Brian Walshe’s attorney took the stand Wednesday to explain how state police obtained his electronic devices, which authorities say he used to search the internet about body decomposition while his wife was still missing.
The Google searches, along with other evidence, led state police to charge Walshe with the murder of his wife, Ana Walshe, and a single count each of body dismemberment and witness intimidation.
Walshe’s lawyers contend the investigators’ search of his devices violated his rights.
Wednesday’s hearing was the third for the motion to suppress the results of a search of Walshe’s phone and iPads. state police investigators testified at hearings in May. Sgt. Yuriy Bukhenik testified at one of those hearings, an investigator who testified in the Karen Read trial.
Among Walshe’s Google searches: “How to stop a body from decomposing” at about 5 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2023, the last day anyone saw his wife, according to past court filings.
Tracey Miner, Walshe’s attorney for a federal fraud case he pleaded guilty to, advised him on Jan. 6, 2023, about his rights when police asked to examine his phone and his son’s iPad for clues of Ana Walshe’s whereabouts, according to her testimony on Wednesday.
At the time, police were investigating Ana Walshe’s disappearance, but had not yet classified it as a murder.
“I don’t like to give the government anything,” Miner said under questioning by Walshe’s other attorney, Larry Tipton. He and Kelli Porges are representing him in the murder case.
Walshe’s defense argued that Miner negotiated an agreement with Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrissey’s Office for state police to examine his phone and two iPads only for messages between him and his wife, and nothing else.
Norfolk County prosecutors argued on Wednesday that Miner only narrowed the dates of when police could examine messages between Ana Walsh and Brian Walshe, and that there were no agreements about excluding internet search history.
The internet searches were made between Jan. 1 and 3, 2023, and included “How long before a body starts to smell,” “How long for someone to be missing to inherit,” “Can you be charged with murder without a body,” “Can identification be made on partial remains” and “How to clean blood from wooden floor,” according to police.
Miner testified to the presiding Judge Diane Freniere, however, that the agreement she struck with investigators did not extend to location data or internet searches.
“I told [Walshe] a search warrant or broader consent would be needed,” Miner said.
She said she’d reviewed text messages, emails, voicemails and deleted emails from his iPhone before Walshe ultimately decided to turn over his devices to police because he wanted to help them as part of their missing persons investigation.
A few days later, police investigators interviewed Walshe, and when they began asking about the Google searches for body decomposition, Miner said she cut off the questioning.
Norfolk County Assistant District Attorney Anne Yas told the judge that Walshe freely gave his devices to state police and that the only limitations agreed upon were about the date range of text messages.
The discovery of the evidence on the devices was “inevitable,” Yas said.
Yas suggested that Miner misremembered the agreement she reached with investigators, “more than two years since this event.”
“Memories can fade with the passing of time,” Yas said.
The judge took the matter under advisement, and his next court appearance is scheduled for July 14.
Walshe’s lawyers have filed a motion to dismiss the case, but the documents are impounded.
Ana Walshe’s body has never been found, but prosecutors contend that DNA evidence suggests her husband dismembered and disposed of it in dumpsters across Massachusetts during the first few days of January 2023.
Walshe’s lawyers wrote in new court filings that detectives violated his constitutional rights by obtaining this evidence improperly.
The defense team also questions the validity of the subsequent search warrants investigators used to obtain evidence against Walshe. One was prepared by disgraced former state police Trooper Michael Proctor, who was the lead investigator in the Read murder case.
Proctor was fired from his position in March for violating two state police regulations: unsatisfactory performance and alcoholic beverages.
Ana Walshe was a mother of three and a real estate executive who split her time between Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. She was reported missing by coworkers on Jan. 4, 2023, beginning a multi-week search for her by authorities that resulted in her husband being charged with her murder.
Ana and Brian Walshe hosted one of her former employees on New Year’s Eve 2022, but the guest left the couple’s Cohasset home around 1:30 a.m. Prosecutors allege that by 4:50 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2023, Brian Walshe had killed his wife and become the sole beneficiary of her $2.7 million life insurance policy.
