MA Man Admits To Disposing Of His Wife’s Still Missing Body, But Says He’s Not Guilty Of Murder
The trial of 50-year-old Bryan Walshe continues today with jury selection after the Massachusetts man refused to plead guilty to his wife’s murder. Ana Walshe went missing on New Year’s Day 2023 and to date, her body has never been found. Amy and T.J. discuss the courtroom drama minutes before his trail began, Walshe changed his plea from not guilty to guilty on the disposing of her body and misleading police charges. However, his attorney made it very clear to the judge, Walshe is not admitting guilt when it comes to Ana’s murder. It’s a move that left many folks scratching their heads, especially when you hear the evidence prosecutors plan to present at trial.
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Speaker 1: Either folks. It is Wednesday, November nineteenth and heads turned, jaws dropped. In a courtroom yesterday, a man accused of killing and dismembering his wife was set to go on trial, and he pled guilty to dismembering her, but not to killing her. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. Please explain this one to me. I said that correctly, Yes, he was charged with killing and dismembering.
00:00:37
Speaker 2: Correct So he technically he pleaded guilty just as jury selection was beginning in court of disposing of her body and misleading police.
00:00:47
Speaker 3: So he had been charged with three.
00:00:50
Speaker 2: Charges, one for first degree murder, one for disposing of her body, and the third for misleading police.
00:00:56
Speaker 3: He pled guilty.
00:00:57
Speaker 2: Is the lesser two, but deny and the attorney said, please do not mistake this as him admitting any guilt towards murdering his wife. So they're doubling down, saying don't know what happened to her because, by the way, her body has never been found.
00:01:15
Speaker 1: They're admitting what was the charge again, the official one is conveying it.
00:01:19
Speaker 2: He admitted to disposing of and conveying the body of Anna Walsh after her death.
00:01:26
Speaker 1: Essentially moving a body, mistreating a body. All this far reck that thing, right, right, And the reason we're talking about dismembering is because a lot of stuff here involves hatchet and other equipment in this case that we're going to get into.
00:01:39
Speaker 2: This case is wild, It truly is so. As I mentioned, Anna's body has never been found. She was thirty nine years old, mother to his three boys who were two, four, and six at the time of her disappearance. Again, he is fifty years old. Brian Walsh, Yes, Brian Walsh. So she was last seen on New Year's Day twenty two, twenty three, at a New Year's Eve dinner. She wasn't reported missing until three days later on January fourth.
00:02:06
Speaker 1: Well, who her missing? Surely her husband was concerned.
00:02:09
Speaker 3: Surely you would think her husband would have done it.
00:02:11
Speaker 2: No, her work, her employer reported her missing on January fourth.
00:02:16
Speaker 3: So when police went to go to.
00:02:18
Speaker 2: Her home and met her husband, they said, where's your wife and he said, beats.
00:02:24
Speaker 1: Me, there's a trip.
00:02:25
Speaker 3: She got called back to Washington, d C.
00:02:28
Speaker 2: On New Year's Day for a work emergency, but her employer, who called police that she was missing, told police, yeah, there was no work emergency, and so he was arrested on January eighth, four days later, charged with misleading police, and then later that month he was charged with her murder.
00:02:47
Speaker 1: So the misleading part, obviously, that one makes sense, and he pled guilty to Now there's also a reason he would say, okay, you got me on the conveying of a body. Part two. Some of these details, or at least some of the evidence against him sounds like, come on, are you okay? Where should I start with? The with the bags and okay, let's start with that.
00:03:09
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:03:10
Speaker 2: Well, first they found a bloody a bloodstained knife, a damaged bloodstained knife, and some blood in the couple's basement. In the Walsh's basement, there was surveillance video of a man resembling Walsh throwing heavy trash bags into a.
00:03:25
Speaker 3: Dumpster not far from their home.
00:03:27
Speaker 2: Unfortunately for police, that dumpster was in like the contents of it were incinerated by the trash company before they could get to the bags. Therefore, her body has never been found and looks like it will never be found.
00:03:43
Speaker 3: But a search of a trash processing.
00:03:45
Speaker 2: Facility, so some of what he threw away didn't get incinerated. They found bags that contained a hatchet, a hacksaw towels, a protective tie X suit, cleaning agents, a product purse, boots like the ones Anna Walsh was last seen wearing, and a COVID nineteen vaccination card with Anna Walsh's name on it.
00:04:08
Speaker 1: Sure does doesn't sound good, doesn't prove he did anything though, right?
00:04:11
Speaker 3: Correct?
00:04:12
Speaker 2: So there is more surveillance video of showing Brian purchasing four hundred and fifty dollars in cleaning supplies and tarps on January twod, the day after she went missing.
00:04:22
Speaker 1: All very coincidental, fine, suspicious. But we have seen a lot of a lot of true crime docs that go.
