Brian Walshe will spend the rest if his life in prison for murdering and dismembering his wife in 2023.
The sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole was handed down Thursday, per ABC News.
A Massachusetts jury found him guilty of killing and dismembering his wife, the mother of their three children.
Judge Diane Freniere called what he did “barbaric and incomprehensible.”
Ana Walshe, 39, went missing on Jan. 1, 2023; her body has not been recovered.
Brian Walshe, 50, pleaded guilty in November to improperly disposing of her body and lying to police following her disappearance.
He changed his plea on the two charges before jury selection got underway for the trial. He was steadfast is denying he killed her.
A Norfolk County jury found him guilty of first-degree murder on Monday. The jury deliberated for about six hours over two days.
Freniere said this was the only appropriate sentence under the law and is “immensely appropriate and just, given your murderous acts and the life trauma that you’ve inflicted upon your own children.”
She said that since he of lied to police, there were “thousands of hours of investigative resources were wasted, diverted from other deserving cases,” and that his “acts in dismembering your wife’s body and disposing of her remains in multiple area dumpsters can only be described as barbaric and incomprehensible.”
“You had no regard for the lifelong mental harm that your criminal acts inflicted on your then 2-, 4- and 6-year-old sons,” she said. They are “never being able to properly grieve that loss to say goodbye to their mom.”
She also handed down consecutive sentences on the three counts, with up to 20 years for lying to police and up to three years for illegally disposing of her body.
Her sister, Aleksandra Dimitrijevic, asked the court to consider the “long-lasting” impact her murder will have on Ana Walshe’s children.
“The most painful part of this loss is knowing her children must now grow up without their mother’s hand to hold,” she said. “They now face a lifetime of milestones, big and small, where her absence will be deeply and painfully felt.”
