For Ana Walshe, it was love at first sight.
In 2008, the Serbian immigrant was working at the Wheatleigh Hotel in Lenox. It was there that she met Brian Walshe, the man she would eventually marry seven years later.
The pair tried a long-distance relationship for a while, but the woman then known as Ana Knipp eventually moved to Boston in 2015. A year earlier, Ana Walshe told Washington, D.C. police that Brian threatened to kill her and her friend. The case was dropped when she declined to cooperate with police.
Brian Walshe proposed in 2015, and the couple married the same year. She took his name.
In 2016, she gave birth to their first child, a son. The couple moved around, living in Marblehead and Lynn before settling in Cohasset.
In 2019, Ana gave birth to the couple’s second child, also a boy. Their third son was born in 2020.
In the fall of 2021, Ana Walshe described her husband in glowing terms. She called him the love of her life and her best friend.
“When I met Brian, I witnessed his kindness and generosity on many occasions. However, I also saw the level of suffering in his life,” she wrote. “He was afraid of relationships and for years did not allow anyone to get close to him, including me. He was clearly in doubt that he could be loved for who he truly was. Brian has been deeply affected by his childhood and relationship with his parents.”
“Brian has a big heart,” she added.
But by December 2022, Ana Walshe was thinking of leaving her husband. At that time, she was working a full-time job in Washington, D.C., where she began dating another man, an affair that many people in her social circle in the nation’s capital knew about.
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, Brian Walshe was on house arrest, awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to an elaborate art fraud scheme, and staring down the prospect of prison time.
On Dec. 27, 2022, Brian Walshe took to Google to determine the “best state to divorce for a man.” When he did so, Massachusetts appeared as the third-worst state for divorce, according to court documents.
By that time, Ana Walshe was the family’s breadwinner, working a steady job at Tishman Speyer. When she was hired by the firm, she intended to eventually move her whole family from Massachusetts to Washington, D.C. But her husband’s sentencing hearing was repeatedly delayed, leaving her shuttling back and forth between Cohasset and D.C.
Eventually, Ana Walshe gave her husband an ultimatum, according to prosecutors. Her friends, who did not know her to be overly emotional, said she was “angry, fed up and increasingly frustrated with the situation,” according to court documents. She urged her husband to take accountability for his crime.
On social media, there was little sign of the trouble from Walshe’s private life. Her Instagram bio read, “Confident, generous, loving leader. Serving those I lead.” Her last post reads, “take the risk of optimism.”
On LinkedIn, former colleagues describe her as “everything you would want in a colleague, direct supervisor, and friend” and “a caring and supportive mentor.”
“She is kind, inspiring, compassionate, respectful and a fearless leader,” wrote a man who worked with Walshe at the Newbury Hotel in Boston.
Ana Walshe spent New Year’s Eve with her husband and former boss at her Cohasset home. There were no signs of trouble between her and her husband, despite the tension only days earlier over Christmas.
Gem Mutlu, her former boss, was the last person to see Ana Walshe alive when he left the couple’s Cohasset home around 1:30 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2023. Her body has never been recovered.
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