Walshe said she believed her husband — who was awaiting sentencing in an unrelated federal case — was going to be incarcerated. She said that “she was prepared to leave him and take the children to Washington D.C.,” Connor said.

Brian Walshe’s attorney, Tracy Miner, denied that her client had anything to do with his mother’s hiring of a private investigator. She said he learned about the decision from his mother.

“He said she was crazy, ‘Ana’s a good girl but go ahead, you’ll be proved wrong,’” she said. “The investigator never found any evidence of an affair — because they didn’t have time to start doing anything before Ana went missing.”

She added that Brian Walshe “had no idea that his wife was having an affair until he learned it in discovery in this case.”

The prosecutor also noted that Brian Walshe was the sole beneficiary to a pair of life insurance policies worth $2.7 million in the case of his wife’s death. Miner disputed the possible motive, noting that Brian Walshe’s mother was wealthy and had given the couple tens of millions of dollars over the years.

The defense attorney emphasized that authorities had not recovered Ana Walshe’s body, saying, “It is easy for a single person to disappear if they want to disappear.”

In the four months since Ana Walshe was last seen, “there’s been no indication of, if she died, how she died. There’s no murder weapon. There’s no motive.”

Prosecutors said authorities found evidence that Brian Walshe dumped items into several dumpsters in the days after his wife’s disappearance, although they were only able to recover evidence from one. The other dumpsters had already been cleared and their contents incinerated, Connor said.

Among the items found in a dumpster near his mother’s home in Swampscott, Connor said authorities found Ana Walshe’s COVID-19 vaccination card, a Prada purse, a Tyvek suit with blood that was later matched to Ana Walshe and a hacksaw that had red-brown stains on it. Authorities dissembled the hacksaw and found a small fragment of bone that is still undergoing DNA testing.

Miner asked a judge to release her client on $250,000 cash bail, though the judge sided with prosecutors who asked that he be held without bail until trial. He is scheduled to appear for a pretrial hearing in November.