Judge denies motion to suppress dismemberment Google search in Brian Walshe case
The judge assigned to oversee Brian Walshe 's murder case denied a motion by his lawyers to suppress key evidence , which they argued was obtained unlawfully when Massachusetts State Police searched Walshe's phone and other devices.
Judge Diane Freniere handed down orders on two motions from Walshe's lawyers Friday — a motion to suppress Google searches he made, including for how long a body takes to decompose, and to suppress information obtained via searches of Walshe's home and devices, as well as from his mother's car and his cell phone provider.
The searches are critical to the prosecution's case against Walshe, who is charged with the murder of his wife, Ana, in January 2023. Prosecutors say he killed her, dismembered her body in the basement of the Cohasset home where they lived with their three children, then disposed of her remains in several dumpsters. Walshe was motivated by knowledge of his wife's affair and money troubles stemming from a federal art fraud case, prosecutors claim.
On his phone and his oldest son's iPad, Walshe searched: "how long before a body starts to smell," "how long for someone to be missing to inheritance?" and "dismemberment and best ways to dispose of a body." Prosecutors say some of the searches happened before the killing, while others happened after, pointing to a roughly three-hour gap in the records.
Lawyers for Walshe claimed the information about the searches was obtained illegally by Massachusetts State Police troopers because they did not get a warrant to search the devices, and went beyond the scope of an agreement with a lawyer representing Walshe in the federal case.
But Freniere found Walshe and the attorney, Tracy Miner, likely understood the searches were for the entire devices, not solely communications between Walshe and others between Dec. 25 and Jan. 6. Even if Miner was operating under the belief the agreement extended to just communications, not the entire device, she never communicated that to police, Freniere wrote.
Miner also agreed that Walshe would turn over his son's iPad, a device she knew didn't have any of his communications on it.
"If it was indeed their understanding that police only sought communications, there would have been no need to turn the iPad over at all," Freniere wrote.
While Freniere ultimately credited police's interpretation of the search agreement, she wrote that even if she had credited Miner's recollection, the searches likely would have been uncovered during the execution of a search warrant at Walshe's home.
During that search, police would have seized Walshe's cell phone, his son's iPad, and other devices in the home, Freniere wrote.
The searches were the subject of a multi-day evidentiary hearing, where several investigators involved in the case testified.
On the other issue of evidence obtained via the warrants, Freniere allowed only a small part of the motion — evidence obtained from a tracking device on Walshe's mother's car can't be used, and evidence of activity on Walshe's phone, obtained from Verizon, for Dec. 30 and 31 also can't be used.
But the rest of the evidence, including searches on Walshe's son's iPad from Jan. 2 and Jan. 3 for, among other things, "hack saw the best tool for dismembering a body" and "can you be charge with murder with a body," was allowed in.
On Jan. 8, 2023, during a search of Walshe's home, investigators found several surfaces that tested positive for blood, including multiple locations in the basement and a staircase leading down into the basement. A knife that tested positive for blood was found next to multiple bottles of hydrogen peroxide in a cabinet above the kitchen refrigerator.
A day later, police searched Walshe's car. Swabs taken from inside the vehicle tested positive for the presence of blood.
Walshe's lawyers argued the warrant for the search of home was not supported by probable cause because an affidavit attached to it did not create a link between the items police were seeking and criminal activity.
But Freniere said false statements by Walshe about his and his wife's whereabouts after she disappeared and the searches established probable cause that he was at least involved in her disappearance and was misleading police.
Freniere wrote that she was not suppressing information from the searches of devices seized from Walshe's home for "largely the same reasons."
As for the warrants obtained to pull location data from two iPhones Walshe used, Freniere ruled only that one of the warrants, which requested data from Dec. 30, 2022, to Jan. 8, 2023, was unlawfully general, but only for the December dates.
"There is no question here that the affidavits supporting the Verizon warrants provided probable cause to believe the defendant had committed the crimes alleged," Freniere wrote, noting the affidavits had information about Walshe's purchase of tools like a hacksaw, his strained relationship with his wife and items recovered from a Swampscott dumpster.
Freniere excluded the information from those two days in December because there was no information in the affidavit suggesting a crime had been committed before Jan. 1, 2023 — when Ana Walshe was last seen.
Walshe was in court on a separate motion, to dismiss the murder indictment against him , on Thursday. Freniere has not ruled on that issue.
Walshe had pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go to trial in October.
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