Rachel & Lillian Entwistle

Case background and investigation

Rachel Entwistle, 27, and her daughter Lillian Rose, aged nine months, had moved with Rachel's husband, Neil Entwistle, into a rented house in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, only days before they died. BBC News reported that the couple, who had been living with Rachel's mother and stepfather in Carver, presented themselves as a happy family, and that Neil Entwistle, a British IT worker from Worksop, Nottinghamshire, was looking for work.

According to trial testimony reported by the BBC, Rachel's mother and a friend contacted police when they could not reach the family. An officer looked into the master bedroom on the evening of January 21, 2006, and saw only a pile of bedding. When police returned the next evening, they found mother and daughter together under the covers. The jury heard that Rachel had been shot in the forehead at close range and that the bullet that killed Lillian passed through the baby's body and lodged in her mother's chest.

By then Neil Entwistle had left the country. The BBC reported that he drove to Boston's Logan Airport, bought a one-way ticket and flew to London early the next morning without luggage, going to his parents' home in Worksop. He spoke to Massachusetts police by telephone from there and was initially described as a person of interest. He was arrested at Royal Oak Underground station in west London on February 9, 2006, and returned to the United States; Wikipedia gives the date of his return as February 15, 2006.

At the trial, held in June 2008 at Middlesex County Superior Court in Woburn, prosecutors said the weapon was a .22 calibre Colt revolver belonging to Rachel's stepfather, Joseph Matterazzo, kept at the house in Carver. They told the jury that Entwistle was heavily in debt, had been using websites to seek sexual partners and had searched online for methods of killing and suicide. Entwistle had told police he came home to find his wife and daughter dead and covered them. His defence argued at trial that Rachel had shot the baby and then herself, and that he had concealed this.

The jury rejected that account. After about 13 hours of deliberation, it found Entwistle guilty on June 25, 2008, of two counts of first-degree murder and of illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition, the BBC reported. First-degree murder carries a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole in Massachusetts, and Wikipedia records that this sentence was imposed the following day.

According to Wikipedia, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rejected his appeal in August 2012 and the US Supreme Court declined to hear the case in January 2013. Entwistle's parents have continued to say they believe he is innocent; the convictions stand.