Missing Massachusetts mother Ana Walshe scrawled an ominous message in red marker on a champagne bottle box on New Year’s Eve, hours before she vanished.
The message, first transcribed by the New York Post, reads: ‘Wow! 2022…What a year! And yet, we are still here and together! Let’s make 2023 the best one yet! We are the authors of our lives…courage, love, perseverance, compassion, and joy. Love, Ana.’
The Lanson Noble Cuvee box is in the dining room of the Cohasset home that Walshe shared with her husband, Brian, and their three children.
Following Brian Walshe’s arrest on charges of misleading the police, the couple’s three sons, aged between two an six, are in the custody of the state. Ana’s friends are now rallying in an attempt to gain custody of the children until the case is resolved.
A friend of the family, Natasha Sky told Fox Boston that two families are going through the legal process in an attempt to gain custody. She said: ‘They’re two families who have had play dates over and over already. They’re two families who are willing to adapt and take all three boys together.’
The ominous note that Ana Walshe wrote to her husband, hours before she vanished
The Walshes have three sons, believed to be aged two, four, and six, family friends are headed to court in an attempt to gain custody of the boys
Pictures obtained by DailyMail.com showing the champagne box are three neatly lined up bottles of A.H. Hirsch Reserve Whiskey. The liquor sells for around $3,000 per bottle.
The other side of the champagne box reads: ‘Gem Ana Brian 2023!’ Family friend Gem Mutlu was in the Walshe’s home on New Year’s Eve.
Mutlu earlier told WBZ-TV in an interview: ‘We hugged and celebrated and we toasted, just what you do over New Year’s. There was a lot of looking forward to the New Year. There was no indication of anything other than celebrating the New Year, problems on hold.’
He left the Walshe family home, around 15 miles southeast of Boston, around 1:30 am in the early hours of January 1.
Walshe was supposed to take a ride-hailing service to Logan International Airport for a flight to Washington, D.C., where she works for real estate behemoth Tishman Speyer., but authorities said there is no evidence she ever got into a vehicle or on a flight.
Pictures obtained by DailyMail.com showing the champagne box are three neatly lined up bottles of A.H. Hirsch Reserve Whiskey
The Lanson Noble Cuvee box is in the dining room of the Cohasset home that Walshe shared with her husband, Brian, and their three children
The couple own several properties together – including their home in Cohasset and a $1.3million house in DC
On Monday, cops said they had found blood on a damaged knife and in the basement of their home in Cohasset
Brian Walshe, 47, iss being held on a $500,000 bail after pleading not guilty to misleading police investigating the disappearance. His attorney, Tracy Miner, said he has been ‘incredibly cooperative’ with police and she requested low or no bail.
Meanwhile family friend, Natasha Sky told Fox Boston that in addition to the two families already going through the courts to gain custody of the Ana’s sons, she would also welcome them into her home.
She said: ‘Our focus right now is the children. That’s why we want to appeal to the local authorities, especially the Department of Children and Families. If the children can stay together, that is what we are putting our energy into.’
Another friend, Pamela Bardhi, told the station: ‘You’ve got three boys under six years old dealing with what could be extreme trauma. You don’t know what they heard that night or what they saw that night. God knows what they’re in for.’
A prayer vigil has been organized for Thursday at 4:30 pm in downtown Cohasset for Walshe.
It has also emerged that on January 2, Walshe’s husband was spotted on security video at a juice bar in Norwell, Massachusetts, where he placed an order for three kid’s smoothies and two large smoothies.
On the same day as his trip to the juice bar, surveillance footage showed him at at a Home Depot in Rockland, authorities learned.
According to a receipt provided by the juice bar, at 9.57am, Walshe ordered three kid’s sized chocolate peanut butter smoothies and two large peanut, banana and honey smoothies, 7NEWS reported.
New security video obtained by 7NEWS shows Brian Walshe, 46, at the Press Juice Bar in Norwell, Massachusetts, placing an order around mid morning
Ana worked for real estate behemoth Tishman Speyer in Washington DC
Hannah Connors, the juice bar’s manager, told the news outlet it was not Walshe’s first visit and that the employees think of him to be somewhat of a regular.
‘I remember he was staying towards the door, towards the entrance,’ Connors said. ‘Usually, people will go sit down and hang out but he didn’t go over there. He was just waiting for it and he left as soon as he got it.
‘We know our regulars and stuff, but we were just too busy,’ Connors added. ‘I didn’t have a conversation with him, but just to think he was here is absolutely mind-blowing.’
On Tuesday, it was widely reported that cops had found traces of blood, a hatchet, a hacksaw, a rug and used cleaning supplies while searching dumpsters near her mother-in-law’s home.
Walshe was seen cracking a smile as he was handcuffed and led out of the station by officers
Brian Walshe had been on home confinement while awaiting sentencing in a fraud case involving the sale of fake Andy Warhol paintings, according to federal court records. Cohasset police said Ana’s disappearance and her husband’s case seem to be two very separate things.
Massachusetts State Police and local police took Brian Walshe into custody after concluding they had ‘probable cause’ to believe he had misled investigators in the search for his wife.
He did not tell police he had been to a Home Depot store, where he bought $450 worth of mops, buckets, tarps, tape and cleaning supplies on January 2, Assistant Norfolk District Attorney Lynn Beland said at the hearing in Quincy District Court.
Walshe did tell police that he had been to a supermarket and a pharmacy – though there is no evidence he had been to either store, she said. He misled investigators so he could either clean up or dispose of evidence, she added.
He as been accused by prosecutors of not giving a full account of his activities in the days after his wife vanished while the search for her was underway.
The couple own several properties together – including their home in Cohasset and a $1.3million house in DC.
They also owned another property in Massachusetts, worth $1.4million – which they sold last year before she went missing.
That was the building that went up in flames days after she vanished, but cops investigating the matter believe the fire is not linked to her disappearance.
This week, a friend of Walshe’s father claimed he was a ‘long-term patient’ at a psychiatric center and had been diagnosed as a ‘sociopath.’
Walshe had received treatment at Austen Riggs Psychiatric Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, before being discharged a few years ago, Jeffrey Ornstein alleged.
Ornstein, who was a friend of Walshe’s neurologist father, Dr Thomas Walshe, for 35 years, aired the claims in an explosive 2019 affidavit.
He also claimed Walshe had been estranged from the rest of his family after he had been accused of stealing millions of dollars from Dr Walshe’s estate following his death.
Walshe’s cousin, and two close friends of his father, made the claims against him in the scathing 2019 court documents following the death of Dr Walshe in 2018.
Ornstein said he had known Brian Walshe since he was 13, but said father and son had been estranged since 2009.
He claimed that, when Walshe was released from Austen Riggs after around 12 years and attempted to contact his father, Dr Walshe turned him down.
On Monday, cops said they had found blood on a damaged knife and in the basement of their home in Cohasset.
Officers searching two waste facilities on Monday night found further potential evidence.
They trawled through security footage at West Wareham after finding blood, a hatchet, a hacksaw, a rug and used cleaning products in a Peabody dumpster.
The first facility is an hour south of Ana and Brian Walshe’s home in Cohasset, while the other is 15 minutes from his mother’s house in Swampscott.
Prosecutors at Quincy District Court say Walshe’s statements, including claiming that he didn’t leave the house, delayed the investigation.