00:04:31
Speaker 2: This way, and there are a lot more details that match our true crime jocks like scarily so a lot of times, well all the time, police will go immediately into said suspects computer and look for possible clues as to what may have happened. They found a treasure trove in Brian Walsh's computer.
00:04:52
Speaker 3: Want to hear some of the searches all right?
00:04:55
Speaker 2: Here?
00:04:55
Speaker 3: They are? How long before a body starts to smell? Any reason? Why you search that?
00:05:01
Speaker 1: Mmm? I'm not sure last time I googled that?
00:05:05
Speaker 3: Okay, how to stop a body from decomposing.
00:05:08
Speaker 1: I probably have not done that way.
00:05:10
Speaker 2: Okay, about an hour later. Ten ways to dispose of a dead body if you really need to.
00:05:16
Speaker 3: That is what his search was.
00:05:18
Speaker 1: He's like specific, Like you and some of your complain about your searches are too long sometimes. That was very specific.
00:05:23
Speaker 3: How long for someone to be missing to inherit?
00:05:27
Speaker 1: Oh? Schnike?
00:05:29
Speaker 3: Wow, all right? How long?
00:05:31
Speaker 2: How long does DNA last? Damn dude, here's another one. This is all in the same day. By the way, can identification be made on partial remains? A few hours later? What happens when you put body parts in ammonia?
00:05:45
Speaker 1: Oh? My word?
00:05:46
Speaker 2: And the final text from this day again, this was the day.
00:05:51
Speaker 3: This is the day in early January before he was arrested.
00:05:54
Speaker 2: Is it better to put crime scene closed away or wash them?
00:05:58
Speaker 1: It's like he's never even watched CSI. It's like you, why would you do that? Okay, that's bizarre. It's almost like if he wanted to make an argument that he'd been set up, I would listen because I would not think anyone's that stupid. Given the days and times that we're in on a computer, you know better than this.
00:06:18
Speaker 2: He then in the following days used his son's iPad to search more very damning searges. This one was the one that really stood out. Can you be charged with murder without a body?
00:06:32
Speaker 1: The answer is yes, he has proven that yes, But can you be convicted? That is going to be another question that it's going to be tricky. There is nobody in this case, and prosecutors will tell you that's a tough uphill climb with a jury. They need to know these things. They want to know how a person died, where this person and they want to even confirm that they are dead. Sometimes that is going to be a challenge correct.
00:06:56
Speaker 2: And so that is what and that is the idea behind Brian Walsh and his attorney deciding to plead guilty to the charges that they were pretty sure prosecutors were going to be able to prove with what I.
00:07:10
Speaker 3: Just read out from shillance video from the.
00:07:14
Speaker 2: Searches, it's pretty clear it would be a tough defense for him to say that he did not get rid of his wife's body. With all of that, now here are some of the other complicating factors for Brian Walsh, with what the prosecutors have to work with. There was a life insurance policy that was recently taken out.
00:07:34
Speaker 3: Allegedly by Anna Walsh herself.
00:07:36
Speaker 2: Apparently she took out a two point seven million dollar life insurance policy and named her husband as the soul beneficiary, not her three sons, her husband as the soul beneficiary.
00:07:50
Speaker 1: No, we have, for all accounts at least that I saw she at least they say she did this. Now, I haven't seen anything you tell me otherwise that suggested he pushed in some way for this or he was behind it.
00:08:02
Speaker 2: Yes, I think a lot of times the insinuation is that maybe he could have encouraged her to do it, could have said, hey, let's do this for our kids whatever. Who knows, but that certainly doesn't look good for him. Life insurance policies usually do point to a potential motive. How recent was this I don't know exactly when it was, but they said fairly recently.
00:08:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a that's a tough one.
00:08:23
Speaker 2: Here's another problem for Brian Walsh or in terms of motive. Police and prosecutors say they believe they have one. Anna was having an affair, according to investigators, and they say that before her death, she told her friend that she was going to leave her husband, and so that is a motive that prosecutors plan to introduce in the trial.
00:08:46
Speaker 1: And again, this is stuff that's out there and they are saying this as part of their investigation. And again, rope we are we do whether it's snapped or scorned or all all these shows we watch, these little episodes about love and relationships ending in murder. Everything, every detail you have said here is a part of these stories. You go within life insurance, you go with an affair, you go with dismemberment, you go all these single search Yeah, all this adds up to to what we have seen plenty of times before. We never try to convict someone publicly. He has a right to defend himself. But his argument he is saying in court, and it threw some people off, but it's his best legal strategy. Yes, got rid of her body. No, didn't kill her. I don't know if they have to come up with a reason or how she died. They don't have to. That's actually on the prosecution. How did she die? We don't know.
00:09:53
Speaker 2: I wonder how much like I'm imagining being a juror, like do you need we could all we're all all allowed legally to use our common sense correct?
