Brian Walshe’s defense faced an ‘uphill battle’ in trial for wife’s murder

By Lauren del Valle, CNN

(CNN) — Brian Walshe is expected to be sentenced Thursday to life in prison without parole after a jury in Dedham, Massachusetts, convicted him of first-degree murder, finding he planned to kill his wife Ana Walshe just hours after ringing in the new year in 2023.

The sentencing will represent the culmination of a case that captured national attention almost three years ago, first with the initial search for 39-year-old Ana Walshe, and then with the grisly evidence that her husband googled topics like “how to dispose of a body” and other inquiries on cleaning up blood.

For the defense, the trial itself “was an uphill battle from the jump,” according to Daniel Medwed, a law professor at Northeastern University, despite the prosecution’s lack of concrete evidence about how Ana died and definitive proof of premeditation – an element needed to convict Walshe of first-degree murder.

Walshe left a trail of evidence prosecutors used to retrace his actions to dispose of his wife’s remains.

Prosecutors left jury ‘breadcrumbs’

Prosecutors told the jury Ana met a violent death at her husband’s hand before he dismembered her body and disposed of her remains in area dumpsters.

Walshe then lied to investigators, claiming she had gone missing the morning of January 1, 2023, after leaving their Massachusetts home to handle a work emergency in Washington, DC, where she worked and lived part time.

Ana Walshe’s body has never been found.

Prosecutors called about 50 witnesses over eight days, but they never offered the jury a theory of how exactly Walshe killed his wife, a real estate manager and the mother of his three children.

Instead, they worked to shed light on purported strife in the Walshes’ marriage, stemming from a separate, federal criminal case against Walshe and an affair Ana was having in DC.

Walshe has always maintained he had nothing to do with Ana’s death. His defense team told the jury he found her dead in their bed hours into the new year, then panicked, fearing no one would believe him.

“Why do people kill? It’s usually love or money or both,” Medwed told CNN. “Here, it was a ‘love gone bad’ theory, because she was having an affair and he was in financial distress.”

Prosecutors alleged Walshe found out about his wife’s monthslong affair with a man she met in Washington, DC, William Fastow, and feared losing his wife and kids to a new life she had there while he was facing the possibility of prison time and a hefty restitution bill for a federal fraud conviction.

When Ana died, Walshe was still awaiting sentencing for that conviction. He had pleaded guilty to selling forged Andy Warhol artwork and was granted home confinement ahead of sentencing because he was the primary caregiver for their three kids.

“The prosecution tried as best as possible to create motive,” Medwed said, “and then they pointed to the post-incident cover-up to suggest (Walshe) was acting in a cold and calculating manner, and that that may reflect back on his mental state at the time of her death.”

Digital data recovered from Walshe’s devices revealed he also googled divorce and William Fastow days before his wife’s death.

A conviction on first-degree murder requires evidence of deliberate premeditation, which was not a given in this case, according to Medwed.

“I think the prosecution did as good a job as possible to allude to premeditation, given the absence of the body for an autopsy and the absence of any direct evidence about cause of death,” Medwed said. “Given all of the absence, what the prosecution, I think, tried to do is leave the jury some breadcrumbs.”

One such breadcrumb may have been a photo jurors asked to see during deliberations: In two days, they asked just one question, indicating they wanted to see a photo of Ana Walshe lying on a rug in the living room of their Cohasset home that prosecutors had submitted as evidence.

Prosecutors told the jury the rug ended up covered in Ana’s blood in a dumpster near the apartment complex where Brian Walshe’s mother lived days after Ana’s death. When investigators found pieces of the rug in garbage bags, they also found a piece of her necklace stuck in the fibers.

The jury might have been debating whether Ana Walshe died on that rug in her living room. “That could go to the fact that the jury was wondering about cause of death and manner of death,” Medwed said.

“What’s interesting, of course, is a picture of her alive on that rug doesn’t shed any light on cause or manner of death,” Medwed said. “But maybe it was kind of a visceral reminder of her connection to that space.”

Jurors may have perceived defense strategy as a ‘bait and switch’

In opening statements, defense attorney Larry Tipton told the jurors they would hear from Walshe about how he found his wife inexplicably dead in their bed in the early hours of January 1, 2023.

But Walshe ultimately didn’t testify, and the defense rested its case without offering any evidence.

“Promising, essentially, or intimating that you would hear from the defendant is a fairly aggressive strategy,” Medwed said. “We don’t know how the jury perceived that, but they might have felt a little bit like it was a little bit of a bait and switch.”

While Walshe denied involvement in his wife’s death, he pleaded guilty to the illegal disposal of Ana’s body and misleading police – though jurors were unaware of his pleas.

In closing arguments, Tipton admitted there was indeed evidence Walshe had done both. But Tipton said there was nothing to prove his client planned to kill his wife.

“Defense lawyers are often trained to concede: You concede what you can and challenge what you can’t,” Medwed said.

“So, given all that evidence about the dismemberment and the discarding of the body, it made sense, I think, to plead out on those charges and make the case really about the murder, because that’s where there were gaps in the prosecution’s evidence.”

The jury may have been sending a message

Sometimes, a verdict becomes a matter of the defendant’s likability.

“It’s quite possible the jury was motivated by just, you know, utter disdain for what Walshe did,” Medwed said.

“It’s also possible the jury was sending a signal,” Medwed said. “Like, anyone who does this – somebody who engages in such a callous and cold and really despicable post-incident cover-up – should be found guilty at the highest level, even if the evidence of premeditation wasn’t overwhelming.”

Walshe’s jurors were also able to consider a lesser homicide charge, second-degree murder, but chose to convict him of first-degree.

The key element that differentiates a conviction on first-degree versus second-degree murder is whether there’s proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the murder was deliberately premeditated.

Evidently, “there was just enough in terms of (Walshe’s) researching the best place to have a divorce, his Google search about William Fastow – just enough for the prosecution to point to to say he was thinking about killing her before New Year’s Eve,” Medwed told CNN.

“I was anticipating second-degree,” he said, again characterizing the prosecution’s evidence as “breadcrumbs, not a loaf.”

Walshe’s sentencing and a future appeal

Walshe’s conviction will be reviewed by the highest court in Massachusetts automatically, as all first-degree murder convictions in the state go before the Supreme Judicial Court.

He could challenge the strength of the commonwealth’s evidence for deliberate premeditation to pursue a downgraded conviction on second-degree murder, which would at least give him the possibility of an eventual release on parole.

But success rates on appellate issues like this are low, according to Medwed, and it could be especially challenging for Walshe to overcome the extensive digital evidence in the case.

Judge Diane Freniere is expected to sentence Walshe Thursday for his murder conviction – life without parole is a mandatory sentence for the most serious homicide conviction available in Massachusetts – and the lesser charges of misleading police and improper conveyance of a body that he pleaded guilty to ahead of the trial.

He faces up to 20 years for misleading police – an enhancement triggered by the murder conviction – and can be sentenced to another three years for pleading guilty to the illegal conveyance of a body.

While first-degree murder carries a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole, Freniere could stack the sentences for the lesser charges consecutively.

“It’s symbolic,”Medwed told CNN. “And you know that’s not insignificant here, because I think sending a message that dismemberment and disposal of a body by itself really deserves distinct punishment.”

“You could see the judge saying, ‘Yeah, you’re spending the rest of your life in prison,’” Medwed said, “’but these extra things you did almost suggest, like, afterlife punishment.’”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.