A California convict pleaded guilty to two New England cold cases dating back to the 1980s on Tuesday, the Berkshire County District Attorney’s Office announced.

David Allen Morrison, 65, pleaded guilty to the 1981 kidnapping of then-15-year-old Laura Sheriden in Lanesborough, Massachusetts, in Berkshire County Superior Court, the district attorney’s office said in a joint press release. He also pleaded guilty to the 1986 murder of 32-year-old Sarah Hunter in Bennington County, Vermont, Tuesday afternoon.

Morrison was imprisoned in California for over 30 years before being extradited to Massachusetts in November, the district attorney’s office said. He was motivated to plead guilty in these additional cases after realizing he would not be granted parole, The Bennington Banner reported.

A kidnapping and a murder from the ‘80s

Morrison kidnapped Sheriden on June 23, 1981, after she accepted a ride from him to her home in New Ashford, the district attorney’s office said. The ride “seemed normal” at first, with the two chatting about their mutual interest in taekwondo, she told The Berkshire Eagle in an interview.

But when Morrison drove past Sheriden’s house, “she quickly realized she was in danger,” the district attorney’s office said. He then pulled out a handgun, and a struggle ensued as she tried to wrest the gun away from him, causing the car to veer back and forth on the roadway, the Eagle reported.

Soon after, Morrison pulled over at a rest area on Route 7 in New Ashford, and Sheriden managed to escape, the district attorney’s office said. He was tried on assault and illegal gun charges in connection with the incident later that year, but a jury found him not guilty, the Eagle reported.

Five years later, Hunter — a golf pro living in Manchester, Vermont — was reported missing by her coworker on Sept. 19, 1986, after she unexpectedly didn’t show up for her shift, the district attorney’s office said. Her body was discovered in a wooded area of Pawlet, Vermont, over two months later.

Morrison became the prime suspect in Hunter’s murder early-on in the investigation, and in 2012, he was finally charged in the case, The Bennington Banner reported. But as Bennington County State’s Attorney Erica Marthage prepared for his trial in 2015, mishandling of evidence in the case was discovered, and she was forced to dismiss the case against him.

Though Morrison evaded justice in New England, he was convicted in California on charges related to violent crimes over the next few years, The Bennington Banner reported.

Why Morrison confessed decades later

In 2023, Massachusetts and Vermont State Police investigators began developing new evidence linking Morrison to Sheriden’s kidnapping and Hunter’s murder, the Banner reported. In July 2024, he decided to confess to the two crimes in the hopes of serving out a life sentence close to his relatives in his home state of Vermont.

Morrison told investigators he abducted Hunter on a whim when she came into the Manchester, Vermont, gas station he was working at at the time, the newspaper reported. He had never met her before.

Morrison said he restrained Hunter and put her in his car with the intention of sexually assaulting her, but was stymied by cars passing by, the Banner reported. He ultimately stabbed her to death with a pair of scissors, then disposed of her body and the murder weapon in the woods.

Morrison’s new pleas came after a complex agreement was reached between law enforcement and government officials in Massachusetts, Vermont and California, the newspaper reported. He is set to serve out his sentences from each state concurrently.

Law enforcement officials have questioned Morrison about his potential involvement in other unsolved cases out of Massachusetts and other states, according to The Berkshire Eagle. The Berkshire County District Attorney’s Office is set to provide more information about its prosecution of Morrison during a press conference Wednesday morning.

Since Brian Walshe’s trial began earlier this month, jurors have heard testimony from more than a dozen witnesses as prosecutors try to prove that the 50-year-old Walshe plotted to, then killed, his wife in their Cohasset home on New Year’s Day in 2023.

Thus far, many of the witnesses have been keepers of records for companies like JetBlue, Stop and Shop and CVS, or law enforcement officers who investigated the disappearance of Ana Walshe. Since Ana Walshe’s remains have never been found, prosecutors have been relying largely on circumstantial evidence.

But some witnesses have offered a glimpse into who Ana Walshe was, including William Fastow, the man she was having an affair with when she died.

• Read more: Who was Ana Walshe? What we know about woman at center of high-profile murder case

As the trial enters its 7th day, here are five things we’ve learned so far.

In pre-trial hearings, Brian Walshe’s defense gave few hints about how they might approach the trial. That meant the defense’s opening statement on Dec. 1 was the first time the public learned what Walshe’s side of the story was.

During his opening statement, defense attorney Larry Tipton claimed Ana Walshe died of natural causes — a sudden, unexplained death.

At about 2:30 a.m. on New Year’s Day 2023, Tipton said, Brian Walshe found his wife in bed and “sensed something was wrong.”

