She vanished on New Year's Day. Her body was never found. Her husband was convicted anyway.
Cohasset, Massachusetts, a wealthy coastal town south of Boston. On New Year's Eve 2022, real estate executive Ana Walshe, 39, had dinner at home with her husband Brian and a family friend. By the time the sun came up on January 1, 2023, she had been seen alive for the last time. Her body has never been found. Nearly three years later, a Norfolk County jury convicted her husband of first-degree murder anyway.
Ana, born Ana Ljubicic in Belgrade, had built a career in hospitality before landing a regional general manager job with Tishman Speyer in Washington, D.C., in 2022, commuting home to Cohasset and the couple's three young sons. Brian Walshe could not follow her: he was on house arrest with an ankle monitor, awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to selling two counterfeit Andy Warhol paintings. Prosecutors said the marriage was in crisis. Ana had begun an affair; someone on Brian's devices had searched "best divorce strategies for men"; and Ana carried more than $1 million in life insurance, with Brian as beneficiary.
Brian told police Ana left early on New Year's Day for a work emergency, taking a rideshare to Logan Airport. There was no rideshare record, she never boarded her flight, and her cards were never used again. Instead, surveillance footage from a Lowe's time-stamped 6:02 a.m. on January 1 showed Brian, masked and wearing latex gloves, paying cash for a hacksaw, a utility knife, a hammer, a Tyvek suit, mops, buckets and bleach. Over the next two days cameras placed him buying rugs, candles, a trash can and twenty pounds of baking soda.
On an iPad belonging to one of his sons, synced to the same Apple ID, investigators found dozens of searches made between January 1 and 3, including "how long before a body starts to smell," "ten ways to dispose of a dead body if you really need to," and "can you be charged with murder without a body." Phone data and surveillance video placed him at dumpsters in Swampscott and Abington. Searched by hand, those dumpsters yielded the clothing Brian said Ana left in, her COVID vaccination card, a Tyvek suit, rugs, and a hammer, shears, hatchet and hacksaw. Many items tested positive for blood; one rug held a piece of the Gucci necklace Ana wore every day. Brian was arrested on January 8, 2023, and charged with murder ten days later.
In November 2025, on the eve of trial, Brian Walshe pleaded guilty to misleading police and improperly disposing of a human body, but not to killing her. The jury was not told. At trial in Dedham, beginning December 1, 2025, prosecutors Anne Yas and Greg Connor called roughly fifty witnesses over eight days. The defense, led by Larry Tipton, argued Ana had died suddenly in her sleep and that everything Brian did afterward was panic. The defense called no witnesses, and Brian did not testify.
On December 15, 2025, after about six hours of deliberation, the jury of six women and six men found Brian Walshe guilty of first-degree murder. Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey said it was the first no-body first-degree murder conviction he could recall in the county. On December 18, Judge Diane Freniere sentenced him to life without the possibility of parole, calling his actions barbaric, with consecutive sentences on the other counts. The conviction is under automatic review by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Ana Walshe has never been found.
