Blood, a hatchet, a hacksaw, a rug, and cleaning supplies have been discovered in trash bags at a transfer station in the search for missing mother Ana Walshe in Massachusetts.
Officers with police dogs made the discovery in Peabody, north of Boston, on Monday, the local CBS station reported.
The 39-year-old mother of three was last seen on 1 January following a New Years Eve dinner at her Cohasset residence with her husband and a friend.
Her husband, 47-year-old Brian Walshe, has been charged with misleading the authorities working to find his wife. He pleaded not guilty on Monday and is being held on $500,000 bond.
The discovery of the items was shared with WBZ-TV but wasn’t confirmed by a spokesman for Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey in a statement shared on Tuesday.
“Search activity conducted north of Boston yesterday resulted in a number of items being collected which will now be subject to processing and testing to determine if they are of evidentiary value to this investigation. No detail on those items will be disclosed at this time,” spokesperson David Traub said.
The Walshes’ three young boys are in the care of the Department of Children and Families.
A bloody knife was discovered in the basement of the Walshe home, prosecutors said at Mr Walshe’s hearing Monday. He is alleged to have purchased cleaning supplies for $450 following his wife’s disappearance.
Mr Walshe wore a surgical mask and gloves while buying the supplies using cash, a police report said.
his car has been impounded with evidence indicating that it was cleaned recently, according to CBS Boston.
“The processing of the home may be completed as soon as today or tomorrow,” Mr Traub said Tuesday. “There is no anticipated change or adjustment of the charges in place in this matter at this time.”
The husband alleged that Ms Walshe left the rented house at about 4am on 1 January to go to Boston’s Logan airport in a rideshare or a taxi to fly to Reagan National Airport in the US capital. But she never entered an Uber or a Lyft, prosecutors said during the arraignment on Monday.
Mr Walshe told police that Ms Walshe left early on New Year’s Day because of a “work emergency,” an arrest affidavit states.
“Ana got ready and kissed him goodbye and told him to go back to sleep,” Mr Walshe told police, the affidavit states.
Ms Walshe’s phone pinged around the residence on 1 and 2 January, police have said.
“The fact that he was asked a specific question and he gave an untruthful answer that led investigators out of the area caused a clear delay in the search for the missing person, Ana Walshe,” the affidavit adds.
Mr Walshe claimed that he left the home on the afternoon of New Year’s Day to visit his mother in Swampscott, about an hour away.
“At the time, Walshe did not have his cell phone so he did not use a GPS,” officials have said. Mr Walshe is alleged to have claimed that one of his children could have taken the phone at some point when they celebrated the new year.
“Walshe related he drove to his mother’s house via the route leading by Derby Street in Hingham, Route 3 north, Route 93 through Boston, and instead of taking Route 1A, he got lost and took Route 1 and then maybe Route 114,” the legal filing states. “Walshe related the commute should have taken 60-70 minutes but ended up taking about 90 minutes.”
“There are no anticipated searches of public areas today, but that may change should the work of detectives develop additional areas of potential investigation,” Mr Traub added.
“Police were notified around January 4 by her employees in Washington, DC, that she had not shown up for work on January 4. That was the first time that (anyone) was notified that she was missing,” Norfolk Assistant District Attorney Lynn Beland said while appearing in court on Monday, WCVB reported. “She actually had a plane ticket for January 3 that she did not use and did not show up at the airport.”
Ms Walshe worked at the real estate company Tishman Speyer.
Mr Walshe said that he only left the residence on 2 January to buy ice cream but Home Depot surveillance footage shows him buying the cleaning supplies – which included mops, a bucket, drop cloths, and several types of tape, according to officials.
“He’s on surveillance at that time on January 2, even though he said he never left the house. Police obtained a search warrant and actually searched the house with crime scene services. During that time, they found blood in the basement. Blood was found in the basement area, as well as a knife, which also contained some blood,” Ms Beland said.
Friends of Ms Walshe have said that she commutes to Washington, DC during the week for a job she started in 2022 and that the family has a townhouse in the capital but that there’s no sign of Ms Walshe at that residence.
Mr Walshe’s lawyer told WCVB that he’s been “incredibly cooperative” with the authorities.
“He is not charged with murder. He’s charged with misleading investigators by not saying, as I understand it, if he went to a Home Depot,” the attorney said.
Mr Walshe’s next appearance in court has been scheduled for 9 February.
Ms Walshe was born in Belgrade, Serbia and was working at the Wheatleigh Hotel in Lenox when she met Mr Walshe in 2008. After their 2015 marriage, they had three sons between two and six years old.
Ms Walshe has dual citizenship in the US and Serbia, where she still has family, said the Acting Consul General Olga Vlacic at the country’s New York consulate, according to WCVB.
“The whole (of) Serbia is following media reports on Ana’s disappearance and we are all joined in hoping and praying for Ana’s safe return, despite the latest grim developments,” she wrote. “Our hearts go out to her family and especially to her young children, who deserve to be reunited with their mother.”
The authorities have found that Mr Walshe searched online for how to dismember a body and “how to dispose of a 115-pound woman’s body,” CNN reported.
“We are devastated. Ana is such a beacon of love and Joy,” Peter Kirby, a family friend, told CNN in a statement. “She lights up every room. We miss her and are doing everything we can to support her 3 beautiful children.”
Mr Walshe was convicted of fraud and other charges in 2018 after selling fake Andy Warhol paintings two years previously, according to the New York Post.
Mr Walshe was in home confinement, which included wearing an ankle bracelet, while waiting for his sentence on the 2018 fraud conviction. During the week that his wife disappeared, he made several unapproved trips, including the one to Home Depot to purchase cleaning supplies.
Mr Walshe was charged in May 2018 following allegations by the FBI that he sold two fake Warhol paintings on eBay, a criminal complaint states, according to CNN. The federal agency stated that Mr Walshe or his wife used her account on the online selling platform to sell the two paintings in November 2016.
He was indicted by a federal grand jury in October 2018 for wire fraud, interstate transportation for a scheme to defraud, possession of converted goods, and unlawful monetary transaction. Last year, he pled guilty to three of the counts. He also agreed to return or pay for artwork that he had agreed to sell for a friend but which he never did.
“Brian has been working consistently on breaking the past habits of his family and we are all looking forward to the new chapter of his life,” Ms Walshe wrote in a letter to the court dated 1 June of last year.
A week before her disappearance, Ms Walshe asked her mother to come visit her from Serbia. Milanka Ljubicic, 69, told Fox News Digital that “she just said, ‘Please, Mama. Come tomorrow’”.
“Which means that clearly, there must have been some problems,” she added. She told Fox that Ms Walshe asked on 25 December for her mother to come to the US the following day.
Ms Ljubicic suggested she come a bit later but her daughter said she didn’t have to.
“And now I can’t forgive myself for not just letting things fall where they may, and just go, and whatever happens to me, happens,” the mother said. She added that she missed two phone calls from Ms Walshe around midnight on New Year’s Eve. She’s also reported to have called her older sister and her maid of honour, both of whom also missed her calls.
“And now, I regret not getting the phone, because she’s disappeared,” Ms Ljubicic told Fox.
“That anything happened, I can’t believe it,” she added. “In total, I spent 16 months with my son-in-law and I never noticed anything bad about my son-in-law.”
“I cannot believe that he’d ever have done anything to her,” she told the outlet. “He said to the police that everything with Ana was fine.”
“I just have just one wish, and that is that my daughter is alive,” she added.
