Jurors in Brian Walshe’s murder trial saw evidence recovered from a dumpster outside his mother’s house in January 2023, as police were searching for his missing wife Ana, whom he is now accused of killing and dismembering before hiding her remains.
The evidence there included some of Ana’s clothes, her purse and her coronavirus vaccination card. Police also recovered two towels with red brown stains on them, as well as stained tissues and stained hair samples. Other bags held a stained bathrobe, slippers and a chopped-up rug that appeared to be soaked in blood.
Another bag held a Tyvek suit and safety goggles. Yet another had shears, a hacksaw and a hatchet along with a large tarp.
Assistant District Attorney Gregory Connor led Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab technician Davis Gould through the items, one by one, starting with Ana’s COVID vaccination card. A gloved Gould cut open sealed evidence bags and retrieved items which were then entered into evidence. Connor walked each bag across the courtroom, underscoring the large amount of forensic evidence.
During cross-examination, defense attorney Larry Tipton questioned if the items recovered from the trash bags might have come into contact with each other before they were retrieved, potentially transferring biological evidence under Locard’s Exchange Principle. Gould said it’s possible.
Gould was the crime lab tech who responded to the Cohasset Police Department in January 2023 to process Brian Walshe’s Volvo SUV. Gould recounted how blood-screening tests were performed on the interior of the vehicle, of which five tested positive.
Gould also processed evidence retrieved from the dumpster near Walshe’s mom’s house in Swampscott.
Earlier Wednesday saw state police officers, airline records keepers and a Customs agent take the stand.
Massachusetts State Police Trooper Nicholas Guarino returned to kick things off.
Guarino spent hours testifying this week about Walshe’s search history, which included damning queries about disposing of human remains and cleaning DNA off a knife. But he also looked up classified ads for Porsches, sales of diamond jewelry and a pornographic video about a cheating wife.
Ana was allegedly having an affair with a Washington, D.C., realtor named William Fastow, whose name Walshe also searched for.
Prosecutors have alleged two potential motives in the slaying. The first is anger over the affair. The second is because he allegedly believed he would have a better chance of avoiding prison in an unrelated art fraud case if his wife were out of the picture and he was the only caretaker for their three children.
Walshe’s defense has denied that he had any knowledge of the affair.
Next on the stand was a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent named William Foley, who testified briefly about Ana’s air travel in the weeks before she vanished.
Next up was Cohasset Police K-9 Sgt. Patrick Reardon, who was part of the search effort for Ana on Jan. 5. 2023, with his K-9 partner, Einstein. Reardon and Einstein participated in an area search outside the Walshe family home. They found nothing of note, except for a dog in a fenced area of the backyard. The defense declined to cross-examine him.
Thomas Menino, a JetBlue corporate security official and records keeper who works at Boston Logan International Airport, took the stand next. He testified that Ana’s flight from Washington to Boston on Christmas Day 2022 had been refunded. She took another flight on the same route from Dec. 30, 2022. She was listed as “no show” on her return ticket, issued for a flight back to D.C. on Jan. 3, 2023.
She missed four more flights later in January that had all been booked earlier, because she commuted to the nation’s capital for work. Ana was last seen on Jan. 1, 2023.
The defense also declined to cross-examine Menino.
Cohasset Police School Resource Officer Gregory Lowrance testified next that Walshe told him after Ana’s disappearance that when he last saw her on Jan. 1, she had departed for a flight from Boston to Washington.
Lowrance took a missing person report from Walshe regarding Ana on Jan. 4.
