^{U.S.! 2025.12} The jury in Brian Walshe’s murder trial heard testimony from the man who had an affair with his wife. Here are the takeaways, Testimony at Brian Walshe murder trial details affair his wife was having before she vanished, Brian Walshe murder trial: Slain wife Ana’s lover takes the stand, Long Island teen who shot ex in rage over getting dumped left disturbing note before botched murder-suicide, Twisted killer Levi Aron — who chopped up dumped body of Leiby Kletzky(8) in 2011 — dies behind bars, FBI arrests suspect in DC pipe bomb case after 5-year investigation, Pirro calls suspected DC pipe bomber ‘quiet’ reveals insight into his ‘low-key’ personal life, DNA links 1987 cold case to Colorado’s ‘most prolific serial killer’, Brooklyn homeless man killed in baseball bat beatdown over defecating in building, Teen gunman murdered 19-year-old college hoops star in triple shooting at Long Island house party, Jurors in Brian Walshe’s murder trial were shown items covered in possible blood – and other takeaways from Day 3, Brian Walshe jurors shown bloody tools and chopped up rug prosecutors allege are linked to wife Ana’s murder, Grisly online searches take center stage in Brian Walshe’s murder trial. Here are takeaways from Day 2, Twisted online cult targeted kids as young as 11 to create child porn — then urged them to commit suicide, NYU student hit shoved to the ground in shocking random attack on way to class, Anti-ICE agitators busted at NYC protest include Fordham grad student standup comic Columbia student editor, Bonkers Brooklyn dine-and-dasher evicted while she sits in jail, A California family was about to cut the cake when gunfire erupted at a toddler’s birthday party, Man pleads guilty to killing an Ole Miss graduate who was prominent in the LGBTQ+ community, Death of Afghan commander financial stress surface in National Guard shooting investigation, Takeaways from Day 1 of the Brian Walshe murder trial, If this is the first time you’re hearing about this case. here’s a rundown, FDA links 10 children’s deaths to COVID-19 vaccines. Doctors want proof

The jury in Brian Walshe’s murder trial heard testimony from the man who had an affair with his wife. Here are the takeaways

Brian Walshe on Thursday came face-to-face for the first time with the man who had been having an affair with his wife before her death, as he took the stand to testify in Walshe’s murder trial.

Washington, DC, real estate broker William Fastow is a key witness for the prosecution, as his testimony could offer jurors a potential motive while they weigh whether Walshe killed his wife, Ana Walshe, around New Year’s Day in 2023.

The jury also saw surveillance footage and GPS data from Brian Walshe’s phones that prosecutors are using to bolster their case that Walshe bought supplies to dismember his wife and then dispose of her body and belongings after her death.

Walshe maintains he did not kill the corporate real estate manager and mother of three – though he has pleaded guilty to illegally disposing of her body and misleading police, unbeknownst to the jury. He faces life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted of her murder.

Here are the takeaways from the fourth day of witness testimony.

Stressors weighed on the Walshes’ marriage before she vanished, Fastow said
Fastow testified Thursday that he started an intimate relationship with Ana Walshe within weeks of her relocating to the city where he sold her a townhome in the spring of 2022.

Ana Walshe had relocated to DC for work. She told Fastow her children were living with their father in Massachusetts because her husband was subject to home confinement due to a pending federal case in which he pleaded guilty to charges related to selling forged Andy Warhol artwork.

That confinement was predicated on Brian Walshe being the primary caregiver for their children, Ana Walshe told Fastow, according to his testimony.

Still, Ana was “despondent” over the fact that she felt she wasn’t in a position to be the mother her children deserved, Fastow testified.

Their relationship became more serious around July 2022, when Walshe’s federal sentencing was delayed, said Fastow, who added the dragging federal fraud case was a major point of contention in the Walshes’ marriage.

“The biggest stressor was his inability to resolve his criminal case,” Fastow said, “and the fact that, because of that, she couldn’t be with her children and bring them back to Washington, DC, … It felt like it was holding up her life.”

Fastow’s testimony also shed light on the final weeks of Ana’s life, as he testified they spent Thanksgiving 2022 together in Dublin, Ireland, and Christmas Eve with his friends in Annapolis, Maryland.

Ana Walshe ultimately wouldn’t return home to Massachusetts until late Christmas Day because her flight that morning was canceled. The jury heard earlier this week from Brian Walshe’s recorded police interviews that they fought about her absence over Christmas.

Fastow confirmed Ana’s absence from her family during the holidays was also a point of contention in her marriage.

Ana cared about her husband and feared him discovering her affair, Fastow said
Despite the monthslong affair, Ana Walshe still cared for her husband, Fastow said.

“Ana felt it was really important that when Brian was to find out about the relationship, that he would hear it from her,” Fastow testified. “She had expressed a great concern, and I think she felt it would be a strike against her integrity if he found out a different way.”

Fastow said he understood Ana cared about her husband and might not leave him, though Fastow had stopped seeing other people.

“While she would talk about arguments they had about finances or the stress of his federal case,” defense attorney Kelli Porges asked on cross-examination, “she always spoke to you about him in a positive light?”

“Yes,” Fastow said.

“And you knew from her, from her words, that she cared for him deeply,” Porges said.

“Very much so,” Fastow said.

Ana Walshe and Fastow had plans to meet on January 4, 2023, to celebrate the New Year and discuss their “one-, three-, five- and 10-year plans,” Fastow said. But on cross-examination, he clarified they never had extensive conversations about being together long-term.

Ana Walshe never shared that she thought her husband might know about their affair, nor that she had plans to tell him about it, Fastow said.

Brian Walshe’s attorneys have repeatedly claimed he did not know about his wife’s affair before her death.

A text message around the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2023, wishing him a happy new year was the last time Fastow ever heard from Ana, he said. He grew increasingly concerned when she didn’t answer his calls or texts on January 2 and 3.

Fastow ignored two calls from Brian Walshe on January 4, fearing he had learned of the affair.

“I was in an intimate relationship with his wife. I had not heard from her in several days, and frankly, I was concerned that maybe he had found out and was calling to confront me,” Fastow testified.

He eventually called Brian Walshe back after Walshe left him a voicemail saying Ana was missing. Fastow went to her DC townhouse looking for Ana at Brian’s request, he said.

The jury saw evidence used to trace Walshe’s alleged movements after Ana’s disappearance
On Thursday afternoon, the jury saw surveillance footage and GPS data that prosecutors have said led investigators to believe Walshe disposed of his wife’s body and other evidence after her death.

Law enforcement retraced Brian Walshe’s movements before his arrest on January 8, 2023, by analyzing two iPhones seized during the investigation into Ana’s disappearance, according to previous court filings by the prosecution. Both phones were believed to be used by Brian Walshe, prosecutors have said.

Massachusetts State Trooper Connor Keefe testified that, after extracting information from the devices around January 8, 2023, he told his supervisors he saw location data suggesting Brian Walshe’s cellphone traveled to dumpsters at his mother’s apartment complex on the morning of January 5.

Earlier this week, the jury saw items recovered from those dumpsters, which prosecutors have said belonged to Ana and bore her and Brian’s DNA.

Trooper Keefe reviewed other location data used to retrace Walshe’s movements between January 1 and January 5, 2023. According to the trooper, that evidence showed that:
On the evening of January 1, Walshe’s phone pinged at a Lowe’s, CVS and grocery stores.
On January 2, his phone appeared at a Home Goods, Home Depot, Walgreens and a grocery store.
And on January 3, according to the phone data, Walshe went to three different apartment complexes in suburban areas south of Boston.

Jurors saw surveillance footage from January 3 that showed a Volvo SUV driving into one of those apartment complexes. The footage captured a man who threw away a black trash bag in the complex’s dumpster.

The apartment’s general manager testified that, based on the typical collection schedule, the trash would have been picked up the following day.

Prosecutors have alleged in court filings Walshe took garbage bags to six dumpsters in different cities and towns on multiple days – and officials believe some of them contained Ana’s remains. Filings also allege Walshe misled police in the days after Ana’s death, and that investigators were too late to recover some of the evidence they believe Walshe threw away.

His attorney acknowledged during opening statements that Walshe lied to police.

Jurors see more of Walshe’s alleged internet searches
Thursday also featured testimony about more internet searches made from Walshe’s cellphone in the days before and after Ana’s disappearance.

Earlier this week prosecutors showed the jury a lengthy and gruesome list of online searches they alleged were made from Brian Walshe’s laptop in the days after Ana’s disappearance.

The records presented Thursday show a user on Walshe’s cellphone searched for William Fastow on December 25, 2022 – around the time Walshe has said he was trying to reach Ana when her flight home for the holiday was canceled. The internet history reflected another search for Fastow on January 4, 2023, around the time Fastow testified he got a call from Brian Walshe.

Searches for buildings managed by Ana Walshe’s employer in Washington, DC, also came up in Brian Walshe’s phone’s internet history on December 29, 2022, and then again on January 4, the day Ana was reported missing.

