Entwistle Family Murders

Neil Entwistle was born on September 18th, 1978 in Nottinghamshire, England to parents Clifford and Yvonne. He had a younger brother named Russell. His father was a coal miner and his mother was a cook at a school cafeteria. The Entwistle family was a typical, middle class family. He studied at the University of York where he obtained a master’s degree in electronic engineering. As a child, Neil loved taking things apart and figuring out how they worked. His parents were shocked and excited when Neil’s teachers told them that they thought he was college material. He was the first of the Entwistle family to attend and graduate from college.

Rachel Elizabeth Souza was born on December 14th, 1978 in Weymouth, Massachusetts to Priscilla and Paul. She had a brother named Jerome. After Rachel’s father passed away, her mother remarried to a man named Joseph Matterazzo, who gave her several step-siblings, Joseph, Michael, Marybeth, Erika, Anthony, and Zachary. Her friends described her as “spritely and full of energy…she had a sparkle in her eyes that just made everyone she met fall in love with her.”

While attending the University of York in 1999, Neil met Rachel, who was studying abroad from her Massachusetts school, College of the Holy Cross. They met through the University’s rowing club. Rachel was a coxswain for the team, which was the person who was essentially in charge of navigating and steering the boat. She didn’t row, but got to yell out commands at all of the men rowing (from what I understand!) One of the students who rowed with them said that Neil was pretty quiet and was more of a homebody, while Rachel was outgoing, bubbly, and positive. She was described as “something of a novelty” due to being American. The men’s rowing squad really liked having her on the team.

Rachel and Neil soon developed a relationship and appeared to be a very loving couple. She described him to her friends back in the United States as her “knight in shining armor”. Her friends approved of Neil and said that they often saw him opening doors for her and that he truly seemed to adore her. She had to return to Massachusetts by the end of the summer in 2000, to finish her senior year at Holy Cross. She graduated in 2001 and returned right back to England, enrolled in a teaching program, and her and Neil picked up right where they’d left off.

In 2002, Rachel began teaching drama and English at a high school and Neil worked in computers at IBM and QinetiQ. The couple’s relationship blossomed and the two were finally married in the city of Plymouth, Massachusetts in August of 2003, with a ceremony in England following shortly after. Rachel loved working as a teacher and she seemed to be incredibly happy. Neil created a website for the couple to post photos to share with family and friends, since they were still living in England.

On April 9th, 2005, Neil and Rachel welcomed their first daughter, Lillian Rose, nicknamed Lily-Bean. A few months after Lily’s birth, the family moved to Massachusetts so they could be closer to Rachel’s family. Initially, they lived with Rachel’s mother and stepfather, but on January 12th, 2006, the Entwistles moved to their own home in the town of Hopkinton, about an hour from Rachel’s parents’ house. They signed a three month lease on the home, with the rent of $2,700/month, as well as leasing a BMW SUV for $400/month. 

The Murders

On Saturday, January 21st, 2006, Priscilla, Rachel’s mother called the local police at 8:25PM. She told them that she was unable to get in touch with her 27-year-old daughter. Priscilla said that she was supposed to have lunch with her that afternoon. She’d gone to her house in Hopkinton, but nobody answered the door, and she couldn’t reach Rachel or Neil on their phones. Priscilla left a note on the door and drove back home. She was worried, but she didn’t become overly concerned until later that evening.

Rachel’s friend, Joanna Gately and her sister Maureen, were planning on arriving at the Entwistle home around 5PM on the same day. They’d called and left Rachel a voicemail, telling her they were running late, but had never heard back. The two arrived at the home at 7:15PM, but nobody answered the door. Some of the lights were on in the house and they could hear the Entwistle’s dog barking. They tried calling Rachel, but she didn’t pick up. They called Priscilla and told them that they were concerned about Rachel, Neil, and Lily. Priscilla, now worried for her daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter’s safety, called the police.

Priscilla told the investigator over the phone that both she and Joanne had spoken to Rachel on Thursday, two days prior, and everything seemed normal. They’d made plans for Saturday. The officer told Patricia that they’d send someone out to the Entwistle’s house. She advised them that Joanna and Maureen were still at the house, hoping the family would arrive.

Two officers, including Sargent Sutton, made their way to the house, where Joanna told them that it was very unlikely that the couple would leave their dog alone for this long. There was no movement through the windows and nobody answered when officers knocked. They decided to enter the home and picked the lock on the front door. They found that the family’s vehicle was missing from the garage. Nothing appeared abnormal on the mail floor, but there were a few lights on, along with the television, and the dog was in its crate.

Upstairs, the bathtub was filled with water and a few toys. There was classical music playing on a radio in Lily’s bedroom. The officers stepped into the master bedroom, where they saw a large white comforter piled in the middle of the bed. Other than the unmade bed, nothing looked abnormal. They let Joanna and Maureen into the house so they could leave a note for the family and take the dog for a walk. Joanna and Maureen hung out in the driveway until the early morning hours, but Rachel and Neil never arrived home. 

