Ashley Banfield (0:00)

Foreign. Hi, everyone. I'm Ashley Banfield, and this is Drop dead serious. Back in 2023, I spent a whole lot of time in Boston, specifically a few of the areas that surround Boston. And let me tell you, I was not on vacation when I heard the news about Anna Walsh. I knew there was a story that wasn't being told. It was a story that was being hidden from the public. Because nobody dies the way Anna Walsh died, without a whole lot of planning and a deep sense of cunning, methodical strategizing, and a heart of pure evil. Let me take you back to where I was standing in the deep winter months of 2023. It was the kind of case that made national headlines. Anna Walsh, a glamorous wife and mother of three, missing on New Year's Day. And before I go any further, you should know that Anna has never been found. There are no witnesses per se to this crime. None with beating hearts anyway. And most troubling of all, there's no body for the medical examiner to poke and prod and come up with hard evidence for the prosecutors. But there is so much more. Like a damning trail of Google searches and surveillance video that is so disturbing, so methodical, it almost seemed like a director was calling the action and might at any moment yell, cut. But this is not fiction. This is the real story of Anna Walsh, a successful real estate executive who vanished without a trace and the husband that prosecutors say planned her murder down to the minute. And trust me, it is the kind of story that stays with you. Because what Ana's husband, Brian Walsh, allegedly Googled just might haunt you and might have you checking your partner's search history online. Because it is never good when somebody looks for 10 ways to dispose of a dead body. If you really need to. End quote. I have the full list of everything that police say Brian Walsh searched for, and I'm going to get to that in just a moment. But the timeline in this case may be even more damning because while Brian Walsh was allegedly Googling how to dispose of a dead body if you really need to, Anna Walsh, his wife, was supposed to be 30,000ft in the air, headed to Washington, D.C. for work. In this episode. I'm walking you step by step through this bewildering crime from the moment Ana disappeared to the lies that police say her husband told anybody who would listen to the digital breadcrumbs that prosecutors say are his blueprint for murder. All the way to where we are now, a trial approaching in October of 2025. And I should just let you know that there is a thunderstorm while I am recording this. So you just may hear rumblings of thunder and maybe the pitter patter of rain as well. Kind of adds to the whole, I don't know, eerie sadness of this entire story. And wait for it. As this legal drama continues to unfold, an unlikely character has emerged from from our true crime past. None other than former Massachusetts State trooper Michael Proctor. Yep, that Michael Proctor. It does sound familiar, doesn't it? He's the same lead investigator at the center of the Karen Reed explosive murder case. Michael Proctor was also involved in the Anna Walsh investigation. So, yeah, this is kind of giving Groundhog Day, but let's start right from the beginning. Anna Walsh was last seen in Cohasset, Massachusetts, early in the morning of January 1, 2023, right after New Year's Eve. A dinner that she was actually hosting at home with a friend and her husband, Brian Walsh. Just the three of them. Ana was supposed to catch an early flight to Washington, D.C. the next morning for work. She worked in D.C. during the week. A rising star in real estate who regularly commuted from Massachusetts and spent weekends at home with her husband, Brian and their three young sons. Ana had a plane ticket booked for January 1st. And though we didn't know it then, Ana never made it to the airport. Ana never even left the house by January 4th. Four days into the new year, Anna's employer raised the alarm because Anna was a no show in D.C. and that was not like her. They called the police, asked for a wellness check. And that's when the search for Anna Walsh really began. Cohasset police went to the Walsh's home, you know, for a wellness check. But Brian Walsh was cool as a cucumber. Nothing wrong here. He told the officers his wife had left early in the morning, around 6am on New Year's Day. He said she'd taken an Uber or a lift, you know, something to the airport, and that she was fine, that she just left four days ago. Gone. Let me just stop you for a minute. I'm a mom. I have two boys, right? And I've traveled for work as well. But there is no mother that I know of, and certainly not me that would ever leave her. Little boys, you know, some of them still on the bottle and not check in at least, I don't know, a hundred times a day, okay? Realistically, once or twice per day, a mom who's traveling for work, checks in, calls home, says good morning to the kids, maybe good evening or good night to the kids. But four days no word from your commuting wife with three little boys at home. Absolute horse shit. So, yeah, red flag. I don't think I need to tell you that there was no Uber on New Year's Day. There was no Lyft on New Year's Day. There was no taxi, There was no check in, There was no flight. In fact, there was no digital trail of Anna Walsh leaving that house at all that day. Of course, in