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Sources and credits
FACTUAL SOURCES - CBS News Boston / WBZ-TV, Neal Riley and Penny Kmitt, "Brian Walshe convicted of first-degree murder in wife Ana's death in Cohasset, Massachusetts," Dec. 15, 2025 (verdict; jury of six women and six men, ~6 hours; 48 prosecution witnesses, defense called none; Judge Diane Freniere's ruling on the guilty pleas; DA Michael Morrissey quotes; $1M+ life insurance; the Jan. 8 arrest, broken knife and blood in the basement; hacksaw and hammer in the trash; quoted Google searches). - NPR, Rachel Treisman, "Brian Walshe, who searched for crime tips online, is convicted of his wife's murder," Dec. 15, 2025 (Ana's background and Tishman Speyer job; the 2021 Warhol fraud plea, house arrest and $400,000+ restitution; William Fastow's testimony; divorce searches; Gem Mutlu's account; the Hunter boots / Hermes watch account; searches on the son's iPad, Jan. 1–3; the Swampscott dumpsters and what was recovered; the Gucci necklace; the "I still love you" text; prosecutor Anne Yas and defense attorney Larry Tipton quotes; sudden-unexplained- death argument; children in state custody; links the Norfolk DA's Jan. 17, 2023 charging release). - Boston 25 News, Bob Ward, "Jury sees chilling video of Brian Walshe buying tools, cleaning supplies at Lowe's, CVS, Stop & Shop," Dec. 8, 2025 (Lowe's video ~16 hours after Ana was last seen; $463 cash receipt itemized; mask and gloves; Swampscott liquor-store and Abington dumpster video; Weymouth Lowe's trash-can purchase; MSP forensic scientist Matthew Sheehan's testimony on items that tested positive for blood; medical examiner's testimony on the rugs). - Wikipedia, "Murder of Ana Walshe," citing CNN (Jan. 18, 2023 and Dec. 18, 2025), AP (Mar. 31, 2023 indictment), Time (Jan. 18, 2023), Boston.com (Nov. 18, 2025 plea change) and Boston 25 (Jan. 2023 background) — timeline of Jan. 1–18, 2023, the Mar. 30, 2023 indictment, the Nov. 19, 2025 plea, the Dec. 18, 2025 life-without- parole sentence, and Ana's biography (born Belgrade Apr. 12, 1983; emigrated 2005; married 2016; three sons aged 2, 4 and 6). - NBC News, "Brian Walshe sentenced to life in prison for murdering his wife and dismembering her body," Dec. 18, 2025 (consecutive sentences on the lesser counts; Judge Freniere's "barbaric"). - Boston.com, Feb. 9, 2026 (prosecutor Greg Connor tried the case). - Where the Lowe's location is reported differently (Rockland in early 2023 reporting; Danvers in trial coverage), the narration names no town. VISUALS - Ana Walshe: the identification photo released by Cohasset Police and used across coverage of this case (via CBS Boston) — opening composite, solo slides, thumbnail and Facebook teaser card. - Brian Walshe: courtroom pool photograph at Norfolk Superior Court (via CBS Boston) — opening composite and solo slide. - Cohasset Police missing-person poster as displayed on the first day of trial, Dec. 1, 2025; Brian Walshe after the verdict and being escorted from court, Dec. 15, 2025; the Lowe's surveillance image as presented in court: Greg Derr / The Patriot Ledger, AP pool photographs (via NPR). - Lowe's self-checkout still (SCO Term 7, Jan 01 2023 06:02), hacksaw and knife exhibit photographs: trial exhibits as displayed in court Dec. 8, 2025 (via Boston 25 News). - Cohasset Harbor aerial: Pi.1415926535, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. - Logan International Airport at night: 4300streetcar, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. - Norfolk County Courthouse, Dedham: Daderot, CC0, Wikimedia Commons. - Ankle monitor (CC BY 4.0), typing on a laptop (Unsplash/CC0), back-alley dumpsters (CC BY 3.0): Wikimedia Commons, illustrative. - Phone, evidence recovery team (CC BY-SA 4.0), prison cell block (public domain): licensed/public-domain stock reused from earlier videos in this series — all illustrative, none depicting this case. No news-broadcast footage was used. No photographs of the bloodstained rugs or of any remains were used. AMAZON AFFILIATE NOTE Tag: truecrimecases-20 (from .env), applied 2026-09-05. This is a RUNG-3 tagged SEARCH URL, not a product link. Two Amazon titles about this case were found (ASINs B0H3L7M9CC and B0BSKCPPXB) and both were REJECTED by scripts/verify_book.py on 2026-09-05 — zero ratings, rapid-turnaround releases. No ASIN is linked. Full-length amazon.com URL, no amzn.to short link. No placeholders anywhere in this file.