The husband of a missing Massachusetts realtor is said to have searched online for “how to dispose of a 115-pound woman’s body” in the days surrounding her disappearance, according to a CNN report.
Convicted fraudster Brian Walshe, 46, exhibited strange behavior in the days after he claims wife Ana, 39, took a car service to Boston’s Logan International Airport and seemingly vanished on Jan. 1.
He left his house without his cellphone, got lost on a journey to his own mother’s house and forget to tell police about a visit to Home Depot, where he purchased $450 of cleaning supplies.
Law enforcement sources said Brian had also looked up how to dismember a body, according to CNN, prompting investigators to switch from a missing person’s case to suspecting that Ana, a mother of three, may have been killed.
In reports to publicize her disappearance, Ana — originally from Serbia — is described as 5 feet 2, approximately 115 pounds and speaking with an Eastern European accent.
Her husband’s gruesome search history comes as prosecutors said in court Monday that investigators had found blood in the Walshes’ basement when searching the house.
Assistant District Attorney Lynn Beland told the judge: “Crime services recovered and found blood in the basement area … There was also a knife that was found. On the knife, there was blood.”
Walshe is being held on bail, charged with misleading a police investigation after allegedly lying about his movements around the time Ana went missing. He has not been accused of being behind his wife’s disappearance.
Walshe, who has three children between 2 and 6 with Ana, told investigators the only time he left the house on Jan. 2 was when he took his eldest son to get ice cream.
However, cops found video footage of him visiting a Home Depot store in a mask and gloves to buy a tarpaulin, mops, tape, bucket and other cleaning supplies, according to Beland.
“He is not charged with murder. He’s charged with misleading investigators by not saying … he went to a Home Depot,” Walshe’s attorney Tracy Miner said Monday, when he entered a plea of not guilty to the charge against him. He was held on $500,000 bail.
Miner also pointed out Walshe had raised the alarm with Ana’s work colleagues and they had both reported her missing to police on the same day, Jan. 4.
Rideshare services said they had no record of picking anyone up from the Walshe residence on Jan. 1. Although Ana was said to have taken her phone with her, it still pinged to the home address for the next two days, according to local reports.
A two-day search of the area surrounding their home in Cohasset, 20 miles southeast of Boston, followed involving 20 state troopers, three K-9 teams, a search-and-rescue team and support from state police helicopters and divers.
Walshe is separately under house arrest over wire fraud charges stemming from 2018, when he sold two forged Andy Warhol paintings on eBay for $80,000, charges to which he pleaded guilty in 2021.
In a sentencing memo filed last summer, Walshe’s attorneys said he had become the “sole caretaker” for the couple’s three sons since Ana Walshe had started working in Washington, DC.
“This position, which came with a large increase in salary and with excellent health care benefits for her family, requires her to work in Washington D.C. for much of her time,” they wrote, adding she’d sold the family’s Massachusetts home and purchased one in the capital.
“Because of his current legal situation … Brian was unable to move with her,” the filing adds. “Brian and his three sons moved to a house rented by his mother in Cohasset, where he is now the sole caretaker of his sons during the week.”
Before marrying Walshe in 2016, Ana had lived in DC, where she had worked in hospitality, including at the Willard InterContinental hotel.
Former co-worker Cofield Williams told The Post: “My heart is breaking the more information is released and even thinking about the thought of her not being among us anymore is truly devastating. I’ve worked alongside her during my time at the Willard and there we became the best of friends.
“She left in February of 2015. I don’t know much about [Brian] and she didn’t speak much about him or what he did, but I knew she loved him very much as she was leaving the Willard to move to Boston to start her life with him.”