“You will hear evidence that it made no sense to him, but he nudged Ana, his wife,” Tipton said. “She didn’t respond. He nudged her again, a little harder. She didn’t respond. He nudged her now in a frantic and panicked reaction to where she actually rolled off the bed.”

Titpon spent a portion of Monday morning reiterating the theory for jurors. On cross-examination of Dr. Richard Atkinson, a medical examiner, Tipton raised several different ways a person could die a sudden, unexpected death.

While Atkinson acknowledged each was possible, he said there was no evidence of any such cause — in part because there was no body to examine.

In the spring of 2022, Ana Walshe uprooted her life in Massachusetts, taking a job at Tishman Speyer, a global property management company, in Washington, D.C. It was a dream job, but it meant leaving her husband and three children behind, with Brian Walshe on house arrest due to his federal art fraud case.

At some point, not long after moving to the nation’s capital, Ana Walshe began an affair with the man who sold her the townhouse she was living in, William Fastow.

The affair wasn’t a secret for Fastow, who testified that he and Ana Walshe spent time with many of his friends. The relationship appeared to be becoming more serious that fall and winter — the pair travelled to Dublin together over Thanksgiving, and Ana Walshe spent Christmas Eve with Fastow.

Fastow testified he and Ana Walshe had conversations about what a life together might look like, and they were set to discuss their plans on Jan. 4, 2023, when she returned to Washington, D.C. from Massachusetts. But later, he admitted that Ana Walshe never indicated she would leave her husband for him.

Prosecutors have said Brian Walshe knew his wife was having an affair, citing in part a Google search for Fastow on Christmas Day and subsequent searches for divorce two days later. His defense says he didn’t know about the relationship, even though Ana Walshe admitted to having a “crush” on Fastow.

When investigators first learned of Brian Walshe’s internet searches on the morning of New Year’s Day 2023 — for terms like, “how to dispose of a body” and “Best ways to dispose of body parts after murder” — they moved quickly to arrest him, charging him with misleading police.

Nearly three years later, the search history remains a focal point of the case against Brian Walshe. A pair of Massachusetts State Police troopers who pulled data off Walshe’s devices spent hours on the stand reading through internet searches on both his laptop and iPhone.

The cross-examination from Tipton, the defense lawyer, focused primarily on adding context to the searches. He noted that on Dec. 27, before and after searching for divorce, Walshe searched for diamond rings and Porsches, around the same time as a text conversation with his wife about buying a car.

The searches about disposing of and dismembering a body don’t start until Jan. 1. It’s not known when Ana Walshe died, but as Walshe’s defense tries to poke holes in the prosecution’s theory of a premeditated killing, they have brought up for jurors multiple times that the search history does not reflect any terms related to a dead body until after Ana Walshe may have died.

In addition to the digital forensics, jurors have heard hours of testimony about the physical evidence recovered as investigators conducted a frantic search for Ana Walshe.

Much of the physical evidence so far has come from trash bags found in a Swampscott dumpster, not far from where Walshe’s mother lived. That has included bloody towels, rugs, slippers and a robe. In that dumpster, investigators also found Ana Walshe’s COVID-19 vaccination card and a jacket and boots that matched her husband’s description of what he last saw her wearing.

Investigators also found several tools, including a hatchet, a hacksaw, a hammer, snips and shears. Many of those tools, jurors learned, tested positive for the presence of blood.

Jurors also learned that blood was found on a kitchen knife stored in a cabinet above the refrigerator in the Walshe home and in several areas of the basement. It’s not yet clear whose blood was found, but samples were preserved and sent off for DNA testing.

It’s expected that prosecutors will call at least one expert to testify as to the DNA evidence.

A series of witnesses took the stand Monday for essentially the sole purpose of authenticating surveillance video captured where they work. That included keepers of records at CVS, Walgreens, Lowe’s and a Swampscott liquor store.

Jurors saw that in the afternoon of Jan. 1, hours after his wife died, Brian Walshe went shopping.

He first visited a Walgreens in Cohasset, then drove to Vinnin Liquors in Swampscott, where he was seen on surveillance tossing a trash bag into a dumpster behind the store. The liquor store was closed on New Year’s Day and there was no footage of Walshe attempting to enter the store.

The longest surveillance footage played on Monday came from Lowe’s. Walshe went to the store’s Danvers location around 6 p.m. on New Year’s Day. He is seen entering the store in gloves and a face mask, then walking up and down the main aisle, adding items to a shopping cart.

Eventually, Walshe makes his way to the self-checkout with a cart overflowing with items. An employee at the store helps him buy what would ultimately amount to $463.20 worth of items, including a hammer, a utility knife, multiple five-gallon buckets, latex gloves and a mop. Walshe paid in cash.