Searches for the Washington, DC, police and “how to file a missing persons report” also occurred on January 3, the records showed.

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Testimony at Brian Walshe murder trial details affair his wife was having before she vanished

The focus in the murder trial of Brian Walshe turned Thursday to an affair his wife was having before he allegedly killed and dismembered her on New Year’s Day 2023.

Ana Walshe, a real estate agent who immigrated from Serbia, was last seen early on Jan. 1, 2023, following a New Year’s Eve dinner at her Massachusetts home. Her body has never been found. Her husband, Brian Walshe faces a first-degree murder charge, after agreeing to plead guilty last month to lesser charges of misleading police and willfully disposing of a human body in violation of state law.

William Fastow told the court on the fourth day of the trial that he met Ana Walshe in March 2022 when he sold her a townhouse in Washington, D.C. He said the relationship quickly intensified as they became close friends and confidants and eventually had an “intimate relationship.” They went out to dinner and to bars together, he said, and she would spend time on his sailboat and stay overnight at his home. They also took a Thanksgiving trip to Ireland.

Relationship was never hidden
Fastow testified he never tried to keep their relationship secret and told others about their relationship, though he admitted they never socialized with her friends. They did, however, discuss telling Brian Walshe about it.

“Ana felt it was really important that when Brian was to find about relationship that he would hear it from her,” Fastow said. “She had expressed great concern and I think she felt it would be a strike against her integrity if he found out a different way.”

Fastow said the pair spent Christmas Eve together with friends and had planned to celebrate New Year’s together on Jan. 4, when they would discuss their plans for the future.

“We’d had a number of conversations about what a life together might look like, what merging two families would look like,” he testified. “But I’d always said to Ana that she needed to figure out how she wanted things with Brian and what she wanted that to look for her life before we could make any commitments or decisions.”

New Year’s Eve text
Fastow said his last contact with Ana Walshe was a text message from her on New Year’s Eve. The following day he sent her a photo of Fastow showing his son how to ski, a waving hand emoji, question mark query and a few more text messages the following days that got no response. He tried calling her several times on Jan. 2 but the calls went straight to voicemail. Then, on Jan. 4, he got a call from Brian Walshe, but let it go to voicemail because he was in an “intimate relationship with his wife.”

“I had not heard from her in several days and, frankly, I was concerned maybe he had found out and was calling to confront me,” he testified.

Walshe called Fastow a second time, and his voicemail was played in court. In a somewhat upbeat tone, Walshe said he “hoped all was going well” with Fastow before saying he was “reaching out to anybody he could” because “Ana hadn’t been in touch for a few days” and that he was wondering if Fastow “had spoken to her recently.” Walshe then apologized for the call and said he was sure “everything was fine.”

At the time, Brian Walshe was at home awaiting sentencing in an unrelated art fraud case involving the sale of two fake Andy Warhol paintings.

On cross examination, Walshe’s defense attorney Kelli Porges was able to get Fastow to acknowledge he was not aware of any plans for Ana Walshe to tell her husband about their relationship.

“There was no plan, as Ana went home for Christmas to be with her family, that she was going to come clean and tell Brian about you,” Porges said, prompting Fastow to say that he wasn’t aware of “any plan.”

Internet searches, dumpster discoveries
Prosecutors so far have relied on incriminating searches allegedly made by Walshe on several devices that related to dismembering bodies and cleaning up blood.

Investigators also said surveillance video showed a man resembling Walshe throwing what appeared to be heavy trash bags into a dumpster near their home, and that a search of a trash processing facility near his mother’s home uncovered bags containing a hatchet, hammer, sheers, hacksaw, towels and a protective Tyvek suit, cleaning agents, a Prada purse, boots like the ones Ana Walshe was last seen wearing and a COVID-19 vaccination card with her name. Many of those items have been entered into evidence.

In his opening statement Monday, Assistant District Attorney Gregory Connor told the jury that the Massachusetts State Crime Laboratory examined some of the items for DNA against samples they had from the couple. They found Ana and Brian Walshe’s DNA on the Tyvek suit and Ana Walshe’s DNA on the hatchet, hacksaw and other items.

Walshe’s attorney, Larry Tipton, argued in his opening statement that was not a case of murder but what he called a “sudden unexplained death” of Ana Walshe. He portrayed a couple who loved each other and were planning for the future before Ana Walshe died after celebrating New Year’s Eve with her husband and a friend.

“When he entered the bedroom and began to get into bed, he sensed something was wrong. You will hear evidence that it made no sense to him,” Tipton told jurors. “He nudged Ana his wife. She didn’t respond.”

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Brian Walshe murder trial: Slain wife Ana’s lover takes the stand
Prosecutors allege Brian Walshe killed wife over affair and to avoid federal prison as sole caretaker of their kids

Ana Walshe’s paramour William Fastow took the witness stand Thursday in the murder trial of her husband, Brian Walshe, testifying that the two began an “intimate” relationship before she vanished without a trace on Jan. 1, 2023.

Fastow, a realtor, helped her find housing in Washington, D.C., where she was commuting to work from her family home in Boston.

Fastow, like Ana, had children, although he was separated from his own wife, he testified.

They became close, bonding over common interests, including in fitness and over the struggles they had in common as parents. Then they began their affair, he said.

Although he never stayed at her Washington townhouse overnight, she stayed at his, he said. He said he did not keep the affair a secret generally, but that Ana had told him that if her husband ever found out, she wanted him to find out from her.

Still, the two went on a trip to Dublin, Ireland, for Thanksgiving in the months before her murder. After Dublin, Ana flew to Serbia to visit her mother, while he returned to Washington. They also spent Christmas Eve together in Washington, he said, allegedly infuriating her husband when her flight was delayed. She drove from Washington to Cohasset.

She had also set up rooms for her three children in her townhouse, he said, anticipating that they would be moving in there.

“Ana was extremely disappointed that she wasn’t in a position to be the mother she believed the children deserved,” Fastow testified.

He testified that Ana told him that her children lived with their father in Cohasset, a suburb of Boston, because Walshe’s home confinement for a federal art fraud conviction was contingent on him being their primary caretaker.

Prosecutors have alleged two potential motives in the slaying. The first is anger over the affair. The second is because he allegedly believed he would have a better chance of avoiding federal prison if his wife were out of the picture, and he was the only caretaker for their three children.

Walshe’s defense has denied that he had any knowledge of the affair, although he mentioned Fastow more than once during interviews with detectives before his arrest and allegedly looked him up on the internet before Ana’s disappearance.

During cross-examination, Walshe’s defense attorney repeatedly referred to Ana as “Mrs. Walshe” to underscore how Fastow was carrying on an affair with a married mother of three.

Her remains have not been found, but prosecutors showed the jury Wednesday a saw and hatchet recovered from a dumpster near Walshe’s mother’s house that the defendant allegedly used to dismember his wife. The same dumpster also had her COVID-19 vaccination card, clothes, bloody towels and a cut-up rug suspiciously similar to one taken from the family home.

Janet Cotter, a woman who ran into Ana at a nail salon on Dec. 31, 2022, testified that Ana was friendly and warm and was excited to attend a New Year’s Day dinner with her husband in the north shore town of Marblehead. Once she realized Ana was missing, she said, she called Cohasset police and alerted them to their conversation.

The general manager of the Clairmount apartment complex, where Walshe’s mother lived and where prosecutors say police found bags of tools and Ana’s clothing, took the stand and confirmed she provided police with surveillance footage from the property.

She testified the property has four outside cameras, three of which focus on the back of the building where two gated areas contain the building’s dumpsters.

Prosecutors played some of the video, which had several time skips but showed a man alleged to be Walshe getting out of a Volvo like the one he drove and throwing heavy bags into the dumpster.

FBI arrests suspect in DC pipe bomb case after 5-year investigation
Law enforcement arrested the suspect Thursday morning in Virginia

A suspect who allegedly planted pipe bombs blocks from the U.S. Capitol on January 5, 2021, is now in federal custody after a nearly five-year investigation, the Department of Justice announced Thursday.

The FBI arrested the suspect, thirty-year-old Brian Cole Jr. of Woodbridge, Thursday morning, DOJ leaders said at a press conference. Cole is facing charges of using an explosive device, but more charges are possible, they said.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said the investigation is “very active and very ongoing.”

Bondi also criticized the Biden FBI for failing to solve the case, saying the Trump administration made it a high priority and that federal authorities had a breakthrough using existing tips rather than new information.

“The total lack of movement on this case in our nation’s capital undermined the public trust of our enforcement agencies,” Bondi said. “This cold case languished for four years until Director [Kash] Patel and Deputy Director [Dan] Bongino came to the FBI.”

Authorities discovered the two pipe bombs near the Republican and Democratic National Committees’ headquarters around the same time that thousands of protesters a few blocks away began to descend on the Capitol over the 2020 election results.

