Ana Walshe owned a pair of green boots. They were found in a trash bag at a recycling facility in Peabody, Massachusetts, surrounded by the kind of items that tell you everything about what prosecutors believe happened to her: a black jacket with red-brown stains, a purse, a wallet, her Volkswagen keys, a pair of headphones. In another bag, there was a white bathrobe, also stained. Two pairs of slippers, one with what the forensic scientist called "trace material" on them, which in this context means apparent human hair. Towels soaked through with something that looked like blood. And in yet another bag, the tools: a hammer, a hatchet, wire snips, and a hacksaw with red-brown stains on its blade.
These items were not hidden. They were not buried in a remote location or weighted down in a river. They were thrown in garbage bags and left at a trash compactor in Swampscott, at the apartment complex where Brian Walshe's mother lived. This is either the behavior of someone who panicked and made terrible decisions, or the behavior of someone who thought the trash system would destroy the evidence before anyone found it. Either way, the items survived. They made their way through the compactor, into a dumpster, onto a flatbed truck, and finally to a recycling facility where investigators pulled them out one by one and photographed them for a jury that would see them two years later.
Day 3 of Commonwealth v. Brian Walshe was the day the case stopped being about computer searches and became about what those searches might have been planning for. For two days, the jury had heard about digital evidence, the disturbing Google queries that someone made on Brian Walshe's MacBook starting at 4:52 in the morning on New Year's Day 2023. How long before a body starts to smell. Can you throw away body parts. The best tool to dismember a body. Today, they saw what came next. Today, they saw the boots and the bathrobe and the hacksaw. Today, they heard that Brian Walshe stood to collect $1.25 million in life insurance if his wife died.
Ana Walshe was thirty-nine years old when she disappeared. She had three sons who are now four, six, and eight years old, boys who have spent almost two years without their mother and whose father sits in a Norfolk County courtroom accused of killing her. She worked as a regional general manager for Tishman Speyer, one of the largest real estate companies in the world, commuting between her family in Cohasset and her career in Washington, D.C. She spoke multiple languages. She had family in Serbia. She had a townhouse in the nation's capital that Massachusetts State Police searched on January 7, 2023, finding it neat and tidy, the beds made, the closets full of her clothes and shoes and handbags. Everything exactly as you would expect from a woman who was supposed to fly home the following weekend, who had flights booked through the end of January, who never showed up for any of them.
The prosecution is building a circumstantial case, brick by brick. They cannot produce Ana's body because it has never been found. They cannot show the jury a murder weapon because they do not know exactly how she died. What they can show is the aftermath: the searches, the purchases, the items recovered from trash facilities across the region. They can show motive, opportunity, and consciousness of guilt. They can show a husband who researched dismemberment and then bought the tools to accomplish it. They can show that same husband standing to collect more than a million dollars if his wife never came home.
But here is what makes this day so critical for both sides: the defense scored real points. On cross-examination, attorney Larry Tipton forced Trooper Nicholas Guarino to acknowledge that the Google searches about divorce happened in the middle of searches for diamond rings and Porsche sports cars. The same day. The same session. Someone was shopping for a four-carat diamond ring on Blue Nile, looking at Porsches for sale in Cohasset, and yes, also looking at divorce-related websites. That is not the search pattern of a man planning to murder his wife for the insurance money. That is the search pattern of someone whose marriage was complicated, maybe in trouble, but not necessarily homicidal.
And when forensic scientist Davis Gould took the stand to describe the evidence recovered from the Peabody trash facility, the defense asked the questions that every juror should be asking. How do you know that the red-brown stains on these items were there when they were originally placed in the bags? How do you know they did not transfer from one item to another when everything was jumbled together in a compactor, then a dumpster, then dumped on a warehouse floor? Gould, to his credit, was honest. He could not say how the stains got there. He could only confirm their presence. The manner of deposition, as he put it, was beyond his ability to determine.
This is what reasonable doubt looks like in a murder case. Not proof that the defendant is innocent, but questions that cannot be answered. The prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Brian Walshe murdered his wife. They have to prove she is dead, that he killed her, that the killing was premeditated. They have to do all of this without her body, without a definitive murder weapon, and now with an expert who admitted on cross-examination that he cannot tell the jury how the blood got on the evidence. That is a problem. How big a problem remains to be seen.
The morning began with the final cross-examination of Trooper Nicholas Guarino, the digital forensics expert who had testified the day before about the MacBook searches. Defense attorney Tipton had spent much of Day 2 establishing that the searches found on the family's iPad did not originate on the iPad itself. They were synced from Brian Walshe's MacBook, meaning the iPad was never physically used to conduct those searches. This matters because the prosecution's original theory, before the forensic analysis was complete, suggested that multiple devices were being used to research dismemberment. Guarino confirmed definitively that all the searches came from one device: the gray MacBook.
But Tipton was not done. He walked Guarino through the binder of search records that had been admitted as evidence, a massive document containing 3,677 entries spanning from December 25, 2022 to January 8, 2023. Tipton pointed out that many of these records were duplicates, artifacts of how the forensic software parses and carves data from different locations in the database. The same search appearing twice does not mean it was conducted twice. Guarino acknowledged this but noted there was no key or guide in the binder to help someone identify which records were duplicates. There was also no way, from the binder alone, to identify which website visits were redirects, meaning the browser automatically sent the user somewhere they did not intend to go, versus intentional navigation.
Then came the context that the prosecution would rather the jury forget. On December 27, 2022, five days before Ana disappeared, someone using the MacBook searched for diamond rings. The searches included queries for four-carat diamonds and visits to BlueNile.com. Shortly after that, the same user searched for Porsches, including one specifically for sale in Cohasset. And then, sandwiched between the diamonds and the sports cars, there were searches about divorce. Katie Holmes divorce. Divorce advice. Your spouse is missing and you want a divorce.
