Testimony at Brian Walshe murder trial details affair his wife was having before she vanished

Brian Walshe’s murder trial focused Thursday on an affair his wife was having before he killed and dismembered her on New Year’s Day 2023.

Ana Walshe, an immigrant real estate agent from Serbia, was last seen early on January 1, 2023, after a New Year’s Eve dinner at her home in Massachusetts. His body was never found. Her husband, Brian Walshe, faces a first-degree murder charge after agreeing to plead guilty last month to lesser charges of deceiving police and willfully disposing of a human body in violation of state law.

William Fastow told the court on the fourth day of the trial that he met Ana Walshe in March 2022 when he sold her a townhouse in Washington, DC. He said the relationship quickly intensified as they became close friends and confidants and eventually had an “intimate relationship”. They would go to dinner and go to bars together, he said, and she would spend time on his sailboat and spend the night at his house. They also took a Thanksgiving trip to Ireland.

Fastow testified that he never tried to keep their relationship a secret and told others about their relationship, although he admitted they never socialized with his friends. They did, however, discuss talking to Brian Walshe about it.

“Ana thought it was really important that when Brian found out about a relationship, he heard it from her,” Fastow said. “She had expressed great concern and I think she thought it would be an attack on his integrity if he found another way.”

Fastow said the two spent Christmas Eve together with friends and planned to celebrate the New Year together on Jan. 4, when they would discuss their plans for the future.

“We had several conversations about what living together could look like, what the merging of two families would look like,” he testified. “But I had always told Ana that she needed to figure out how she wanted things to be with Brian and what she wanted for her life before we could make commitments or decisions.”

Fastow said his last contact with Ana Walshe was a text message from her on New Year’s Eve. The next day, he sent her a photo of Fastow showing his son how to ski, a waving hand emoji, a query with a question mark and a few more texts over the next few days that received no response. He tried to call her several times on January 2, but the calls went straight to voicemail. Then, on January 4, he received a call from Brian Walshe, but dropped it on his voicemail because he was in an “intimate relationship with his wife.”

“I hadn’t heard from her in several days and, frankly, I was afraid he would have found out and would call me to confront me,” he testified.

Walshe called Fastow a second time and his voicemail was played in court. In a somewhat optimistic tone, Walshe said he “hoped everything was going well” with Fastow before saying he was “reaching out to everyone he could” because “Ana hadn’t been in contact in a few days” and that he wondered if Fastow “had spoken to her recently.” Walshe later apologized for the call and said he was sure “everything was fine.”

At the time, Brian Walshe was at home awaiting sentencing in an unrelated art fraud case involving the sale of two fake Andy Warhol paintings.

During cross-examination, Walshe’s defense attorney, Kelli Porges, managed to get Fastow to admit that he was unaware of Ana Walshe’s intention to tell her husband about their relationship.

“There was no plan, as Ana was going home for Christmas to be with her family, that she was going to tell the truth and tell Brian about you,” Porges said, prompting Fastow to say he was not aware of “any plan.”

So far, prosecutors have relied on incriminating searches allegedly carried out by Walshe on several devices related to dismembering bodies and cleaning up blood.

Investigators also said surveillance video showed a man resembling Walshe throwing what appeared to be heavy trash bags into a dumpster near his home, and that a search of a waste treatment facility near his mother’s home turned up bags containing a hatchet, a hammer, window curtains, a hacksaw, towels and a Tyvek protective suit, cleaning supplies, a Prada handbag, boots like the ones Ana Walshe was wearing for the last time and a COVID-19 vaccination card with their name. Many of these items were entered into evidence.

In his opening statement Monday, Assistant Prosecutor Gregory Connor told the jury that the Massachusetts State Crime Lab examined some of the items for DNA compared to samples they had from the couple. They found Ana and Brian Walshe’s DNA on the Tyvek suit and Ana Walshe’s DNA on the hatchet, hacksaw and other items.

Walshe’s attorney, Larry Tipton, argued in his opening statement that this was not a case of murder but what he called a “sudden and unexplained death” of Ana Walshe. It depicted a couple who loved each other and were planning for the future before Ana Walshe died after celebrating New Year’s Eve with her husband and a friend.

“When he came into the bedroom and started to go to bed, he felt something was wrong. You’ll hear evidence that it didn’t make any sense to him,” Tipton told jurors. “He elbowed his wife Ana. She didn’t respond.”