Video footage released by the FBI showed an unidentified person placing the pipe bombs near the two headquarters more than 16 hours before law enforcement found them. The suspect was seen wearing a gray hoodie, Nike Air Max Speed Turf sneakers, a mask, glasses and gloves, but the person’s identity had long been unknown.

The initial investigation had slowed in under two months, by the end of February 2021, a possible result of credible leads drying up at the time, according to a congressional report.

The lingering mystery led a faction of President Donald Trump’s base to raise concerns about the timing of the pipe bomb incident and security failures surrounding it. Some elevated theories that the Biden administration was not forthright to the public about the facts of the case.

Bongino had suggested the planting of the bombs was an “inside job” prior to joining the bureau. In May, he told Fox News authorities were “closing in” on suspects.

Bongino celebrated what he viewed as a long-awaited resolution to the case during the press conference Thursday.

“You’re not going to walk into our capital city, put down two explosive devices and walk off in the sunset. Not going to happen,” Bongino said.

In unsealed court papers, an FBI affidavit gave no details about the suspect’s motives but did shed light on how authorities identified Cole. They obtained his banking records, which showed Cole “purchased multiple items consistent with the components that were used to manufacture the pipe bombs placed at the RNC and DNC,” the affidavit said. It also said authorities matched his cell phone records to cell towers in the Capitol Hill vicinity on the night of Jan. 5.

At the start of the investigation, a top official with the FBI Washington Field Office had told the public the bombs were live explosive devices when they were uncovered.

“These pipe bombs were viable devices that could have been detonated, resulting in serious injury or death,” Washington Field Office head Steven D’Antuono, who has since retired, said in 2021.

D’Antuono later told the House Judiciary Committee in an interview that the devices also came with one-hour timers that had lapsed, so he did not believe the timers could have set them off.

The first bomb was discovered by a woman near the RNC, who said she was in an alleyway doing laundry when she saw it and told a nearby officer about it, according to investigative reports. That set off a furious hunt during which the second bomb was discovered, the reports said.

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Pirro calls suspected DC pipe bomber ‘quiet,’ reveals insight into his ‘low-key’ personal life
Federal authorities say they’ve found bomb-making materials in the suspect’s home

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro revealed insight into the personal life of the suspect in connection to pipe bombs planted in Washington, D.C., and what the FBI found in his home on “The Ingraham Angle.”

Federal authorities arrested 30-year-old Brian Cole Jr. of Virginia on Thursday morning after a nearly five-year-long investigation involving “millions of pieces of data.”

“This is a guy who kind of has a very low-key life. He lives with his mother,” Pirro told Fox News host Laura Ingraham.

“He was always wearing his headphones. He would take his dog out. He’d go to the 7-Eleven. He was very low-key, low-profile,” she added.

“He’s that quiet individual that you would never imagine could put a pipe bomb, put it together,” Pirro said.

Cole is suspected of planting two pipe bombs near the RNC and DNC’s headquarters on Jan. 6, 2021, just as thousands of rioters moved toward the Capitol a few blocks away to protest 2020 election results.

Surveillance footage released by the FBI shows a suspect placing the two explosive devices by the buildings in Washington, D.C.

“Cell phone pings that connected with the defendant walking along that area with the video that we had,” Pirro revealed.

The explosives found hours later by law enforcement were determined by the FBI to be “viable devices that could have been detonated, resulting in serious injury or death.”

Cole was surveilled by authorities prior to his arrest, Pirro said.

“He was just a very low-key person that you would never expect — not a lot of social media,” she told Fox News.

Cole is sitting in federal custody facing charges of using an explosive device, though more could be added, authorities said.

“His closest friends are his family. He lives with his mom and his sisters. He would go to work for a few hours a day. His father had a bail bondsman company,” Pirro told Fox News.

She discussed what law enforcement found in the suspect’s home upon searching it Thursday morning.

“They found a lot of other products and pieces for pipe bombs,” Pirro said.

“He was into this, very much into this.”

She said Cole had been purchasing bomb-making materials since 2019.

Pirro credited the Trump administration with “reinvigorating” the investigation and accused Biden’s team of not making it a priority.

“This case was solved because of President Trump and this administration making it a priority,” she said. “The well-being of any society depends upon whether or not people feel safe. And people feel safe when we do — and we will — make the criminal accountable, and that’s what we did.”

An unhinged Long Island teen charged with killing his ex-girlfriend in a botched murder-suicide was furious when she went off to college – and flew into a rage when she dumped him, Suffolk County prosecutors said Thursday.

“I have set my mind on leaving this place before my 18th birthday,” accused killer Austin Lynch wrote in a chilling manifesto on his phone after 18-year-old Emily Finn ended their three-year high school relationship.

“I f–king hate her.”

The disturbing new details came as Lynch, who survived a self-inflicted gunshot to the face during the Nov. 26 incident, wore green scrubs and bandages over much of his face as he was arraigned on a second-degree murder charge.

Assistant District Attorney Dena Rizopoulos said Lynch went from obsessive to downright scary after Finn left for SUNY Oneonta then dumped him two weeks before the murder.

“The victim’s friend described the two-week point when the defendant shifted to anger,” Rizopoulos told the judge. “In a conversation the weekend before the murder, this defendant told this friend that he would be dead by Wednesday.”

Finn, a bubbly freshman and talented ballet dancer, was home for Thanksgiving break when she was confronted by Lynch.

Both graduated from Sayville High School in June after dating for three years, but things began to go sour when Finn left for school, and Lynch stayed home to enlist in the Marine Cops.

“While the victim was away at school, the relationship began to break down,” Rizopoulos told Judge Philip Golglas. “Multiple friends of the victim, who also knew the defendant, described the defendant as becoming possessive, accusatory and overbearing.”

Lynch made at least two trips to see Finn at her school, most recently on Halloween, with the pair bickering fiercely.

Finally, Finn had had enough and broke it off by phone, blocking her jilted ex on her phone and online accounts, Rizopoulos said.

On Nov. 21, a tearful Lynch had a nasty spat with Lynch in a late-night phone call, with Lynch calling her “whore and other derogatory names,” the prosecutors said.

“The victim came home for the Thanksgiving holiday and made plans to speak with the defendant on Wednesday, Nov. 26, to return some personal items and have a face-to-face conversation for closure,” Rizopoulos said.

Outside, Lynch’s parents were cleaning out their hot tub when they heard a gunshot from inside and rushed in to find Finn dead with a shotgun wound to the head and their son on the ground bleeding — and called 911.

“The defendant was lying on the ground bleeding from his face,” the prosecutor said. “A portion of his nose appeared to be missing. A shotgun was found on the kitchen island.”

Rizopoulos said Finn died clutching her car keys.

Police later found the accused killer’s iPhone in his bedroom, where his deranged ramblings were found.

A coroner’s report determined she died from a close-contact wound at the base of her skull.

More than a thousand mourners packed the Raynor & D’Andrea Funeral Home in West Sayville for her wake last week, many wearing pink – Finn’s favorite color – to honor her memory.

Suffolk County prosecutors had been waiting for Lynch to recover enough to be arraigned on murder charges in the cowardly slaying.

In court Thursday, the slain teen’s mother, Cliantha Finn, sobbed during the proceedings, sitting between her son and husband in a pink sweater.

The accused killer was ordered held without bail.

Nearly 40 years after a passing motorist spotted the nude body of 30-year-old Rhonda Marie Fisher alongside a rural Colorado highway, new DNA evidence has implicated one of the state’s “most prolific serial killers.”

Fisher had been sexually assaulted and strangled, then tossed down an embankment about 35 miles south of Denver on April 1, 1987.

Police questioned everyone from an acquaintance she’d been staying with to “multiple serial offenders” active in the area at the time. Among them were Vincent Darrell Groves and another man, but investigators lacked DNA confirmation so the case went cold.

“Despite an extensive investigation and periodic reviews spanning nearly four decades, the case remained unsolved,” the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement, noting that even renewed DNA testing in 2017 hadn’t yielded enough material to identify Fisher’s killer.

Flash forward to 2025, when the office’s Cold Case Unit reopened the inquiry, reviewing all the evidence anew. They also managed to recover DNA from inside paper bags that police had placed over Fisher’s hands at the original crime scene to preserve trace evidence — an “exceptionally rare” feat, Sheriff Darren Weekly told Denver ABC affiliate KMGH.

What wasn’t Fisher’s DNA matched the DNA found in three 1979 murders committed by Groves. Police hold him responsible for at least 12 homicides, an attempted murder and a sexual assault in the Denver metro area between 1978 and 1988. Now Fisher is added to the list, and police suspect there may be as many as 20 victims.

Groves was convicted of murder in 1982, but released from jail less than five years later, “only to commit additional violent crimes,” according to the DCSO. Two more murder convictions in 1988 put him back in prison, where he died in 1996.

