Ana was born Ana Ljubicic Kripp in Belgrade, Serbia. Brian came from a prominent family, his father was neurologist Thomas Walshe. Brian’s mother is a woman named Diana Walshe. Some reports say that Ana and Brian met when she cleaned his apartment.
We will now look into Brian’s life over the past years.
Brian’s relationship with his father seems like it was volatile. A friend has been quoted in the media as saying Thomas Walshe told him that Brian had been a “long-term patient” at the Austin Riggs Psychiatric Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and had been diagnosed as a “sociopath.”
When Brian was let out of the facility, after 12 or so years of no contact, Dr. Walshe turned him down.
“You’re my son and I will always hope for the best for you, but I do not want to re-engage,” Thomas is quoted as saying. “If I did, I know that I would be letting mayhem back into my life, and I can’t have that.”
This information is from an article by Boston 25 news:
Brian Walshe conned his father Thomas out of a large sum of money through an elaborate real estate scam.
A friend said Brian then disappeared from his father’s life.
“His dad never heard from him after that,” he recalled. “His father was never the same after that.”
Details from an affidavit in relation to the will dispute have been released. “Brian is not only a sociopath but also a very angry and physically violent person,” said the affidavit.
In 2014, Ana filed a report with the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department on Aug. 2, 2014. An unnamed suspect “made a statement over the telephone that he was going to kill” Ana and her friend.
While the report does not name Brian as the suspect, Metro D.C. police confirmed to PEOPLE he is the person associated with the complaint. The case was closed because Ana refused to cooperate with the investigation at the time, police say.
Ana and Brian got married in Serbia in 2015. They lived with their three boys (aged 6,4 and 2) in Cohasset, Massachusetts.
Just as some background into the area, in a Coldwell Banker survey, Cohasset ranked as the 18th most expensive area to live, with an average house price of $923,609.
Cohasset is a small area with a population of around 8,500.
In 2016, Brian was arrested in connection with an $80,000 art fraud of Andy Warhol paintings. He was ordered by a court to remain under house arrest until sentencing.
According to a U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Massachusetts press release, Brian “took art from a friend, falsely offered the authentic Warhol paintings for sale on eBay, but delivered fake paintings to the buyer,” the release reads.
According to WFXT-TV, the buyer was Revolver Gallery owner Ron Rivlin. The gallery’s website touts itself as the world’s largest gallery-owned Andy Warhol collection.
“I’ve bought over a thousand Warhols and this is the one and only acquisition that got by me. He was that good. Clever playbook and Oscar-worthy performance,” Rivlin told WFXT.
At first, Brian was “charismatic, articulate, and professional,” said Rivlin, but after the transaction, Brian was “unreachable” until the FBI got involved. Then, “he would only cooperate when he was forced to.”
“What happened to me is telling of [Walshe’s] masterful ability to coerce and deceive people,” he said, per the station.
Brian pleaded guilty as part of a plea deal in 2021. The deal involved no jail time, but he had to either return the stolen paintings or pay restitution for them.
Rivlin said he was unable to get his full money back from Brian and just wants to see justice for his crime.
Brian’s father Thomas died in India in 2018. Thomas and Brian were estranged at the time and Thomas’ attorney informed Brian about the death.
Legal documents show Brian asked for a key to his late father’s $710,000 beachfront property in Hull, Massachusetts. Brian is alleged to have raided the home. He apparently thousands of dollars worth of artwork and luxury items – including paintings by Salvador Dali and Joan Miro – as well as a car.
Brian also allegedly tried to sell his father’s home for $140,000 more than it was worth after he was wrongly named executor of the will.
The discrepancies were only caught after his cousin, who had been named the executor of Thomas’ will, contacted a friend of his uncle’s in 2019 to discover he had passed away.
You might be wondering how Brian managed to live this seemingly affluent lifestyle. Friends have told the media he used to host dinners that cost more than $20,000. His story was that he made money creating a software program in college. Brian’s LinkedIn profile says he is “CFO” of something called LETS: Leadership & Effective Teamwork Strategies, which does not seem to have much of a footprint online. The profile also shows he was the CFO of “Capital Letters Consulting,” which has little to no presence online.
In recent times, Ana got a job in March 2022 as the Regional General Manager for real estate firm Tishman Speyer. The job was based in Washington DC, which meant that Ana had to commute. One of Ana’s friends has been chatting with us on instagram and said that Brian and Ana had two homes – one in Cohasset and another in DC.
