Where is Ana Walshe?
Where is Ana Walshe?
The mother-of-three vanished after midnight on Jan. 1, 2023
Ana Walshe (born Ana Ljubicic) speaks English with an Eastern European accent. The mother of three is 5’2”, 39 years old, and weighs about 115 lbs. Her social media reveals an attentive mom to her sons and a generally polished presentation. She’s someone who has paid attention to best practices and advice from LinkedIn on presenting herself in a professional but accessible way.
Her last Instagram post was on December 31st. It was a simple quote from the author Simon Sinek: “Take the risk of optimism.”
According to the Cohasset, Massachusetts, police department, she disappeared shortly afterward:
Chief William Quigley reports that the Cohasset Police Department is seeking the public’s assistance in locating a missing resident who was last seen in the early morning hours of Jan. 1.
Ana Walshe, age 39, was last seen at her home in Cohasset shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day.
People disappear for an untold number of reasons. Police know disappearances aren’t always a matter of foul play. But at the same time, it’s not hard to spot cases where vanishing seems, at a minimum, implausible. Or suspicious.
Ana Walshe is a good example.
On June 24, 2015, Ana and her husband Brian Walshe attended a Boston Common Magazine-sponsored celebration of “the future of yachting” at Barton & Gray Mariners Club at the Battery Wharf Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts. A photo from the event shows a handsome couple carrying themselves like they belong there.
Brian Walshe has been a known quantity in Boston since at least 2009 when he was mentioned in the Globe in a lifestyle article about the decline of voicemail use. Walshe, “a Boston-based international art dealer,” said he preferred to leave his voice mailbox full to maintain control of incoming messages.
He was mentioned in passing again in November 2015. Another lifestyle article, titled “Where the power players fuel up.” It listed various eateries and said that during a dinner at Deuxave French restaurant, “art dealer Brian Walshe” purchased “every ounce of the restaurant’s white truffles and every wine from his birth year.”
By 2017, however, things had taken a turn for Brian and Ana Walshe.
From a Courthouse News article published on April 6, 2017:
The Superior Court lawsuit from the Revolver Gallery accuses Brian and Ana Walshe of passing off “clever forgeries” of two scarce pieces from Warhol’s series of silkscreened works called “Shadows” by claiming they were worth at least $100,000 and as much as $240,000.
When gallery owner Ron Rivlin received the pieces, however, he says he discovered that promised authentication stamps on their backs were nonexistent, the supporting documentation was phony and the canvas on which the presumably 38-year-old works were printed was new.
Court documents indicated that “Brian and Ana Walshe likely sold the authentic Warhols to a collector in South Korea and passed off the forgeries in the United States, assuming that because the paintings are on different continents, the forgeries would not be detected.”
Brian Walshe was arrested over the fake Warhols in May 2018.
In April 2021, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts published a press release titled “Lynn Man Pleads Guilty in Connection with Missing Warhol Paintings.”
“Brian R. Walshe, 46,” the release read, “pleaded guilty to one count each of wire fraud, interstate transportation for a scheme to defraud, possession of converted U.S. funds and unlawful monetary transaction. U.S. Senior District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock scheduled sentencing for Aug. 2, 2021.”
The release went on to describe Walshe pulling a bait and switch. A friend had purchased a pair of Warhol’s "Shadows," untitled abstract paintings from 1978. Walshe then offered to “sell some of the art for a good price,” according to the release.
He then ghosted his friend, aka the victim.
The victim tried to get in touch with Walshe to no avail. They contacted a mutual friend, who managed to convince Walshe to give back some of the art. Not long after that, Walshe tried to sell the Warhol paintings to a gallery in NYC, but they weren't interested because he had no proof of ownership.
At the time of the release, Brian Walshe was facing up to 50 years in prison and a million dollars in fines.
Things got worse for him after that.
In June 2022, Boston federal judge Douglas P. Woodlock ordered Brian Walshe to trial over allegations that he “plundered his [deceased] father’s estate by destroying the signed will that left him ‘my best wishes but nothing else.’”
Law360 reported that Walshe allegedly destroyed the will and sold off his father’s belongings.
However, news about Brian Walshe is hard to find after a couple of Law360 reports in June. He’d been free on bail, but I have yet to determine if he was moving about the state freely.
As for Ana Walshe, it was hard to find many traces of her (possibly former?) husband on her social media after 2017. On the date Law360 published an article indicating Brian was facing new charges in 2022, she was in Washington DC, Instagramming about her favorite tea.
There is no known evidence Brian Walshe had anything to do with Ana Walshe’s disappearance. Husbands are typically the first suspects in such cases, and with his criminal history indicating Brian might be lacking in ethics (at a minimum) there’s no doubt investigators will examine him and any connections he might have very closely.
Sometimes, a lot of smoke doesn’t hide a much larger fire. And even among criminals, the leap from art cons to having a role in the disappearance of your spouse is a big one. Then again, there could still be plenty of people angry with the Walshes as a couple, even though Ana seemed to vanish from reporting about Brian’s Warhol Caper after Courthouse News mentioned her in 2017.
And there are always other unknowns, such as whether Ana’s carefully presented social profile was hiding deep depression or simply a desire to get away from it all.
Once I started pulling out the threads I could find about the Walshes, however, I felt compelled to lay out what I found for anyone curious about her disappearance — because it’s very clear many people care. On Facebook, some of Ana’s friends have established a #findanawalshe hashtag seeking tips or information regarding her whereabouts.
I’ll update with another newsletter edition as the case makes its way into the news.
Where is Ana Walshe?
Interesting situation. I hope they find her and that she’s safe.