“While Vincent Groves cannot be held accountable in a court of law, we hope this long-awaited resolution brings answers and a measure of peace to Rhonda Fisher’s family and friends,” Sheriff Weekly said in the DCSO’s statement. “Rhonda Fisher was a mother, daughter, sister and friend. Her case exemplifies the dedication of DCSO investigators, forensic partners and cold case specialists who continue to work tirelessly, often for years at a time, to bring closure to families who have endured unimaginable waits.”

Jurors in Brian Walshe’s murder trial were shown items covered in possible blood – and other takeaways from Day 3

The Massachusetts jury weighing the case of Brian Walshe saw a collection of evidence on Wednesday, including photos of items covered in what looked like blood, as prosecutors work to prove he murdered his wife around New Year’s 2023.

The evidence capped the third day of witness testimony in Walshe’s murder trial, which also featured witnesses who prosecutors called to establish Ana Walshe did not travel after returning home to Massachusetts from Washington, DC, where she lived and worked – despite her husband’s initial claims that she had left early on January 1, 2023.

Meanwhile, Walshe’s defense worked to undercut any suggestion he might have been motivated to kill his wife because of the more than $1 million in life insurance policies she had purchased.

Walshe has already pleaded guilty to misleading police and improperly disposing of his wife’s body. But he maintains he did not kill the corporate real estate manager and mother of three. He faces life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted.

The trial in Dedham, Massachusetts, will continue Thursday. Prosecutors previously said they planned to call key witnesses later this week, like the man Ana Walshe was having an affair with before her death.

Here are the takeaways:

Jurors see photos of evidence covered in possible blood stains
A forensic scientist from the Massachusetts State Police Crime Laboratory walked the jury through photos of evidence recovered from dumpsters near an apartment complex where Brian Walshe’s mother lived.

Prosecutors have alleged Walshe tossed several bags at the location in an effort to cover his tracks, throwing away items that they previously said belonged to Ana Walshe, including a pair of Hunter boots and her Covid-19 vaccination card.

On Wednesday afternoon, the jury saw photos of several items recovered during the January 9, 2023, dumpster search, and prosecutors brought several into the courtroom to admit them into evidence. One by one, Norfolk County Assistant District Attorney Greg Connor carried evidence bags to forensic scientist Davis Gould, who confirmed the contents of each bag without removing them for jurors to see.

Judge Diane Freniere told the jury they would have access to the physical evidence during deliberations.

Several items recovered from the trash search were covered in what appeared to be blood, according to photos shown in court – though Gould only referred to “red-brown stains.”

The jury saw photos of a black jacket, white towels and a white robe that were covered in these stains. A pair of gray slippers showed similar smears and a clump of what appeared to be hair on the bottom of one shoe. Another evidence photo showed several tools recovered from the trash, including a hatchet with similar “red-brown stains” and a hacksaw.

Prosecutors did not make a connection between the items and Brian and Ana Walshe in court Wednesday. But they’ve previously said investigators determined that items recovered from those dumpsters were covered in blood and the couple’s DNA. They will likely make that link explicit through a later witness.

Gould also said he processed Walshe’s Volvo at the family’s home and tested several locations for blood. He did not testify to the results of that testing, but again, prosecutors have previously said Ana Walshe’s blood was recovered in the car.

Witnesses testify Ana Walshe did not travel despite husband’s claim
Prosecutors called a series of record keepers whose brief testimony bolstered their claim that there is no evidence Ana Walshe left on her own from the family’s Massachusetts home after January 1, 2023, when she was last seen alive celebrating the New Year.

In the immediate aftermath of his wife’s disappearance, Brian Walshe told police she had left early that morning for Washington, DC, to address an emergency at work. She typically used an Uber, Lyft or taxi to go to the airport, he told them at the time. At trial, Walshe’s defense has acknowledged this was a lie, claiming instead that he found her dead in bed.

However, records custodians for Uber and Lyft confirmed she didn’t use either ridesharing app between December 30, 2022, after arriving in Massachusetts, and January 8, 2023, when Brian Walshe was arrested.

A records custodian for JetBlue testified Ana Walshe was considered a “no show” for a flight from Boston to DC that she had booked for January 3, 2023. She was also a “no show” for a flight on January 13, from DC back to Boston, the witness said.

A representative from the US Customs and Border Patrol similarly testified there were no records of Ana Walshe leaving the country after she returned in early December 2022 from a trip abroad.

A Massachusetts state trooper testified she searched Ana Walshe’s townhome in Washington, DC, on January 7, after she had been reported missing. The property was “neat and tidy,” the trooper said, and showed no signs that Ana had recently been there.

Ana Walshe bought over $1 million in life insurance policies only after her husband was denied
Jurors also heard from an insurance agent who had sold Ana Walshe a $1 million term life insurance policy and a $250,000 whole life insurance policy in 2021 – though defense attorneys on cross-examination worked to defuse the life insurance as a potential motive.

Brian Walshe was the beneficiary of both policies, Mark Selvaggi, the insurance agent, testified under direct questioning. The Walshe family also had whole life insurance policies on all three of their children, with Ana Walshe as the sole beneficiary, he said.

When Ana Walshe bought the policies, Selvaggi said, she had to undergo a health assessment – and received the highest health rating by the insurance company. Ana Walshe also submitted to blood and urine tests as part of that health designation process.

On cross-examination, Selvaggi testified it’s common for married couples to name each other as beneficiaries of life insurance policies when they have minor children: The surviving spouse can use the insurance to continue to care for their children.

The defense also had Selvaggi acknowledge that, before Ana Walshe bought her policies, Brian Walshe had first tried to purchase life insurance policies on himself. But he was repeatedly denied because of a pending federal case in which he pleaded guilty to charges connected to selling forged Andy Warhol artwork.

“It was probably your recommendation that Ana applied because Mr. Walshe was getting denied?” defense attorney Kelli Porges asked.

“Correct,” Selvaggi said.

Selvaggi said he wasn’t aware of a follow-up screening with Ana Walshe after she bought the policy in 2021. He also said he wasn’t sure if there were any evaluations for pulmonary, cardiac or neurological health included in her original assessment.

—

Brian Walshe jurors shown bloody tools and chopped up rug prosecutors allege are linked to wife Ana’s murder
Brian Walshe allegedly looked up cheating wife porn and searched for his wife’s suspected lover’s name

Jurors in Brian Walshe’s murder trial saw evidence recovered from a dumpster outside his mother’s house in January 2023, as police were searching for his missing wife Ana, whom he is now accused of killing and dismembering before hiding her remains.

The evidence there included some of Ana’s clothes, her purse and her coronavirus vaccination card. Police also recovered two towels with red brown stains on them, as well as stained tissues and stained hair samples. Other bags held a stained bathrobe, slippers and a chopped-up rug that appeared to be soaked in blood.

Another bag held a Tyvek suit and safety goggles. Yet another had shears, a hacksaw and a hatchet along with a large tarp.

Assistant District Attorney Gregory Connor led Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab technician Davis Gould through the items, one by one, starting with Ana’s COVID vaccination card. A gloved Gould cut open sealed evidence bags and retrieved items which were then entered into evidence. Connor walked each bag across the courtroom, underscoring the large amount of forensic evidence.

During cross-examination, defense attorney Larry Tipton questioned if the items recovered from the trash bags might have come into contact with each other before they were retrieved, potentially transferring biological evidence under Locard’s Exchange Principle. Gould said it’s possible.

Gould was the crime lab tech who responded to the Cohasset Police Department in January 2023 to process Brian Walshe’s Volvo SUV. Gould recounted how blood-screening tests were performed on the interior of the vehicle, of which five tested positive.

Gould also processed evidence retrieved from the dumpster near Walshe’s mom’s house in Swampscott.

Earlier Wednesday saw state police officers, airline records keepers and a Customs agent take the stand.

Massachusetts State Police Trooper Nicholas Guarino returned to kick things off.

Guarino spent hours testifying this week about Walshe’s search history, which included damning queries about disposing of human remains and cleaning DNA off a knife. But he also looked up classified ads for Porsches, sales of diamond jewelry and a pornographic video about a cheating wife.

Ana was allegedly having an affair with a Washington, D.C., realtor named William Fastow, whose name Walshe also searched for.

Prosecutors have alleged two potential motives in the slaying. The first is anger over the affair. The second is because he allegedly believed he would have a better chance of avoiding prison in an unrelated art fraud case if his wife were out of the picture and he was the only caretaker for their three children.

Walshe’s defense has denied that he had any knowledge of the affair.

Next on the stand was a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent named William Foley, who testified briefly about Ana’s air travel in the weeks before she vanished.

Next up was Cohasset Police K-9 Sgt. Patrick Reardon, who was part of the search effort for Ana on Jan. 5. 2023, with his K-9 partner, Einstein. Reardon and Einstein participated in an area search outside the Walshe family home. They found nothing of note, except for a dog in a fenced area of the backyard. The defense declined to cross-examine him.

