Husband Of Missing Massachusetts Woman Charged With Murder

Ana Walshe, a 39-year-old real estate executive and mother of three from suburban Boston, has been reported missing since the early hours of New Year's Day. Her husband, Brian R. Walshe, has been charged with her murder after police obtained an arrest warrant. He is currently in jail for misleading investigators and attempting to cover up or dispose of evidence.

District attorney Michael W. Morrissey said more evidence supporting the murder charge will be disclosed at Brian Walshe's arraignment on Wednesday. The lawyer for Brian Walshe, Tracy A. Miner, has refused to comment on the charges and is focusing on defending her client in court. “Her focus is on defending Mr. Walshe in court,” the assistant wrote in an email.

Scrutiny soon focused on Mr. Walshe, 47, the son of a wealthy family who pleaded guilty in 2021 to charges that he had sold fake Andy Warhol paintings to a California art dealer

According to prosecutors, Brian Walshe initially told police that his wife, Ana Walshe, had left for a work emergency early on New Year's Day via an Uber or Lyft ride. However, it was discovered that her cellphone had pinged in the vicinity of her house on January 1st and 2nd after Brian Walshe claimed she had left. Furthermore, when the police searched their house, they found blood in the basement, as well as a bloody knife, part of which was damaged, according to prosecutor Lynn Beland.

Mr. Walshe was seen on surveillance video on Jan. 2 buying $450 in cleaning supplies — including mops, a bucket, tarps, drop cloths, and tape — from a Home Depot, Ms. Beland said. He had told the police that the only time he had left home that day was to buy ice cream for his son, she said. The media has been closely following the investigation of Ana Walshe's disappearance, releasing new developments to the public such as the search of a local trash transfer station and Brian Walshe's internet search history. This has led to criticism of the excessive coverage given to cases involving missing white women, a phenomenon referred to as "missing white woman syndrome" by Gwen Ifill, a PBS anchor, and trailblazer as a Black woman in the Washington press corps, nearly two decades ago.

Ms. Walshe, who worked in the Washington office of a real estate investment firm, was last seen at her home in Massachusetts on New Year’s Day but wasn’t reported missing until three days later, the police said.Credit...Cohasset, Mass., police

Some drew comparisons to the case of Gabrielle Petito, who disappeared on a cross-country van trip in late 2021. Her body was eventually found in a national park in Wyoming, and the chief suspect, Brian Laundrie, her fiancé, took his own life while he was a fugitive in Florida.

In The Boston Globe, which has covered the Walshe case extensively, the columnist Joan Vennochi wrote that it “illustrates yet again — if you are young, white, and pretty, and live in a place where horrific crime is not supposed to take place, you are very newsworthy.”

“Yet would we be just as fascinated if this couple were Black and lived in Roxbury?” Ms. Vennochi added, referring to a Boston neighborhood with a large Black population.

She noted that Cohasset is a town of about 8,400 people that is 94 percent white, with median home values and household income in the 6 figures, with a low crime rate and no murders in the last decade.

In his newsletter, CNN reporter Oliver Darcy discussed the connection between race and the media's coverage of the Ana Walshe case. He quoted Martin G. Reynolds, co-executive director of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, who said "Journalists are making value judgments and articulating through coverage who is important and whose life has value. That is very powerful." Additionally, prosecutors have revealed that at the time of Ana Walshe's disappearance, Brian Walshe was under house arrest and awaiting sentencing in a fraud case involving Andy Warhol paintings. He was accused of taking two authentic Warhol paintings from a friend and then selling forgeries for $80,000 to a California art dealer.

 Brian Walshe pleaded guilty in April 2021 to committing wire fraud, transporting goods as part of a scheme to defraud, holding converted goods, and engaging in an unlawful monetary transaction. Prosecutors had recommended that he serve 30 months in prison, stating that he had carried out a prolonged and elaborate fraud over a number of years, and had deceived his victims with his charm and false reassurances. 

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Mr. Walshe’s lawyers asked that he be sentenced to one year of home confinement, writing that he had been “used as a pawn by his parents in their acrimonious marital relationship.”

Quoting Mr. Walshe’s psychiatrist, the lawyers said Mr. Walshe’s childhood left him “neglected, unloved and emotionally damaged.”

Mr. Walshe wrote to the court in September 2021 that he was “extremely sorry for my past conduct.”

“I have created a contract for myself: ‘I am an honest, courageous, loving leader,’” Mr. Walshe wrote. “I repeat this contract to myself on a daily basis. I train every day on 100 percent integrity, 100 percent of the time.”

Source: nytimes, cbs news