Ana Walshe's body was never found. How will that affect husband's murder trial?
By the time investigators found surveillance video showing Brian Walshe dumping large trash bags into dumpsters on the South Shore in early January 2023, it was too late.
The bags, which Walshe has now admitted contained the body parts of his wife, Ana, had been picked up and transferred to the Southeastern Massachusetts Resource Recovery Facility in Rochester, where they were shredded or incinerated on Jan. 8.
Still, investigators traveled to the dumpsters in the hopes of finding viable evidence.
"It was determined there was none," an affidavit prepared by former Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor reads.
Other evidence that investigators collected at a dumpster outside of Brian Walshe's mother's apartment in Swampscott included clothing that belonged to Ana Walshe, her COVID-19 vaccination card, towels with red-brown stains, a hatchet and hacksaw, according to the prosecution's theory of the case.
Ana Walshe's remains have never been found — and it appears, cannot be recovered.
Still, her husband is on trial for killing her.
It is normally a challenge for prosecutors to prove a murder took place without a body, experts say, but the unique circumstances of the Walshe case may work against his defense.
"It's not an issue because Walshe is conceding he disposed of her," said Mark Bederow, a New York City-based defense lawyer and former prosecutor. "That evidence is going to be admissible as consciousness of guilt."
Had Walshe not pleaded guilty to disinterring a body, his defense could have argued Ana Walshe was simply missing and not dead. But the facts of the case, particularly the Google searches prosecutors say Brian Walshe made in the early morning hours of Jan. 1, 2023, made it near impossible not to admit he moved his wife's body.
Those searches, for terms like "10 ways to dispose of a dead body if you really need to" and "Dismemberment and the best ways to dispose of a body," are a critical part of the government's case against Brian Walshe.
"The other problem they're gonna have is if you didn't murder your wife and had nothing to do with it, why would you start Googling these things?" Bederow said.
Jack Lu, a retired Superior Court judge, suggested the electronic evidence left Walshe in a scenario where it "makes no sense to deny that Ana Walshe is dead."
"The scenario might have been very different thirty years ago," he said.
So-called "no body" murder cases are rare. But just last year, New England was home to a high-profile murder trial featuring a criminal defendant who admitted to moving a person's body that was never recovered.
The case of Adam Montgomery , who was eventually convicted of killing his daughter, Harmony , in the back of a car the family was living out of, shares some similarities with that of Walshe, explained Carol Erskine, a retired judge who wrote a book about the case .
Harmony Montgomery's body, much like Ana Walshe's, has never been found.
"I certainly believe they both had a belief if there was no body they wouldn't be charged or convicted," Erskine said in a telephone interview.
But Walshe's case is likely to be more challenging for prosecutors for a key reason, Erskine explained. In the Montgomery case, his then-wife, Kayla, was in the car when the killing happened.
There are no eyewitnesses to Ana Walshe's killing, however.
Erskine suggested that fact makes it more likely Walshe will testify in his own defense.
"From my perspective, what makes it different is that Brian Walshe is going to have to testify in order to say that she died, but he didn't kill her," Erskine said.
Walshe's lawyers have thus far not suggested they will be pursuing a third-party culprit defense in the case, casting blame at someone else for causing his wife's death. If he doesn't testify, it will be difficult to suggest he knew she was dead and moved her body but didn't kill her, Erskine said.
On the other hand, the defense could lean into the uncertainty. Without a body, prosecutors don't have a forensic expert who can testify as to the cause and manner of death, or even when Ana Walshe died.
It's a challenge for the government, which won't be able to lay out a specific narrative of how exactly they believe Brian Walshe killed his wife.
"It's entirely circumstantial, but the circumstantial evidence is strong," Bederow said. "It is harder, it helps to have a body, but it can be done."
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