Posted on 12/16/2011 9:55:18 AM PST by raccoonradio
DA argues killer does not deserve a second trial
The wild theory that the web is to blame for Neil Entwistle’s double-murder conviction was slammed by prosecutors yesterday who argued the cold-blooded fact the Brit executed his wife and child is what made the story go viral, not titillating tales of sex sites and online porn.
If anybody was abusing the Internet it was Entwistle, argued Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr.
The sex-crazed brainiac trolled for illicit liaisons online and Googled on how to "kill with a knife" before he murdered his wife and child in their posh rented home in Hopkinton on a bitter cold Jan. 20, 2006.
He spammed online users with pitches on how to create homemade porn sites, use penis pumps and cheated his eBay customers. He claimed to be a software wonder boy and secret agent, yet he was in debt for tens of thousands of dollars.
The deceiving dad is now locked up in a Bridgewater medium-security prison and demanding a new trial. He’s arguing media scrutiny, that spread like wildfire on the web, tainted the jury pool.
"The defendant argues on appeal that he is entitled to a ‘presumption of prejudice in the jury selection process’ because of the significant media coverage ... was supposedly the ’functional equivalent, in the Internet age, of the televised confession,’" Leone’s office wrote in a 55-page response to the killer’s appeal.
"No one should be able to skirt culpability for murdering two innocent people simply because their own actions, purposefully or otherwise, attracted media attention," Middlesex Assistant District Attorney Casey E. Silvia stated on behalf of Leone’s office.
The DA’s office hammers home that Entwistle, now 33, shot his wife, Rachel, 27, and baby girl, Lillian, 9 months old, with a .22 caliber handgun he stole from his father-in-law in Carver and then ran home to his folks in Worksop, England, with just the clothes on his back leaving the bodies of his wife and child behind hidden under a quilt in the master bedroom.
He left the lights on in the house, the radio "blaring" in the baby’s room, the dog yelping, the TV running, the bath drawn ... and the wife and child he supposedly loved so much left arm-in-arm shot dead at point-blank range.
"After leaving their bodies to decompose and locking his pet dog in a cage, he fled the country in order to avoid apprehension for his crimes," the DA’s office wrote. "The verdict was consonant with the evidence, and with justice."
The DA also states Entwistle’s argument that cops had no right to search the house on Jan. 21 and 22 of 2006 while they checked out a missing persons report is a violation of common sense. Both times cops broke into the home on 6 Cubs Path to try and find the family -- not to hunt for evidence, the DA states.
"Police acted reasonably and within the confines of their community caretaking role," the DA’s office stated.
"It is patently absurd to believe that two decomposing bodies would have lain undiscovered at 6 Cubs path forever had police not entered the home," the DA’s office stated.
It was "inevitable," prosecutors added, that Entwistle’s cold-blooded butchering would be exposed. Such a brutal betrayal could never remain a secret in his rented home on a dead-end street. Somebody, they argued, was going to come upon this evil.
Entwistle was found guilty of the murders of his wife and child in June of 2008. His appeal to the sate Supreme Judicial Court is his last shot at freedom.
And cor’ blimey, I wuz, I wuz so distraught yer honor that I fled back to England, guv’nor.
(Death penalty? Deserves. But...this is Massachusetts.)
Wikipedia:
>>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 .22 caliber handgun. Finding the 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 the 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’d only used the weapon once months earlier while practising at his father-in-law’s shooting club. Additionally, DNA matching that of his wife Rachel was found on the gun’s muzzle. Also, 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 also revealed that days before the murders, Entwistle 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 essentially penniless at the time of the killings. Authorities suspected a financial motivation for the killings.
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