In the summer of 2022, Ana wrote a letter to a federal judge, seeking leniency for Brian in relation to the art fraud case. She told the judge how much ‘joy’ and ‘comfort’ Brian brought to the family while he had been on house arrest.
“During these eight months, our family was able to be together during many of the milestones,” Ana wrote.
“Our youngest son turned one, our middle son started to speak and our eldest son who had just started kindergarten when we saw you last is now only a few weeks away from completing the year and preparing for first grade,” she wrote.
“He also lost his first tooth,” Ana added.
We will now get into the timeline of Ana’s disappearance.
What we know is that she was last seen alive on January 1, 2023.
Brian and Ana had dinner with a friend on New Year’s Eve, until around 1.30am on January 1.
Ana tried to contact her family overseas at around 1am. “She called again at 1 a.m. and I missed that call.” her mother Milanka said. “She called her elder sister who was also asleep. Then she tried to call her maid of honor who didn’t hear the phone because of the loud music. And now, I regret not getting the phone, because she’s disappeared.”
We will jump ahead slightly here for a minute to January 4. Ana was reported missing on this day by her employer.
Brian apparently called the employer to say he hadn’t heard from Ana. Police went to Brian’s home at 6.30pm that night to interview him.
His story about Ana’s whereabouts since January 1 was that she told him she had a work emergency and that she would have to fly to DC on the morning of January 1. Brian said his wife left the house around 6am and got a rideshare to the airport for her flight.
This info about that morning is from NBC Boston:
That morning, he said his wife got ready, kissed him goodbye and told him to go back to sleep before leaving. He told police he woke up around 7 a.m. and made breakfast for the couple’s three boys, ages 2, 4, and 6, and left to run errands around 3 p.m. after a babysitter arrived at the house. He said he left again around 4 p.m. to see his mother, who lives in Swampscott. He said he got lost along the way, so the trip took him about 20 to 30 minutes longer than usual.
Within 15 minutes of arriving at his mother’s condominium, he said he left to run errands for his mother at Whole Foods and CVS in Swampscott to get groceries and cleaning wipes. He said he went back to his mother’s house and returned home to Cohasset around 8 p.m.
Police investigated the Whole Foods and CVS CCTV and were unable to find Brian in the images. He was also unable to produce any receipts from the stores.
Police pinged Ana’s phone and found that it pinged in the area of their home on Cushing Highway in Cohasset on both January and January 2. This was after Ana was said to have left for DC.
Data from Brian’s phone showed that it traveled to the areas of Brockton and Abington during the week beginning Jan. 1
Investigators determined that Ana had a plane ticket for January 3 which she never used. She also never showed up at the airport or her job or the Walshes’ DC apartment. It was also determined that no Uber or Lyft picked her up on January 1.
Brian told police that on January 2, he took his son to get a chocolate shake at Press Juice Bar in Norwell. This was against the conditions of his house arrest.
But surveillance footage showed on that day, sometime after 4 p.m., he went to Home Depot in Rockland, where he purchased $450 in cleaning supplies, including mops, buckets, tarps, Tyveks, drop cloths and various kinds of tape. He was seen wearing a black surgical mask, blue surgical gloves and made a cash purchase. This trip was also allegedly in violation of his probation conditions.
Police issued a press release about Ana’s disappearance on January 5.
Chief William Quigley reports that the Cohasset Police Department is seeking the public’s assistance in locating a missing resident who was last seen in the early morning hours of Jan. 1.
Ana Walshe, age 39, was last seen at her home in Cohasset shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day.
Walshe stands 5’2″ and weighs 115 pounds. She has brown hair, brown eyes and has an olive complexion. It is believed that she speaks with an Eastern European accent.
If anyone has seen Walshe or has any information regarding her whereabouts, they are urged to contact the Cohasset Police Department.
On January 6, a massive search including K-9 officers, search and rescue teams, state police and local police began that morning and continued throughout the day.
Police said at this time that Brian was cooperating with the investigation.
In a random twist, a fire broke out in a house on January 6 and that house that Ana and Brian had lived in until a few months before her disappearance.
We all thought surely that the fire was connected to the case, but it turns out that it was purely coincidental apparently.
Police Chief William Quigley admitted it was a “very strange coincidence.”
A spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Fire Services said on Saturday that investigation determined the fire started with a fireplace insert. Damage to the piping caused a fire inside the wall.
The following day, January 7, a specialized state police unit trained in search and rescue operations, three K-9 teams and the State Police Air Wing searched wooded areas near the Walshes’ home. State police divers searched a small stream and a pool but didn’t find anything. The Metropolitan Law Enforcement Council also helped with the search.