Thomas Menino, a JetBlue corporate security official and records keeper who works at Boston Logan International Airport, took the stand next. He testified that Ana’s flight from Washington to Boston on Christmas Day 2022 had been refunded. She took another flight on the same route from Dec. 30, 2022. She was listed as “no show” on her return ticket, issued for a flight back to D.C. on Jan. 3, 2023.

She missed four more flights later in January that had all been booked earlier, because she commuted to the nation’s capital for work. Ana was last seen on Jan. 1, 2023.

The defense also declined to cross-examine Menino.

Cohasset Police School Resource Officer Gregory Lowrance testified next that Walshe told him after Ana’s disappearance that when he last saw her on Jan. 1, she had departed for a flight from Boston to Washington.

Lowrance took a missing person report from Walshe regarding Ana on Jan. 4.

A teenager was busted for allegedly carrying-out a triple shooting that left a 19-year-old college basketball player dead outside of a house party on Long Island, Nassau County police said Wednesday.

Jacob McMillan, 18, allegedly opened fire outside the bash in Hempstead on Nov. 22 just before 11 p.m., senselessly killing Monroe University hoopster Amira McCleod and shooting two 20-year-old Nassau Community College students, according to cops.

Police were still investigating whether any of the victims were specifically targeted, or if they were tragically hit by stray bullets.

The two students who survived their gunshots have since been discharged from the hospital, officials confirmed. Their names were not publicly released.

McMillian, from Baldwin, was charged with murder, attempted murder, weapons possession and burglary.

He pleaded not guilty and was held without bail at his arraignment Wednesday morning, according to the Nassau District Attorney’s Office.

University officials described McCleod as “a cherished member” of the women’s basketball team, The Express, in a previous statement to The Post, adding that the school “community was devastated by the tragic loss.

The basketball star, a Queens native playing at the school’s Bronx campus, was only nine games into her sophomore season when she was killed.

“We are in close contact with Amira’s family, teammates, and roommates, offering our full support as they navigate this unimaginable loss,” the statement read.

The 5-foot-3 guard was known for her defensive prowess, averaging nearly two steals a game and played a season high 30 minutes in the team’s afternoon 67-44 win over Dutchess Community College just hours before her death.

The promising athlete, who was working toward a degree in business administration, said she wanted to continue her education at “a four-year school” after leaving Monroe, according to her bio on the team’s website.

Her dream eventually was to open a clothing and sneaker store.

McCleod’s team was off to an 8-1 start — now 10-1 since her passing — mustering up the willpower and strength to blow-out Suffolk County Community College by 21 points just three days after her murder shocked the locker room.

Head coach Damel Ling said the big win was in honor of McCleod, and detailed that it was the team’s decision to still play, according to Newsday.

A homeless man beaten into a coma by a baseball bat-wielding attacker has died of his injuries more than a year-and-a-half later, cops said Wednesday — and the accused attacker admitted to cops he confronted the victim for urinating and defecating in the suspect’s apartment building.

James Cole, 58, died Nov. 11 after clinging to life for nearly 20 months, since Matthaat Blomont allegedly bashed him in the head with a bat and stomped him outside a laundromat next to the suspect’s Flatbush apartment building.

Blomont has been held without bail since his arrest and indictment on attempted murder and assault charges a few weeks after the beating. He could now face upgraded charged in the wake of Cole’s death, which has been deemed a homicide after an autopsy by the city Medical Examiner.

After his arrest, the suspect told cops that Cole had been “pissing and s–ting” in Blomont’s building on Bedford Ave. near Clarkson Ave. The building’s super blamed Bomont, the suspect said, according to court filings.

“He was in the building…. And he was like yo get the f–k out of my face and he cut me with a blade,” Blomont said in a rambling interview with detectives on April 11, 2024, in which he admitted confronting the victim but claimed he wasn’t present when Cole was attacked. “(I) left it alone and I walked away… When I came back I saw an ambulance. I said ‘Oo, he’s on the floor’ and I stood there. Yes, I stood there with the police. I’m serious.”

Blomont then admitted he “was there with the bat” but claimed he didn’t use it, telling detectives at separate points in the interview he put the bat on the ground, it fell, and he threw it away near a tree, according to court filings. He also said a woman at the scene told him to back off, so he did.

“I’m being honest with you. I walked off. I went to get a coffee,” he said. “I was just telling him not to come in the building, that’s it.”

Blomont then admitted to pushing Cole but insisted he didn’t hit him, according to court documents.

“I came outside. I saw him and said, ‘Why are you in the building?’ I said, ‘The landlord said you pissed and s— and break the locks,” Blomont said. “I didn’t hit him. (The bat) fell I’m telling you. It fell under the car. He threw bags at me and (the bat) was rolling and I just left it.”

An eyewitness saw Blomont repeatedly hit Cole in the head with the bat, then repeatedly stomp his head while he was on the ground, according to the complaint. A law enforcement source said the beating was also caught on video.

Cops initially couldn’t identify the unconscious victim, though investigators determined who he was after he admitted to Kings County Hospital with severe head trauma, a police spokeswoman said.

The beatdown left Cole in a coma and he needed a ventilator to breathe, according to the criminal complaint.

The Legal Aid Society, which is representing Blomont, declined comment Wednesday.

An NYU student was thrown to the ground while walking to class in Lower Manhattan on Monday morning — with the shocking and unprovoked attack caught on surveillance video.

Big Apple coed Amelia Lewis said she was walking down Broadway shortly before 9:30 a.m. on Monday when a violent vagrant came up behind her and attacked her without warning.

“As I’m walking, like with my headphones on listening to music, I feel something slap me so hard, like literally on my ass,” Lewis, 20, said in a tearful TikTok post following the assault.

“And I was like, ‘Oh my God, oh that hurts so bad!’ I thought it was like one of my friends. I was gonna turn around and be like, ‘Oh, that hurt so bad, why did you do that?’

“But when I turned around, I saw this old white guy. And like right when I turned around, he grabs my f—ing hair like this and like yanks me and like threw me to the ground. My headphones went f–ing flying,” Lewis sobbed.

“And I was like on the ground and I saw him just bolt away down Waverly. And I was like, ‘Holy s–t? What the f–k just happened?’”

The chilling clip shows the thug stalking up behind Lewis before the attack, and fleeing while she lay on the ground as shocked bystanders came to her aid.

Cops arrested and charged serial creep James Rizzo, a 45-year-old homeless man who has a history of assaulting unsuspecting young women, with persistent sexual abuse, forcible touching and assault charges Tuesday evening.

Rizzo has 16 prior busts, including for sexual abuse and forcible touching and even a 1997 murder rap. He was released from state prison in September after being sentenced to two years behind bars on a persistent sexual abuse conviction, online correction records show.

Meanwhile, the traumatized student issued a warning.

“I just really want to emphasize how not ok this is,” Lewis said in another post shared on X. “I’m honestly still in shock, but I’m more enraged that things like this are able to happen in this city, and we really need to do something about it because this is unacceptable.

“This just shows that you really need to reflect on who you’re voting for and supporting right now, because New York needs help and we’re just not getting the help we need and this is crazy,” she added.

Lewis said her attacker was “a tall white male with tall brunette hair and a long brunette beard, and is wearing grey sweatpants and a big black fur jacket and a blue towel around his neck.”

The university “is deeply disturbed by the attack on one of its female students that took place yesterday morning on a Broadway sidewalk,” an NYU spokesperson said in a statement.

“We take this incident very seriously; we are offering support to the student, and NYU’s Campus Safety Department is working with the police in investigating the incident,” the spokesperson said.

A Queens man and four other members of a twisted online cult terrorized and blackmailed children on gaming platforms into performing sick sexual acts on camera – then gave their terrified victims instructions on how to kill themselves, federal prosecutors announced Tuesday.

The five deranged men belonged to “Greggy’s Cult,” which exploited Discord, a messaging app, and gaming networks, such as Roblox and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, to prey on children as young as 11 from 2019 to 2021, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.

Hector Bermudez, 29, of Queens, was arrested Tuesday and arraigned in federal court.

“No child should ever be terrorized or exploited online, and no online platform should give refuge to predators,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.

“The Department of Justice will continue to protect children, support survivors, and hold accountable anyone who preys on the vulnerable — online or offline — with every tool we have.”

Prosecutors said the accused pedophiles held video calls on the digital platforms, coercing children nationwide to perform sexually explicit acts – sometimes with household objects – which they recorded or screenshot and then circulated online or among themselves.

The suspects then forced victims to mark their bodies with cult members’ names and beg for forgiveness on video, declaring themselves “owned” to prove their loyalty, the disturbing court docs said.

The accused predators allegedly continued their disturbing scheme, urging several victims to kill themselves – including one who was told to overdose or hang themself from a ceiling fan.

The depraved cult used malware to lock minors out of their computers until they complied with the group’s twisted demands, authorities said.

The youngest victim targeted by the cult was 11 years old, according to court documents.