Tipton's point was clear: these searches, taken together, do not paint the picture of a man planning murder. They paint the picture of a man whose life was complicated. Maybe he was thinking about buying his wife an expensive ring. Maybe he was dreaming about a sports car. Maybe he was also worried about the state of his marriage. All of these things can be true simultaneously. People in troubled marriages still buy anniversary gifts. People considering divorce still have moments of hope. The searches, Tipton suggested, show a man who was conflicted, not a man who had already decided to kill.
The prosecution pushed back on redirect. They highlighted one particular search from January 1, 2023, at 10:30 in the morning: "your spouse is missing and you want a divorce." This was not December 27. This was New Year's Day, hours after Ana was allegedly killed, hours after the first "how long before a body starts to smell" search. Searching for information about divorcing a missing spouse on the day you allegedly killed her suggests something very different than searching for Katie Holmes divorce gossip five days earlier.
After Guarino stepped down, the prosecution shifted gears entirely. The next several witnesses were quick, almost perfunctory, laying the foundation for what was to come. William Foley from U.S. Customs and Border Protection testified about Ana's international travel records. Her last trip outside the United States was in late 2022, when she flew to Europe and returned on December 7. There were no records of her leaving the country after that date, no evidence she fled to Serbia where she had family, no suggestion she boarded any international flight in the days after her disappearance.
Sergeant Patrick Reardon of the Cohasset Police Department testified next about a K-9 search conducted at the Walshe property on January 5, 2023. Reardon has been a police officer for eighteen years and a K-9 handler for fifteen. His dog, Einstein, a Belgian Malinois trained for tracking and area searches, spent about thirty minutes searching the grounds around 516 Chief Justice Cushing Highway. They found nothing. The only complication was a large German Shepherd in the backyard that was barking aggressively at Einstein, preventing Reardon from searching inside the fenced area. But everywhere else, the area to the left of the house, the wooded section near Peppermint Brook, the front of the property, Einstein detected no scent of Ana Walshe.
Thomas Manino from JetBlue corporate security walked the jury through Ana's flight records. She had purchased multiple flights in advance, a pattern consistent with someone who commuted regularly between Boston and Washington. On December 30, 2022, she flew from Reagan National to Boston. That ticket was used. On January 3, 2023, she was booked on a 6:00 a.m. flight from Boston to Reagan. She was a no-show. On January 13, she was booked from Reagan to Boston. No-show. January 16, Boston to Reagan. No-show. January 27, Reagan to Boston. No-show. January 30, Boston to Reagan. No-show. Five flights, all purchased in November 2022, all missed. Ana Walshe never boarded another plane.
Officer Gregory Lowrance of the Cohasset Police Department was the first officer to respond to 516 Chief Justice Cushing Highway on January 4, 2023. He arrived at 11:44 in the morning for a well-being check and was met at the side door by Brian Walshe, who said he wanted to file a missing person report. Lowrance described Brian as calm and collected. Brian told him Ana had left between 6:00 and 7:00 a.m. on January 1 to catch a flight to Washington for a work emergency, that she usually took an Uber or Lyft to the airport, that he had been trying to reach her by phone and text without success. Brian provided Ana's cell phone number, her date of birth, her physical description, the address of their Washington townhouse, even the make and model of her car. He said she was flying JetBlue. He seemed cooperative, helpful, eager to find his wife.
The rideshare records told a different story. Seth Fox from Lyft and Alyssa Wimmer from Uber both testified about Ana's accounts with their respective services. Her last Lyft activity was... nothing. No rides between December 30, 2022 and January 8, 2023. Her last Uber rides were on December 30, 2022, the day she flew home from Washington. Between December 30 and January 8, there were no Uber trips on her account. If Ana took a rideshare to Logan Airport on the morning of January 1, as Brian told police, she did not use Lyft or Uber to do it. The prosecution's implication was clear: she did not take a rideshare because she never went to the airport. She never left the house.
Officer Michael Kenyon of the Swampscott Police Department provided a brief but important piece of the puzzle. On January 9, 2023, he was dispatched to 330 Paradise Road in Swampscott, an apartment complex where Diana Walshe, Brian's mother, lived. Multiple law enforcement agencies were there, including Massachusetts State Police crime scene units. They had located a dumpster and a trash compactor that they believed contained evidence. Kenyon led a caravan transporting those receptacles from Swampscott to Republic Trash Services at 300 Forest Street in Peabody, where the contents would be searched. This was the chain of custody for the evidence that would later be pulled from those bags: the boots, the bathrobe, the hacksaw.
Sergeant Amy Waterman of the Massachusetts State Police provided a window into Ana's life in Washington. On January 7, 2023, she traveled to 5334 43rd Street Northwest in D.C. with Lieutenant Michael Lopes of the Cohasset Police Department to search Ana's townhouse. What they found was a home frozen in time. The garage level contained boxes, rolled-up carpets, a wet vac, an exercise room with a treadmill. The main floor had a neat and tidy kitchen with food still in the refrigerator, a living area with furniture in place. The bedroom floor had a made bed with female clothing laid out on it, a closet full of clothes and shoes and handbags, a bathroom with personal items like hair products and toothbrushes. The third floor had three smaller bedrooms set up for children, all neat, all with toys and kids' furniture. Everything suggested a woman who expected to come back.
Peter Capazolei took the stand next, the landlord who rented 516 Chief Justice Cushing Highway to the Walshe family. He owned the property and ran Cohasset Imports, a used car dealership next door. The lease was in Diana Walshe's name, Brian's mother, and she paid the first six months upfront at a discounted rate of $4,800 per month before the rent increased to $5,000. Capazolei saw Brian every month when he came to drop off the rent check and maybe five or six other times during the lease. He saw Ana maybe three or four times total, usually with the three boys.
