Dateline NBC - Brian Walshe love triangle. Yale professor's search for justice. Plus, juror misconduct.

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

In Massachusetts, Brian Walshe comes face to face with his dead wife's lover in court. Prosecutors say the affair was Walshe's motive to kill his wife. Walshe says that's not true. Forty-three years ago in California, the body of Nancy Galvani was discovered floating under the San Mateo Bridge. For more than a decade, her daughter has suspected the killer was her own father. Last week, he was arrested. Updates in the cases of Luigi Mangione and the Gilgo Beach murders. Plus, NBC News legal analyst and defense attorney Danny Cevallos gives us the lowdown on juror misconduct.  Find out more about the cases covered each week here: www.datelinetruecrimeweekly.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Let's go ahead and jump in here, see and get going. It's the start of another workday here at 30 Rockefeller Center. Do we know anything about these witnesses who have surfaced? The Dateline team is swapping tips and story ideas. Just an update from five minutes ago. We'll find out who that mystery woman is. Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning.

It's December 11th, and here's what's on our docket. In San Francisco, a college professor's mission to solve her mother's 40-year-old murder ends in an arrest of her own father. She's an epidemiologist, so she knows how to do research. She knows how to ask questions, and that's what she did when it came to this. In Dateline Roundup, Luigi Mangione is back in court, and so is an alleged killer in connection with the Gilgo Beach murders, but it's not Rex Heerman. A judge asked him if you wanted to stay in Florida and contest the charges there or go back

to New York. Plus, what exactly can jurors get up to in the deliberation room? NBC News legal analyst and defense attorney Danny Savalos fills us in on juror misconduct. Twelve people who are total strangers and, you know, they don't always get along and they don't always behave. But before all that, we're heading back to a Massachusetts courtroom where the Art Swindler accused of murdering his wife comes face to face with the D.C. real estate agent she was having an affair with. It is week two in the trial of Brian Walsh, the Art Swindler accused. of murdering his wife Anna on New Year's Day, 2023.

The prosecution has been presenting a mountain of physical and digital evidence that they say proves the methodical steps Walsh took to dismember Anna and then dump her body in the trash. But remember, Walsh isn't on trial for that. He's already pleaded guilty to disposing of Anna's body illegally and misleading police. He's on trial for Anna's murder, and that he vehemently denies. He says his marriage was a half. happy one and he had no reason to kill her. That's why all eyes have been on one prosecution witness,

a man who admitted he was Anna's lover at the time of her death. And he says Anna was afraid to tell her husband about the affair. She had expressed great concern. Joining us is Dateline producer Dorothy Newell. She's been in the courtroom and is here to bring us up to speed. Hey, Dorothy. Thanks for having me, Andrea. Dorothy, it was a big moment when Anna's lover, William Fasto, took the stand. Did you notice a big shift in the energy in the courtroom because everyone was really waiting to hear from this man? Yeah, it was the first time the jury heard from the man who might be central to the motive in this case. You could see that he was nervous. His voice was a little shaky, but he sounded confident when he talked about his relationship with Anna. And you got to wonder what Walsh was thinking as he listened to Fashto talking about Anna, his own wife.

Walsh appeared calm as he always does, but I wonder if some of what Fasto said was new. to it. Let's get into the details of what he said. Remind us how these two first met. Sure. So William Fasto was the real estate agent in D.C. that Anna and Brian Walsh worked with when they were buying a townhouse in the area. Remember, Anna had a prestigious new job at Tishman Spire that took her down to D.C. during the week while Brian stayed at home in Massachusetts to take care of the kids. Fasto testified he didn't have a lot of contact with Brian. have had a call or two with him discussing the townhouse. I don't really recall. It would have been dealing with property matters. He said he didn't talk to Brian much after that,

but Anna quickly became someone important in his life and not just as a client. We quickly became close friends, then confidants, and before long we started an intimate relationship. As listeners will remember Dorothy at the time of Anna's disappearance, Brian, her husband, was under house arrest after his conviction for selling fake Andy Warhol paintings. And according to Fasto, this put a strain on Anna's life and her relationship with her husband. Yeah, Brian had to stay in Massachusetts, so he had the kids there. Fasto testified about how hard it was for Anna to be separated from them. And from Fasto's testimony, it seemed like he and Anna were planning a future together, right? Yeah, well, it may have all been