“This case underscores how easily predators can embed themselves in the digital platforms that minors use,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said in a statement.

“The NYPD and our federal partners have been focused on uncovering and dismantling online groups that prey on children, and today’s indictment reflects the progress of that work.”

In addition to Bermudez, the feds also indicted Zachary Dosch, 26, of Albuquerque, New Mexico; Rumaldo Valdez, 22, of Honolulu Hawaii; David Brilhante, 28, of San Diego, California; and Camden Rodriguez, 22, of Longmont, Colorado.

Valdez is already serving time on another federal case.

Each suspect is charged with sexual exploitation of a minor, distribution of child pornography, access with intent to view child pornography, and conspiracy to communicate interstate threats, prosecutors said.

The FBI is urging potential victims to come forward by calling 1-800-CALL-FBI.

Dedham, Massachusetts — Jurors in the murder trial of Brian Walshe on Tuesday saw evidence of dozens of online searches recovered from his laptop, which prosecutors say shows the defendant was researching the best ways to dispose of a body and clean bloodstains around the time his wife vanished.

Walshe’s attorneys say he found his wife, Ana, dead in their bed in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2023 and panicked, resulting in the grisly searches, which were made in the hours and days immediately after Walshe claims to have discovered her body.

On Tuesday, the jury in a Dedham, Massachusetts, courtroom also heard a recorded law enforcement interview taped the day before Walshe’s arrest, in which he insisted to investigators he loved his wife and would never hurt her.

Trial exhibits also showed items belonging to Ana Walshe that investigators recovered from a dumpster. Prosecutors say Walshe tossed those items in an attempt to cover his tracks.

Walshe faces life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted of first-degree murder for Ana’s death.

Here are the takeaways from the second day of witness testimony in Walshe’s trial.

Walshe allegedly searched online for tips to dispose of a body

Days after his wife was reported missing on January 4, 2023, Brian Walshe voluntarily gave investigators his phone and his sons’ iPads. On the tablet belonging to Walshe’s young son, investigators found internet searches about disposing of a body, cleaning blood and wiping electronic devices, according to testimony Tuesday.

Investigators later realized the searches were made on Walshe’s laptop, which was synced with his son’s tablet because they shared an Apple account, Massachusetts State Trooper Nicholas Guarino testified.

When investigators confronted Walshe on January 8 about their discovery, he said, “I don’t use that iPad, so that’s really weird,” according to an audio recording played in court.

The evidence showed that, on January 1, a series of searches were made from Walshe’s laptop, Guarino said. They included:
4:52 a.m. ET: Best way to dispose of a body
4:55 a.m. ET: How long before a body starts to smell
9:33 a.m. ET: How long does DNA last
9:35 a.m. ET: Can identification be made on partial human remains
9:59 a.m. ET: How to dispose of a cell phone
10:29 a.m. ET: My wife is missing what should I do
11:30 a.m. ET: The laptop reflected a Google search for “Patrick Kearney,” a notorious serial killer. Over defense objections, Trooper Guarino testified that Kearney was known as the “trash bag killer” – a fact he learned from Kearney’s Wikipedia page, which had been viewed on Walshe’s laptop, according to the data shown in court Tuesday.
11:50 a.m. ET: Can I use bleach to clean my wood floors from blood stains

More searches were made on January 2. Among them, according to Guarino’s testimony:
2:01 p.m. ET: How to remove a hard drive from apple laptop
12:27 p.m. ET: How to saw a body
12:33 p.m. ET: Hack saw the best tool for dismembering a body
12:47 p.m. ET: Can you be charged with murder without a body
1:12 p.m. ET: Can you identify a body with broken teeth
1:14 p.m. ET: Disposing of a body in the trash
2:01 p.m. ET: How to remove a hard drive from apple laptop

On January 3, Guarino said, more searches were made, including:
1:05 p.m. ET: Body found at trash station
1:12 p.m. ET: Can a body decompose in a plastic bag
7:30 p.m. ET: Can police get your search history without your computer

Walshe called his wife’s employer on the morning of January 4, 2023, setting off a search for her. But after that morning, no other searches were made on his laptop until January 7 at 3:58 p.m. ET, the trooper said Tuesday.

On cross-examination, defense attorney Larry Tipton confirmed “dark searches” like those read in court weren’t found on Walshe’s devices before January 1, 2023. Law enforcement searched several devices, including the laptop seized from his home, extracting data between December 25, 2022, through January 8, 2023, per a search warrant.

Additional searches were raised during direct testimony that prosecutors suggested could speak to Walshe’s motive to kill his wife. The internet history on his laptop revealed it accessed pornography related to a “cheating wife” on December 27, 2022 – days before Ana’s disappearance – as well as research on divorce.

Prosecutors have said Ana Walshe was involved in a romantic relationship with a man in Washington, DC, where she worked.

These searches are key to the prosecution’s case: A conviction on first-degree murder requires the commonwealth to prove Walshe planned to kill his wife.

Tipton, the defense attorney, has said Brian and Ana Walshe discussed divorce as a way to protect their assets amid his ongoing federal fraud case, in which Brian Walshe pleaded guilty to charges connected to selling forged Andy Warhol artwork.

Tipton also said the internet history did not prove Walshe searched for pornography related to a “cheating wife,” and suggested whoever was using the laptop at that time could have stumbled on it while searching for a preferred actress’s content.

Brian Walshe said he would never hurt his wife before his arrest

Jurors on Tuesday also heard the end of an audio recording of an interview law enforcement conducted with Walshe on January 7, 2023, in which an investigator directly asked him, “Did you do anything to hurt your wife?”

“No,” Walshe said without hesitation, “I would never do that.”

An investigator then asked him if a fight with his wife ever escalated to physical violence.

No, Walshe said, adding, “The family doesn’t work without my wife.”

“I would never hurt my wife,” he continued, according to the recording. “I mean, I loved her and I think about my kids too. She’s a wonderful mother on top of being a wonderful wife. And to take that away from them, I mean, I just couldn’t even imagine something like that.”

“I wanted to spend the rest of my life with my wife,” he said. “I’m still going to, and we were apart because of the job and my legal problems.”

Ana Walshe’s belongings were found among the contents of two dumpsters

While Ana’s body has never been found, testimony by Sgt. Harrison Schmidt of the Cohasset Police on Tuesday showed police had found evidence that her belongings had been thrown away.

On January 9, 2023, investigators searched the contents of dumpsters near Walshe’s mother’s apartment complex, where they believed he had thrown away evidence days earlier.

The jury saw photos of the search, which was conducted at a trash transfer station in Peabody, Massachusetts.

“We had dumped the contents of the dumpsters in the warehouse, and we began searching the bags, bag by bag,” Schmidt said, describing how police spread the contents across the ground and searched for items they believed were significant.

They also saw photos of the items recovered, including a photo of a pair of Hunter boots, a purse, a black coat and a Covid-19 vaccination card bearing Ana Walshe’s name.

Schmidt didn’t say on the stand Tuesday that all the items belonged to Ana. But prosecutors have previously said her belongings were recovered in the dumpster search, including those listed in court and her Prada purse and a necklace.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A man charged with killing a University of Mississippi graduate who was prominent in the LGBTQ+ community pleaded guilty on Monday to second-degree murder and tampering charges as he faced a second trial.

Sheldon “Timothy” Herrington Jr. entered the plea in the death of Jimmie “Jay” Lee, who disappeared from Oxford, where the university is located, in July 2022. Herrington was arrested two weeks later and eventually charged with capital murder.

A judge declared a mistrial last year when jurors failed to reach a verdict after more than nine and a half hours of deliberation. At the time of the trial, Lee’s body had not been found, but a judge had declared him dead.

In February of this year, deer hunters stumbled upon Lee’s skeletal remains in a wooded area, according to Mississippi Today.

During the first trial, prosecutors claimed Herrington, who was not openly gay, killed Lee after the two had a sexual encounter.

Campus cameras showed Lee leaving his apartment shortly before 4 a.m. the day he disappeared. He returned 40 minutes later, before leaving again just before 6 a.m.

Prosecutors allege Lee had been at Herrington’s apartment, and that when Lee had left Herrington’s apartment he was upset. Herrington, they said, invited Lee back and searched “how long does it take to strangle someone” online before Lee arrived.

The final text message from Lee’s phone was sent to a social media account belonging to Herrington at 6:03 a.m. from a spot near Herrington’s apartment, law enforcement testified. Accounts belonging to Herrington and Lee had previously exchanged sexually explicit messages, they said.

Herrington was later captured by surveillance video jogging out of a parking lot where Lee’s car was found. He was also seen picking up a shovel and wheelbarrow at his parents’ house, authorities said.

Herrington is from Grenada, Mississippi, about 52 miles (83.7 kilometers) southwest of Oxford. Lee’s body was found in neighboring Carroll County.

Both Herrington and Lee had graduated from the University of Mississippi.