Later in the day, state and Cohasset police said their ground search for Ana Walshe had concluded.
Seems very quick to wrap things up? Essentially two days of searching?
On Sunday January 8, police carried out a search warrant on Brian and Ana’s home in Cohasset.
Blood and a bloody knife were found.
Cohasset police took Brian into custody on this day, after concluding they had “probable cause” to believe he had misled investigators in the search for Ana.
Brian was arraigned on Monday January 9 on a charge of intimidation of a witness for misleading police between Jan. 5 and Jan. 7 during the course of their investigation into his missing wife.
Prosecutors said various statements he made caused a delay in the investigation, which they said would have allowed him “to either clean up evidence or dispose of evidence.”
At the conclusion of the hearing, the judge ordered him held on $500,000 cash bail.
His lawyer argued that Brian has been “incredibly cooperative” with the investigation, consenting to searches and giving interviews. She also argued against the hefty bail amount, saying he is on a bracelet and isn’t going anywhere.
Later in the day, investigators removed dumpsters from outside of the Swampscott apartment complex where Brian’s mother lives. Police taped off the area with crime scene tape and hauled the dumpsters away from the scene as possible evidence in the case.
The same day, officials searched a dumpster station in Peabody, Mass in relation to Ana’s case.
The Norfolk District Attorney’s Office said the search “resulted in a number of items being collected” and that those items are “now subject to processing and testing.”
Materials found included a hacksaw, torn-up cloth material and what appears to be bloodstains.
Law enforcement sources told CNN that investigators hope to collect blood samples from Ana’s sons so they have a “direct bloodline” sample to compare against traces of blood found in the couple’s basement. Those results could give investigators a result that makes an almost certain match to blood and a bloodied knife found in the basement and apparent bloodstains at the refuse processing plant.
Police have also looked into Brian’s internet search history. He apparently googled ‘ how to dispose of a 115 pound woman’s body’ and he also searched for information on dismembering a body.
Some reports say he used his son’s iPad to conduct these searches but that has not been confirmed by police.
On January 10, law enforcement sources told multiple news outlets that investigators reportedly recovered a series of cutting instruments during their search for Ana.
Citing unnamed sources, both stations (WBZ-TV and WHDH-TV.) reported investigators recovered a hatchet, hacksaw, rug, and garbage bag with blood, believed to be connected to Ana’s disappearance.
Similarly, also citing unnamed sources, WFXT-TV reported human tissue was also discovered during the search.
On January 10, Ana’s friends Mike and Mandi Silva spoke to the media. They said that Ana was in a rush to get rid of several assets before her disappearance. She sold her car and an apartment they rented from her for the past four years. The Silvas say the the apartment buyer paid in cash just days before she went missing.
“Nothing is adding up,” Mandi said. She also told WCVB-TV that Ana seemed different recently, and the dynamic of their friendship shifted.
“Over time, within the last six months, things started to get really strange with the Walshes,” Mandi said. “Ana was selling all of her assets in the Boston area, including our unit … Why are you in such a rush to sell our unit? It doesn’t make sense.”
“This was very out of character for them,” Mike, who reportedly worked construction on Ana and Brian Walshe’s many Massachusetts properties, added.
“They never stayed at a property for more than a year, so I figured maybe they’re running from something or hiding from something,” Mike said. “I mean, she sold all her properties and walked away with a lot of money.”
On January 12, more search warrants were served in this case.
The warrants were “impounded,” which means they were returned and not available to the public, according to Quincy District Court.
When asked when or if the warrants will be unsealed, the court said, “As far as I know, they won’t be.”
Ana’s mother has spoken to the media. She lives in Belgrade. Ana messaged her on December 25. “She just said, ‘Please, Mama. Come tomorrow,’” Milanka Ljubicic said. “Which means that clearly, there must have been some problems.”
“She was a gorgeous woman from Serbia — I just wonder why she went for him,” said a neighbor of Brian’s mother, Diana Walshe, in Swampscott who did not want to be identified. “Nobody can figure out his game.”
Brian is due back in court on February 9.
SOURCE LIST:
https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/timeline-what-happened-to-ana-walshe/2939929/
https://nypost.com/2023/01/10/inside-the-marriage-of-ana-walshe-and-sociopath-brian-walshe/
https://people.com/crime/ana-walshe-husband-once-sold-fraudulent-andy-warhol-paintings/
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/ana-walshe-missing-mother-cohasset-house-fire-cause/