The defense used Capazolei to establish several important points. The basement of the house was unfinished, with no heat except what came from the boiler, a cement floor, no washer or dryer, and a walkthrough door to the outside. This matters because the prosecution's theory involves Brian dismembering Ana in the basement. The defense wanted the jury to know that the basement was cold, bare, and accessible from outside, suggesting other explanations for any evidence found there. The Walshes, Capazolei testified, were planning to relocate to Washington permanently. They had initially wanted a short three-month lease extension because the move was imminent. This was a family in transition, not a husband plotting to stay in Massachusetts forever after eliminating his wife.
The testimony that followed lunch was perhaps the most significant of the day. Mark Selvagi, a life insurance agent with New York Life, took the stand to discuss the policies he sold to the Walshe family. Selvagi had been in the business for over ten years, working out of an office in Rockland with a colleague named Nancy McLoon who handled applications and underwriting. Brian Walshe had come to him as a lead in July 2021, a local resident looking for life insurance coverage.
There was just one problem. Brian could not get approved. He had a pending federal case, the art fraud charges that would eventually result in a criminal conviction. Insurance companies do not like pending felony cases. Selvagi applied to multiple carriers on Brian's behalf, even reached out to colleagues for advice on how to get coverage for someone in his situation. Nothing worked. Brian Walshe was uninsurable as long as those charges were hanging over him.
So they pivoted to Ana. At some point during the process of trying to insure Brian, the conversation shifted. Selvagi could not remember exactly whose idea it was, but he acknowledged it was probably his recommendation. If the husband cannot get coverage, insure the wife. That is standard practice in the industry. Families need protection, and if one spouse is uninsurable, you cover the other one.
Ana qualified without any problems. She was healthy, had no pending legal issues, passed all the underwriting requirements. Selvagi sold her two policies: a twenty-year term life insurance policy for one million dollars, and a whole life policy for $250,000. Both policies listed Brian Walshe as the sole beneficiary. If Ana died, Brian would receive $1.25 million.
The defense handled this testimony carefully. On cross-examination, attorney Tracy Miner walked Selvagi through the broader context. Life insurance, she established, is something families purchase together. It is an investment in the family's security, not a motive for murder. Selvagi confirmed that he also sold whole life policies on the three Walshe children, with Ana as the beneficiary of those. This was a family that was financially planning for the future, protecting themselves against unexpected tragedy. That is responsible parenting, not evidence of homicidal intent.
And then came the question that mattered most. Had Brian Walshe ever contacted Selvagi to ask about collecting on Ana's policies? Ever called or emailed to ask how the payout process worked? Ever inquired about taking out loans against the whole life policy? No, Selvagi said. Not once. If Brian Walshe killed his wife for the insurance money, he never took a single step to collect it. That does not prove innocence, but it does complicate the prosecution's motive theory. A man who murders for money usually tries to get the money.
The final witness of the day was Davis Gould, a forensic scientist with the Massachusetts State Police Crime Laboratory. Gould works in both the criminalistics unit, which analyzes evidence in the lab, and the crime scene response unit, which collects evidence from physical locations. He has a bachelor's degree in forensic and investigative science from West Virginia University with a minor in biology and has been with the crime lab for over ten years, passing every proficiency and competency test required to do his job.
Gould's testimony covered two separate evidence collection efforts. The first was the examination of the Walshe family's Volvo, which was brought to the Cohasset Police Department garage on January 9, 2023. The exterior of the vehicle was very clean. Gould noted an apparent hair on the front passenger exterior door handle, which he collected. Inside, he found two child safety seats, one in the second row and one in the third row, a detail that reminds the jury that three young children rode in this vehicle, children who are now without their mother.
The interior showed some staining. There were red-brown stains on the front driver side visor and brown stains on the front passenger side visor. There were also examination-style gloves scattered throughout the vehicle: two on the passenger floor, two more in a Ziploc bag in the passenger door pocket, and sixteen additional gloves in the center console. Twenty gloves total. The prosecution did not explicitly say why this matters, but the implication is clear: someone was taking precautions against leaving evidence in this car.
Gould performed blood screening tests throughout the vehicle, swabbing approximately forty to fifty different areas including the steering wheel, door controls, floor mats, brake pedals, and numerous other contact points. The test he used is preliminary, not confirmatory. A positive result indicates that blood might be present; additional testing is needed to confirm. Some substances other than blood, like cauliflower and certain beans, can also trigger a positive reaction.
Of all the areas Gould tested, five came back positive for potential blood. The front driver side seat controls. An area on the second row passenger floor mat. The back of the folded-down third row passenger seat. And two areas on the mat covering the trunk storage space. These were all locations where no visible staining was observed. The blood, if it was blood, was not visible to the naked eye. It took chemical testing to find it.
After approximately four hours examining the Volvo, Gould was called to 300 Forest Street in Peabody, the Republic Trash Services facility where the dumpster and compactor from Swampscott had been transported. He arrived around 8:15 p.m. to find a scene that was chaotic by design: mounds of garbage, with a specific section separated out for examination. Other officers had already begun emptying bags and sorting through the contents. Gould's job was to identify items relevant for forensic analysis and ensure they were properly documented and collected.
What they found in those bags will stay with the jurors. Bag one contained a pair of green boots, a black jacket with red-brown stains, a bracelet in the pocket, a black purse with red-brown stains, a black wallet, headphones in a case, a pair of socks, and Volkswagen keys. Ana Walshe's belongings. Her purse, her wallet, her keys, tossed in the trash like garbage.
