In the morning session of the murder of Ana Walshe, the man who had an affair with the now‑deceased Massachusetts mother, William Fastow, explained to the jurors that Ana had planned to confess the affair to her husband, Brian Walshe. He said she was “despondent” about not being able to spend more time with their three sons.
Fastow took the stand in the Norfolk County Superior Court in Dedham on the fourth day of Walshe’s trial. He recounted that Ana and he began dating just weeks after she started splitting her time between Boston and Washington, DC for a new job.
While Walshe stayed behind in Cohasset, MA to care for their children, Ana crossed between the two homes. Fastow testified that Ana felt “despondent” because she could not be more involved with the kids, and she relied on Walshe to be the primary caregiver – a situation complicated by Walshe’s federal art‑fraud conviction and home confinement, which prevented him from moving to DC.
He told the jury that Ana decided she needed to tell Walshe about their affair herself, rather than let someone else discover it first. “Ana felt it was really important that when Brian was to find out about the relationship, that he would hear it from her. She had expressed a great concern, and I think she felt it would be a strike against her integrity if he found out a different way,” Fastow said.
Fastow, a real‑estate broker, had first met Ana when the couple was looking to purchase a townhouse in the capital where she could live while working. “We quickly became close friends then confidants and before long we started an intimate relationship,” he explained, citing a CNN report. “We would share conversations about our lives, what we were going through, personal troubles, those sorts of things.”
Although he never met Walshe in person, Fastow did see him on Zoom during the home‑buying process. He learned early that Walshe’s federal art‑fraud case was a major strain on the marriage. One moment of discussion surfaced when an insurer refused to cover a policy on the $1.3 million townhouse they secured, prompting Ana to tell Fastow that Walshe was on home confinement in Cohasset. He also said Ana had plans to admit the affair to Walshe – a fact that he did not hide.
Walshe’s attorney told jurors that Ana never intended to end the marriage and had kept the affair a secret from her husband. She had been expecting Walshe and the boys to relocate to DC in early 2022 when his sentencing was supposed to occur, but the delay allowed Fastow and Ana to become more serious. Fastow did not date anyone else during that time, and they spent Thanksgiving 2022 together in Dublin and Christmas Eve with Fastow’s Atlanta friends in Annapolis. That night, Ana’s flight returned to Massachusetts and she drove home instead.
Fastow said they had planned a meeting on New Year’s Day to discuss their future, but Ana stopped replying after the call. He last heard from her at the start of the new year. When Walshe called Fastow twice on Jan. 4, he received a voicemail asking for help locating Ana; that recording was played for the jury.
Fastow also described disputes within the marriage, such as Walshe’s frustration over Ana not staying home on Christmas Eve. “There were some points of contention,” he recounted.
Walshe faces charges of killing Ana around New Year’s Day 2023, dismembering her body, discarding the remains in dumpsters where they were never found. Prosecutors argue that his motive was partly triggered by learning of Ana’s affair, compounded by the already fraught relationship due to his looming prison sentence and $400,000 restitution.
He told the jury that the criminal case strained Ana’s marriage the most. “The biggest stressor was his inability to resolve his criminal case, and the fact that, because of that, she couldn’t be with her children and bring them back to Washington, DC, and the fact that it felt like it was holding up her life,” Fastow said.
Fastow also mentioned that Ana and Walshe clashed over spending, since she was the sole wage earner. Walshe has admitted in statements to police that he lied about the body and disposed of it, but he maintains that he did not kill Ana. His lawyer claimed that on Monday he argued that Ana died of “sudden unexplained death” and that Walshe panicked, fearing blame and leaving the boys alone, leading him to dispose of the remains.
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