Brian Walshe pleads guilty to charges before jury selection in murder trial

Lance Reynolds, Boston Herald on Nov 18, 2025

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DEDHAM, Mass. — Accused killer Brian Walshe pleaded guilty to charges that he lied to investigators and disinterred the body of his wife, Ana, before jury selection began for his murder trial.

This comes after a Bridgewater State Hospital psychiatrist found Walshe to be “competent and ready to stand trial,” a finding that Judge Diane Freniere accepted last week.

Walshe, 50, pleaded guilty to the two minor charges at Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham on Tuesday morning, shortly before jury selection started. The Cohasset man is set to stand trial for first-degree murder.

Testimony is slated to begin on Dec. 1.

Walshe’s defense has said that his guilty pleas to the lesser charges came without a plea deal from prosecutors, whom they argued refused to negotiate “unless negotiations included the indictment charging murder.”

“Mr. Walshe is prepared to admit to the recitation of facts with respect to the indictment that the government just read in so far,” Walshe’s attorney, Kelli Porges, said in court on Tuesday, “as it alleges he did impede and obstruct the criminal investigation into the disappearance of Ana Walshe.”

“We obviously object, and he’s not admitting to … murder,” Porges added.

Prosecutors have said Walshe dismembered his wife and made several trips to dumpsters around Greater Boston to dispose of her body and any physical evidence.

They have also argued that the implications of Walshe’s alleged internet searches on how to dispose of bodies and clean up gore are backed up by surveillance video evidence of him picking up needed supplies from Home Depot.

After Ana Walshe disappeared in the early hours of Jan. 1, 2023, and her employer reported her missing, the victim’s husband was initially described as being cooperative with police. Days later, on Jan. 8, though, Brian Walshe was arrested and charged with her murder.

Walshe was scheduled to go to trial on the murder charge last month, but that was rescheduled due to competency concerns. He is fresh off a 20-day stint at Bridgewater State Hospital in which psychiatric staff monitored him for competency to stand trial for the murder of Ana Walshe in the early hours of Jan. 1, 2023.

In court on Tuesday, Walshe told the judge that he was still married. That sparked a complaint from Assistant Norfolk District Attorney Gregory P. Connor, who told Freniere Walshe’s response to his marital status posed an issue with accepting a guilty plea.

“I believe that if he continues to say he’s married, that he is negating facts of count three,” Connor said, in reference to the charge of improper disposal of Ana Walshe’s remains.

Freniere told Walshe, “Under the law, death extinguishes marriage,” an assertion that his defense attorney agreed with.

Prosecutors have alleged Walshe had a private eye hired to shadow his wife in Washington, D.C., where he suspected that she was cheating on him. They’ve also argued that he would benefit from Ana Walshe’s death because he’d allegedly pocket $2.7 million from her life insurance policy.

Walshe has also been convicted and sentenced in federal court to an international art fraud scheme.

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