Neil Entwistle (born 18 September 1978) is an English man convicted of murdering his American wife, Rachel, and their infant daughter, Lillian, on 20 January 2006, in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, United States.
Entwistle worked in computing and his wife as a teacher of English, Drama and Theatre Studies at St. Augustine's Catholic High School in Redditch.
After migrating to the US, the couple stayed with Rachel's mother and stepfather, Joseph and Priscilla Matterazzo, in Carver, Massachusetts, before finding a house of their own in Hopkinton, located 26 miles (42 kilometers) west of Boston.
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.
Hours after the deaths of his wife and daughter, Entwistle purchased a one-way ticket to London at about 5:00 a.m. (EST) on 21 January and boarded a British Airways flight that departed Boston at 8:15 a.m. His speedy departure from the crime scene was not the only reason he raised suspicion: Entwistle's DNA was found on the handle of the same .22 caliber handgun owned by his father-in-law, Joseph Matterazzo, that he told authorities he had only used once, months earlier, while practising at Matterazzo's shooting club.
On the evening of 21 January, the day after the murders are believed to have been committed, police officers visited the Entwistles' home after Rachel's friend reported her missing.
Though the police conducted a cursory inspection of the house, they failed to notice Rachel's and Lillian's bodies, obscured under a pile of bedding in the master bedroom.
Entwistle told the trooper that, on the morning of the murders, he had left his Hopkinton home at around 9:00 a.m. (EST) 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.
On 9 February 2006, Entwistle was arrested on a London Underground train at Royal Oak station following a detailed search of his parents' house.
Middlesex County district attorney Martha Coakley (who had successfully prosecuted British au pair Louise Woodward in 1997) told a press conference after Entwistle's arrest:[citation needed] On Thursday night [19 January 2006], Rachel was alive and had spoken with family members.
What we believe happened next was that Neil Entwistle returned the gun to his father-in-law's home in Carver, then made preparations to leave the country.
On 8 February 2006, a week after their funerals, Entwistle was arrested by the extradition unit of London's Metropolitan Police Service at Royal Oak station.
In December 2006, nearly a year after the murders, officers at the Middlesex County jail found letters from Entwistle to his parents and his legal team which indicated he was depressed and might be contemplating suicide.
"[11] Entwistle was put into protective custody (i.e., Administrative Segregation or "AdSeg") as a result, and in December, he was transferred to Old Colony Correctional Center, a medium security prison in Bridgewater.
[18] His parents continue to insist that their son is innocent of the murders, that Rachel was the true killer and that he will eventually be cleared and released from prison.
[19] In 2008, a book titled Heartless: The True Story of Neil Entwistle and the Cold Blooded Murder of His Wife and Child, was released by author Michele R.