Bag two held two white towels with red-brown stains and a piece of tape with gauze inside it, the gauze also stained red-brown. Bag three contained a white bathrobe with red-brown stains. Bag four held a pair of gray slippers with red-brown stains, a second pair of dark gray slippers with stains and what Gould called trace material, meaning apparent hairs or fibers visible on the surface, a leather strap wristwatch, a sponge with a wipe stuffed into it, and loose apparent hairs with red-brown stains that were not attached to any other item.
Bag five contained pieces of rug with red-brown staining. Bag six held more rug pieces, a white Tyvek protective suit, a wrapper for the suit, and safety goggles. Gould explained that a Tyvek suit is personal protective equipment worn to protect the wearer from whatever they are working with. He himself has worn them during training exercises involving biological fluids. The implication was unmistakable: someone wore a protective suit while doing something that produced biological evidence.
Bag seven contained hydrogen peroxide, an ice pack, and a blue flat sheet. Bag eight contained tools: a hammer, wire snips, a hatchet, and a hacksaw with red-brown stains on its blade. The jury saw photographs of these items laid out on the warehouse floor: the hammer, the cutting tools, the hacksaw that someone may have used to dismember a human body. Bag ten contained a large tarp made of multiple pieces taped together and protective booties worn over shoes.
Gould catalogued everything meticulously. Each item received a LIMS number, an identifier in the Laboratory Information Management System that tracks evidence through the chain of custody. The swabs from the Volvo, the jacket, the purse, the boots, the towels, the bathrobe, the slippers, the rugs, the Tyvek suit, the hacksaw, all of it entered into the system for further analysis. The prosecution was building a physical record of what they believe is the aftermath of murder.
But the defense was not finished. On cross-examination, attorney Tracy Miner focused on a concept that every juror needs to understand: Locard's Exchange Principle. This is a foundational principle of forensic science that states when two objects come into contact, there is always a transfer of material between them. A hair on a slipper might have come from the person wearing the slipper, or it might have transferred from another item in the same bag. A red-brown stain on a towel might have been there originally, or it might have spread from a stained jacket that was touching it.
Miner asked Gould directly: could he tell the jury how the red-brown stains got on any of these items? No, Gould admitted. He could confirm the presence of stains. He could not determine the manner of deposition. He could not say whether a stain was on an item when it was first placed in a bag or whether it transferred later. He could not account for what happened to these items before he arrived, when they were in a compactor, then a dumpster, then dumped on a warehouse floor that appeared damp in the photographs.
This is not a minor point. The prosecution's physical evidence depends on the jury believing that the stains found on these items are Ana Walshe's blood and that they got there because Brian Walshe killed and dismembered her. But if the evidence was contaminated, if stains transferred between items, if the warehouse floor added unknown substances to materials that were laid directly on it, then the chain of inference breaks down. You cannot prove murder with evidence that might be compromised.
Gould was honest about the limitations of his analysis. He could not say what was on the warehouse floor before he arrived. He could not rule out contamination from the compactor or dumpster. He acknowledged that items were placed directly on the floor before being moved to bench paper for proper preservation. He confirmed that biological evidence can transfer from one item to another simply through contact. The defense did not need to prove contamination happened. They only needed to establish that it could have happened, and Gould admitted that it could.
Day 3 was a pivot point in this trial. For two days, the jury absorbed digital evidence, the disturbing Google searches that paint a picture of premeditation. Today, they saw the physical aftermath, the boots and the bathrobe and the hacksaw, and they heard testimony that began to contextualize what all of this might mean. The prosecution's theory is straightforward: Brian Walshe murdered his wife, dismembered her body, and disposed of the evidence in trash bags that were eventually recovered from a recycling facility. The life insurance policies establish motive. The Google searches establish planning. The physical evidence establishes execution.
But the jury also saw something else: the systematic way that prosecutors build a murder case. Twelve witnesses took the stand today. Some testified for only minutes. William Foley from Customs and Border Protection was on and off the stand in under ten minutes, establishing a single fact: Ana Walshe did not leave the country after December 7, 2022. Seth Fox from Lyft and Alyssa Wimmer from Uber each testified briefly, establishing that Ana did not use rideshare services after December 30. Michael Kenyon from Swampscott Police testified just long enough to explain how evidence was transported from one location to another. These witnesses are the bricks in a wall. Individually, none of them proves murder. Together, they eliminate alternative explanations. Ana did not flee the country. She did not take an Uber to the airport. She did not catch a flight to Washington. Every avenue of escape the defense might suggest, the prosecution is closing off.
This is how circumstantial cases work. You build an inference by eliminating alternatives. If Ana had taken an Uber on January 1, Brian's story would be plausible. She did not. If Ana had boarded her January 3 flight, she might be alive somewhere. She did not. If Ana had used her passport to leave the country, there would be hope. She did not. Each negative finding, each absence of evidence that Ana did what a living person would do, adds to the weight of the prosecution's case. The jury is learning to read silence as evidence. The silence of Ana's phone after January 2. The silence of her Uber and Lyft accounts. The silence of her seat on five different flights she never boarded.
But the defense is building something too. They showed that the divorce searches happened alongside searches for diamond rings and sports cars, suggesting a man whose marriage was complicated but not necessarily homicidal. They established that Brian never tried to collect on the insurance policies, undercutting the financial motive. They got the forensic scientist to admit he cannot determine how stains got on the evidence, opening the door to contamination arguments. They planted the seeds of reasonable doubt without presenting their own case.
The tactical story of this day was about foundation-laying. The prosecution needed to establish the chain of custody for the physical evidence, to put witnesses on the stand who could authenticate the documents and items they plan to rely on throughout the trial. Customs records showing Ana never left the country. Flight records showing she never boarded a plane. Rideshare records showing she never called an Uber. Police officers describing what they found when they searched. The insurance agent explaining the policies. The forensic scientist cataloguing the evidence. None of this is dramatic on its own. All of it is necessary to prove the case.