Lee had been pursuing a master’s degree. He was known for his creative expression through fashion and makeup and often performed in drag shows in Oxford, according to a support group called Justice for Jay Lee.

Herrington is set to be sentenced on Tuesday.

His lawyers were not immediately available for comment.

STOCKTON, Calif. (AP) — Family members were getting ready to cut the cake at a toddler’s birthday party when the gunfire started inside a banquet hall packed with relatives and friends over the weekend in California.

“I actually thought it was my balloons popping. It was gunshots,” said Patrice Williams, the birthday girl’s mother.

Her daughter, who turned 2, was uninjured. But Williams told The Associated Press on Monday that her sister, a cousin and three of her friends were shot in the burst of gunfire Saturday evening in Stockton.

Three children ages 8, 9 and 14 and a 21-year-old were killed in the hall where at least 100 people were gathered, San Joaquin County Sheriff Patrick Withrow said. Detectives believe the gunfire continued outside and there may have been multiple shooters.

Eleven people were wounded, and at least one is in critical condition, Withrow said. No one is in custody.

Sadness and remorse for the victims and their families

Williams said partygoers who had gathered around the cake dropped to the ground the moment the gunshots rang out.

“It was just unexpected. I don’t know what happened, and I’m just so shocked and lost,” Williams said. She expressed remorse for the mothers who lost their children.

Williams said she didn’t get a look at the shooter and has no idea who would commit violence at what was supposed to be a joyous event.

“They deserve to be in jail. They deserve to go to hell,” Williams said. “I’m sorry, but I just … it’s not respectable. It’s a kids’ party.”

Williams, surrounded by family members, teared up as she said parents who plan birthday parties for their kids should consider having them indoors because of the risk of violence.

Sheriff’s office believes the shooting was targeted

The sheriff urged anyone with information to contact his office with tips, cellphone video or witness accounts.

“This is a time for our community to show that we will not put up with this type of behavior, when people will just walk in and kill children,” Withrow said Sunday evening. “And so if you know anything about this, you have to come forward and tell us what you know. If not, you just become complacent and think this is acceptable behavior.”

Sheriff’s spokesperson Heather Brent has said investigators believe it was a “targeted incident.” Officials did not elaborate on why authorities believe it was intentional or who might have been targeted. She said investigators would welcome any information, “even rumors.”

‘Who would come and do that to some kids?’

Stockton resident Carolyn Tahod, who didn’t know the victims, showed up Monday to place bouquets of flowers at a makeshift memorial with candles lit in honor of those who died.

“I’m just the average person that has a big heart, and I have grandkids,” she said. “I would be devastated if this were to happen in our family.”

Roscoe Brown, who said the party was in honor of his brother’s granddaughter, works for the city of Stockton’s Office of Violence Prevention. Brown was in Arizona when he learned about the shooting and drove straight to the scene. He said a niece and nephew were shot, and he knows several other victims. He didn’t have information about their conditions.

“Who would come and do that to some kids, you know?” Brown told AP after a Sunday afternoon vigil organized by faith leaders. “You can’t shoot up a party. That’s senseless. A kid’s party, at that.”

A 14-year-old boy named Amari Peterson, who played football and basketball and was making plans for college, was killed in the shooting, according to a GoFundMe account operated by his aunt, Aresha Mosley.

“The only mistake this sweet boy made was being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the account said. “He was simply being a kid at a kids’ party.”

Emmanuel Lopez told the Los Angeles Times his brother, 21-year-old Susano Archuleta, was shot in the neck and died at the scene. Lopez said his 9-year-old daughter was shot in the head but survived. He didn’t share details about what led up to the shooting.

Stockton records a lot of violent crime

Stockton is a city of 320,000 residents about 80 miles (130 kilometers) east of San Francisco. Stockton saw 3,680 violent crimes in 2024, at a rate more than double the statewide rate, according to city and state data. Violent crime includes homicide, rape, assault and robbery. The San Joaquin Valley, where Stockton is located, had the highest violent crime rate in the state in 2023, according to data from the Public Policy Institute of California.

Hours after the shooting, the Stockton Police Department arrested five people, including a juvenile, on weapons and gang-related charges. There was no indication that the arrests were connected to the killings at the banquet hall, the sheriff said.

It was the 17th U.S. mass killing of the year with at least four victim fatalities, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.

Mayor Christina Fugazi told reporters that the 8-year-old victim attended a local school and had a parent who worked for the Stockton Unified School District. The mayor said counselors would be available this week at city schools.

She expressed anguish over the loss of victims so young.

“They should be writing their Christmas lists right now. Their parents should be out shopping for them for Christmas. And to think that their lives are over. I can’t even begin to imagine what these families are going through. Breaks my heart,” Fugazi said on Sunday.

Was Ana Walshe murdered by her husband? Or did she die in bed of a mysterious, unexplained medical event?

Defense attorneys for her husband, Brian Walshe, will try to convince jurors of the latter, one said in opening statements Monday as his murder trial began in earnest, almost three years after Ana vanished from a Boston suburb in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2023.

It was the first time anyone has publicly offered a theory for the cause of Ana’s death since Walshe was charged with her murder. Her body has never been found, and while Walshe two weeks ago pleaded guilty to illegally disposing of Ana’s body and misleading police as they investigated her disappearance, he insists he did not kill her.

Walshe faces life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted of first-degree murder for Ana’s death.

Here’s what happened Monday during opening statements and the first day of witness testimony:

Prosecutors did not offer a theory for how Ana Walshe died

Prosecutors have told the jury they will prove Walshe planned to kill his wife. But in opening statements Monday, Assistant District Attorney Greg Connor instead walked the panel through the known events in the days around Ana Walshe’s disappearance – without suggesting how Walshe allegedly killed her.

Ana Walshe flew to Massachusetts on December 30, 2022, from Washington, DC, where she worked as a real estate manager for Tishman Speyer. The next day, the Walshe family hosted Ana’s former boss, who joined them to celebrate New Year’s Eve.

That man is expected to testify at trial that he left the Walshe home after 1 a.m. on January 1, 2023, and that the couple seemed happy.

“When he left, she was home, she was alive, she was with her husband. No one has seen her since her husband said she left on January 1,” the prosecutor said. “She has not accessed her finances, her email, her phone has made no calls and no one has found her body.”

Connor then told the jury Walshe waited until January 4, 2023, to call Ana’s employer, who then reported her missing. When law enforcement went to the Walshe home that day, Walshe told them he hadn’t seen or heard from his wife since the morning of January 1, when he said she left for DC to handle a work emergency.

Investigators later learned that Walshe searched the internet on January 1 for answers to questions like, “best way to dispose of a body,” “Can you throw away body parts” and “Is it possible to clean DNA off a knife,” Connor said.

The prosecutor also said Walshe went to Lowe’s and Home Depot, where he bought hundreds of dollars in equipment and cleaning supplies –– including a Tyvek suit, a hacksaw, a hatchet and 20 pounds of baking soda.

Connor told the panel Walshe then threw black trash bags away in a dumpster near his mother’s home. On January 9, he said, law enforcement recovered a number of items Walshe allegedly threw away, including a Tyvek suit, a hacksaw, a hatchet and several items with Brian and Ana Walshe’s DNA on them.

Ana Walshe died mysteriously in her bed, the defense said

Walshe publicly acknowledged his wife was dead for the first time last month, when he pleaded guilty to illegally disposing of her body. But Monday marks the first time anyone has publicly offered an explanation for her death.

After their guest left early on New Year’s morning, Brian and Ana Walshe went up to their bedroom to continue celebrating, Tipton told the jury.

He then went downstairs from their bedroom to clean the kitchen and checked his emails, Tipton said. When Walshe returned to the bedroom, “intending nothing more than to crawl into bed with Ana Walshe, the woman he loved,” she was unresponsive, Tipton said: She was unexplainably dead in their bed.

It’s unclear at this point if Walshe will testify in his own defense. But Tipton said the jury will hear evidence to support the defense claim of a sudden, unexplainable death.

Tipton referenced the “frantic and tragic” Google searches Walshe made beginning January 1, 2023, explaining his client made those searches as he came to terms with his wife’s death.

“You will hear evidence that those searches evolved from ‘how best to dispose of a body’ to even dark subject matter, as he wrestled with the fact that Ana Walshe was dead,” Tipton said.

What the jury won’t hear, according to Tipton, is evidence that Walshe murdered his wife.

When Walshe found his wife dead, he thought no one would believe he had nothing to do with it, his attorney said, and he worried about what might happen to his sons if people thought he killed his wife.

“And so he told the story,” the attorney said. “He told lies. He tried to hide so he could hang on to those boys.”

“What will happen if they think, ‘He did something bad to Ana,’” Tipton said, channeling his client’s purported thought process at the time. “Where will those three boys go?”

“Brian Walshe never killed Ana. Brian Walshe never thought about killing Ana. He would never think about killing Ana. Brian Walshe is not guilty of murder,” Tipton told the jury.

