Crime
Prosecutors will continue to present their case on Tuesday.
Livestream via NBC10 Boston.
Witness testimony will continue on Tuesday in the Brian Walshe murder trial, as prosecutors work to build their case in Norfolk Superior Court.
Walshe is standing trial for allegedly killing his wife, Ana, on New Year’s Day 2023. Prosecutors say he dismembered her body and dumped her remains in dumpsters around the region, including one near his mother’s home. Investigators never found her body.
In the days after her disappearance, they say Walshe repeatedly misled police as searches stretched from the couple’s Cohasset neighborhood to Washington, D.C., where Ana worked.
On Nov. 18, just before jury selection began, Walshe pleaded guilty to two charges — misleading police and improperly removing or concealing a body. However, he still faces a first-degree murder charge. Sentencing on the lesser charges will come later.
On Monday, defense attorney Larry Tipton argued in his opening statement that Walshe found Ana suddenly dead after a night of New Year’s celebrations — and then spiraled into a panic.
Tipton said that panic drove Walshe to make a series of disturbing online searches and to lie to police in the hours and days that followed.
The defense’s account stands in sharp contrast to the prosecution’s.
Norfolk District Attorney Chief Trial Counsel Gregory Connor told jurors that the Walshes’ marriage was unraveling as Ana pursued her new job in Washington, D.C., and started an affair, while Brian stayed in Cohasset caring for their three sons and awaiting sentencing in his federal art-fraud case.
At the end of the day on Monday, Cohasset Police Sgt. Harrison Schmidt remained on the witness stand, as the prosecution played recordings of the interviews in the days following Ana’s death between the police and Walshe.
Schmidt will retake the stand on Tuesday morning, with Connor saying Safari and iPad searches are coming up next.
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