“Brian Walshe Murder Trial Begins: No-Body Case, Google Searches, and $2.7M Ana Walshe Life Insurance Motive”

The high-profile murder trial of Brian Walshe opened today, December 1, 2025, in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Massachusetts, drawing national attention as prosecutors and defense attorneys delivered starkly different accounts of what happened to his missing wife, Ana Walshe. Ana, a Serbian-born real estate executive and mother of three, was last seen in the early hours of January 1, 2023. Her body has never been found, but Brian Walshe now faces a charge of first-degree murder along with related offenses.

Prosecutors used opening statements to preview a case built around digital forensics and physical evidence. They told jurors that starting on the day Ana disappeared, Walshe allegedly made a series of chilling online searches about dismemberment, disposal of a body, and how long it takes for a body to smell. Surveillance footage, they said, shows a man resembling Walshe disposing of heavy trash bags, and later searches of a trash facility yielded items including a hatchet, hacksaw, a Tyvek suit, cleaning agents, and personal belongings believed to be Ana’s. DNA from both Brian and Ana was reportedly recovered from some of those items.

Investigators and prosecutors also highlighted a possible financial motive. Ana had taken out approximately $2.7 million in life insurance policies naming her husband as the sole beneficiary, a detail the state argues underscores premeditation. At the time of her disappearance, Brian Walshe was under federal scrutiny in an art fraud case involving fake Andy Warhol paintings, for which he was later sentenced to more than three years in prison and ordered to pay substantial restitution.

The defense countered with a dramatically different narrative, telling jurors that Ana suffered a “sudden unexplained death” after the couple went to bed on New Year’s Eve. According to defense attorney Larry Tipton, Walshe panicked when he found her unresponsive and made the incriminating internet searches in shock, believing no one would accept his story. The defense conceded Walshe’s role in moving Ana’s body and misleading police, but insisted that those acts, to which he has already pleaded guilty, do not prove murder.

That earlier plea—admitting to disposing of Ana’s body and lying to investigators while maintaining innocence on the murder charge—sets up an unusual dynamic for jurors, who must now separate admitted wrongdoing from the still-contested allegation that Walshe killed his wife. Legal analysts note the prosecution’s challenge in a “no-body” case, while also emphasizing the weight of the forensic and digital trail. Testimony, including from state police investigators already under a separate cloud of controversy in another high-profile Massachusetts case, is expected to stretch over roughly three weeks as the Commonwealth and defense battle over what happened inside the couple’s Cohasset home that New Year’s.