the investigation, police pinged her phone and they discovered that Anna Walsh's phone stayed at the home all through New Year's Day and all the way until January 2nd, in fact. And on January 2nd, something weird happened. Anna Walsh's phone, suddenly, Walsh went dark. No calls, no text messages, no movement. Just utter silence. But Brian Walsh, his phone wasn't silent. He was busy. Police say Brian Walsh was very busy, in fact, super busy, Googling some of the most disturbing questions we have ever seen tied to a missing person's case. And as you imagine that it is his dead wife, we are talking about, the mother of his three kids, disturbing doesn't even begin to cover this. Let me walk you through just some of what the investigators say Brian was searching for. And keep in mind, this is all before Anna was even considered, quote, unquote, missing. So, January 1st, early morning. How long before a body starts to smell? How to stop a body from decomposing? How to embalm a body. 10 Ways to Dispose of a dead body if you really need to. How long for someone to be missing to inherit? And can you throw away body parts? And yeah, I'm kind of floored with those searches, but that was just the start. There was more later that same morning. Like, what does formaldehyde do? How long does DNA last? Can identification be made on partial remains? Dismemberment. And the best ways to dispose of a body. How to clean blood from a wood floor. Luminol to detect blood. What happens when you put body parts in ammonia? Is it better to throw crime scene clothes away or wash them if you have your jaw off the floor? And if you've been counting all of those searches that I just outlined, that's 14. 14 separate searches in less than nine hours. And it turns out these searches were all made on an iPad. An iPad that belonged to Brian and Anna's own child. So, yeah, borrow your kid's iPad to search for ways to dismember and dispose of their mommy. If you believe the police and the evidence. By January 2nd, the day Anna's phone finally shut off, Brian's phone was very much on, and he was back on the move. He went to Home Goods and he bought three rugs. And then, police say, he made even more sickening Google searches like Hacksaw, best tool to dismember. Can you be charged with murder without a body rate of decomposition in plastic versus the woods? Can baking soda make a body smell good? Then came a trip to Home Depot, where police say they saw Brian Walsh on Video buying $450 worth of cleaning supplies. Prosecutors say that Brian paid for these items with cash. But lucky for police, surveillance video saw him do it. He's right there on camera, wearing a face mask and rubber gloves, pushing a loaded shopping cart, topping, topping over with mops and tarps and tape. A Tyvek suit with boot covers, buckets, goggles, baking soda, and even a hatchet. Brian Walsh was caught on surveillance camera, not just then, but again later that evening, removing the gloves and the mask. All alone on a dark street. And the next day, on January 3rd, prosecutors say Brian Walsh made three separate stops at three different apartment complexes and at each apartment complex. Surveillance footage shows him heading for the dumpsters and dumping heavy garbage bags into the bins, dragging them, hoisting them, and struggling under their weight. We all now know what was likely inside those garbage bags, but I'll get to that in a moment. And what police actually found in some of those bags, I'm going to get to that, too. Because what Brian Walsh did on January 4th, the day that police showed up at his house for that welfare check, was just as suspicious. He went to TJ Maxx, he went to HomeGoods, and he went to Lowe's. He bought towels, bath mats, men's clothes, squeegees, and brand new trash can. And later on, when officers arrived at his home for the wellness check for Anna, police noticed Brian's Volvo. It was parked in the driveway, and the back seats were folded down. And there was a plastic liner that had been spread out, covering the entire cargo area. Like I mentioned at the top of this episode, Brian had told the police that Anna had flown to D.C. days earlier. But detectives could already tell something wasn't right. Something was just off about Brian Walsh. By January 5, one day after police had come to his house, Brian's story was already falling apart. Investigators checked his Volvo again, and this time the plastic liner was gone. Wouldn't you know it, those seats were still folded down, but the carpet under the plastic liner, fresh vacuum streaks, as if somebody had just tried to clean something up. And fast. And then came the real break. In the case, Brian's phone data placed him at his mother's apartment earlier that morning. Specifically at a dumpster at his mother's apartment. And while all the trash that he'd allegedly dumped at the apartment complexes in the days prior had already gone to the incinerator, which was really awful for the police. Right. Everything was gone. All of those heavy garbage bags that he had struggled to throw on video into these dumpsters all went through incinerators. And if you think about it, if Brian is guilty of this, wow, that is planning. Right? Find the apartments that have dumpsters that are collected and go to an incinerator and soon. Right, but the trash at his mom's apartment. Yeah, maybe this one wasn't