Prosecutors Point to Search History as the Roadmap to What Happened to Ana Walshe

Ana Walshe was reported missing just a few days into the new year on Jan. 4, 2023, per ABC 7 News. From the start, this was a story that didn’t make a lot of sense. She was a high-powered real estate executive, a mother of three, and someone who split her time between Washington, D.C. and her family’s home in Massachusetts. She wasn’t the kind of person who would just vanish without telling someone.

But that’s exactly what happened to Ana Walshe.

Her employer was the first to file a missing persons report. Her husband, Brian Walshe, filed his own report not long after. He told investigators that Ana had flown to D.C. on Jan. 1 for a work emergency. Police, however, couldn’t confirm that she ever got into a car, much less boarded a flight. Her cards hadn’t been used. Her phone had gone silent.

And then investigators started digging, literally and digitally.

Brian Walshe was arrested on Jan. 8, 2023, for misleading investigators, per CNN. Ten days later, he was charged with murder and disinterring a body without authority. A body was never found. According to prosecutors, however, they didn’t need one. They had what they called a digital roadmap: Brian Walshe’s Google search history.

The timeline, laid out in court by prosecutors, paints a grim picture. Starting days before Ana Walshe’s disappearance and continuing into the days after, Brian Walshe allegedly searched for things like “What’s the best state to divorce for a man,” “How long before a body starts to smell,” “Dismemberment and the best ways to dispose of a body,” and “Can you be charged with murder without a body.”

Many of these searches, reported by CNN, were made on his son’s iPad, according to prosecutors.

It didn’t stop there. Prosecutors say Brian Walshe bought $450 worth of cleaning supplies — mops, tarps, a bucket, a hatchet — all in cash at a local Home Depot. Investigators later found trash bags with a hacksaw, a hatchet, and items stained with blood and DNA belonging to both Brian Walshe and Ana Walshe. Inside the family’s basement, they found blood and a damaged, bloody knife.

As the trial neared, Brian Walshe made a surprising move. In November 2025, just before jury selection for his murder trial began, he pleaded guilty to two charges: misleading police and improper conveyance of a human body. However, he drew a hard line at the murder charge, pleading not guilty and making clear, through his attorney, that he was not admitting to killing Ana Walshe.

There was no plea deal. Prosecutors refused to negotiate unless the murder charge was on the table. So, the trial moved forward.

In court, Brian Walshe confirmed under oath that he did dispose of Ana Walshe’s body, acknowledging the prosecutors’ allegations. But his defense continues to argue that the evidence doesn’t prove how she died, when she died, or even if she died. With no body recovered, the defense has leaned hard on those gaps.

Still, prosecutors plan to call up to 60 witnesses to make their case. They’re betting that the search history, the physical evidence, and Brian Walshe’s own actions in the days following Ana Walshe’s disappearance will be enough to convince a jury that this wasn’t just a missing person — it was murder.

As the murder trial unfolds, one thing is clear: in the absence of a body, the prosecution is relying on a story told not through witnesses or surveillance video, but through the cold, unsettling logic of internet searches. If they’re right, those clicks and queries may reveal exactly what happened.