The Brian Walshe And Adam Montgomery Macabre Body Disposal Blueprint
Two New England husbands and fathers. Two men with criminal histories. Two murdered loved ones. Two men who misled the police. Two bodies that have never been found. Two bodies dismembered. And now, two men who followed the same twisted script — right down to the Home Depot shopping list.
Brian Walshe pleaded guilty just before the start of his murder trial of willfully misleading a police investigation and willfully conveying a human body or the remains thereof, effectively admitting his wife is dead while still denying he killed her.
The parallels to Adam Montgomery’s case are striking. Harmony Montgomery, age 5, was brutally beaten to death in a car on December 7, 2019 by her father, who was in a blind rage because she wet her pants. He reached into the backseat as he had done earlier and killed little Harmony with repeated blows to her head.
According to prosecutors, Ana Walshe, 39, was allegedly bludgeoned or strangled in her Cohasset kitchen on New Year’s morning 2023. The two cases are chillingly and strikingly similar. Here is the playbook both men used, step by damning step:
They Believed in the Oldest myth in the Book: “No body, No Murder.”
At Adam Montgomery’s February 2024 murder trial, prosecutors told the jury he transported Harmony’s body first in an Under Armour duffel bag, then in trash bags inside a cooler and finally in a tote bag. He always had possession of her remains, ostensibly believing that if police had no body there could be no murder charge. Prosecutor Knowles in opening statements told the jury, “He [Adam] believed if there was no body to find, there would be no evidence of what he had done and he would get away with this heinous crime.”
Brian Walshe literally Googled it: “Can you be charged with murder without a body?” and “How long before a body starts to smell? Neither seemed to understand that the trail of circumstantial evidence left behind might result in a murder charge, both believing they could outsmart the forensic science experts and law enforcement.
A Trail of Evidence Including DNA
Montgomery hid Harmony’s remains in a ceiling vent at a family shelter where her decomposed fluids dripped through, leaving DNA. Walshe tossed bloody rags, Ana’s boots, her COVID vaccination card, and clothing with her blood into dumpsters — many of which were recovered near his mother’s house in Swampscott. Walshe is accused of using the hacksaw and hatchet to dismember Ana in the basement, leaving behind blood-soaked rugs, a broken knife with her DNA, and a necklace she wore every day.
With trials ready to begin, both seemed to understand the overwhelming, undeniable circumstantial evidence that could lead a jury to find them guilty of murder.
Can you be charged with murder without a body?
–Brian Walshe -Google
Race to Home Depot: The Dismemberment Playbook
Both men made near-identical purchases within days of the killings. Adam Montgomery bought a bag of crushed limestone along with a cutting power tool known as a fuel finder, or angle grinder, a Diablo brand blade, and a battery. Testimony revealed he used a reciprocating saw and added lime to accelerate decomposition. Total purchase was about $400 and paid in cash. Brian Walshe was seen on surveillance video at Lowes and Home Depot purchasing a hacksaw, hatchet, tarps, mops, buckets, baking soda, cleaning products and a Tyvek suit at the Rockland MA Home Depot on January 2, 2023 spending $450.
Montgomery folded his five-year-old daughter’s tiny body into a duffel bag after beating her to death in a car. He later dismembered her frozen body thawing it out in a shower after carrying her remains in a cooler for weeks before crushing her remains into a tote bag from a medical center.
Walshe is accused of using the hacksaw and hatchet to dismember Ana in the basement, leaving behind blood-soaked rugs, a broken knife with her DNA, and a necklace she wore every day as he shopped for he “dismemberment” items the next day.
Incineration: No Body, No Murder?
Montgomery rented a U-Haul and drove over the Tobin Bridge in Boston with GPS tracking him in an area along the Rumney Marsh near the Saugus/ Revere line in Massachusetts. In that very area is the WIN Incinerator, formerly the Wheelabrator waste-to-energy incinerator where the ash is placed in an adjacent landfill that is physically located within the boundaries of the Rumney Marsh. WIN is the region’s largest industrial burner. Dumpster and trash haulers in the area bring tons of waste every day to the incinerator. It is only known that Montgomery’s van was in the area and that he later returned home telling his wife that Harmony’s remains were disposed of but did not provide details. Once arrested and detained, Montgomery, in a phone call, scoffed at the notion the ongoing searches for Harmony would find her remains. “They wasted their time,” he said.
Walshe allegedly dumped bags into commercial dumpsters in Abington and Swampscott that were destined for incineration. Brian Walshe has admitted that Ana is dead and he disposed of her remains. According to prosecutors, he dismembered her body in the family’s Cohasset home and placed the remains into multiple trash bags. Prosecutors allege Walshe then transported those bags across several towns, disposing of them in commercial dumpsters before repeatedly returning to ensure they were removed. Surveillance and forensic evidence later showed that the bags were taken to a regional incineration facility, where they were destroyed—eliminating nearly all physical evidence and forming the core of the state’s theory that Walshe acted deliberately to conceal his wife’s death.
He [Adam Montgomery]believed if there was no body to find, there would be no evidence of what he had done and he would get away with this heinous crime
–Montgomery prosecutor Attorney Knowles.
Eleventh Hour Guilty Plea
Montgomery took a plea before trial to the charges of abuse of corpse and falsifying evidence. Walshe took a similar deal before trial both for willfully misleading a police investigation and willfully conveying a human body or the remains, hoping to blunt or keep the most grotesque, damning evidence away from jurors. Montgomery’s strategy was to admit to the non-murder charges and blame a third party culprit, specifically his wife. His position was that he wanted to help cover-up the murder to protect his wife. He did not testify.
The reason behind Walshe’s plea is now clear. He will claim he found her dead and call witnesses to discuss the medical phenomena of “sudden unexplained death.” Admitting to google searches and purchasing the items at home depot to dismember Ana’s body he hopes will mitigate the relevance to the murder charge, and the damaging effect of the overwhelming circumstantial evidence that he simply cannot deny.
The only difference in these two cases with this unusual strategy is that Adam Montgomery lost the bet and was convicted of murder anyway. Brian Walshe is about to sit in the defendant’s chair and may possibly learn the same brutal lesson: in 2025, there is no such thing as the perfect no-body murder. Things have changed in the world of murder investigations. Google searches leave digital fingerprints, the surveillance cameras never blink, and the DNA doesn’t lie. Ana and Harmony deserved better than to be reduced to trash bags and possibly incinerator ash. And the men who treated them with such depravity now know they couldn’t just erase the existence of two beautiful souls by ensuring that no body was found.
Rest in peace Ana and Harmony