theoretical. We'll never know. But Fasto did testify that he and Anna were talking about what might happen if they merge their families. And yet he said Anna was still concerned about how she'd tell Brian. I had always said to Anna that she needed to figure out how she wanted things to be with Brian before, you know, we could make any sort of commitments or decisions. Then the prosecutor turned to the days surrounding Anna's disappearance. Fasto and Anna, had plans to meet up on January 4th, but instead of meeting up with Anna, he got a call from her husband, Brian. That's right. And he told the jury that when he saw Brian's number come up on his phone, he sent the call to voicemail. Why did you do that? I was in an intimate relationship

with his wife. I had not heard from her in several days. And frankly, I was concerned that maybe he had found out and was calling to confront me. Interesting. So his first first thought was that Brian had learned about the affair. That's right. When Brian called us second time, he also let that call go to voicemail, and that message was played for jurors. Good afternoon. What are you said, Brian Walsh?

I hope all is going well. Anna hasn't been in touch for a few days, so just wondering if you spoke to her, just so let me know or if you know anyone that might have that contact with her, just, you know, calling everyone. So I started to bother you. Sure has been fine. In this voicemail, you know, his wife's missing and Brian Walsh just sounds very calm. Yeah, but Andrea, think about it. At the very least, by his own admission, Brian knew Anna was dead when he left that message. And according to the prosecution, Brian had already dismembered and disposed of her remains. How did the defense handle Fasto on cross? That is a

tough witness for them. Yeah, well, they challenged the whole idea. that the affair was a motive for murder. The defense pushed hard on whether Brian even knew about the affair. Did I ever text you or call you and say, ugh, I think Brian is suspicious that I'm having an affair? Anna never texted or called me and said that she felt that Brian knew that we were having an affair. And if Brian didn't know, well, that might take the steam out of the prosecution's theory that he killed Anna in some jealous rage.

Something else the prosecution showed the jury this week were videos. of something Brian was doing the same day, Anna died, and they're pretty incriminating. Yeah, it's surveillance footage of Brian at Lowe's and other stores that show him buying hundreds of dollars worth of cleaning supplies on New Year's Day. He is so calm talking to the store employees strolling around. He looks like some normal dad stocking up for some do-it-yourself project. He just seemed so detached from what his reality was. At the very least, his wife was dead at home while he was rolling his shopping cart up and down the aisles. This week, jurors learned more about blood traces found in the Walsh's basement and on items found in several dumpsters.

A DNA analyst testified that the blood on many of the items found, like a slipper, some coveralls, a hacksaw, a hatchet. The blood was a match to Anna, Dorothy. Yeah, this is all really incriminating stuff, but it's still mostly about the disposal of Anna's body. which Brian has already admitted to. The prosecution hasn't laid out a distinct full theory about how she was murdered. As for the defense, they are questioning whether the evidence presented is valid. Maybe the blood evidence got mixed up or changed in that dumpster. Who knows? It does get confusing when you're hearing about a case that has already been partially pled out. It's very unique, Dorothy, to see something like this.

But what I'm wondering about is the defense case. How are they going to explain how a man sees the woman he loves dead. And instead of calling 911, decides to get rid of her body and lie to the police. Only one person can explain that. And it's Brian Walsh himself. So will he testify? That's the question on everyone's mind. Thanks so much, Dorothy, for being in court and for bringing us this important story. We appreciate it. Well, you're welcome. Thanks for having me. Coming up, a daughter searching for her mother's killer leads police to her own father. For our next story, we're heading to the Bay Area in California for a stunning development in a 40-year-old murder case. Alison Galvani is an esteemed epidemiologist, a Yale professor who has made a name for herself researching infectious diseases.

But for the past 15 years, she's had another research passion, finding out who killed her mother Nancy. On the morning of August 9, 1982, two fishermen spotted a sleeping bag drifting in some water near the San Mateo Bridge. Inside the sleeping bag was Nancy Galvani's body tied to a cinder block. Allison was just five years old at the time. The police came to our house. They asked to speak to my father. That's when I was told that my mother had been found strangled. For years, she said she tried to put the case behind her until she became a mother herself.