Consider the testimony of Officer Gregory Lowrance from the Cohasset Police Department. He was the first law enforcement officer to interact with Brian Walshe after Ana's disappearance. He arrived at 516 Chief Justice Cushing Highway at 11:44 a.m. on January 4, 2023, four days after Ana was allegedly killed, and found a calm, cooperative husband who wanted to file a missing person report. Brian met him at the side door. Brian provided detailed information about Ana: her phone number, her date of birth, her physical appearance, the address of their D.C. townhouse, the airline she typically flew. He said she had left between 6:00 and 7:00 a.m. on January 1 to catch a flight to Washington. He said she usually took an Uber or Lyft.
Lowrance's testimony establishes two things the prosecution needs. First, it shows what Brian told police in the immediate aftermath of the disappearance. His story was that Ana left for the airport early on New Year's morning. That story is contradicted by the rideshare records, the flight records, and the cell phone data that shows Ana's phone stopped pinging near the Cohasset house around 3:00 a.m. on January 2. Second, it shows Brian's demeanor: calm and collected. The prosecution can use this to suggest that Brian was performing the role of worried husband, that his composure was the composure of a man who knew exactly where his wife was because he had put her there.
The defense can use the same testimony differently. A calm demeanor is not evidence of guilt. Some people respond to crisis with visible panic; others respond with outward calm even while internally devastated. Brian provided extensive information to police, cooperated fully, gave them names and phone numbers and addresses. That is not the behavior of someone hiding a murder. The defense will argue that Brian's cooperation shows innocence, that a guilty man would have been evasive, would have given police as little information as possible, would not have volunteered details about his pending federal case and home confinement restrictions.
The defense played small ball, scoring points where they could. They did not try to explain away the Google searches or the physical evidence. Instead, they complicated the narrative. They showed that the digital evidence is more ambiguous than the prosecution suggests. They demonstrated that the physical evidence has chain-of-custody issues that a careful jury should consider. They reminded everyone that having life insurance does not make you a murderer and that not collecting on that insurance suggests you might not have killed for money.
The witnesses themselves ranged from bureaucratic functionaries to emotional touchpoints. William Foley from Customs, Thomas Manino from JetBlue, Seth Fox from Lyft, Alyssa Wimmer from Uber: these were records custodians, people whose job is to maintain databases and respond to subpoenas. Their testimony was technical and brief. They established facts without interpretation. Ana traveled internationally in late 2022. She had flight reservations through January. She had rideshare accounts. None of those flights were taken, none of those rides were requested, after December 30.
Sergeant Amy Waterman's description of Ana's Washington townhouse was quietly devastating. A neat home with food in the refrigerator and clothes laid out on the bed. A closet full of shoes and handbags. Children's bedrooms with toys and furniture. This was not a woman who planned to disappear. This was a woman who expected to come home. Every detail Waterman provided, the toothbrush in the bathroom, the personal items throughout the house, painted a picture of a life interrupted. Ana Walshe did not pack up and leave. She vanished.
Mark Selvagi's testimony about life insurance was a double-edged sword for the prosecution. Yes, Brian stood to collect $1.25 million if Ana died. That sounds like motive. But Selvagi also explained that insurance is a family investment, that the children had policies too, that Brian never tried to collect. The prosecution wanted the jury to hear the dollar amount and think about greed. The defense wanted them to hear about responsible financial planning and a man who never pursued the money. Both interpretations are available. The jury will have to decide which one makes more sense.
Davis Gould's testimony was the centerpiece of the afternoon, and it cut both ways. The prosecution used him to walk the jury through the evidence collection, to put photographs of Ana's belongings on the screen, to show the hacksaw and the Tyvek suit and the stained towels. This is what the state believes happened: a man bought protective gear and tools, killed his wife, dismembered her body, cleaned up the scene, and disposed of everything in trash bags. The evidence supports that theory. But Gould also admitted, under cross-examination, that he cannot tell the jury how stains got on the evidence. He can only confirm their presence. That admission will be part of the defense's closing argument. If the forensic scientist cannot explain how the blood got there, how can the jury be sure it got there the way the prosecution claims?
The legal issues at play on Day 3 are more subtle than the dramatic confrontations that sometimes dominate murder trials. This was a day about evidence: how it is collected, how it is preserved, what it can prove and what it cannot. These technical questions matter enormously in a case built on circumstantial evidence, where the prosecution cannot point to an eyewitness or a confession but must instead ask the jury to draw inferences from what was found.
The burden of proof in a criminal case is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. That is the highest standard in American law, and it means exactly what it says. Not proof beyond all doubt, not absolute certainty, but proof that leaves no reasonable doubt in a juror's mind. The prosecution has to meet that standard for every element of the charge. They have to prove Ana is dead, that Brian killed her, that he did so with premeditation. If the jury has reasonable doubt about any of those elements, the verdict must be not guilty.
This standard exists for a reason. My father spent his career explaining that reason to people who had been accused of crimes, people facing the full weight of the government's power. The presumption of innocence is not a technicality. It is a recognition that the state, with all its resources and authority, should bear the burden of proving its case before taking someone's liberty. The alternative, requiring defendants to prove their innocence, would flip the scales of justice in favor of the powerful. Anyone the government wanted to punish could be punished simply by making accusations they could not disprove.
In a case like this one, where the defendant is accused of a horrific crime, where photographs of bloody towels and hacksaws are being shown to the jury, the presumption of innocence is tested. It is easy to presume innocence when the charges are minor and the evidence ambiguous. It is harder when you are looking at images of a woman's boots in a trash bag and being told her husband put them there after dismembering her body. But the standard does not change based on the severity of the accusation. Brian Walshe is entitled to the same presumption as someone charged with shoplifting. The prosecution must prove its case. The jury must evaluate the evidence without letting the horror of the allegations substitute for proof.