Jurors heard Brian Walshe’s recorded interviews with police

The prosecution’s first witness, a sergeant with Cohasset Police Department, was the only witness to testify Monday.

Sergeant Harrison Schmidt testified about the law enforcement investigation into Ana Walshe’s purported disappearance, which began January 4, 2023, when Ana’s employer reported her missing.

Schmidt is expected to continue testifying Tuesday morning when the trial resumes.

The jury also heard three audio recordings of interviews law enforcement conducted with Brian Walshe on January 4, 5 and 7, 2023. During opening statements, Walshe’s attorney acknowledged he lied to the police in all three interviews. He did not, however, specify what information provided in the hours of questioning wasn’t true.

In the recordings played in court, Walshe told investigators he last saw his wife before 7 a.m. on New Year’s Day, when she left for the airport to return to Washington, DC, for work. Walshe said at the time he waited to report her disappearance because he upset his wife a week earlier, when he purportedly overreacted after failing to get in touch with her around Christmas.

Walshe told investigators that, after Ana left the house on January 1, he made breakfast for his kids and played with them before he went out to run some errands. He went to see his mother and went to the grocery store and pharmacy while a nanny watched his children, Walshe told them.

Walshe was arrested on January 8, 2023, and charged with misleading police in connection to Ana’s disappearance. He was charged with her murder later that month, and he has been in commonwealth custody since his arrest.

Jurors are expected to hear testimony from a man who had an affair with Ana Walshe

Prosecutors have suggested Brian Walshe could have been motivated to kill his wife over an extramarital romantic relationship she had with a man in Washington, DC.

Ana Walshe was romantically involved with the real estate agent who helped her buy a townhouse in DC when she moved there for work in 2022, prosecutor Connor said in his opening statement.

Walshe’s attorney said Monday his client didn’t know about the affair, but said Ana had told her husband she had a crush on the man, William Fastow. Walshe wasn’t jealous, Tipton said.

An affair “does not make someone a bad person, does not make someone a bad mother,” Tipton said. But Ana “did everything she could to hide that affair,” and she did not tell her friends about it, he said.

Ana spent Christmas Eve with the man, according to prosecutors, and had traveled to Ireland with him around Thanksgiving.

Connor told the jury that a cell phone that belonged to Brian Walshe searched the Fastow’s name on December 25, 2022, after Ana missed the holiday with her family in Massachusetts.

Walshe told investigators in his interviews on January 4 and 5 that Fastow was a friend of Ana’s in DC, and that he called the man while looking for Ana. He went to Ana’s townhouse to look for her, Walshe said.

In the January 5 interview, Walshe also told investigators he was sure Ana wasn’t seeing anyone else in Washington, DC. He said she would wear a wedding ring and talk about her husband to others.

“Her having an affair just doesn’t make sense to me,” Walshe said in his interview with law enforcement on January 7. “Also where’s the time? Every moment she was flying here or working.”

He eventually acknowledged an affair was possible but again said, “I don’t see it.”

The jury is expected to see messages between Ana and Fastow, and he is expected to testify for the prosecution later this week.

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If this is the first time you’re hearing about this case, here’s a rundown

Brian Walshe is on trial for the murder of his wife, Ana Walshe, who went missing in 2023.

Here’s what you need to know as both sides are set to give their opening statements today:
What prosecutors say happened: A massive search for Ana Walshe was launched after her employer reported her missing on January 4, 2023. Her husband told investigators he’d last seen her leaving their home for a work trip on January 1, 2023. However, prosecutors allege there is no evidence Ana Walshe took her usual rideshare or taxi to the airport, or that she arrived in Washington, DC. You can read the full timeline here.
Charges: Brian Walshe pleaded guilty last month to misleading police and improper conveyance of a human body, but maintains he is not guilty of murder.
Possible motive: Prosecutors allege Brian Walshe killed his wife because he wanted to end their marriage. Court documents show she was having an affair before she went missing. During Brian Walshe’s arraignment, prosecutors said his wife took out $2.7 million in life insurance on herself and her husband was the beneficiary.
Evidence: Investigators uncovered a series of internet searches prosecutors say Brian Walshe made, including, “How to stop a body from decomposing.” Investigators also uncovered 10 trash bags of evidence at a garbage collection station, containing a hacksaw, a hatchet, and several items with Brian and Ana Walshe’s DNA on them, prosecutors said.
And lack of evidence: After Walshe’s arrest, his defense attorney noted no body has been found and said there was “no indication of if she died, how she died” and no murder weapon or motive established.

The FBI continued to interview family and associates of the suspect.

As investigators continue to delve into what may have motivated the suspect in the deadly National Guardsmen shooting last week, a portrait of a life of increasing financial stress and a potential mental health crisis has emerged, sources familiar told ABC News.

Additionally, multiple sources said that investigators are looking into the impact of the recent death of an Afghan commander, who allegedly worked with the suspect, 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal.

The death of the commander — whom Lakanwal is said to have revered — had deeply saddened the suspect, sources said.

This may have compounded on Lakanwal’s financial burdens, including not being employed, having an expired work permit and allegedly struggling to pay rent and feed his children, sources said.

Officials said the suspect has a wife and five children. He drove from his residence in Washington state to the nation’s capital prior to the shooting and targeted the Guardsmen, officials said.

A senior law enforcement source told ABC News on Sunday that investigators are looking at everything and are closely examining the role of an apparently deteriorating situation at home.

The FBI, Homeland Security and intelligence officials are also investigating the possibility that the attack was directed by or inspired by international terrorists. But thus far, authorities have not publicly released any specific evidence tying Lakanwal to a terrorist organization and no terror charges have been filed.

The investigation into the deadly shooting is still in its early phases.

Two members of the National Guard were shot and seriously wounded just blocks from the White House in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 26, with one guard dying as a result of her sustained injuries the next day.

President Donald Trump called the shooting “an act of evil, an act of hatred and an act of terror,” adding, “It was a crime against our entire nation.”

Trump, citing information from the Department of Homeland Security, said the suspect entered the U.S. from Afghanistan in September 2021, and criticized the prior administration of President Joe Biden.

The suspect previously worked with the U.S. government, including the CIA, as a member of a partner force in Kandahar, “which ended in 2021 following the withdrawal from Afghanistan,” according to CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

He applied for asylum in 2024 and was granted asylum in April, under the Trump administration, according to the sources.

In Afghanistan, the suspect was involved with the Zero Unit, working closely with the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command, according to sources familiar with the investigation. The suspect was a trusted member of that team, which went after U.S. counterterrorism targets, according to sources.

The FBI over the weekend continued to interview family and associates of the suspect and tried to exploit documents and other material obtained through searches of mobile devices, his social media footprint and properties tied to him.

Lakanwal remains hospitalized under heavy guard, sources told ABC News on Sunday.

The federal agency has not publicized how it reached its conclusions.

The top vaccine chief at the Food and Drug Administration sent out a memo saying the FDA will seek a stricter review and approval protocol for vaccine trials.

In the memo on Friday, Dr. Vinay Prasad claimed a new review of records linked 10 children’s deaths to the Covid vaccine.

“These deaths are related to vaccination (likely/probable/possible attribution made by staff,” Prasad wrote.

No information about how the conclusions were reached was shared in the memo, nor were they made public or published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The memo was first reported by a PBS Newshour correspondent and later obtained and posted online by the Washington Post.

FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, in an interview with Fox News over the weekend, said the agency would make information available on the deaths related to the coronavirus shot that he said the Biden administration didn’t.

When talking about the recommended booster shots, Makary said, “It makes a mockery of science if we’re just going to rubber-stamp things with no data.”

Makary did add, however, that the COVID-19 vaccine worked well for older recipients. “The COVID shot was amazing for people at risk and for older people, especially when it was a good match for the circulating virus,” Makary said.

ABC News has reached out to the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services for a comment.

Many public health experts questioned the findings, taking to social media and speaking with ABC News.

Dorit Reiss, a professor of law at UC Law San Francisco who has studied the FDA approval process, criticized Prasad for suggesting changes to the approval for respiratory vaccines based on the conclusion of an unpublished investigation.

“Dr. Prasad is not suggesting a deliberative process to assess next steps, as was FDA’s usual practice,” Reiss wrote in a post on X. “It is more problematic given that Dr. Prasad’s expertise is not in vaccines, but it would be problematic even if he were a vaccine expert.”

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a spokesperson for the Infectious Disease Society of America, said in a statement to ABC News, “The FDA’s memo on vaccines is bereft of any actual medical data that could justify their conclusion linking deaths with Covid vaccines.”

“To make such a claim, one would need to know basic things such as the age of the patients, the type of vaccines they received, their underlying conditions, what type of analysis was done to establish a causal link, etc,” Adalja added.

“The statement will only serve to increase anti-vaccine sentiment and further politicize an issue that should not be politicized,” Adalja said.