Brian Walshe ruled competent to stand trial for wife's murder

WASHINGTON - A judge ruled on Friday that Brian Walshe is competent to stand trial for the murder of his wife, realtor Ana Walshe. The trial is set for December 1.  

What we know:

Walshe's trial was originally supposed to begin last month, but Judge Diane Freniere halted proceedings and sent Walshe to the hospital over mental health concerns. 

In September, Walshe was assaulted inside a housing unit at a correctional center in Massachusetts. The Norfolk County Sheriff’s Office didn't identify Walshe as the victim, but his lawyer, Larry Tipton, confirmed to Masslive.com that Walshe was stabbed. 

The backstory:

Ana Walshe, who split her time between Washington, D.C., and her family home in Cohasset, Massachusetts, was last seen on New Year's Day 2023 when she reportedly got into a rideshare to catch a flight to D.C., to deal with a work emergency. Police in Massachusetts confirms Walshe never got on the plane. 

Investigators found blood in the basement area of the Walshe home last year, in addition to a partially damaged knife which also contained some blood. Prosecutors say Walshe went to a Home Depot in the area and purchased $450 worth of painting and cleaning supplies.

Ana Walshe's body has yet to be recovered. Prosecutors allege Brian Walshe dismembered his wife before hiding her remains. 

In July, prosecutors floated two possible motives: 

• The first is that Brian Walshe discovered an affair between his wife and another man, whose name he allegedly searched on Google a half-dozen times.
• The second was that Walshe hoped his wife’s disappearance might help him avoid prison in his art fraud case, where he owes nearly $500,000 in restitution.

Ana reportedly confided in a friend shortly before her disappearance that Walshe was convinced having custody of their children would help him evade incarceration in the federal case, according to prosecutors. And he was the beneficiary of her $2.7 million life insurance policy.

Dig deeper:

Walshe was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2018 for attempting to sell two fake Andy Warhol paintings on eBay. He pleaded guilty in April 2021 to one count each of wire fraud, interstate transportation for a scheme to defraud, possession of converted goods and unlawful monetary transaction.

He allegedly took two authentic "Shadow Paintings" by Andy Warhol from a friend in South Korea and later offered the art for sale on eBay for $100,000. A buyer on eBay received the paintings, and found no Warhol Foundation authentication stamps and also noticed that the canvasses and staples looked new, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts. When the buyer compared the paintings to the photographs from the eBay listing, they did not look identical and the buyer concluded the paintings were not authentic. 

Walshe was on house arrest and wearing a location monitoring device while he awaited sentencing for the wire fraud case when his wife went missing.