Prosecutors trying a Massachusetts man for the murder and dismemberment of his wife traced his gruesome online trails in court Tuesday through dozens of Internet searches conducted after Ana Walshe’s disappearance three years ago.
The searches, which authorities extracted from Brian Walshe’s laptop, are key evidence in a case without a body. Ana Walshe has never been found.
The searches began shortly before 5 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2023, hours after the couple celebrated the holiday with a friend at their home south of Boston.
According to testimony presented by a state trooper who examined the data, at 4:52 a.m. this term was typed into Google on Brian Walshe’s computer: “better ways to dispose of a body.”
What followed was a three-day litany of inquiries seeking information on bodies and dismemberments, crime scene cleanup and computer disposal.
Brian Walshe, 50, pleaded guilty last month to misleading a police investigation and improperly transporting a body. He is charged with first degree murder.
In his opening statement Monday, Brian Walshe’s attorney said Ana Walshe died a sudden and unexpected death. He described his client’s search for bleak information on the Internet as a frantic and tragic response as he “struggled with the fact that Ana was dead.”
The attorney, Larry Tipton, acknowledged that Brian Walshe lied to authorities about what happened to Ana Walshe (he told police she had disappeared after traveling to Washington, D.C., for a work emergency on the morning of Jan. 1), but said Brian Walshe “never thought about killing Ana.” He said his client concluded that no one would believe his wife was “alive one minute and dead the next.”
Prosecutors maintain that the murder was motivated by money (Brian Walshe was the sole beneficiary of his wife’s $2.7 million life insurance policy) and that he believed she was having an affair.
According to the testimony of Massachusetts State Trooper Nicholas Guarino, most of the Internet searches taken from Brian Walshe’s computer were conducted through Google and Yahoo. Among them:
- 4:55 am January 1: “How long until the body starts to smell bad.”
- 9:35 a.m. January 1: “Can partial human remains be identified?”
- 11:50 am January 1: “Can I use bleach to clean blood stains from my hardwood floors?”
- 12:10 pm January 1: “What does bleach do to make corpses?”
- 1:43 pm January 1: “Can the FBI know when you accessed your phone?”
- 12:27 pm January 2: “How to Saw a Body.”
- 1:12 pm January 2: “Can you identify a body with broken teeth?”
- 1:12 pm January 3: “Can a body decompose in a plastic bag?”
- 7:30 pm January 3: “Can the police get your search history without your computer?”
Two videos on the same topic were seen on YouTube, Guarino said. A web page viewed on Jan. 1 called “6 Ways to Dispose of a Body” came from a website called “murdermurdermurder.com,” Guarino said.
