Jurors chosen to decide the fate of Brian Walshe, the Cohasset man who allegedly killed and dismembered his wife in 2023, will be barred from watching the news during his murder trial, the presiding judge said Monday.
Judge Diane C. Freniere announced the restriction from the bench during Walshe’s final pretrial hearing in Norfolk Superior Court, where jury selection in the high-profile case is scheduled to begin Tuesday.
Freniere said she’ll tell prospective jurors that they must refrain from social media and “agree not to watch the news in any media.”
She acknowledged the condition is “a big ask” but said she believed it was necessary “given the level of publicity, media coverage, in the case.”
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Walshe, 50, has pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, disinterring a body, and lying to investigators in the Jan. 1, 2023 death of his wife, Ana Walshe, 39. He’s currently held without bail.
Prosecutors allege that Walshe strangled his wife in the predawn hours of New Year’s Day before making a number of disturbing Google searches on his son’s tablet, including “how to embalm a body,” “10 ways to dispose of a dead body if you really need to,” “how to stop a body from decomposing,” and “how long before a body starts to smell.”
The searches were made between 4:55 a.m. and 5:47 a.m. on New Year’s Day, prosecutors said.
Authorities allege that Walshe also dropped his wife’s remains in dumpsters in Swampscott and elsewhere.
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At one point during Monday’s hearing, Freniere asked Walshe’s mother, who was seated in the spectator’s gallery, to leave the courtroom while both sides argued over what the jury would be permitted to learn about her hiring of a private investigator to track Ana Walshe.
Authorities allege Brian Walshe killed his wife because he knew she was having an affair and preparing to leave him as he awaited sentencing in a separate federal fraud case.
Freniere said Monday that she recalled from the grand jury transcripts that Walshe’s mother wanted to hire the private investigator in late December 2022 “because of the psychic” she had visited.
Separately, Walshe attorney Kelli Porges told Freniere that if a witness who socialized with Ana Walshe a couple nights before her death can tell jurors about a fight with Brian Walshe that Ana recounted, they should also learn that same witness told grand jurors that the Walshes “had a very open and honest relationship, and that Ana wanted him to do whatever he had to do [with his federal case] so the family could be together.”
The two sides also clashed over whether jurors will learn about an Internet search for pornography involving a “cheating” spouse that Walshe had made days before the murder.
Freniere said the search speaks to “his state of knowledge on the 27th as to whether or not his wife was having an affair. Right?”
Not necessarily, Porges said.
“Without getting into a semantical discussion about pornography, I think that there’s millions of different interests, predilections” that people may have when searching for adult material, Porges said, adding that the search “wasn’t just ‘cheating wife.’ It was ‘cheating wife has threesome and gets impregnated.’ ... So I think it’s inflammatory.”
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Freniere asked prosecutors to provide her with a list of Internet searches they seek to introduce, and that Walshe’s defense can raise objections at trial to “particularized searches” as they arise.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin Tuesday, with Freniere and both sides seeking to seat 12 jurors and four alternates.
On Monday, Walshe’s mother blew a kiss to him as court officers led him from the courtroom in handcuffs following the hearing. Walshe smiled as he glanced in her direction.
Material from prior Globe stories was used in this report.
Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com.