And that's when her research began in earnest. She reached out to her mom's old friends, talked to relatives, and soon there was just one man on her suspect list, her own father, Patrick. Tonight, 81-year-old Patrick Galvani is behind bars at the San Mateo County Jail on a murder charge. Now, 43 years after her mother's death,

her father has been arrested. East Idaho news reporter Nate Eaton, who has been following this case closely and interviewed Allison on his podcast, Portroom Insider, is here to bring us up to speed. Nate, welcome back to the podcast. Nice seeing you, Andrea. Yeah, you too.

So, Nate, take us back to 1982. Let's just start with Nancy and Patrick's relationship and what you learned about that through your reporting. So Nancy was a 36-year-old social worker. Patrick was 39 years old. He was a businessman. They were married for about eight years, and then they decided to file for divorce.

She moved out and moved to a residential hotel. Patrick stayed at the couple's home in a really nice neighborhood in Pacific Heights, and they informally shared custody of their daughter. So what do we know about Nancy's final hours before she ended up in that sleeping bag? Well, Allison interviewed a lot of her mom's friends and others that knew her. And according to them, Nancy was hosting a taco party the night before her body was found. At some point during the party, she told her friends that she had to leave to pick up Allison, that Allison was at Patrick's house. She said she'd returned to the house, returned to the party, but she never showed back up. So, Nate, her body was found floating near the San Mateo Bridge, but at first, police didn't know it was Nancy?

Yeah, they didn't know who she was. So they released a sketch to the public. And according to what Allison has learned, Nancy's friends actually recognized the sketch and called Patrick to find out if he had seen her or heard from his wife. He said that Nancy never showed up to pick Allison up from him. The San Francisco Examiner at the time reported that he waited three days to actually call the police and say that she was missing, but it was actually her friends that went and identified the body. Okay. So Patrick was arrested for Nancy's murder days after she was discovered. How did that come about? It all focused on a car that was parked inside of Patrick's garage. It was a yellow Buick that Nancy had driven. That's the car she was driving in when she had left to go get Allison. Police searched the home. They found the car.

Patrick denied that he had any involvement in her disappearance. A newspaper at the time reported that they spoke with Patrick's father who said that his son was mild-mannered, that he was gentle, that he would never hurt a fly. But Nancy had gone to court with allegations of abuse, correct? Yeah, just two months before she was killed. She was granted a temporary restraining order after Patrick allegedly tried to suffocate her with a pillow. Back then, the newspaper got a hold of the couple's divorce declaration. Patrick claimed that he'd only kept it over her face to keep the neighbors from hearing them from arguing, from hearing her yelling and screaming. But Allison told me just recently that she witnessed it, and she went out and begged her dad to stop.

Okay, so he was charged with murder, but it didn't stick. It didn't stick. Four months later, in December of 1982, the charges were dropped. And the prosecutor told the local media at the time he didn't have enough evidence to convince a jury that they would get a guilty verdict. Patrick's lawyers at the time insisted he was innocent. He passed a lie detector test and he said that he wanted to help the police find the person who actually killed his wife. When did Allison start to suspect her own father? Well, she lived with him all throughout her childhood. So my father was really all I had, and having lost my mother so suddenly as well, I was anxious basically all the time that he would suddenly die as well. So I was very attached to him. Once she hits adulthood, she realizes that she'd been in denial about some of these weird things that had happened from that weekend her mom disappeared.

Patrick told investigators that Allison had been at the house the night that Nancy disappeared, but that wasn't true. She remembers him taking her to her uncle's house. I had only seen that uncle once before. I didn't want to spend the night. And as it turned out, she was murdered. And it was actually Allison's husband once she got married who said, you really need to look at this with fresh eyes. Yeah, and we talked a little bit about that off the top. Nate, what exactly was she able to do as an investigator?

Well, she's an epidemiologist, so she knows how to do research. do research. She knows how to ask questions, and that's what she did when it came to this. She reached out to relatives. She spoke with her mom's friends. She met with detectives. She actually filed a wrongful death lawsuit against her dad at one point. That was thrown out. And then she finally got up the nerve to actually confront her dad about all of this. In 2010, she recorded a phone call for the police. He denied killing Nancy, but said that he, quote, would have, but someone beat me to it. And so she had this recording that she then took to the police and that may have helped lead to these new developments that we're talking about today. We spoke to the San Mateo