On Sunday, January 22nd, Priscilla called police again. She asked them what they recommended that she do from here. Nobody had seen or heard from Neil or Rachel. Priscilla told them that this was EXTREMELY abnormal for her daughter, that she would call her often. At 5PM, Priscilla and her husband Joe went to file an official missing persons report.

Investigators returned to the Entwistle home and interviewed their neighbors. Unfortunately, since the Entwistles had only moved in less than 2 weeks ago, they hadn’t had much interaction with their neighbors. Sargent Sutton and another officer decided to conduct a second search of the home, this time entering through the basement. They immediately noticed an odd smell, that they later described as smelling like dirty diapers. Sutton said that the smell wasn’t there the previous day. 

They continued upstairs, following the smell, which seemed to be coming from the master bedroom. Nothing appeared different in the room, still no signs of a struggle, the bed still unmade. Sutton walked closer to the bed and saw a pair of reading glasses and a watch on the floor. He pulled back a corner of the comforter and saw an adult foot sticking out. He walked around the bed and pulled up another corner of the comforter and saw a small face. As he moved the comforter out of the way, Sutton saw that Rachel was laying on the bed, with her arm draped across 9-month-old Lily. Both mother and daughter were obviously dead.

The Investigation

The initial officers on scene didn’t see any signs of foul play and thought that the two had possibly succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning. They searched the rest of the house, looking for a third body, but Neil was nowhere to be found. When the bodies were removed from the bed, they found bloodstains on Rachel and Lily’s clothing and on the bedding. There was a small hole in the front of Lily’s onesie. The back was covered in brown and red blood, with another hole in the center of the back. She had died from a single gunshot wound to the torso. Evidence was later found that showed the shot was a contact shot, where the gun had been held against her torso and fired.

The same bullet that had killed Lily had lodged itself in Rachel’s torso, however it was not her cause of death. A small bullet hole was found on Rachel’s forehead that was initially undetectable to police, because it was so small. The wounds were believed to have come from a .22 caliber handgun.

The following day, on January 23rd, the District Attorney announced that they were investigating the deaths of Rachel and Lily Entwistle as homicides.

Investigators continued to search for Neil. They didn’t want to immediately put suspicion on Neil, as he could be somewhere outside of the home, dead or injured. Priscilla and Joe tried to give the police as much information as they could, until they began to realize some odd things about their son-in-law. They never understood exactly what Neil did for work. He hadn’t gotten a job yet after moving to the United States, and Priscilla and Joe said that he was always very vague when they brought it up. They also noticed that he never used cash, only credit cards. It was strange, especially when the couple signed the lease for their house and car. Priscilla, Joe, and others had wondered where the money was coming from. They said that Neil would always reassure Rachel and her parents that they were fine financially, that their money was just tied up in offshore accounts. 

Investigators were able to locate the family’s SUV parked in the lot at Boston Logan International Airport with the keys locked inside. They also found that at 5AM on January 21st, the day that Priscilla had first contacted police, Neil had purchased a one-way plane ticket to London. Once he arrived in London, he got a rental car and drove around aimlessly for 800 miles, before finally stopping at a hotel that was about an hour from his parents’ home.

Now assuming that Neil was at his parents’ home in Worksop, England, police contacted him immediately. Neil’s father answered the phone and handed it to his son to speak with Trooper Robert Manning of the Massachusetts State Police. Manning informed Neil that his wife and daughter were dead. 

Neil wasn’t surprised. In fact, he told police that he already knew that they were dead.

Neil told Manning that he’d gone out early Friday morning to run some errands, leaving Rachel and Lily at home. When he returned home around 11AM, he said that it didn’t look like either of them had come downstairs yet, which was odd. He went into the master bedroom and said that, at first, he could only see Rachel, and that she looked like she was asleep. Neil thought it was strange that Rachel would still be asleep and also wondered where Lily was. 

Neil approached the bed and said that he finally saw Lily. He could tell that both Rachel and Lily were dead. Neil said that the covers were pulled about halfway up. He didn’t see any blood on Rachel, that the blood was all on Lily. He said that her onesie was soaked in blood and that the blood was covering her face. He pulled the cover up further over his wife and baby.

Neil told Manning that his first instinct was to go downstairs and get a knife to fatally harm himself, but as he held the knife, he couldn’t. 

“I think it was almost the thought of how much it was going to hurt. I couldn’t do it. And then I realized that what I needed to do was let Priscilla know,” he said.

