Mounting circumstantial evidence as a hatchet, blood, hack saw and a rug at a trash depot during the search of missing Cohasset mother, Ana Walshe. Items found at trash facility close to husband mother’s home. Will prosecutors charge husband, Brian Walshe with murder?
In what increasingly appears to be the mortal demise of a missing Cohasset, Massachusetts mother of three, cops discovered a hatchet, blood, a hacksaw, trash bags, used cleaning supplies, along with a rug at a transfer trash facility close to the missing woman’s hushand’s mother’s home.
Investigators accompanied by police canines searched the facility in Peabody on Monday, CBS reported. Ana Walshe, 39, was last seen alive on Jan. 1 following a New Year’s Eve dinner at her Cohasset home.
The discovery comes a day after the missing realtor’s husband, Brian Walshe, 47, appeared in court where he was formally charged for misleading investigators in the search for his wife. Walshe who pled not guilty during Monday’s arraignment remains held on $500,000 bond.
In addition to the transfer station materials, evidence pointing to foul play in the suspicious disappearance includes a bloody knife in the family’s basement and Brian Walshe’s alleged purchase of $450 in cleaning supplies in the days after Ana vanished.
Other incriminating finds included Brian Walshe googling, ‘how to dispose of a 115 pound woman’s body,’ along with a search on how to dismember a body. To date no body has been found.
Mounting circumstantial evidence point to foul play
According to the arrest affidavit, Brian Walshe, a convicted fraudster arrested in 2018 for selling fake Andy Warhol paintings, told police that his wife left on a ‘work emergency’ early on the morning of the 1st bound for Washington, D.C.
During investigations, police found no corroborations of a ride share ever picking up Ana (as the husband had claimed) along with no airline reservations for the realtor wife.
In an attempt to link the missing woman’s husband in a possible involvement in her abrupt disappearance, police scrutinized Brian Walshe’s movements in the days since Ana allegedly leaving for work.
Brian Walshe claimed leaving the family’s home on the afternoon of January 1 to visit his mother, some hours after Ana according to the husband catching a ride share to Boston airport.
Read an affidavit describing the hour drive to his mother’s residence in Swampscott:
‘At the time, Walshe did not have his cell phone so he did not use a GPS,’ authorities stated. He apparently said one of his sons must have absconded with the device sometime during the New Year’s festivities.
‘Walshe related he drove to his mother’s house via the route leading by Derby Street in Hingham, Route 3 north, Route 93 through Boston, and instead of taking Route 1A, he got lost and took Route 1 and then maybe Route 114,’ the document continued. ‘Walshe related the commute should have taken 60-70 minutes but ended up taking about 90 minutes.’
Will prosecutors charge Brian Walshe with Ana Walshe’s murder?
Brian told police he helped his mother run errands at CVS and Whole Foods before returning to the Cohasset home around 8 p.m. Surveillance footage, however, didn’t place Walshe at the pharmacy or the grocery store during the times he claimed to have visited.
Brian later said he found his cellphone under his pillow on Jan. 2, when he also violated parole by visiting a Home Depot in a town he is not permitted to travel to.
Now investigators say Walshe deliberately wasted their time by not answering truthfully when asked about his whereabouts on the day of Ana’s disappearance.
’The fact that he was asked a specific question and he gave an untruthful answer that led investigators out of the area caused a clear delay in the search for the missing person,’ the affidavit reads.
Ana Walshe previously gushed about her husband in a letter to a judge last summer, showering him with praise for helping her mother after she suffered a brain aneurysm in December 2021.
‘Not only did he save her life, but he also brought her and the entire family comfort and joy during the course of her illness,’ Ana wrote of her husband’s time in home confinement.
‘Brian has been working consistently on breaking the past bad habits of his family and we are all looking forward to the new chapter of his life,’ she continued.
#BREAKING: Police are searching this trash station for missing mother #AnaWalshe.
Also just in— husband Brian Walshe allegedly searched online for how to dismember & “how to dispose of a 115-pound woman’s body,” sources tell @CNN.
(h/t: @EmilyMaherTV)pic.twitter.com/XrFIzMxgZv
— JB Biunno #HeyJB (@WFLAJB) January 10, 2023
‘Please, Mama. Come tomorrow,’
A week before her disappearance, however, Ana seemed to have a change of heart and begged her mother, who now lives in Serbia, to come to visit.
‘She just said, ‘Please, Mama. Come tomorrow,’’ Milanka Ljubicic, 69, told Fox News on Monday from her home in Belgrade.
‘Which means that clearly, there must have been some problems.’
In a statement released Tuesday morning, the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office said no further details on the results of Monday’s search would be released.
‘There is no anticipated change or adjustment of the charges in place in this matter at this time,’ the statement read.
To date investigations have not found Ana Walshe’s whereabouts or as it increasingly appears her body in what is now appearing to be a murder investigation.
The couple’s three young sons are in custody as the search continues.