What creates reasonable doubt in this case? The defense has several arguments available. First, there is no body. Ana Walshe has never been found. The prosecution will argue that the circumstantial evidence proves she is dead, that the Google searches about decomposition and the disposal of remains, combined with the biological evidence found in trash bags, establishes that she was killed. But without a body, there is always the theoretical possibility that she is alive somewhere. The defense does not have to prove she is alive. They only have to raise enough doubt about her death to make the jury pause.
Massachusetts, like most jurisdictions, allows murder convictions without a body. The legal term is "corpus delicti," the body of the crime, but this phrase refers to the elements of the offense, not literally to a corpse. The prosecution can prove murder through circumstantial evidence: blood evidence, DNA, testimony about threats, the victim's disappearance, and other factors that together establish both death and foul play. It has been done many times. But no-body cases are harder to prove, and they give defense attorneys room to argue that the most fundamental fact, the victim's death, has not been established beyond reasonable doubt.
Second, there is the contamination issue that emerged from Gould's cross-examination. The physical evidence went through multiple transfers before it reached the crime lab: from original location to trash bags, from bags to compactor, from compactor to dumpster, from dumpster to transport vehicle, from vehicle to warehouse floor, from floor to bench paper. At each stage, there was opportunity for contamination and transfer. Locard's Exchange Principle tells us that contact between objects results in material exchange. If the jury believes the evidence might have been contaminated, they might not trust what it appears to show.
Third, there is the gap between evidence and intent. Even if the jury believes Ana is dead, even if they believe Brian disposed of her remains, they still have to conclude that he killed her. The defense has already signaled their strategy in opening statements: they concede the disposal but deny the murder. Their theory is that Ana died of some unexplained cause, and Brian panicked and covered it up. This is legally distinct from murder. Improper handling of a body is a crime, but it is not first-degree murder. If the jury believes Ana might have died naturally or accidentally, they cannot convict Brian of killing her.
This defense strategy is unusual, and it requires the jury to hold two seemingly contradictory ideas simultaneously. Brian Walshe is not guilty of murder. Brian Walshe did dispose of his wife's body. Both things can be legally true. A man who finds his wife dead and panics, who makes terrible decisions in the aftermath, who researches disposal methods and buys supplies and puts remains in trash bags, that man has committed crimes. Misleading investigators. Improper conveyance of human remains. But he has not committed murder unless he actually killed her. The defense is asking the jury to separate the disposal from the death, to recognize that one can happen without the other.
Can this strategy work? It depends on what the prosecution can prove about the cause of death. If they can show evidence of violence, signs of struggle, wounds inconsistent with natural death, the sudden-unexplained-death theory falls apart. If they cannot, if the only evidence is the disposal itself, then the defense has an argument. People do strange things in crisis. People who find loved ones dead sometimes panic and make irrational decisions. The defense does not have to prove what happened; they only have to create doubt about whether Brian caused Ana's death versus responded to it.
The Google searches are the prosecution's strongest evidence of intent. Starting at 4:52 a.m. on January 1, someone searched for information about body disposal, decomposition, and dismemberment. That timing suggests the searches were made after Ana died and were part of a plan to conceal her death. But the defense complicated this narrative by showing that similar searches, or at least searches on related topics like divorce, occurred days earlier alongside mundane searches for jewelry and cars. The prosecution will argue the January 1 searches are different in kind, that researching divorce is not the same as researching how to dismember a body. The defense will argue the pattern of searches shows a troubled man, not a murderer.
There is a logical problem with the defense's theory that they will eventually have to address. If Brian found Ana already dead and panicked, why did he search for disposal information before calling anyone for help? The searches began at 4:52 a.m. If Ana died of natural causes, the normal response would be to call 911, to try CPR, to summon an ambulance. Instead, someone, presumably Brian, went straight to Google and asked how long it takes for a body to start smelling. That sequence suggests foreknowledge or involvement. The prosecution will hammer this point. The defense will have to explain why an innocent man's first response to finding his wife dead was to research body disposal.
Life insurance is a classic motive in murder cases, and $1.25 million is a substantial sum. But motive is not an element of the crime. The prosecution does not have to prove why Brian killed Ana, only that he did. They introduce the insurance evidence to help the jury understand what might have driven him, to give them a theory of the case that makes emotional sense. The defense counters by pointing out that Brian never collected the money, never even asked about collecting it. A man who kills for insurance usually wants the insurance. Brian's failure to pursue the payout suggests the money was not his motivation.
But there is another way to look at the insurance testimony. Mark Selvagi explained that Brian Walshe could not get life insurance himself because of his pending federal case. He was uninsurable. So they pivoted to Ana, insuring her for over a million dollars instead. This creates an asymmetry that the prosecution will emphasize. Brian had everything to gain from Ana's death and nothing to lose if something happened to him. Ana, by contrast, could not collect anything if Brian died because there was no policy on his life. The insurance protected the family only if Ana died. That asymmetry, combined with Brian's pending prison sentence, creates a picture the prosecution wants the jury to see: a man who stood to benefit financially from his wife's death at exactly the moment when he was about to lose his freedom.
My father used to say that trials are won on cross-examination. You do not win by asking questions you do not know the answers to. You win by getting witnesses to admit things that help your case, things they have to admit because they are true. Tracy Miner did that with Davis Gould. She got him to admit he cannot determine how stains got on the evidence. She got him to acknowledge contamination was possible. She planted doubt without overreaching. That is skilled advocacy.