He got in the family’s SUV and began driving towards Priscilla and Joe’s home. As he drove, he remembered that Joe kept guns in his house and that he could use one of those to end his life. When he arrived at Joe and Priscilla’s house, he realized that he didn’t have a key. Neil said that they had a copy of their house key on their car key, but Rachel must’ve taken it off. He couldn’t get in the house, so he just sat there. He tried to drive around and find Priscilla’s work, but got lost and couldn’t find it, so he continued driving around for a while.

Neil said that he just wanted to go somewhere to clear his head, and he finally ended up at Boston Logan Airport. He pulled into the parking area for a while and said that he’d wanted to let his emotions out, but he couldn’t cry. He got out of the car and walked around for a bit before going inside and buying a ticket to fly home.

Trooper Manning asked Neil why he hadn’t considered, AT ANY POINT, to call 911. 

Neil said, “I…I…I didn’t think to call police…I don’t know why I did things the way I did.”

Manning then tried to indirectly ask Neil if anything could’ve happened to Rachel and Lily that may have been caused by him.

• Manning: I’m wondering. Was there any kind of situation that took place at the house that caused you to immediately, instead of calling police, want to kill yourself?
• Neil: God, no. No.
• Manning: You sure? . . . I’m trying to rule out all possibilities.
• Neil: No. No. No.
• Manning: Are you sure?
• Neil: Yeah. I couldn’t do that. Why would I do that?
• Manning: I don’t know. Could be a million reasons. Could be no reason. I’m asking you if a situation took place that was out of character for you and your wife and this situation happened.
• Neil: No. Nothing. It was just a normal day . . . It was just a normal day.

Despite knowing that both his wife and daughter had been murdered for several days, Neil told Trooper Manning that he still hadn’t cried. He said that “it almost doesn’t seem real. It’s just a void.” When Manning asked Neil what he thought might have happened to Rachel and Lily, Neil said that he didn’t remember seeing the house disturbed and that he was gone for such a short amount of time, he didn’t really see how someone could’ve killed them. 

Clearly it was fucking Neil

The entire phone call between Neil Entwistle and Trooper Manning only furthered the police’s suspicion that Neil was involved in his family’s murders. Inside of the family’s BMW parked at the airport, investigators found Neil’s laptop. The first concerning thing found on the computer was evidence that Neil had been selling fake computer equipment on EBay. There were a lot of emails from people who’d purchased items from Neil, but never received any goods.

Even more concerning were the emails and multiple websites that they’d found Neil had been visiting. Sites titled “Naughty Nightlife”, “Hot Local Escorts”, and “Adult Friend Finder” were all visited regularly. On his profile on one site, he wrote, “I need to confirm what friends have told me, that you are much better in bed than the women over the ocean”. There was also a picture of him fully naked and sitting in a chair. He wrote messages to women saying that although he was in a relationship, he wanted to have some more fun in the bedroom. Additionally, there were searches that had been made on January 16th, four days before Rachel and Lily were killed, someone under the user name, “ENT” asked Google, “how to kill with a knife”. Police found a file full of collection notices addressed to the Entwistles from when they lived in England.

Neil’s parents AGGRESSIVELY denied that their son had anything to do with the deaths of his wife and baby. In fact, they told police that they suspected that Rachel was suffering from postpartum depression that was getting increasingly worse.

On February 1st, Rachel and Lily were laid to rest in the same coffin at St. Peter’s church in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Neil’s name was not mentioned in their obituaries, during the service, or on their graves. Priscilla decided to use Rachel’s maiden name of Souza for both her daughter and granddaughter. Did Neil travel back to the United States to attend the funeral? No, he didn’t. He did however send a single orange rose and a single white lily, with a note reading “My orange rose and my lily for always. Xoxoxo.” 

Neil’s parents said it was on legal advice that he didn’t attend the funeral, that it would turn into a madhouse if he did. They said it was supposed to be Rachel and Lily’s day. The press however, assumed that Neil feared being arrested

The Arrest and Trial

Stil in Worksop, Neil seemed to be living a relatively normal life. He was reportedly going out to eat with friends and to the movies. Thankfully, police in Massachusetts weren’t done with his bullshit and issued a warrant for his arrest on February 8th. Neil was arrested on February 9th in a train station after boarding a tube train when he heard that police were on their way to arrest him. His friend, Dashiell said that officers had called HIM telling him to get his friend to turn himself in. Dashiell said that when he told Neil that while on the train, Neil panicked and asked him if there was another way of getting off the platform. Unfortunately for him, there wasn’t and was taken into custody.

He had a notebook with him that had a note reading that he intended to sell his story of what truly happened to Rachel and Lily to the highest bidder. There were two drafts of letters to the editors. In one, he referred to himself as a “close friend and confidante” of Neil, who wanted to tell his story. He added, “What’s of interest to us is what price you would be willing to pay for exclusive rights to the full story.”

