A status hearing for the Cohasset man accused of murdering his wife and dismembering her body has been set for March 1 after an initial status hearing Thursday morning.
Brian Walshe, 46, appeared virtually in Quincy District Court from the Norfolk County House of Corrections, where he is being held without bail on charges that he murdered and discarded the remains of 39-year-old Ana Walshe, whose body has still not been found.
Walshe, who was initially charged with misleading a police investigation, is now charged with murder as well as the improper transportation of a body or human remains. He has so far pleaded not guilty to all three charges.
Ana Walshe, 39, was first reported missing by her colleagues in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 4, after she did not appear for work. Officials later learned she did not board a D.C.-bound flight scheduled for Jan. 3, either.
A mother of three boys, ages 2, 4 and 6, the prosecution described how she split her time between her home in Cohasset and working in D.C. at a real estate agency.
In court, Assistant District Attorney Lynn Beland described how it was only when Cohasset police conducted a wellbeing check at Walshe’s home did her husband first report Ana missing, claiming he had not heard from her after she left the house at approximately 6 a.m. on Jan. 1 for a work emergency.
He also claimed she used a ridesharing service to go to the airport, which authorities later found no record of.
Police were later able to ping Ana’s phone to try to locate the 39-year-old. According to their findings, the pings found the phone had remained “stationary,” in the area of the family home on New Year’s Eve until early Jan. 2, when the phone was apparently turned off.
Beland stated that Brian told police he later went to his mother’s residence in Swampscott on New Year’s Day, but that it took him longer than it should have because he got lost and did not have his phone. He claimed to have gone to Whole Foods and a CVS that day, according to officials, but police found he was not seen on surveillance video at either store and that there were no receipts for the items he claimed to have purchased.
Instead, nearby security footage reportedly showed Walshe at a dumpster at a nearby liquor store around that time.
Prosecutors previously stated that Brian also claimed the only time he left his home on Jan. 2 was to take his son for a smoothie. While Walshe was found to have gone to a smoothie shop in Norwell, he was also seen on surveillance video around 4 p.m. at a Home Depot in Rockland, where he purchased $450 worth of cleaning supplies, including mops, a bucket, and tarps, as well as baking soda and a hatchet.
He was also found to have purchased three rugs from a HomeGoods store in Norwell that day, per the prosecution.
During Brian’s last court appearance on Jan. 18, prosecutors said Walshe allegedly used his son’s iPad to Google search a number of questions the week of Anna’s disappearance, including “10 ways to dispose of a dead body if you really need to” and “can you be charged with murder without a body?”
Prosecutors also said that samples of Brian and Ana’s DNA were found on numerous discarded items recovered by authorities during their investigation of Ana’s disappearance, including clothing and slippers.
Other items later recovered included a Prada purse, the boots Ana was last seen wearing, her COVID-19 card, a piece of a necklace she was seen wearing in photos, a hacksaw, a hatchet, and cutting sheers, according to court records. Blood was also found in Brian’s car.
Data from the defendant’s phone indicated that on Jan. 3, Brian Walshe traveled to an apartment complex in Abington where surveillance video showed a vehicle similar to Walshe’s and a man matching his physical description approach a dumpster.
The suspect then discarded what appeared to be a heavy garbage bag that took some lifting to get in, according to the prosecution. By the time an investigation was underway days later, officials found the bag had been picked up and shredded and incinerated at a facility.
The following day, Walshe was believed to have gone to a HomeGoods and T.J. Maxx store in Norwell to purchase towels, bathmats and men’s clothing before going to a Lowe’s in Weymouth to buy squeegees and a trash can.
Officials also found that on Jan. 5, a day after Walshe reported his wife missing to police, he travelled to his mother’s apartment complex in Swampscott and approached a dumpster there that was later searched by police.
Days later, on Jan. 8, police searched the Walshe’s home where they recovered evidence that included a bloody knife and blood found in the basement of the Walshe home, which was disclosed during Brian Walshe’s initial arraignment the following day on Jan. 9.
The same day of his arraignment, the aforementioned items were recovered at a transfer station in Peabody, found in ten garbage bags thrown into the dumpster outside Walshe’s mother’s apartment.
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