Big Greater Boston cases and where they go next: From Karen Read to Brian Walshe

The husband accused of murdering and dismembering his wife in their Cohasset home on the first day of this year and then hiding her body, which has never been found, is back in court this week.

It’s one of several big cases that have made this year such a newsy one.

Brian Walshe, 48, was indicted for the murder of his wife, Ana Walshe, 39, in March, and was arraigned on the charge in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham on April 27. At that time, Judge Beverly J. Cannone denied him bail and set a next court date for Aug. 23, this Wednesday, a date confirmed by the clerk’s office last week.

The case has been largely dormant since that time, minus a treasure trove of District Court-level filings that were released when the case was kicked up to the Superior Court, as the defense and prosecutors build their cases.

The grisly case has garnered national attention with its details, including alleged Google searches found in the days following Ana Walshe’s disappearance, including “How long before a body starts to smell?” and “10 ways to dispose of a body if you really need to.”

Brian Walshe is a convicted international art fraudster and has some skeletons in his past like suspicious complications regarding his father’s estate, and prosecutors say that he stood to inherit $2.7 million from his wife’s life insurance policy.

But 2023 has been one crazy year, and the Walshe murder trial isn’t the only case to bring shocking headlines to the forefront. Here is a rundown of cases this year that Herald readers, and in some cases the nation at large, have followed from the edge of their seats.

Karen Read: Next date Sept. 15

Another big one that has notably not been quiet between courtroom dates is the case of Karen Read, the Mansfield woman accused of running over her boyfriend of two years, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, and leaving him to die in the cold in front of a Canton home in the early hours of Jan. 29, 2022.

Read pleaded not guilty to charges of manslaughter, motor vehicle homicide and leaving the scene of personal injury and death in Stoughton District Court days later and posted bail. She was indicted on second-degree murder charges the following June and the case was kicked up to Norfolk Superior Court.

The case has since been a flurry of filings behind the scenes, with her attorney David Yannetti arguing in court and in motions that the discovery process is too slow. The defense — which now includes both Yannetti and famous defense attorney Alan Jackson — has since floated their own theory: that it was not Read, but homeowner Brian Albert, a fellow Boston cop, and O’Keefe’s longtime friend Jennifer McCabe, also present in the house at that time, as the ones actually culpable in O’Keefe’s death.

Prosecutor Adam Lally has repeatedly called the defense theory “fanciful,” and both Albert and McCabe have lawyered up.

In recent months, the case has become even more dramatic. In May, Read took the unusual step of speaking directly to the public on the courthouse steps to both reassert her innocence — “I tried to save his life” — and to say that the whole case was a coverup, “We know who spearheaded this coverup. You all know.”

In the final week of last month, Judge Cannone denied both a defense motion and a prosecutor motion, which were, respectively, to recuse herself and to place a gag order on attorneys’ public comments.

Read is due back in court at 2 p.m. on Sept. 15 for a hearing on a renewed motion to compel discovery.

Lindsay Clancy: Next date Sept. 28

The 33-year-old Duxbury mother accused of the unthinkable, killing her three young children by strangling them and then attempting to take her own life, was arraigned at Plymouth District Court by video feed from her Brigham and Women’s Hospital bed on Feb. 7. The case has been quiet since.

But it will return next month, Sept. 28 at 9 a.m., for a probable cause hearing, the Plymouth District Attorney’s office confirmed but offered no additional comment on the case.

Lindsay Clancy, 33, was the mother to Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and little Callan, 8 months.

The day of Jan. 24 seemed a normal one for the young family. Lindsay Clancy took Cora to a pediatrician appointment that morning and would later that day text her husband a photo of Cora and Dawson playing in the snow and building a snowman, according to the arrest report.

At around 5 p.m., Lindsay Clancy was thinking about dinner and ordered a Mediterranean power bowl for herself and a scallop and pork risotto for her husband, Patrick Clancy, from the Plymouth restaurant ThreeV. She then texted her husband to pick up the food and some children’s stool softener before he came home.

