Neil Entwistle - Murders

Murders

The bodies of 27-year-old Rachel and 9-month-old Lillian were found on 22 January 2006 in the master bedroom of the family's rented home where they had been living for ten days. Autopsy results showed that Rachel died of a gunshot wound to the head and Lillian of a gunshot wound to the torso.

Hours after the deaths of his wife and daughter, Entwistle purchased a one-way ticket to London at about 5 am (EST) on 21 January and boarded a British Airways flight that departed Boston at 8:15 am.

On 23 January, police located Entwistle at the home of his parents in Worksop. Entwistle told them that he had left his Hopkinton home at around 9 am EST three days previously to run an errand, and that his wife and daughter had both been alive and well, in the bed in the couple's master bedroom. He claimed that when he returned, at around 11 am, he found both had been shot dead. He covered their bodies with a blanket, and did not alert authorities.

Entwistle told the police that he was so distraught upon seeing the corpses of his wife and daughter that he decided to kill himself. However, because he was unable to bring himself to end his life with a knife, he drove the family car to his father-in-law Joseph Materazzo's house to get a .22LR caliber revolver. Finding the Materazzos' house locked, he told police that he then decided to fly home to England to see his parents.

Entwistle's speedy departure from the scene of the deaths of his family was not the only reason authorities questioned his version of events. Entwistle's DNA was found on the handle of the same .22 handgun owned by his father-in-law that he told authorities he had only used once, months earlier, while practising at Matterazzo's shooting club. DNA matching that of his wife was found on the gun's muzzle. A set of keys to Materazzo's house were found in the car Entwistle left at Boston's Logan airport.

A search of Entwistle's computer revealed that, days before the murders, he had looked at a website that described "how to kill people", and searched for escort services. Contrary to outward appearances, Entwistle had been unemployed since September 2005 and was indebted at the time of the murders. Authorities suspected a financial motivation for them.

Read more about this topic:  Neil Entwistle

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