Ana Walshe's mother in Serbia seeks official info about her missing daughter after Brian Walshe charged with murder
The Serbian mother of a Massachusetts woman who has been missing since New Year's Day and whose husband is charged with murder, will ask the United States for official information about her daughter's disappearance, Serbia's Foreign Ministry said Saturday.
Milanka Ljubicic, the mother of Ana Walshe, signed a formal request to receive documentation about the case as next of kin, the ministry said in a statement. The request has been sent to Serbia's Consulate in New York and will be submitted to relevant U.S. authorities, the ministry added.
Brian Walshe, 47, has been charged with murder in the case of Ana Walshe, 39, whose body hasn't been found. The couple, who have three young children who are now in state custody, lived in the affluent coastal community of Cohasset, about 15 miles southeast of Boston.
Ana Walshe was reportedly last seen leaving their home in the early morning hours of Jan. 1, purportedly to take a ride-hailing vehicle to Logan International Airport for a flight to Washington, authorities said. But police have found no indication that she either took a vehicle or boarded any flight out of Logan.
She was reported missing Jan. 4 by her employer in Washington, where the couple has a home and to which she often commutes during the week for work at a real estate company, authorities said.
Prosecutors said earlier this week that Brian Walshe had used his son's iPad to to look up ways to dismember and dispose of a body, and that items belonging to the woman with Ana Walshe's DNA were found at a trash processing facility. Officials also found trash bags with blood, a hatchet, a hacksaw, a rug and used cleaning supplies.
One of the searches Walshe conducted early on the morning of New Year's Day was "10 ways to dispose of a dead body if you really need to," prosecutor Lynn Beland said in court.
Other searches Beland said Walshe conducted that morning were "how long before a body starts to smell," "how to stop a body from decomposing," "how long does someone to be missing to inherit," "can you throw away body parts," "dismemberment and the best ways to dispose of a body" and "how to clean blood from wooden floor."
Walshe's disappearance has been followed closely in her native Serbia where her mother still lives. Ms. Ljubicic has told local media she could not believe that her son-in-law would harm her daughter.