COHASSET, MASS. (WHDH) - As the husband of a missing Cohasset woman was arraigned on a charge of misleading a police investigation Monday, prosecutors described the bloody evidence investigators allegedly found at the family’s home and laid out a disturbing timeline of events after she disappeared.
Brian Walshe, 46, of Cohasset, appeared in Quincy District Court in connection with the disappearance of his wife, 39-year-old Ana Walshe, who was last seen at her home shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day.
Prosecutors say Walshe misled police by telling them Ana had left for the airport in an Uber or Lyft on Jan. 1 to fly to Washington D.C., where she works for a real estate agency. However, officials said there was no evidence she left the house and that her phone pinged at her home location on both Jan. 2.
“Police were notified around Jan. 4 by her employees in Washington, D.C., that she had not shown up for work on Jan. 4,” Assistant District Attorney Lynn Beland said in court.
The prosecution described how Brian had told police that he went to his mother’s house in Swampscott on New Year’s Day, but that it took him longer than it should have because he got lost. He also said he went to Whole Foods and CVS, but officials stated he was not seen on surveillance video at either store and that there were no receipts for the items he claimed to purchase.
These movements prompted investigators to sort through trash at a transfer facility in Peabody, sources said.
Prosecutors said Brian claimed the only time he left his home on Jan. 2 was to take his son for a smoothie. However, he was 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.
Police later obtained a search warrant and searched the house they were renting, where they found blood in the basement and a knife with blood on it.
“Crime Scene Services recovered and found blood in the basement-area, in a section of the basement,” Beland stated. “There was also a knife that was found. On the knife, there was also blood and part of the knife was damaged.”
Walshe’s attorney told the court her client has been nothing but cooperative with authorities during the investigation over the past several days, emphasizing that Walshe has not been charged with murder.
“The charges are not anything relating – he’s not charged with murder,” defense attorney Tracy Minor said. “He’s charged with misleading investigators by not saying, as I understand it, he went to Home Depot.”
Minor said Walshe had allowed authorities into the family’s home throughout the investigation, consenting to the searches, and that he was the reason Ana was reported missing in the first place, being the one who contacted her employer in Washington, D.C.
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