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.
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.