In his backpack, they found what appeared to be a letter, but upon further inspection, investigators believed that it was a part of the memoir he was writing with the intent of selling it. It read,

“As a husband, I could never dream for more. She was my soulmate and my very best friend. The love we shared knew no bounds, a love that brought on comfort and excitement…we would model our love on four roses, red for passion, yellow for fidelity, and white for pure love. The combination of these roses is the orange and that is what we are to each other…everyone who has been in her company will have been touched by her kindness, her love, and her energy. And that is what I hope people will remember most.”

Just a few days later, Neil was extradited to the United States and on March 28th, he was indicted on two counts of first degree murder, illegal possession of firearm and illegal possession of ammunition. Neil, surprise, surprise, pleaded not guilty to all charges. At a press conference, the Middlesex County District Attorney, Martha Coakley told the press what she and the police believe happened on the weekend that Rachel and Lily were found dead:

“On Thursday night, Rachel was alive and had spoken with family members. At some time on Friday morning, Neil Entwistle—with a firearm we believe he had secured at sometime before that from father-in-law Joseph Materazzo—shot Rachel Entwistle in the head and then proceeded to shoot baby Lillian, who was lying on the bed next to her mother. We believe possibly this was intended to be a murder-suicide, but we cannot confirm that. Obviously the murder was affect, but the suicide was not.”

There were several postponements of Neil’s trial, requested by his defense attorney, citing a need for more time to analyze evidence, including DNA results and other lab results. In 2007, the judge ruled against the defense’s motion to suppress evidence collected during and after the finding of Rachel and Lillian’s bodies. Neil was held, without bail, in Middlesex County Jail until his trial finally began, more than 2 years later on June 2nd, 2008. 

Neil’s defense was, OPEN YOUR WINDOWS, that Rachel had murdered their daughter, then turned the gun on herself, all because of the severe depression she was going through. Neil, in an act of honor, removed the gun from the scene and left. They said that there was gunshot residue found on both sides of Rachel’s hands.

Despite the evidence, Neil’s parents continued to defend their son. They backed up his story that Rachel and Lily were killed in a murder/suicide. 

Neil’s father said that “the gunshot residue on Rachel’s hands could have suggested she fired the gun…and she was found with her left arm—she was left-handed—flung out. We loved Rachel dearly, she was little Lily’s mom, but in the grip of postpartum depression, she could have fired those shots.”

The prosecution had no issues poking holes in the defense. They brought forward witnesses who told stories of what Entwistle had told them regarding things he owned and his finances. It was also found that Neil had 18 credit cards that were all maxed out, except for one, which Neil maxed out at the airport on the day he fled the country. He’d accrued at least $30,000 in debt. The prosecution said that Neil didn’t return to Joe and Priscilla’s house that day to find a gun to harm himself, but to return the gun he’d used to murder Rachel and Lily. It was proven that one of Joe’s guns was, in fact, the murder weapon. Neil’s DNA was found on the grip of the .22 Colt revolver, as well was an ammunition container, and a gun lock. Rachel’s DNA was found both in and on the muzzle of the same gun. Joe confirmed that he’d taken his son-in-law shooting before, teaching him how to shoot his Colt .22.

After 13 hours of deliberation, the jury found 29-year-old Neil Entwistle guilty of two counts of first degree murder, as well as illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition. The next day, he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. In addition to these sentences, the judge also said that Neil was “not to profit in any way from the sale of his book or otherwise to any media outlet”.

Priscilla and Joe were happy with the sentence, however they realized that nothing would bring back their daughter and granddaughter. Priscilla said, “our dreams as a parent and grandparent have been shattered by the shameful and selfish acts of one person, Neil Entwistle…for him to try to hide behind an accusation of murder/suicide of this beautiful woman and perfect mother is low and despicable…suffering does not begin to describe what we have endured.”

The jury’s decision and the judge’s sentencing did not dissuade Neil’s parents from their belief of their son’s innocence.

His mother said, “we are devastated to learn that the evidence points to Rachel murdering our grandchild and then committing suicide. I knew Rachel was depressed. Our son will now go to jail for loving, honoring, and protecting his wife’s memory.”

Neil was quickly nicknamed ‘the baby killer’ in prison. He was initially incarcerated at a facility in Shirley, Massachusetts. In December of 2008, Neil was transferred to a medium security prison in Bridgewater due to the multiple threats on his life. Neil reportedly shaved his head in order to join a white supremacist gang, who’d promised him security in prison. However, he was then told by the gang’s leader that “it was just a prank and that his life was still very much in danger.” A correctional officer said that he overheard a member of the white supremacy gang say to Neil, “it’s a nice gesture on your part, but we’re still going to kill you.”

In 2012, Neil appealed his conviction saying that police illegally searched his home when they checked on his family and found their bodies. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rejected his appeal.