Brian Walshe is a ‘dumb as dirt’ alleged criminal: legal experts
Alleged wife-murderer Brian Walshe is up a creek without a paddle after his Wednesday arraignment, legal experts say — and his situation will only get worse if authorities find the body of his missing spouse, Ana.
Walshe, 47, is accused of murdering his wife, who went missing on New Year’s Day, and prosecutors presented a slew of damning evidence at his arraignment Wednesday.
“If these allegations are true, it’s stunning how dumb as dirt this guy appears to be,” Mark Bederow, a high-profile criminal defense attorney, told The Post. “It’s unbelievable.”
Bederow, a former prosecutor for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, said Walshe’s internet searches will not only be used as evidence of his alleged crime but might work against his ability to blame mental health issues.
“His internet searches — as sick as they may be — are rational in a cogent thought type of way,” the lawyer said. “There appears to be a lot of planning and it appears to be well thought out.”
Prosecutors revealed the dad of three used his son’s iPad to google “how to stop a body from decomposing,” “how long before a body starts to smell,” “hacksaw best tool to dismember” and “can you identify a body with broken teeth?”
Police have yet to locate the body of Ana, 39, a real estate manager who lived with Brian and their kids in Cohasset, Mass., but worked in Washington, DC.
“Without the body, [the case] is not a slam-dunk case for the prosecution,” former New York prosecutor and current criminal defense attorney Duncan Levin said. “If they find her body, the case will obviously become much more difficult for the defense to have a fighting chance.”
Levin explained that even though the prosecution’s argument looks strong, the case is still young, and all the evidence gathered by authorities is “subject to attack.”
“It’s too early to tell what holes there may be in any of the evidence,” he said. “Obviously from what we know, there is an extremely strong circumstantial case against Brian Walshe.
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“You could not have planned a worse murder if you tried,” Levin added, saying Walshe appeared to have “bungled every aspect of this from beginning to end.”
He also suggested the defense might try to move the trial outside Cohasset, which is home to less than 10,000 people, because of how much attention the case has received.
“On the flip side, the pre-trial publicity in this case has been so significant that a judge may well find that there would not be any less publicity in a different area of the state,” he said.
Prosecutors said Wednesday that during Walshe’s previously reported trip to Home Depot to buy $450 of cleaning supplies with cash, his purchases included a Tyvek body suit, mops and baking soda.
Worse, a man in a Volvo matching Brian’s description was caught on surveillance footage lugging heavy trash bags into dumpsters.
When searching through trash bags originally dumped at Walshe’s mother’s home, police found a hatchet, blood, hacksaw, trash bags, used cleaning supplies and a rug. They also found a Prada purse and Hunter boots matching what Ana was believed to be wearing when last seen, along with a COVID-19 vaccination card in her name, the Tyvek suit her husband had purchased, towels and tape, prosecutors revealed.
Bederow said Walshe appeared to have “left a perfect blueprint for how he committed the murder.”
What he needs now, the lawyer said, “is a hope and a prayer.”
