On Wednesday, Brian Walshe was charged with the murder of his wife — a mother of three and real estate investment manager in Cohasset, Massachusetts. She had gone missing on Jan. 1. After a two-day sweep of the small coastal town didn’t yield Ana Walshe, investigators found evidence that led them to believe she had been killed.
Walshe was reported missing by her workplace on Jan. 4, per Deseret News. The relatively obscure, affluent town of Cohasset has a population just shy of 9,000. The majority of the town is water, with only 9.8 square miles being land. Investigators searched land and water for Ana Walshe, but later began finding evidence that led up to the arrest of Brian Walshe.
On Wednesday, the prosecution revealed in court that Walshe allegedly used his son’s iPad to search online for “hacksaw best tool to dismember,” “dismemberment and best ways to dispose of a body” and other search queries related to the decomposition of a body, per NPR.
The lead prosecutor Lynn Beland said that after Ana Walshe, went missing, Brian Walshe allegedly searched questions like, “Can you be charged for murder without a body” and “10 ways to dispose of a dead body if you really need to,” per NBC News.
More information came out in court about why Brian Walshe was arrested. “Surveillance shows the defendant’s Volvo, as well as a man fitting the defendant’s appearance, exit the car near the dumpster,” Beland said, per NPR.
Beland continued, “He walks to the dumpster carrying a garbage bag. He’s leaning, and it appears to be heavy, as he has to heft it into the dumpster.”
Other evidence that the authorities gathered in the investigation included blood and a knife in the Walshe family residence, as well as a hacksaw and blood evidence in a Peabody transfer station, according to Boston Globe.
According to NBC News, Walshe’s defense attorney asked for Walshe to be released from custody. Since his initial arrest on a charge of misleading the investigation, he has been in custody. The judge denied this request and Brian Walshe will appear in court next on Feb. 9.