The Chilling Internet Searches That Helped Convict Brian Walshe of Murdering Wife Ana Walshe

Ana Walshe appeared to have it all: a successful career in real estate, three beautiful children and a doting spouse. But beneath the facade of her perfect life sat a crumbling marriage rocked by her own infidelity and husband Brian Walshe’s mounting legal troubles.

January 1, 2023, would be the last time anyone would ever hear from 39-year-old Ana.

The mom of three, whose work as a real estate executive at Tishman Speyer in Washington, D.C., kept her apart from her family during the week, was reported missing three days later after she failed to show up to her job.

According to prosecutors, Brian, 50, killed his wife at their home in Cohasset, Mass., shortly after ringing in the New Year during a small gathering with a mutual friend. Her affair with D.C. real estate broker William Fastow, who testified about the relationship, and the fact that Brian stood to gain $2.7 million from Ana's life insurance policy drove him to murder, prosecutors alleged during his trial, according to NBC News.

Misleading statements to police, damning internet searches, including “how to stop a body from decomposing” and “dismemberment and best ways to dispose of a body,” coupled with Home Deport and Lowe’s surveillance footage that captured Brian purchasing cleaning products and a Tyvek suit, led to his arrest in January 2023, according to search warrants reviewed by A&E Crime + Investigation.

“I said from Day 1 that this defendant had absolutely no chance at trial,” Tad DiBiase, a former prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., and the author ofNo-Body Homicide Cases: A Practical Guide to Investigating, Prosecuting and Winning Cases When the Victim is Missing, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “If I were designing what not to do in a no body murder case, you would do exactly what he did in terms of these ridiculously extensive and specific internet searches.”

Brian’s motivation to kill was obvious to DiBiase: “She [Ana] was having an affair; he was standing to benefit from insurance money. He purchased all these items that just scream out ‘disposing of a body.’ This was probably the strongest no body murder case that I've ever seen.”

Investigators believe Ana was murdered and her body dismembered and discarded in various dumpsters within the state, but her remains were never found. However, a hatchet and a hacksaw believed to be used in the killing were recovered at a trash transfer station, WCVB-TV reported.

Still, the absence of Ana’s corpse seemingly did not hinder the state’s case.

“It is not a barrier to prosecution. It's something that has to be surmounted,” DiBiase says. “Prosecutors don't bring a weak no body murder case to trial because the defense is so obvious.”

The sudden cessation of Ana’s digital footprint, including communications with loved ones, was key in proving she was dead.

“The way you show a murder, particularly nowadays, is the ability to show that all the electronic communications and all the familial connections that person had completely stopped,” he explains. “They didn’t use their credit card, they didn't use their phone, they didn't post anything on social media. All these things combined lend themselves to juries’ understanding that people don’t just disappear off the face of the earth while alive. It's very hard to hide in today's society.”

During Brian’s two-week murder trial, which commenced on December 1, 2025, Ana’s close friend, Alissa Kirby, testified about Ana’s struggling marriage marred by her husband’s federal fraud conviction in connection with selling fake Andy Warhol paintings, CNN reported. Living apart also added stress to the already deteriorating romance, she said. The ongoing fraud case litigation required him to stay in Massachusetts.

“She really hit a breaking point,” Kirby told the court of a conversation with Ana on December 29, 2022, according to the outlet.

Kirby said Ana had recently told Brian she was falling out of love with him.

“She just really wanted to be with her kids; their marriage had been really strained for a long time. She told me how like upset she was, and how frustrating that was,” Kirby said on the stand.

Following six hours of deliberation, the 12-person jury found Brian guilty of first-degree murder. On December 18, 2025, Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Diane Freniere sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“The seriousness of your acts cannot be overstated. Your acts in dismembering your wife’s body and disposing of her remains in multiple area dumpsters can only be described as barbaric and incomprehensible,” Freniere scolded Walshe during sentencing, according to CNN. “You had no regard for the lifelong mental harm that your criminal acts inflicted on your then 2-, 4- and 6-year-old sons.”

With the trial over, Ana’s friend, Peter Raider, admits there will never fully be a sense of closure. Although Brian subsequently claimed that he got rid of Ana’s body after he found her dead in their bed on New Year’s Day and confessed to misleading the police investigation, he never took responsibility for her murder.

“Who does this to the mother of their children? I still can't wrap my head around it,” Raider tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “If I had a way to get into a time machine and turn back time, I would give anything to do it for her children.”

Raider described his late friend as a “kind, loving soul" and “a mom who cared dearly about her boys, and somebody who was taken from this world way too young.”

“These are three beautiful kids here who now have no mommy, and Daddy's convicted of killing her,” he continues. “My heart breaks for these children. It's unfathomable.”