District Attorney who confirmed the 2010 phone call and said that Allison's version of events lines up with what they say they've uncovered. Was he charged with murder? Do you think because of what Allison was able to do? I think she played a very pivotal world. And the San Mateo, DOA felt that there is enough new evidence to charge. They haven't exactly elaborated on what that evidence is, but it'll be fascinating to see what has changed, if anything, from decades ago when this proceeds and goes to trial. You first sat down, Nate, with Allison on October. Have you been able to connect with her since the big arrest? We texted a little bit after the arrest was made, and she's not doing any interviews at the moment, but she did release a statement, and she just

expressed her gratitude to the folks at the San Mateo district attorney's office who have been committed to pursuing justice for her mom. And she said that her goal is to shed light even on the darkest of things. And that is what this case is doing for her. Have we heard anything from Patrick's attorneys? They have released a statement saying that their client is innocent, that he was, that the charges were dropped years ago and that they don't believe any evidence has changed as far as being an innocent man. And we'll see. You know, he's in jail now, and he's set to be arraigned coming up in January. Okay, Nate, thank you so much, as always. We appreciate it. Thank you. Have a good day, Andrea.

Up next, it's time for Dateline Roundup. The Luigi Mangione and Gilgo Beach cases are back in the news. Plus, what happens when jurors misbehave? NBC News legal analyst Danny Savalos answers our questions about juror misconduct. Welcome back. Joining us for this week's roundup as Dateline producer Mike Nardy. Thanks for coming back, Mike. Thanks for having me, Andrea. Up first, we've got an update for you on the Gilgo Beach murders. You remember Rex Heuerman, the architect, accused of murdering seven women, many of them sex workers,

and dumping their remains along Gilgo Beach and other parts of Long Island, between 1993 in 2010. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges and is awaiting trial. What you may not remember is that investigators found four other sets of human remains in the same area. On Friday, there was major news in two of those cases. But Mike, they don't believe they're connected to Rex Heurman this time, right? That's right. NASA County Police said two of the other sets of remains belonged to 26-year-old Tanya Denise Jackson and her two-year-old daughter, Tatiana, who were killed in 1997. Jackson was previously referred to by police as peaches because of a peach tattoo she had. Last week, police arrested a man and charged him with Jackson's murder, and it was not Rex Heuerman.

Okay, so who was it, Mike? He's a 66-year-old Florida resident named Andrew Dykes. He's the father of Jackson's daughter, though he hasn't been charged with the daughter's murder. Authorities arrested Dykes in Hillsborough County, where a judge asked him if you wanted to stay in Florida and contest the charges there, or go back to New York and face the courts. You know what you'd like to do, sir? Yes, you are. What would you like to do? I like they don't have to be welcome to defend myself.

Mike, Rex, as we mentioned, is still facing all these charges for these other women. Is there a trial date yet? No trial date has been set yet, so it's still ongoing case for him. For our next story, we're headed to New York, where Luigi Mangione, the man accused of fatally shooting United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, is in court for the second week of an evidentiary hearing. Last week, we talked a bit about the public reaction to the hearing. A lot of people gathered outside of court. There are a lot of supporters of Mangione. This week, we got a better understanding of the case. Yeah, that's right. Luigi Mangione has pleaded not guilty to

all the charges against him. And this is a multi-day hearing, is his defense team trying to get certain evidence excluded or included at his future trial. Stephen Fox, an Altoona, Pennsylvania police officer, took the stand on Tuesday. Fox escorted Mangione to and from his arraignment in Pennsylvania last December. The big headline this week was when Fox revealed something Mangione allegedly said after the arraignment. Right. So Fox testified that Mangione walked past a crowd of journalists and spectators outside the courthouse and said, all of these people here for a mass murderer?

wild. He also said that Mangione tripped at one point and Fox said, I forgot you were shackled. Mangione allegedly replied, it's okay. I'm going to have to get used to it. The hearing is still ongoing, so we will see how the judge rules in terms of whether or not Fox's testimony and other evidence will be allowed in trial. Okay, thanks for the updates, Mike. Thanks, Andrea. We've spent a lot of time on the podcast talking about former Major League Baseball pitcher Dan Serafini. who was convicted this summer of first-degree murder and attempted murder in the 2021 shooting of his in-laws. We've also talked about Serafini's attempts to appeal his conviction,

which sent her around what a juror did during deliberations. She took screenshots of two videos entered into evidence and compared those images on a computer to see if a mysterious masked man at the crime scene was, in fact, Dan Serafini. We looked at those videos over and over. We were taking stills. We were creating side by side.

