The mother of missing Massachusetts woman Ana Walsh breaks silence: 'Clearly there had to be a problem'.

"I have only one wish: for my daughter to be alive," the mother of a missing Massachusetts woman, Ana Walshe, tells Fox News Digital in an interview published on January 9, 2023.

The disappearance of Ana Walshe

Her mother, Milanka Ljubicic, said the missing 39-year-old Ana Walshe had begged her to come from Serbia, her home country, to visit her just a week before she disappeared. This led the worried woman to think there had been "problems" at home before her daughter's disappearance.

Ana Walshe's request

"She just said: 'Please, mom. Come back tomorrow,'" Milanka Ljubicic, 69, the mother of missing Ana Walshe, said in an interview conducted Monday and later translated into English. "This means that obviously there must have been some problems."

Trip postponement

Ljubicic said her daughter texted her on Dec. 25 and asked Ljubicic to visit her in Washington the next day. She replied, "I can't pack in one day. I'm 69 years old, I need to take my medication and a thousand other things."

Ljubicic suggested her daughter come to visit on Jan. 5 or 6, but her daughter said it wasn't necessary. "She said: 'You don't need to come in January. Brian and I are planning for February,'" Lubicich recalled.

Suspicious circumstances

The woman then missed a call to her daughter around midnight on Dec. 31 and another call shortly thereafter. "She called again at 1 a.m. and I missed that call too. She called her elder sister who was also asleep. Then she tried to call a witness at the wedding, but she couldn't hear the phone because of the loud music," she said.

Ana Walshe was last seen

Ana Walshe, a mother of three young boys, was last seen in the early morning hours of Jan. 1 when she had to take a passenger cab service to go to the local airport to board a flight to Washington. The real estate executive at Tishman Speyer was previously scheduled to travel to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 3, but an emergency forced her to take an earlier flight.

Contacting the police

The company reported her missing to police on Jan. 4, after attorney Brian Walsh said he contacted the firm to find out where Ana was.

Police deception

But in the period between Ana's disappearance and her being reported missing, Brian Walsh allegedly lied about his whereabouts. Investigators say Walsh not only told investigators he was at stores like CVS and Whole Foods where he might not have been, but also failed to mention that he spent about $450 to buy cleaning supplies at a Home Depot store in Rockland, Massachusetts.

Evidence

According to court documents and officials, the videotape observed Walsh "wearing a black surgical mask, blue surgical gloves and made a cash purchase" of items including mops, tape and protective tape.

Investigators also found blood and a bloody, damaged knife in the basement of the family's home, and tracked Ana's cell phone in the area of their Cohasset home on Jan. 1 and 2. At the same time, Brian's cell phone showed evidence of his presence in other parts of Massachusetts, such as Brockton and Abington, despite being banned from those areas under the terms of his home confinement.

The arrest of Brian Walsh

Walsh was arrested Sunday and charged with misleading a police investigation. Police are linking the charge to his alleged "purposeful, deliberate and direct answers to questions about his whereabouts on Sunday, January 1, 2023, and Monday, January 2, 2023," which they call "a clear attempt to mislead and delay the investigation."

Walsh's attorney, Tracy Miner, said her client was otherwise cooperative with authorities but omitted to mention his trip to Home Depot. She noted that he was "extremely cooperative."

Bail and charges

Walsh, previously convicted of art fraud, was arrested on $500,000 cash bail or $5 million cash bond.

Irritation and relationships

Interviewed about Brian Walsh, Lubicich described how her daughter was sometimes "annoyed" by the restrictions Ana faced because of her husband's home confinement, such as the fact that she "had to work in Washington, D.C., living alone in the house, while he was home with his three children."

"Sometimes [Brian's] mom would help out. There might have been a fight about that and then on New Year's Eve," she continued. "You have a few drinks and relax and so on."

But Ljubicic added: "I can't believe something has happened. In all the time I spent with my son-in-law together, I never noticed anything wrong."

Ljubicic said she last saw her daughter when she visited Belgrade in late November. She had been there for 10 days.

"I can't believe something like this has happened to me," she said. "I only have one wish: for my daughter to be alive."

Fox News Digital's Rebecca Rosenberg contributed to this report.