Prosecutors in Brian Walshe’s case had to rely on largely circumstantial evidence as they tried to convince a jury to send the 50-year-old to prison for the rest of his life for the murder of his wife, Ana Walshe, in January 2023.
On Monday, the jury decided the circumstantial evidence was good enough to do just that as it returned a guilty verdict on the charge of first-degree murder after about five hours of deliberations. It was a relatively quick verdict, but not much of a surprise, legal experts told MassLive Monday.
“I would’ve been shocked if it were an acquittal,” said Mark Bederow, a New York City-based criminal defense lawyer.
A conviction of first-degree murder means the jury found Brian Walshe premeditated the killing of his wife.
Much of the evidence presented at trial, though, concerned his behavior after his wife died. Jurors saw video of Walshe’s trips to Lowe’s and Home Depot, where he bought cutting supplies he would use to dismember his wife’s body, and tossed a trash bag into a Swampscott dumpster an hour away from his Cohasset home on New Year’s Day, the same day his wife died.
Jo Potuto, a constitutional law professor at the University of Nebraska, who followed the trial, said the evidence in the case was “so terrible and so overwhelming and so gruesome that all the prosecutor needed to do was provide enough of a hook” for the jury to find premeditation.
“The evidence was so gruesome and the explanation was so ridiculous,” she said, referencing the theory put forward by Walshe’s defense that his wife died a sudden, unexplained death of natural causes, causing him to panic.
During deliberations, the jury sent only one question to Judge Diane Freniere. The panel asked for the exhibit number for a specific photo. That photo depicted Ana Walshe on a rug in the family’s Cohasset home — the same rug the jury later saw covered in blood, found in the Swampscott dumpster near Brian Walshe’s mother’s home.
In Potuto’s view, that showed the jury’s buy-in to the prosecution’s case. She noted that prosecutor Anne Yas highlighted the rug in her closing argument.
In that closing, Yas also highlighted Brian Walshe’s internet search history, which included a variety of searches about how to dispose of and dismember a body made beginning around 5 a.m. on Jan. 1.
To Bederow, jurors likely concluded the “nature of his searches and aftermath is consistent with somebody who planned the demise of his wife.”
Carol Erskine, a former Juvenile Court judge, praised the work of prosecutors during the case.
“The Commonwealth presented a strong argument from which the jury could infer there was preplanning,” she said. “They presented evidence that would allow the jury to infer that there was planning, even though a lot of the actions he took occurred after Jan. 1.”
Walshe’s defense faced an uphill battle at the trial, given the evidence against him. Still, they put on as good a case as they could, Bederow said, offering specific praise for Larry Tipton, who led Walshe’s defense.
“He’s a really good lawyer,” Bederow said, adding it was “admirable … how he handled such a hard case.”
But ultimately, the defense argument just “doesn’t make any sense to most reasonable people,” Bederow said.
Erskine added that it likely would have been difficult for jurors to look at the evidence in front of them and come to the conclusion, as Walshe’s defense claimed, that “Ana Walshe suddenly died and he didn’t call 911 and made a decision to dismember [her].”
Neither Tipton nor fellow defense attorney Kelli Porges spoke to reporters after the verdict was handed down on Monday morning. Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey, whose office prosecuted the case, and Assistant District Attorney Greg Connor, though, both addressed reporters.
Morrissey praised the work of the prosecutors in his office, who secured a first-degree murder conviction in a case where the victim’s body was never recovered — a rarity, he said.
Connor, who handled the questioning with Yas during the trial, thanked law enforcement for their tireless work on the case, pointing specifically to Cohasset Police Sgt. Harrison Schmidt.
“When Cohasset lost one of their own, they stopped everything and tried to find this woman, and one person never gave up on that case, and it would be Sgt. Harrison Schmidt,” he said.
All first-degree murder convictions in Massachusetts are automatically appealed.
Freniere set sentencing for Wednesday morning, where it is expected she will hear victim impact statements from Ana Walshe’s friends and family, potentially including her three children, though that statement is likely to be shielded from public view.
Walshe will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the first-degree murder — such sentences are automatic in Massachusetts. He faces additional prison time for the two charges he pleaded guilty to just before trial: disinterring a body and misleading a police investigation.
Last year, Walshe was sentenced to more than three years in federal prison for selling forged Andy Warhol paintings.
