House of Lies

The Trial of Art Fraudster Brian Walshe

Like many, I’ve been transfixed by the Brian Walshe case since early January 2023 when it was reported that his wife, Ana, was missing. But as a longtime examiner of art crimes, there was a whole different dimension to the story.

When the news first broke, I instantly recognized his name. He had been convicted of perpetrating a clumsy art fraud involving copies of Andy Warhol’s work. In the annals of fakes and forgeries, that crime will not go down as one of history’s great art capers. Rather, it was a simple but harebrained bait-and-switch that the victim identified immediately.

I know well the FBI agent who ran the case and another who took part in the arrest. We talk about art crime obsessively, but this one didn’t exactly captivate. After the arrest it was a three-minute story at best. Easy to solve, easy to prove, easy to convict.

But two-and-a-half years later, Walshe sits in a jail cell charged with murdering and dismembering Ana. CCTV footage shows him traveling to Swampscott, Massachusetts, soon after her disappearance and doing something mysterious near dumpsters adjacent to my former residence and a liquor store I frequented. That’s it—I was rapt.

The police investigation would ultimately yield a long list of what appeared to be instruments of murder and of truly damning and, frankly, outrageous Google searches he had conducted on their son’s iPad. The searches were gruesome and outrageous. It was as if the list came from the screenplay for the world’s worst murder mystery. It appears his clumsy criminality had surfaced again. Still, one problem perplexes investigators to this day: where is Ana’s body?

That’s the unanswered question upon which Brian Walshe is betting in his bid for acquittal. To any objective observer, though, his chances are slim. But similar evidence was presented against Casey Anthony when she stood trial for murdering her daughter. All it took was a conspiratorial smokescreen by her defense attorney to get her off the hook.

In 2015, I wrote a book titled The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World. In it, I described how art cons art perpetrated by people who prey upon the need for people who want very badly to believe they’ve gotten lucky and stumbled upon a treasure—perhaps something that everyone else has missed. In his upcoming trial, Walshe appears to be hoping that just one juror might think that the police missed something about the crime that points guilt away from him—and they figured it all out themselves. It’s the Warhol gambit all over again.

Today, the Massachusetts Courts deemed Big Security to be a legitimate news media outlet. I’ll be at the trial observing the testimony and watching the convicted art fraudster try to win the fight of his life. I’ll be telling you what I see right here on this Substack. My focus will be on the profile of the art con man as the Commonwealth argues that he took his criminal tendencies to a deadly level. But the victim will not be forgotten.

The substacks here will be free, but paid subscribers to Big Security will also receive special posts about behind the scenes goings-on at the courthouse; interviews with insiders; and other special content.

I hope you’ll follow along.