Accused wife killer Brian Walshe is seeking the cell phone records of the lead investigator in his case, a suspended Massachusetts State Trooper whose belligerent texts were revealed in the explosive Karen Read trial that ended earlier this year in mistrial.
Walshe’s attorney, Larry Tipton, quickly seized on the opportunity in the case that has been practically dormant since prosecutors read out Walshe’s alleged internet searches for how to dispose of body parts and clean up a crime scene.
A hearing this afternoon which was scheduled to argue the motion was rescheduled for Dec. 2.
Walshe, 49, is charged with the murder of his wife, Ana Walshe, who the prosecutors say he slayed and then cut up on the first day of 2023 and then hid her body parts in dumpsters around the Greater Boston region. Since being indicted for her murder, he was sentenced in federal court to an unrelated international art fraud case, which he has appealed. He has been detained at the Norfolk House of Correction since his initial arrest.
In a Sept. 24 filing, Tipton requested “A complete copy of all data referred to in the Commonwealth’s notice dated September 6, 2024, described as an ‘extraction of Trooper Proctor’s work cell phone’ and ‘Trooper Proctor’s work cloud account.’” He requested a lot more material, as well, including the more than 3,000 pages of U.S. Department of Justice materials looking into the investigation in the Karen Read case, for which Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor also served as the case officer.
In addition to these primary materials, he also requested any correspondence or other written materials regarding that investigation, as well as into the case of the suspicious death of 23-year-old Sandra Birchmore. Birchmore’s death was initially ruled a suicide but federal prosecutors recently charged a former Stoughton cop with killing her after local prosecutors made no move on the case for more than three years.
“Mr. Walshe’s motion does not allege the Norfolk County District Attorney’s office of any wrongdoing. The motion addresses what has been revealed as serious questions about the conduct, decisions and bias in its investigations, the bias and inadequate supervision of the state police assigned to the office and other police departments reporting to the office in its investigations,” Tipton wrote in a subsequent affidavit supporting the motion, “and is an effort to require production of any exculpatory evidence that raises questions about the investigation of Mr. Walshe.”
Prosecutor Greg Connor objected to the scope of the request in his response, which was filed Wednesday morning ahead of the hearing.
“The Commonwealth alerted the Court and the defendant that there is privileged information within Trooper Proctor’s work phone,” he wrote. “The Commonwealth has sought the assistance of an independent examiner to review the contents of the phone and cloud information.
“In the meantime,” he continued, “the Commonwealth is reviewing the extraction reports for all exculpatory evidence that pertains to this investigation including any allegations of misconduct that bear upon truthfulness or could be read as suggesting bias, as well as any material that would question one’s ability to be impartial.”
Proctor, was relieved of duty after testimony during the Karen Read trial revealed he’d sent vulgar texts to colleagues and family, calling Read a “whack job” and telling his sister he wished Read would “kill herself.” He said that was a figure of speech and that his emotions had gotten the better of him.