planned. That had not gone to an incinerator, was still there. And police found a trove of evidence in it. They secured the dumpster right away, and when they opened that dumpster up, they found 10 separate trash bags with really, really damning evidence inside. Let me list some of it out for you, shall we? Blood soaked towels, rags, gloves, cleaning supplies, a damaged carpet, a woman's dress, a black jacket, a pair of hunter boots, pair of slippers, a Prada purse, and a Covid vaccination card belonging, to, you guessed it, Anna Walsh. And I need not tell you that those items of clothing, women's clothing, found in the dumpster amid the bloody towels and rugs, there are photos of Anna Walsh wearing those things. And the Prada purse. Yeah, Anna had one just like it. They also found part of a necklace, and it was the same necklace that Anna was known to wear and was photographed in dozens of pictures wearing it. And most telling of all, there was a Tyvek suit in that trash. The same type that Brian was seen on surveillance video purchasing. And that Tyvek suit, it had Anna's DNA all over the outside of the sleeves and on the inside of the suit, you know, the person who might be wearing it. Yep. Brian Walsh's DNA and Anna's DNA, all of it discovered inside that suit. Even the pair of slippers had both Brian's DNA and Anna's DNA on them. On top of that, the carpet and the rugs had enormous blood stains and traces of baking soda. The same substance that Brian had bought in bulk and the same substance police say he'd googled. Does it help in the COVID up of a murder? My words. When investigators sent the recovered items to the Massachusetts State Crime Lab, the results confirmed what they had already suspected. The blood found on the rugs in the basement and even on the Tyvek suit all matched Anna Walsh's DNA. So this wasn't just a missing person's case anymore. This looked a whole lot more like a murder. The evidence was physical, and it was specific, and it was damning. And when they searched the Walsh home, what they found next was pretty damn chilling. Again, especially when you think this is the mother of Brian Walsh's three little children. There was blood in the basement, A broken knife with blood on it, a second knife nearby, a tarp just like the ones Brian bought at Home Depot. But no Anna. And finding Anna herself proved to be more than police bargained for. Every digital breadcrumb that investigators look for came up empty. Of course, there were no records of an Uber trip or a Lyft trip or a taxi. There was no flight taken, no credit card activity. Anna's phone hadn't sent a single text or made a single call. It was as if she simply vanished before she even stepped out of her own house. And according to prosecutors, that's because she never did step out of her own house. She left that house in pieces. They believe that Anna Walsh was killed in her own home, in that basement, sometime in the early hours of January 1st, after that dinner with the friend and her husband celebrating New Year's Eve. And they believe that her husband, Brian, had already made up his mind to do it days before. Because while the world was counting down to the new year, Counting down to 2023, police say Brian Walsh was making a very different plan for the new year. But let's rewind to December 27, 2022. That's just five days before Anna vanished. Brian Walsh allegedly Googled this question. What's the best state for divorce for a man? Prosecutors say that one search about a man trying to divorce a woman was the first red flag in this case. And when you stack it next to the searches that came afterwards about decomposition, dismemberment, and inheritance, their theory is a simple one. Brian didn't want a divorce. He wanted Anna gone. And they say that's exactly what he did. Now, if you're thinking this seems all too calculating. It is just too bold. It's too evil for a guy with, like, no criminal background. You might want to rethink this, because Brian Walsh has quite a story. He has quite a history. One full of fraud and forgery and deception and crime. Back in 2016, Brian Walsh was involved in an elaborate art fraud scheme, One that included forged Andy Warhol paintings, imitations of Warhol paintings, especially the famous Shadows series. Walsh listed them on ebay, claiming that they were authentic, one of a kind originals from his personal collection. In reality, they'd been stolen from a family friend in South Korea. A buyer in Los Angeles paid $80,000 for the paintings. The paintings arrived looking convincing at first glance, but when the buyer removed the frames, that's when the red flags came up. And they were major red flags. There were no authentication stamps from the Andy Warhol Foundation. The Staples, well, those looked brand new. And the canvases, they didn't match the photos that Walsh had posted online. The buyer quickly realized that he'd been duped, and he tried to contact Brian Walsh about it. But Brian Walsh dodged the phone calls. Wouldn't you know it, he delayed his responses, and he offered excuse after excuse. And when the buyer finally demanded a refund, Brian Walsh ghosted him, Just stopped responding altogether. So, natch, that's when the Fed stepped in and they arrested Brian Walsh in 2018. And interestingly, that same year, Brian was also accused of forging a will and trying to take over his late