Brian Walshe Is Accused of Murdering and Dismembering His Wife — He Is Currently on Trial

Less than two weeks after a 39-year-old mother of three disappeared on New Year's Day in 2023, prosecutor Lynn Beland stood before a judge and said, "Rather than divorce, it is believed that Brian Walshe dismembered Ana Walshe and discarded her body."

This was during Walshe's arraignment on Jan. 11, per Time. The couple had been married for nearly eight years after meeting in 2008.

At the time of Ana's disappearance, Walshe had already been on house arrest for several months while awaiting sentencing for pleading guilty in a federal fraud case involving counterfeit art. Before he was charged with his wife's murder, police arrested Walshe for misleading authorities during their investigation.

Walshe's murder trial began in December 2025, nearly three years after his wife vanished. Here is the latest update.

Just before jury selection began on Nov. 18, 2025, Walshe pled guilty to two lesser counts of willfully conveying a human body in violation of state law and misleading police, per CBS News Boston. Walshe pled not guilty to murdering Ana, but admitted to dismembering her body and disposing of it in dumpsters around the Boston area, CNN reports.

He was later charged with Ana's murder and is serving a separate 37-month prison sentence for the forged artwork.

During the first day of Walshe's trial, the jury heard an audio recording of investigators speaking with him three days after Ana went missing. He is heard explaining to the police what the family's life was like in the days leading up to Ana's disappearance.

Their three children are playing in the background. When asked about marital problems, Walshe said the only issue they had was not being able to spend enough time together as she worked in Washington, D.C. and had to travel often.

In his opening statement, prosecutor Greg Connor referenced the digital trail of Google searches Walshe made prior to Ana's disappearance.

Beginning Jan. 1, 2023, he searched things like, "Can you throw away body parts," and "How long for someone to missing to inherit." Walshe's defense attorney argued in his opening statement that Walshe found Ana unresponsive in their bed, which explained his internet searches.

According to MassLive.com, Ana met Walshe in 2008 while she was working at the Wheatleigh Hotel in Lenox, Mass. The Serbian immigrant, then known as Ana Knipp, entered into a long-distance relationship with Walshe before moving to Boston in 2015.

In 2014, she told Washington, D.C. police that Walshe threatened to kill her and a friend, but refused to cooperate with police. The case was subsequently dropped.

The couple married in 2015, and by 2016, Ana was giving birth to their first child. She would go on to have two more children. By all accounts, things were going well.

In 2021, she wrote about Walshe, reports MassLive.com, describing him as kind and generous when they met while recognizing that he was afraid of relationships. "Brian has been deeply affected by his childhood and relationship with his parents," said Ana.

In December 2022, things took a turn when Ana began dating a man who lived in Washington, D.C. Walshe was already confined to the couple's home in Massachusetts, where he was doing Google searches about divorce on Dec. 27, 2022.

This is how Walshe learned that Massachusetts is the third-worst state for divorce in the United States. Less than a week later, Ana was gone.