Prosecutors who are trying to prove that Brian Walshe murdered his wife Ana showed a potentially bloody rug sample along with other gruesome-looking evidence during the third day of proceedings in the trial.
Walshe pleaded guilty to lying to police and illegally disposing of his wife’s body last month, but he denies killing her in January 2023.
Around noon on Wednesday, jurors saw a photo of Ana lying down on a rug in her home. She was playing with one of her sons, but jurors couldn’t see him. The child had been cropped out of the photo at the behest of Walshe’s defense team.
The rug was green with some sort of pattern on it. Ana looked happy, she was smiling.
About three hours later in Norfolk Superior Court, jurors were again looking at a photo of a rug, seemingly the same rug from earlier in the day. But instead of sitting in a brightly lit home, in front of a fireplace, the rug from the second photo lay on bright blue tarp, obviously cut out from a larger piece — and covered in what appeared to be blood.
The red-brown stained evidence, along with cleaning supplies, hardware tools and some personal effects, were found in a dumpster where Walshe’s phone was tracked in the days following Ana’s disappearance.
Assistant District Attorney Gregory Connor called to the stand Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab’s Davis Gould, a forensic scientist, to speak about the trashed evidence he helped catalog back in 2023.
Flipping through a slideshow of photos, the prosecutor showed jurors a range of materials with red-brown stains, including the cut-up pieces of rug.
There were also towels, a robe, tissues, gauze, a black jacket, and two pairs of slippers, all stained in shades of brown-red.
One pair of slippers in particular had bright red globs of liquid on the sole, along with what Gould thought at the time could be human hair.
The bags of trash also contained Ana Walshe’s COVID vaccination card, a pair of Volkswagen car keys (the same kind of car Ana drove), green boots (like the ones Walshe said Ana had left with before she disappeared), a watch, and bracelets.
Gould said police found a hydrogen peroxide bottle, tarps, shears, snips, a hatchet, and a hacksaw — the last of which was also visibly stained brownish red in a photo shown by the prosecution.
Jurors also saw a photo of booties, the kind that painters use to cover their shoes, and a Tyvek suit from the trash.
Connor asked Gould what a Tyvek suit was used for.
Gould said someone would wear it “to protect themselves from anything they are working with.”
The prosecutor followed up with a question on whether Gould had ever worn one.
“I have worn one specifically during training sessions where there are biological fluids that we are experimenting with,” the forensic scientist said.
After going through photos of the evidence, Connor put on a pair of clear plastic gloves and started to retrieve brown evidence bags, sealed with red tape, from a table on the side of the courtroom.
As Connor asked Gould whether he recognized the bags and their contents, he placed them by his desk and quickly covered the floor.
Walshe’s defense lawyer Larry Tipton briefly cross-examined Gould, asking mostly about the process of collecting and handling the evidence seen in the photos and bags.
During cross, Gould said police found many items in the trash that weren’t relevant to the case. He explained that they deemed evidence relevant by targeting bags of trash that had items inside with visible brownish-red stains.
“There’s no way for you to be able to tell a jury, with regards to this specific case, how exactly some of this red-brown stain, biological evidence, actually came to be on any piece of evidence?” Tipton asked, explaining that some of it could have been transferred from item-to-item while inside of a trash bag.
Gould said that was correct. “I cannot say the manner of deposition,” he explained. “I can only confirm its presence.”
Testimony for the Commonwealth will continue Thursday, when Ana’s lover William Fastow is expected to take the stand.
Want more insights? Join Working Title - our career elevating newsletter and get the future of work delivered weekly.
