Entwistle jailed for life
- 00:01:11
- ITN
Entwistle jailed for life
Briton Neil Entwistle has been jailed for life without parole for the murders of his American wife and baby daughter.Entwistle, 29, who shot wife Rachel, 27, and nine-month-old Lillian before fleeing back to England showed no emotion as the sentence was handed down.Judge Kottmyer told him in the Massachusetts court that the "planned and deliberate murders" were incomprehensible.She added: "What is all too clear is the magnitude of the loss and the pain" suffered by his wife's relatives.Rachel's mother, Priscilla Matterazzo told the court that her daughter and granddaughter's murders were a "shameful and selfish act by one person".Reading an impact statement in court she said that their family both in America and England had been "sentenced without the luxury of a trial by jury".Entwistle, a former computer worker, from Kilton, Worksop, was found guilty of first degree murder after around 13 hours of jury deliberations at the Middlesex County Superior Court in Woburn, Massachusetts.His parents, Yvonne and Clifford, from Kilton, Worksop, were in court every day, with their younger son Russell by their side, as US prosecutors exposed the darker side of their oldest son's life.They always said Entwistle was "100 per cent innocent", but across the aisle on the front row of the public gallery, Mrs Entwistle's mother Priscilla and stepfather Joseph Matterazzo accused him of an "unbearable" betrayal.The court heard he had a secret life in which he trawled the internet for escorts and looked at websites about sex, killing and suicide before shooting dead his wife and baby daughter.US prosecutors have said they investigated the possibility of a murder-suicide, with Entwistle failing to kill himself.The court heard the day after the killings, Entwistle fled to England on a one-way ticket, collecting as much money as he could from several cash machines in New England, and dumping his car, which contained keys to his in-laws' home in Carver, Massachusetts - where the gun was found - at Boston's Logan International Airport.But he did not arrive at his parents' Worksop home until at least 36 hours after landing in London, instead travelling about 800 miles around the UK and staying at a hotel just one hour's drive from his parents' home.Later, he spent time with his friends from the University of York's rowing club, Dashiel Munding and Benjamin Pryor, eating out in London and visiting the cinema, before his arrest at the Royal Oak Underground station on February 9, 2006.On that day, he was carrying a note which the court heard showed the "two sides of Neil Entwistle".On one side he wrote how much he loved his wife and daughter, while on the other were details of how he planned to sell his story to the highest bidder.During the trial, a total of 46 prosecution witnesses gave evidence against him but US prosecutors were never given the chance to cross-examine the defendant.But Entwistle denied he was responsible for the deaths during a recorded phone call with state trooper Robert Manning, in which he said he realised that fleeing to England "did not look good" and confessed he had not cried "properly" since the killings.For the defence, Elliot Weinstein offered no witnesses of his own but suggested Mrs Entwistle killed baby Lillian before committing suicide and that Entwistle was simply a loving husband trying to "protect her honour" and cover it up by moving the gun away from where their bodies were found.But the jury did not believe his lawyer.
ITN | June 26, 2008