We were really analyzing, like, could the person in this video match who we knew was, you know, Daniel Seraphini? This week, Sarapini's appellate attorney was in court arguing that by screenshoting, the juror manipulated evidence amounting to juror misconduct. He said Seraphini should get a new trial. But did the juror do anything wrong? and who makes the rules? We asked NBC News legal analyst and defense attorney Danny Savalos to take us through what juror misconduct really means. Hi, Danny. Welcome back to the podcast.

Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, so, Danny, let's start with, of course, the Serafini case and get your take on that. One of the jurors used her computer's snipping tool to grab screenshots of two surveillance videos shown at trial as a way to compare images side by side. Have you ever heard of a juror doing that before? then what makes that a problem? I haven't heard of a juror doing that specifically, but in the context of this motion, understand this is after a conviction and you're trying anything you can. You're throwing anything against the wall.

And while this is an interesting theory that a juror somehow using some technology to look more closely, and that's what they did, they used it to compare images of the defendant and the suspect side by side. And the defense is basically arguing, well, that went to the level. of manipulating the evidence. The question is, is the juror just looking at the evidence from a different angle and in a different way? Or are they manipulating it? And of course, the other major question is always, are they going outside the evidence? Okay. So what's interesting is Serafini's defense was only made aware of this because of a news interview the juror did

after the trial was over. So do you think there's more of this going on during deliberations than we realize? This is the great frustration of defense attorneys. This is probably going on all the time during jury deliberations, but for the most part, unless the jurors want to tell us about it, we never find out. And so really only in high profile cases, in a situation like this, where a juror comes out and gives an interview, do the defense attorneys have a chance to find out what was going on in deliberations? What else can't jurors do with evidence during deliberations? The key rules are you cannot go outside the evidence. And a good rule of thumb is if you're using the internet on any level, that means by definition you're going into the outside world to either

look something up. You can't look up a definition. You can't use map quests. And by the way, there are plenty of cases in California alone dealing with issues like this. One, for example, a couple jurors, if you can believe it, went home, bought the same rifle and conducted shooting tests. That is clearly going outside the evidence. And I would add also, if you are outside of the jury room, you're home on the weekend, and you're thinking about the case, that isn't necessarily a problem. As long as you've confined your thoughts and your musings to only what the evidence is and you haven't discussed it with anyone else. So those are sort of the key points. But there are cases all over the place with silly stories of things jurors did to conduct research on.

their own that is verboten. It would take everything in me not to do that because I would want to do all these things. It's tempting. You are, there's so much during a jury trial that the jury is not privy to. There are all these sidebars and they're sent out of the room and they must have so many questions. It's natural to want to look into this and conduct your own investigation. But in our legal system, that is not permitted.

But it's not uncommon to have all kinds of juror shenanigans. I mean, honestly, during a jury trial, a lot of the judge's job is managing juror hijinks because you're taking a bunch of 12 people who are total strangers from a very broad cross-section of the community. And, you know, they don't always get along and they don't always behave. And it's a strange environment for them. So you hear the jurors do the craziest things. Well, Serafini's team will be back in court later this month to continue making their arguments. Thank you, Danny, so much for all this very interesting information.

Thank you. That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. Make sure to check out Keith's brand new podcast series, Something About Carrie. After single mother, Carrie Farver, disappeared, her boyfriend and his ex received menacing messages. But that was only the beginning of the mystery. A female stuck a gun to her back told her to get on the ground and then shot her in the leg and then ran off. The first four episodes are available now wherever you get your podcasts, or you can subscribe to Dateline Premium and get early access to the rest of the series and listen, ad-free.

And coming up this Friday on Dateline, I've got an all-new episode for you. The murder of an Iowa farmer was a cold case until detectives found their digital smoking gun. That everything could have just been a complete lie that whole time. It's hard to swallow. Watch The Farmer's Wife Friday at 9-8 Central on NBC. Thanks for listening. Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Carson Cummins, Caroline Casey, and Keani Reed. Our associate producers are Ellery Gladstone Groth and Aria Young.

Our senior producer is Liz Brown Kurloff. Production and fact-checking help by Audrey Abraham's. Veronica Mazzaka is our digital producer. Rick Kwan is our sound designer. Original music by Jesse McGinty. Paul Ryan is executive producer, and Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline. All right, well, happy Thursday. Go outside and enjoy the tree if you're here.