Misc. cases I

[Lady Cop]

murdered wife and baby ^ Rachel and Baby Lillian




Lillian



baby's bullet-ridden sleeper.

BOSTON HERALD
The six-year legal nightmare for the family of a murdered Hopkinton mom and her baby girl is finally over.

The state’s highest court ruled today the double-murder conviction of Neil Entwistle will stand and he will not be granted a new trial. The British native — who fled to England after the January 2006 murders and attempted to sell his sordid story of sex-swap sites and betrayal to the highest bidder — will now die behind bars in a Massachusetts prison. He is locked up in the Old Colony House of Correction in Bridgewater.

Entwistle’s taxpayer-funded legal team had argued local police violated his constitutional rights when they broke into his house on January 21 and 22, 2006, during a missing person search. The Supreme Judicial Court ruled the police searches were justified because of the possibility family members could be in danger.

“There was a reasonable basis to believe that something unfortunate might have happened,” the court ruled in a decision obtained by the Herald today.

Entwistle was found guilty of murdering his wife, Rachel, 27, and 9-month-old baby, Lillian Rose, on Friday, Jan. 20, 2006, with a gun he stole from his father-in-law.

Joe Flaherty, a spokesman for Rachel’s parents Joe and Priscilla Matterazzo of Carver, told the Herald this morning the family never lost faith in the court system and the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office.

“It’s a relief. You just never know,” said Flaherty of today’s SJC ruling, that he said came faster than expected. “It would have been a nightmare” to go through another trial.

Flaherty, a former state police homicide investigator in Boston, backed the SJC in their ruling that Hopkinton cops had the right to conduct a “well-being check” on the couple’s home that bitter cold January weekend. Hopkinton police forced their way into the family’s 6 Cubs Path home that stormy weekend after family and friends became alarmed they could not reach Rachel or Neil.

On the second search, a “slight foul odor” led the cops to the master bedroom of Entwistle’s rented Colonial, where they found mother and child arm-in-arm and both shot to death.

Prior to his 2006 arrest, Entwistle complained about his staggering debt and his flagging sex life with his wife while conducting a double life. He posted a nude photo of himself on an adult sex swap website and peddled penis pumps and helped set up pornography sites on the Internet.

His defense team argued the international full-press coverage of his murder case was so “saturating and inflammatory,” it robbed him of a fair trial.

Not so, the SJC wrote today, stating: “We affirm the convictions and, after a complete review of the record, decline to exercise our authority ... to order a new trial or reduce the murder convictions to a lesser degree of guilt.”

UPDATE: Middlesex DA Gerry Leone released the following statement following the SJC ruling: “We are pleased that the Supreme Judicial Court has affirmed the conviction of Neil Entwistle for the horrific and cowardly murders of his wife and infant daughter. With today’s decision, the SJC has ruled the grounds of the defendant’s appeal as baseless and Neil Entwistle will continue to spend the rest of his life behind bars for the unimaginable, unforgiveable acts he committed against Rachel and Baby Lillian.”