father's estate, even though his father had reportedly disowned him. According to affidavits from family members and friends, Brian had previously stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from his own father and had even been described as, quote, a sociopath, end quote, and, quote, capable of just about anything, end quote. As for the art fraud, prosecutors say Walsh didn't just sell one set of fakes. He tried to pass off multiple fake Andy Warhol paintings to unsuspecting buyers. But in April 2021, Brian Walsh pleaded guilty to wire fraud, interstate transportation for a scheme to defraud, and unlawful monetary transaction. In fact, and this is rich, at the time of Anna's disappearance, Brian Walsh was actually awaiting sentencing on those crimes and was stuck in home confinement. But long before the Feds got involved in these frauds, way back, like in 2014, before Anna and Brian even got married, Anna actually reported Brian to the police. According to the police report, Ana told officers that Brian had threatened to kill her and even threatened her friends. But in the end, Ana chose not to cooperate with the investigation, and the case ended up being closed. And despite that alarming report, despite the fear that she once put into words, Ana decided to marry Brian Walsh the very next year, in 2015. But seven years and three kids later, toward the end of 2022, it seemed as though Anna was setting herself up for independence, and fast. Police say she had sold off a rental property and pulled in nearly $80,000 in cash and was planning to move full time to Washington, D.C. and not with Brian. Prosecutors say Brian Walsh couldn't handle the idea of losing control. So instead of filing for divorce, he carefully crafted a plan to kill his wife, to dismember her body, and to erase every trace of the woman who had shared a home with him and given birth to his three children. Prosecutors also say Anna Walsh had taken out a $2.7 million life insurance policy and named her husband Brian as the sole beneficiary. With a pile of evidence collected against him. Brian Walsh was arrested on January 18, 2023, and later indicted by a grand jury on charges including murder, misleading a police investigation, obstruction of justice, and improper conveyance of a human body. He's pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against him, and his trial is set for October 2025. And while Anna's body has never been found, prosecutors say the case against Brian is built on forensic evidence, digital footprints, and a motive that was as calculated as it was cold. And one of the biggest flashpoints heading into Brian Walsh's October trial, the involvement of a very controversial police officer, former Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor. The same Michael Proctor who was involved in the high profile trial of Karen Reed. Proctor was fired earlier this year after a disciplinary board found that he'd sent misogynistic text messages about Karen, that he'd leaked confidential information from Karen's investigation, and that he'd acted with clear bias in Karen Reed's case. And now that misconduct is casting serious doubt on his role in the Anna Walsh investigation, too. In this case, Michael Proctor is the one who signed the criminal complaint against Brian Walsh and executed the search warrant at the Walsh home. And perhaps not unexpectedly, Brian Walsh's defense team is all over it. They're arguing that if Proctor's work was as tainted as it was in one case, it's fair to question what he did in other cases like this case. And they've asked for his full personnel file, they've asked for internal communications, and they want every record tied to his investigation. And the defense is also raising questions about Sergeant Yuri Buchanak. Yes, that one. A key supervisor in Karen Reed's case, but also in Anna Walsh's case, he's been pressed in court about what was and wasn't searched during the investigation. The defense is now pointing to both of these officers arguing that former Trooper Proctor and his bias could justify maybe tossing out key evidence and that Sergeant Buchanak may have failed to rein in any alleged misconduct as it unfolded. So, yeah, here we are in the Boston area, and yeah. That's why I took a trip to the Boston area in 2023. Not for vacation. Talk about the stars. Misaligning the Karen Reed fiasco weaving its way into the Anna Walsh tragedy. And let me tell you, I sat in the courtroom looking at Brian Walsh, and he had a dead stare. He didn't seem to care about any of it. He was overgrown. He looked so disheveled. Maybe he thought he was going to get away with it all if the police are right, if he really is the murderer. But at that time, those officers might have been in that courtroom. I wouldn't have recognized them. Because we didn't know at that time the extent of what they were up to. The Karen Reed case. We didn't know what lay ahead, that it could actually torpedo some of the evidence in the Anna Walsh case. But we're going to see how far Brian Walsh's lawyers get with all of this. Until then, we are all over this case, and we'll have updates for you the minute every single one of them comes out. Thank you so much for watching and listening. I so appreciate this. I'm Ashley Banfield, and if you remember one thing, the truth isn't just serious, it's drop dead seriously.