Brian Walshe faces a first-degree murder charge, but the jury can convict him of a less severe homicide charge. Here’s why

By CNN Newsource

Published December 13, 2025 2:08 PM

By Lauren del Valle, CNN

Dedham, Massachusetts (CNN) — Prosecutors say Brian Walshe planned to kill his wife Ana Walshe before her death on January 1, 2023, then dismembered her body and disposed of her remains in dumpsters in the area near where they lived in Cohasset, Massachusetts.

Walshe has been charged with first-degree murder for the alleged killing. The jury started deliberations Friday afternoon after hearing eight days of witness testimony. For the panel to convict him on the most serious homicide charge available in Massachusetts, the jurors must believe the murder was deliberately premeditated.

If the panel doesn’t acquit Walshe, the jurors can also opt to convict Walshe of second-degree murder, a less severe homicide charge, which doesn’t require them to believe he planned to kill his wife.

In Massachusetts when a jury convicts a defendant of murder, the panel is also asked to determine the degree of murder even when someone like Walshe is only charged with murder in the first degree.

A jury is always instructed not to consider possible punishments when they’re deliberating a defendant’s fate, but for Walshe, who is 50 years old, a conviction on first- or second-degree murder could determine whether he dies in prison.

The prosecution has not offered the jury a theory of how Walshe killed his wife, Ana, a real estate manager and the mother of his three children, but they’ve said it’s fair to infer she met a violent death in her family home.

During closing arguments on Friday, Norfolk County Assistant District Attorney Anne Yas pointed to a rug that was once in the Walshes’ living room that was later recovered by investigators from a dumpster at the apartment complex where Brian Walshe’s mother lived. When they found the rug, it was cut up in garbage bags and covered in Ana’s blood with a piece of her necklace stuck in the fibers.

According to the commonwealth, Brian Walshe tossed trash bags with Ana’s remains and other evidence in multiple dumpsters in different cities and towns around the local area trying to cover his tracks.

Walshe’s defense team, however, says he did not kill his wife but instead found her inexplicably dead in their bed in the early hours of the New Year and then panicked, thinking no one would believe him.

Prosecutors allege Brian Walshe found out about his wife’s monthslong affair with a man she met in Washington, DC, William Fastow.

Yas suggested Walshe feared losing his wife and kids to a new life she’d set up there as he was facing the possibility of prison time and a hefty restitution bill for a federal fraud conviction.

He 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.

Walshe’s internet searches before his wife’s death show signs he was thinking of killing his wife, the prosecutor said.

Trial evidence revealed Walshe Googled William Fastow and some commercial buildings his wife managed days before her death. After Ana was declared missing, Walshe told family, friends and investigators he last saw his wife around 6 a.m. on New Year’s Day as she was leaving for DC to handle a work emergency.

There’s no evidence Walshe knew about his wife’s affair before her death, according to his attorney Larry Tipton, but Tipton admitted to the jury there’s evidence Walshe disposed of his wife’s body and then lied to police about it.

“There’s evidence that he lied to the police. There’s evidence that he searched the internet. There’s evidence that he disposed of a body,” Tipton said during closing arguments. “But there is no proof in all of the evidence that you have heard or was presented that he ever once thought about harming the woman he loved … that he ever planned to harm, that he ever intended to harm.”

During the commonwealth’s case, the jury saw digital data revealing extensive internet searches on Brian Walshe’s devices about how to dispose of a body and how to clean up blood, which his attorney admitted were “dark” and “troubling.”

“They began at 4:52 a.m. on January 1st of 2023, and the first one is, ‘how do you dispose of a body?’ It causes chills. It causes disgust,” Tipton said Friday.

But the defense attorney said there’s no evidence he planned to kill his wife – only evidence that he reacted after her death.

“Ask yourself why is a man searching now if he had intended to kill his wife?” Tipton said. “Why is the man searching now if he had planned to kill his wife? Where is the evidence of premeditation in thousands of pages of records?”

“The defendant was going to lose Ana, and when he lost Ana he would probably lose his freedom,” Yas told the jury Friday. “He lulled Ana into thinking that everything was OK.”

Defense strategy is ‘brilliant,’ expert says

Boston defense attorney J.W. Carney Jr. called the defense strategy “brilliant.”

Walshe was planning to take the stand as of Wednesday evening but ultimately changed course, the judge and attorneys discussed in court.

Walshe told the judge, “I will not testify,” and the defense rested its case Thursday morning without presenting any evidence.

According to Carney, the defense strategy to admit Walshe disposed of his wife’s body and then lied to police about it could effectively take the sting out of the commonwealth’s strongest evidence for a first-degree murder conviction.

“Those two lesser charges fit hand in glove with the defense, and if the jury has to believe that the prosecutor has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty, there might be a couple of people on the jury who will say it would have been proof beyond a reasonable doubt if he had denied cutting up his wife … and all of those things, but he hasn’t,” he said.

And not letting the jury hear directly from Brian Walshe at trial may have actually given him another advantage, Carney told CNN.

“If he had testified, the jurors would have not been looking at the evidence as whether the prosecutor has proved it beyond a reasonable doubt, they’d be looking at the evidence about whether they believe the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt,” Carney said.

The jury, made up of six women and six men, might use second-degree murder as a sort of compromise when they’re considering whether to convict Walshe, Carney explained.

“There may be two jurors on the panel who are saying … ‘I will concede it is probable that he killed his wife, but the government’s case is not so clear and irrefutable that it reaches the point of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, so I am just going to vote for guilty of second degree,’” Carney said.

The defense has maintained Walshe did not kill his wife, but Carney also said aside from an acquittal, a second-degree murder conviction for Walshe would be a notable success.

“If the jury comes back guilty of second-degree murder, then that’s going to be one of the most incredible verdicts for the defense in the last 25 years,” Carney said. “No prosecutor would view that as anything but a failure in the prosecution.”

Walshe’s possible prison time

First-degree murder carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Second-degree murder, however, would give Walshe parole eligibility. Judge Diane Freniere can set the mandatory minimum between 15 and 25 years after which point he’d become eligible for release on parole.

Regardless of the trial outcome, Walshe will be sentenced for counts of misleading police and the improper conveyance – or disposal – of a body.

Unbeknownst to the jury, Walshe pleaded guilty to those charges on the first day of jury selection – a situation that allowed his attorneys to admit those facts to the panel during trial.

He faces up to three years for pleading guilty to the conveyance charge and up to 10 years in prison for misleading police – though that could be enhanced up to 20 years if he is convicted of murder.

If the jury convicts Walshe of murder in the first- or second-degree at trial, Judge Freniere can choose to set the prison terms for each charge consecutively – so they run back-to-back – or concurrently so he only serves the total prison time for whichever charge carries the longest sentence.