00:10:03
Speaker 3: Is that the instruction?
00:10:06
Speaker 2: Because I'm just it is curious when you don't have a body, when you cannot provide jurors with the manner of death, when you cannot say this is what he did and this is how he did it, but you can prove and he is coping to and conceding that he got rid of her body and won't say apparently we don't know what his explanation is for why she is missing, where is she if he got rid of her body. He's just pleading guilty, but he's not filling in the details. He's not explaining anything. And as a member of a jury, I would imagine that kind of feels like a pretty easy two plus.
00:10:47
Speaker 3: Two equals for a situation.
00:10:48
Speaker 1: Legally, legally, you are not allowed to say, come on, man, as a juror, wow, because what we see there, we've seen how many times have we seen things in a jury go a different direction? Like how the hell they come up with that? Yeah, they have a different legal standard. So everything we put together, I'll ask you, of all we know, is there a reasonable doubt in your mind that he is not the killer? If there is a reasonable doubt. This adds up, This adds up, That doesn't make sense. Of course he thought this, he did that, he had all okay, But if I want to say he's not the killer, there has to be a reasonable not an unreasonable doubt. A reasonable doubt is that there.
00:11:39
Speaker 2: This will be fascinating to see. I mean, we kind of have an idea where the prosecution is going to go, and they usually always have more evidence than we're aware of. But I'm going to be fascinated to see what the defense does. And look, they don't have to The burden of proof is on the prosecution. They don't have to put up one witness if they don't want to. But I am going to be so curious to see what their tactic is court, given all that we've just learned about this case. So when we come back, we're going to tell you why Brian Walsh is already in prison, and it's not because of what he's charged with in regards to his missing wife, but because of something he's already been convicted of. And we're going to tell you what happened to those three little boys, and continuing our conversation on this trial that is getting underway in the state of Massachusetts.
00:12:38
Speaker 3: It is a.
00:12:39
Speaker 2: Fascinating, disturbing and at times when you see the evidence against this man, almost it's hard to get your head around this murder trial that is going on. Thirty nine year old Anna Walsh is missing. Police have never found her body, but her husband, Brian Walsh, is on trial for her murder. He's admitted to getting rid of her body, he's admitted to misleading police, but he won't admit to killing her. And so that trial, a jury selection is happening as we record this, and we will be following this. But here's the deal. Brian Walsh was already in prison for another crime, a random, bizarre has nothing to do, a non violent crime.
00:13:21
Speaker 1: Even he's a apparently not an art thief, but an art fraud.
00:13:27
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, apparently he was responsible. He was on house arrest actually when his wife went missing. He was awaiting sentencing for an art fraud case that involved him selling two fake Andy Warhol paintings and he got busted for it, so he was sentenced to more than three years behind bars. He was supposed to pay back almost a half a million dollars in restitution, so he.
00:13:54
Speaker 3: Was already awaiting sentencing. So he's now serving thirty seven months.
00:13:57
Speaker 1: I believe he had a lot going on. That's not a small sentence. That's not a short sentence at all for the crime we're talking about. He was about to do some hard time. Yeah, so now this on top, there was a lot going on in that house. You talk about the wife, and you talk about that, and I was just asking you during the break remmmy again the ages of the kids. Yeah, there are three little boys.
00:14:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, there were two, four and six at the time she went missing, and that was New Year's Day on twenty twenty three, So add two years to that, they're four, six and eight. And because now yes mom is missing, presumed dead, and Dad is behind bars and is going to be there for quite some time. Even if he isn't convicted of a murder charge, he's still looking at many many years behind bars. And so yes, they are all now in state custody. It is such a tragic story. There is another little twist to this. Brian Walsh actually was just deemed competent to stand trial. He actually was in a mental facility for the past forty days. His trial was supposed to start I believe in early October, but he was stabbed in prison and then said he suffered from PTSD and went through all of these mental evaluations. But the judge said, leading up to yesterday's start to the trial, you're fine, you are confident, you're going to be okay, You're going to face these charges.
00:15:12
Speaker 1: We say, start to the trial. This jury selection. They're trying to get sixteen on this jury. They got nine at least that we know of, over the past couple days. And now, ROGI, you were doing the math there about when the trial was supposed to start. I think they're going to take a break for the holiday.
00:15:29
Speaker 2: Yes, so it looks like they'll get the jury seated now, however long that takes. And then of course we are right on Thanksgiving now, so the actual testimony, witness testimony, all that is going.
00:15:39
Speaker 3: To begin on December one.
00:15:40
Speaker 2: So we will be on top of this case because this looks to be a fascinating, fascinating trial. But thank you for listening to us on this Wednesday. I'm Amy roback alongside TJ.
00:15:51
Speaker 3: Holmes. We will talk to you soon.
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