But the prosecution has advantages too. They have volume. They have photographs of Ana's belongings in trash bags, images that will stick in jurors' minds. They have the hacksaw with red-brown stains, the Tyvek suit, the safety goggles. They have a story that makes sense: husband kills wife, buys supplies to clean up, disposes of body, researches how to avoid detection. The defense has to complicate that story enough to create doubt. Three days into the trial, it is too early to say whether they have succeeded.
This case continues the narrative arc established in the first two days. Day 1 gave us opening statements and the beginning of the digital evidence. Day 2 gave us the recorded police interviews and the full timeline of Google searches. Day 3 brought us into the physical world: the car, the trash facility, the items that were found. We are moving from what Brian allegedly thought about and planned to what he allegedly did.
The prosecution is building methodically. They started with the most damaging digital evidence, the searches that read like a murder manual, and are now layering in the physical evidence that allegedly shows the plan was executed. The defense is fighting on every front, challenging the interpretation of the searches, questioning the chain of custody for the physical evidence, and consistently reminding the jury that their client is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
What we have seen so far is a prosecution case that relies on inference. There is no smoking gun. There is no confession. There is no eyewitness who saw Brian harm Ana. Instead, there is a web of evidence that, according to the prosecution, can only be explained one way: Brian Walshe killed his wife. The searches show he planned it. The purchases show he prepared for it. The items in the trash bags show he executed it. The insurance policies show why he did it. Each strand of the web is circumstantial, but together they form a pattern the prosecution argues is unmistakable.
The defense's job is to show the jury that other patterns are possible. The searches could reflect a troubled mind, not a murderous one. The disposal could have happened after a death Brian did not cause. The insurance policies could reflect responsible family planning, not a motive for murder. Each strand of the prosecution's web has an alternative explanation. If enough of those alternatives seem reasonable, the web unravels.
If you are following this trial as a member of the public, Day 3 gave you the first look at what was actually found. The boots, the purse, the bathrobe, the hacksaw. These items will be central to the prosecution's case. They will argue that Ana's belongings ended up in trash bags because Brian put them there after killing her. They will argue the hacksaw was used to dismember her body. They will ask the jury to look at the photographs and conclude that only a murderer would dispose of his wife's possessions this way.
But what does it mean to see a woman's boots in a trash bag? It means she is gone. It means someone threw her things away like garbage. It means her life, her identity, her possessions have been reduced to evidence in a criminal trial. Whether Brian killed Ana or found her dead, whether he is guilty of murder or guilty of something lesser, the boots are still in the trash. The bathrobe is still stained. The hacksaw still has red-brown residue on its blade. The horror of what happened to Ana exists independent of who is responsible. The jury's job is to determine responsibility. But first they have to sit with the horror.
If you are the victim's family, Day 3 was brutal. Seeing Ana's boots in a trash bag, her purse and wallet and keys mixed in with bloody towels, the tools that may have been used on her body: this is the nightmare that families of homicide victims live through in courtrooms. They have to sit and watch while the worst moments of their loved one's death are displayed for strangers to examine. Ana's family, if they were present, would have seen her life reduced to evidence tags and LIMS numbers. This is the human cost of justice.
Ana had family in Serbia. She had a mother, a sister, friends who loved her. She had three children who will grow up without her, who are old enough now to understand that something terrible happened to their mother, who will someday read about this trial and see the photographs that were shown to the jury. Whatever verdict emerges from this courtroom, those children will have to live with what happened. They lost their mother, and they may be losing their father too, depending on what the jury decides.
If you are the defendant, Day 3 was another day of sitting silently while the state presents its case against you. Brian Walshe cannot testify until the defense puts on its case, if they choose to put on a case at all. He cannot object to evidence or challenge witnesses. He can only sit and watch while his fate is decided by twelve people who do not know him, who have seen photographs of his wife's belongings in garbage bags, who have heard about the searches on his computer and the life insurance policies in his name. The presumption of innocence is supposed to protect him, but that presumption gets harder to maintain with every new piece of evidence the prosecution presents.
The trial will continue tomorrow with additional witnesses. The prosecution has more evidence to present: DNA analysis, expert testimony, perhaps more law enforcement witnesses. The defense will continue to cross-examine, looking for inconsistencies and weaknesses. At some point, the prosecution will rest, and the defense will have to decide whether to present witnesses of their own or rely on the reasonable doubt they have already created. These are the calculations that happen in every murder trial, the strategic decisions that can determine whether a defendant goes free or spends the rest of his life in prison.
As this trial continues, several key issues will emerge. The DNA analysis of the biological evidence will be critical. Red-brown stains that test positive for blood screening are not the same as confirmed human blood, and confirmed human blood is not the same as Ana Walshe's blood. The prosecution will need to present DNA evidence linking the stains to Ana. If they cannot, the physical evidence loses much of its power. If they can, the defense's contamination arguments become harder to sustain.
Davis Gould testified about collecting samples and submitting them to the crime lab. Those samples, the swabs from the Volvo, the cuttings from the stained rugs, the hair and trace material from the slippers, will be the subject of future testimony. Expect a DNA expert to take the stand and explain whether the biological material found in those trash bags matches Ana Walshe's genetic profile. If it does, the prosecution has powerful evidence that Ana's remains were in those bags. If it does not, or if the results are inconclusive, the defense has more room to maneuver.
Watch for how the prosecution handles the "sudden unexplained death" theory that the defense has previewed. This is the argument that Ana died of natural or accidental causes and Brian panicked and covered it up. To counter this, the prosecution will need to show evidence of violence, something that indicates Ana was killed rather than found dead. The medical examiner's testimony, if there is one despite the absence of a body, will be important. Expert testimony about the Google searches, explaining why someone would research dismemberment before rather than after finding a body, may also be part of the prosecution's response.
