MARBLEHEAD — Investigators searching for a missing Cohasset woman have spent several days searching and attempting to re-trace the movements of her husband, Brian R. Walshe, after he allegedly told them he’d traveled to Swampscott last week to visit his mother and run some errands for her.
Walshe, who is being held on charges that he lied to police during an interview, has not only personal ties to the North Shore — his mother, Diana Walshe, lives in a luxury apartment complex in Vinnin Square in Swampscott — but is where Walshe also lived and, at least on paper, set up several businesses, in Marblehead and Lynn, court records show.
Officials won’t confirm so far what they recovered from two trash dumpsters that were towed away from the Swampscott apartment complex and searched at a Republic Services waste management company on Forest Street in Peabody late Monday. They would only say in a statement that “a number of items” were collected and will be examined for potential evidentiary value.
A prosecutor has said in court that investigators found a broken knife and blood in the basement of the couple’s rented Cohasset home.
In an affidavit filed Monday in Quincy District Court, Cohasset police say Walshe, 47, told them that hours after last seeing his wife Ana around 6 a.m. on Jan. 1, he had traveled to Swampscott to see his mother, who recently underwent cataract surgery. Walshe, who had been on home confinement awaiting sentencing in a federal art fraud case, had been granted permission to leave his home from 3 to 9 p.m. on Jan. 1 to take his mother home to her apartment, telling the court that she would be staying with him until that date. However, Walshe told police that his mother had recovered more quickly and, he said, drove herself home earlier. He told investigators that he planned to run some errands for her and went to the CVS and the Whole Foods stores near her home.
Walshe told the investigators that he couldn’t find his cell phone and suggested one of his sons must have taken and hidden it, so he was without GPS while driving to the North Shore. He went on to say he got lost on the way and ended up, he believes, taking Route 1 and, possibly Route 114, to get to his mother’s home.
Investigators spent part of Saturday retracing the possible route and viewing surveillance images from both the CVS and Whole Foods in Vinnin Square. They found no evidence he ever set foot in either store, according to the affidavit.
But they do say they have evidence that Walshe was at a Home Depot in Rockland on the morning of Jan. 2, during a window of time that he normally was allowed out of his home each day to bring his kids to school, and purchased $450 worth of cleaning supplies and other items. He was wearing a mask and gloves while in the store.
Also that morning, he had taken his older child to a Norwell ice cream shop. There was no school that day. Police, in their affidavit, noted that he could be in violation of the terms of his bail conditions in the federal case.
Investigators were back on the North Shore on Monday and Tuesday, when the items were located in the dumpsters.
Swampscott police assisted with controlling access to the area that was searched on Monday afternoon and evening, department spokesman Sgt. Jay Locke said.
Glen Johnson, a spokesman for the Essex District Attorney, said state police from that office were also present to assist their counterparts from the Norfolk District Attorney’s office at the search sites.
Investigators were aware of at least some of Walshe’s legal history when they returned to the area.
Walshe was living in a condo at 589 Essex St. in Lynn when he was arrested in October 2018 in the art fraud case. That’s also the address he used when he set up Tobelos LLC, a purported wine brokerage, in May 2018.
Then, in September 2018, just weeks before his arrest in the federal case, he set up an entity called Moorecroft Wines, according to records with the Secretary of State’s corporations division. That business was also set up as a wine brokerage, with an address of 6 Edgewood Road in Marblehead.
Ana Walshe had purchased and closed on 6 Edgewood Road, on Sept. 17, 2018, paying $510,000 for the property. Brian Walshe was not listed on the deed but was listed on a declaration of homestead for the property, according to Registry of Deeds filings. That would indicate that it was a primary residence for the couple during the time that the homestead was in effect.
Ana Walshe sold the property in November 2020, for $840,000, according to property records.
According to an affidavit filed in an estate dispute, Walshe’s father, Dr. Thomas Moorecroft Walshe, died on Sept. 21, 2018.
Within weeks of his father’s death, Walshe, who had according to an affidavit by a cousin been estranged from his father — allegedly over his having “absconded” with nearly $1 million from his father — was appointed as personal representative of the wealthy doctor’s estate.
The estate included a home on Nantasket Avenue in Hull, an extensive collection of art, antiques and rugs, as well as a Maserati and jewelry. In a filing with the Plymouth County Probate and Family Court, Walshe said his father died without a will.
But a cousin, Andrew Walshe, alleges that in fact, there was a will, one that had explicitly disinherited Brian Walshe.
And his father’s longtime friend Jeffrey Brice Ornstein, a well-known interior designer who had worked on the Hull home, says in an affidavit that shortly after learning of Dr. Walshe’s death, Brian Walshe contacted him looking for keys to the home so that he could obtain documents needed to bring his father’s remains home to the United States. Ornstein says in an affidavit that while at the home, he noticed a will and took photos of it.
He retrieved the keys and left them under a mat for Brian Walshe, according to the affidavit.
Courts reporter Julie Manganis can be reached at 978-338-2521, by email at jmanganis@gloucestertimes.com or on Twitter at @SNJulieManganis