Crime

Watch: Case against Brian Walshe for murder of his wife, Ana, returns to court

An attorney for Brian Walshe said prosecutors have shared very little discovery with the defense to date.

February 9, 2023

2 minutes to read

Update: During a brief status conference in Quincy District Court on Thursday, an attorney for Brian Walshe said prosecutors have so far shared “very little” discovery with the defense, even as a grand jury is expected to deliver its findings sometime next month.

Attorney Tracy Miner said she has not received many materials from the murder investigation involving her client, including “basic stuff that we should have had, like, immediately.”

“We have received basically nothing,” Miner said.

A judge granted Miner her request to meet again for another court check-in on March 1.

Norfolk County Assistant District Attorney Greg Connor said he expects a grand jury to release its findings sometime “by the end of March, but hopefully mid-March.”

Brian Walshe appeared in court via a Zoom call from jail, where he is being held without bail. He did not speak during Thursday’s proceedings.

The case against Brian Walshe, the Cohasset man accused of murdering his wife, Ana, last month, was scheduled to return to Quincy District Court for a status conference Thursday morning.

Conferences like this one are typically held to provide a judge updates on where a case stands.

A plea of not guilty was entered on the 47-year-old husband’s behalf in January to charges of murder and disinterring a body, a little over a week after he was initially arrested for allegedly misleading authorities as they searched for Ana, who was last seen early on Jan. 1.

He has been held without bail.

Brian Walshe reported his wife missing when authorities came looking for her at their home after she did not turn up for work that week as a property management executive at her Washington, D.C., office, prosecutors said.

She was expected at work there on Jan. 4 but didn’t show up, her employer told police. She also had a ticket for a flight from Boston the day before but never boarded the plane, according to officials.

Investigators have so far not recovered Ana’s body, as prosecutors have said they believe Brian Walshe dismembered it and threw the pieces into trash bags he later discarded in communities around Greater Boston.

Police uncovered 10 trash bags stuffed with blood-stained items, including a hacksaw and a hatchet, at a Peabody trash transfer station, although other bags were destroyed before authorities were able to get ahold of them, Norfolk County Assistant District Attorney Lynn Beland said last month. Some of the items also contained DNA from both of the Walshes.

In court, Beland also presented a long list of Google searches allegedly typed by Brian Walshe, which included queries such as “How to stop a body from decomposing” and “Can you throw away body parts?”

An attorney for Brian Walshe did not comment during his last appearance in court but initially told prosecutors her client was cooperating with police after he was accused of misdirecting investigators.

Legal scholars and experts say that, although rare, what’s known as a “no body” case does not necessarily mean prosecutors will have a tough time convincing a jury a defendant is guilty.

“In a no body case like this, there is inherent doubt, right? There’s always doubt because you don’t have the body,” Daniel Medwed, a criminal law professor at Northeastern University, told Boston.com last month. “But the question in this case is whether that doubt is reasonable because in order to acquit Walsh, the jury would have to find reasonable doubt.”

Material from previous Boston.com articles was used in this report.