Patrick Clancy would come back from his errand at around 6:09 p.m. to a silent home. He would see blood on the floors to the couple’s bedroom, where his wife appears to have jumped from. He calls the police to report her suicide attempt. When they arrive, the police follow the sounds of his “extremely loud screaming” to the basement and a nightmarish scene some of the first responders requested time off of work to deal with.

In the basement, the three children were unconscious and blue, with exercise resistance bands around their throats. Cora and Dawson would be pronounced dead that night at Boston Children’s Hospital. Callan would turn 8 months old before also dying the afternoon of Jan. 27.

Riley Dowell: On pre-trial probation

The adult child Democratic U.S. Rep Katherine Clark, the minority whip for the U.S. House, is on pretrial probation for charges of assaulting a police officer, tagging property, vandalism of a historical marker and resisting arrest for a Jan. 21 incident at Boston Common.

Riley Dowell, 23, the self-identified non-binary child of Rep. Clark, who on court documents goes by the birth name of Jared Dowell, pleaded not guilty to the charges at Boston Municipal Court on Jan. 23 and was released on $500 cash bail.

Dowell was caught spray painting the Parkman Bandstand at the Common with messages including “NO COP CITY” and “ACAB” — a message meaning “All Cops are Bastards” — during a protest there that Saturday night, according to previous Herald coverage. The protest moved toward Boylston Street where police attempted to arrest Dowell at the intersection with Tremont Street. In the chaos, Dowell “attempted to flee by violently flailing (her) arms, striking the Officer,” the arrest report reads.

Dowell was put on a year of pretrial probation for the incident during a hearing on May 3 and was also ordered to perform 30 hours of community service, to write an apology letter to the police officer, to go through therapy and to pay the city $1,000 restitution at $100 a month, due by the end of the probation period.

Ivan Cheung: Next date Oct. 3

The case of the State Street vice president accused of the serial rape of women and girls at knifepoint in attacks dating back to 2003 will return to court in the fall.

Ivan Cheung, 43, was arrested Sept. 12, 2022, and pleaded not guilty to the rape and assault charges the next day at Boston Municipal Court, where his attorney Peter Parker successfully argued that his client shouldn’t show his face.

The Fortune 500 financial services and bank holding company State Street, the Boston firm he had worked at for 18 years, fired him the same day.

The case has since moved to Suffolk Superior Court where Cheung faces 11 charges: four counts of forcible rape of a child under 16, two counts of rape of a child under 16, four counts of aggravated rape, and a count of assault with intent to rape. He’s due back in court on Oct. 3 at 9 a.m.

The first alleged rape occurred in Chinatown in July 2003, when Cheung is accused of picking up and raping a 13-year-old girl in Cheung’s Lexus RX300. The next was the following September, an incident in which he is accused of raping a 14-year-old girl in Charlestown.

The third was two years later, this time the victim was a 23-year-old woman Cheung allegedly picked up at a bar inside the Park Plaza in October 2005. The fourth was in April 2006, when Cheung is accused of picking up an 18-year-old woman at a North End pizzeria and then driving her to somewhere in Wellesley, where he raped and stabbed her.

George Williams: Next date Oct. 18

The project coordinator for the City’s Task Force on Reparations was arrested in May in City Hall after allegedly sleeping in his office for at least three weeks prior and giving other municipal workers trouble.

That employee was George Williams, 35, who the City Hall Municipal Protective Services officers said had been “trespassing in the building after hours, and at times becoming aggressive and threatening to other staff members inside of City Hall,” according to the police report of the incident.

MPS staff told police Williams would often enter the building after hours, bypass metal detectors and sleep in upper-floor offices, where he would allegedly also burn sage.

The night of his arrest on May 18, police say in the report, “he sat up without responding and appeared to be under the influence of some sort of narcotic” and then exhibited a series of alleged “unusual and uncooperative behavior,” including attempting to intimidate a police officer who was a foot smaller than the 6-foot-4 Williams.

He was arraigned the next day. He’s next due in Boston Municipal Court for a compliance hearing, which decides where the case goes from there, on Oct. 18.