The timing of the searches remains a central issue. The defense has shown that some searches occurred days before Ana disappeared. But the prosecution has the 4:52 a.m. searches from January 1, the ones that began with "how long before a body starts to smell." Those searches are hard to explain away. The defense will have to address them, either by suggesting someone else made them, which the digital forensics testimony makes difficult, or by arguing that they reflect panic after finding Ana dead rather than planning before killing her. Neither explanation is fully satisfying, which is why the prosecution keeps returning to those early morning searches.
Watch for the defense to continue attacking the chain of custody. Every piece of physical evidence has a history, a journey from where it was found to the courtroom. If the defense can show that journey was compromised, they create doubt about what the evidence means. Davis Gould's admissions about contamination were a start. If other witnesses make similar admissions, the defense will weave them into a narrative about unreliable evidence.
The chain of custody issue is more serious than it might appear. The evidence in this case went through a trash compactor, which crushes and compresses material. It sat in a dumpster alongside other garbage. It was transported on a flatbed truck to a recycling facility. It was dumped on a warehouse floor that appeared damp in the photographs. It was handled by multiple people before forensic scientists arrived. Each stage of that journey creates opportunities for contamination, for transfer, for the kind of problems that defense attorneys love to highlight. Gould admitted he cannot say how the stains got on the items. Other witnesses may make similar admissions. If the jury believes the evidence might have been compromised, they might discount what it appears to show.
Watch for the prosecution to return to the insurance money. They introduced it today through Mark Selvagi, but they may revisit it with other witnesses. The $1.25 million is a significant sum, and the prosecution wants the jury to see it as motive. They may present evidence about the Walshe family's financial situation, about Brian's pending federal case and the prospect of prison time, about pressures that might have pushed him toward murder. The defense will counter that Brian never tried to collect, but the prosecution can argue that his arrest prevented him from doing so.
The federal case looms over everything. Brian Walshe was facing sentencing for art fraud, a conviction that could send him to federal prison for years. Prosecutors had recommended 30 to 37 months. His wife was the family's primary breadwinner, the one with the career that supported their lifestyle. If Brian went to prison, what would happen to the family? What would happen to the children? The prosecution may argue that Brian saw murder as a solution to his problems: eliminate Ana, collect the insurance, somehow escape the consequences of his federal case. The defense will argue that killing Ana made everything worse, that it ensured Brian would go to prison for far longer than any art fraud sentence, that no rational person would commit murder to avoid a federal case and then make it so easy for police to find the evidence.
Watch for the human moments that break through the technical testimony. Ana's boots in a trash bag. The children's car seats in the Volvo. The D.C. townhouse with beds made and clothes in the closet. These details remind the jury that this case is about a real person, a mother and wife who had a life before she disappeared. The prosecution will use these moments to build empathy for Ana and anger toward the defendant. The defense cannot prevent the jury from feeling these emotions; they can only try to redirect them toward reasonable doubt.
Three days into this trial, the prosecution has laid out much of its case. The Google searches. The police interviews. The flight records and rideshare records. The physical evidence from the trash facility. The life insurance policies. Brian Walshe's own words, recorded by police, in which he professed love for his missing wife even as investigators were finding her belongings in garbage bags.
If you were on this jury, what would you be thinking? The evidence is circumstantial, but it is substantial. There is no body, no eyewitness, no confession. But there are searches about dismemberment made hours after Ana was last seen alive. There is a hacksaw with red-brown stains. There are $1.25 million worth of reasons for a man facing federal prison to want his wife dead.
Think about what you have seen so far. The digital forensics expert who confirmed that all the searches came from one device, Brian's MacBook. The customs records showing Ana never left the country. The flight records showing five consecutive no-shows. The rideshare records showing no trips to the airport. The neat townhouse in Washington where a woman expected to return. The boots and the purse and the hacksaw in trash bags at a recycling facility. The Tyvek suit and the safety goggles. The life insurance policies with Brian as the sole beneficiary.
Now think about what the defense has established. The searches about divorce happened alongside searches for diamond rings and sports cars. The forensic scientist cannot determine how the stains got on the evidence. Brian never tried to collect the insurance money. The defense concedes the disposal but denies the murder, asking the jury to believe Ana died of unexplained causes and Brian panicked.
Here are the questions I want you to consider:
First: Do the Google searches prove intent to kill, or could they have another explanation? The defense showed that divorce and diamond ring searches happened around the same time. Does that change how you view the dismemberment searches, or are those searches so specific that no context can explain them away?
Second: Does the contamination issue create reasonable doubt? Davis Gould admitted he cannot determine how stains got on the evidence. Does that matter to you, or is the overall pattern of evidence convincing enough that you would overlook potential contamination?
Third: What do you make of the life insurance? A million and a quarter dollars is a lot of money. But Brian never tried to collect it. Does the amount suggest motive, or does his failure to pursue it suggest he did not kill for money?
Fourth: Can you accept the defense's theory? They say Ana died of unexplained causes and Brian covered it up. Is that a reasonable explanation for what happened, or does the timing and nature of the Google searches make it implausible?
Fifth: How much does the absence of a body matter to you? Murder can be proven without remains, but does the lack of Ana's body make you more hesitant to convict? If her remains were found, would your assessment change?
These are the questions the jury will ultimately have to answer. Not whether Brian Walshe seems guilty, not whether the evidence points in a suspicious direction, but whether the prosecution has proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt. That is the standard. That is what separates a murder conviction from a not guilty verdict. As you watch this trial unfold, keep that standard in mind. It is the only thing standing between an accusation and a conviction.
We will be here tomorrow for Day 4 of Commonwealth v. Brian Walshe. The prosecution continues to build its case. The defense continues to chip away. And somewhere in that courtroom, twelve jurors are trying to decide whether the man sitting at the defense table killed his wife and disposed of her body, or whether there is another explanation that the evidence allows.
Justice is a process. We are watching every step.