Lawyers for Brian Walshe had filed a motion seeking the complete data extraction from the work phone and iCloud account of Michael Proctor, a lead investigator in both the Walshe and Karen Read cases.
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Lawyers for Brian Walshe are not entitled to all the phone data from former state trooper, judge rules
The judge presiding over the murder case against
a Cohasset man who
allegedly killed and dismembered his wife ruled Wednesday that his lawyers are not entitled to all the data harvested from the phone of the lead State Police investigator, who is
suspended without pay for alleged misconduct that came to light during
the Karen Read trial.
Lawyers for
Brian Walshe had filed a motion seeking the complete data extraction from the work phone and iCloud account of
Michael Proctor, a lead investigator in both the Walshe and Read cases.
During Read’s trial, Proctor was
forced to read aloud crude, misogynistic texts he sent about her to coworkers and friends, which her lawyers seized on as evidence that the investigation was biased against her from the start. Read’s first murder trial for allegedly backing her SUV into her boyfriend,
Boston police Officer John O’Keefe, ended
in a hung jury, and her retrial is slated for early 2025.
In her ruling, Norfolk Superior Court Judge Diane Freniere wrote that Assistant District Attorney Gregory P. Connor had indicated at
a Monday hearing in the Walshe case that he was personally reviewing the extraction of Proctor’s electronics for exculpatory material and that prosecutors have also brought in an outside attorney and a forensic examiner to independently assess the data.
She said state law puts the onus on prosecutors to “identify and produce” areas of discovery that must be turned over to the defense.
“This obligation is imposed on the government for many reasons; among them, relative to this request, the likelihood that the extractions contain sensitive information regarding ongoing investigations,” Freniere wrote. “The court finds no special circumstances in this case that warrant a divergence from the presumptive procedures.”
Walshe, 45, will stand trial in October for allegedly killing his wife, Ana, inside their Cohasset home early on New Year’s Day 2023, dismembering her body, and disposing of her remains in several locations.
Walshe has been in custody since his arrest, shortly after his wife disappeared.
Ana Walshe, a real estate executive who worked in Washington, D.C., and split her time between there and Massachusetts, was reported missing by co-workers on Jan. 4.
On New Year’s Eve 2022, the Walshes had hosted one of Ana Walshe’s former coworkers, who left their Cohasset home around 1:30 a.m., according to prosecutors.
By 4:50 a.m., authorities allege, Ana Walshe was dead and her husband allegedly used his son’s iPad to conduct searches such as, “How long before a body starts to smell?” and “How long for someone to be missing to inheritance?”
Prosecutors say Brian Walshe was the sole beneficiary of a $2.7 million life insurance policy his wife had taken out. They also allege he had been closely monitoring the Instagram page of a man he believed his wife was having an affair with.
The texts from Proctor’s cellphone were uncovered by the Massachusetts US attorney’s office after it
launched an investigation in November 2022 into the handling of the investigation into O’Keefe’s death.
In Walshe’s case, his lawyers also asked Freniere to order prosecutors to turn over more than 3,000 pages of documents the US attorney’s office provided to the Norfolk district attorney’s office
related to its investigation into O’Keefe’s death. The material was shared with Read’s lawyers before her trial but remains under a protective order that prevents it from being publicly disclosed.
In Wednesday’s ruling, Freniere did not order that all the federal material be turned over to the defense but signaled that Walshe’s attorneys are entitled to at least some of it. She said prosecutors in the Walshe case have proposed a joint motion to seek an order from the federal judiciary in Boston related to the materials.
“That approach is a practical solution that may well result in the production of the requested materials while safeguarding the Commonwealth from” a violation of the protective order in the Read case, Freniere wrote.
Freniere also noted that federal and state prosecutors did not collaborate on the investigation into O’Keefe’s death.
“Rather, it appears that the investigations were done entirely independently,” she wrote.
Walshe’s trial is slated to begin Oct. 20. The next hearing in his case is scheduled for Jan. 8.
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