British Man Is Held in Slayings

An unemployed computer engineer who flew to his native England after the slayings of his wife and 9-month-old daughter in Massachusetts last month was arrested Thursday at a London subway station and charged with murder.

At a news conference here, Middlesex County Dist. Atty. Martha Coakley said Neil Entwistle, 27, had used a .22-caliber handgun belonging to his father-in-law to commit what might have been intended to be a murder-suicide.

“Obviously, the murder was affected,” Coakley said. “The suicide was not.”

She cited “financial trouble” as a possible motive.

Entwistle told a London magistrate court Thursday that he did not consent to be extradited to the United States. A bail hearing was set for today. The mandatory penalty for first-degree murder in Massachusetts is life in prison without the possibility of parole. The state does not have a death penalty.

Rachel Souza Entwistle, 27, and her daughter, Lillian, were probably killed the morning of Jan. 20, Coakley said. Rachel Entwistle was shot in the head, and Lillian in the abdomen.

Their bodies, left under a heap of bedding in the master bedroom of their home in Hopkinton, Mass., were not discovered until two days later.

Police entered the home the evening of Jan. 21, in what Coakley described as a “well-being check” prompted by calls from Rachel Entwistle’s relatives. The family members had been unable to reach her by telephone, and found the house dark and locked when they arrived for a planned dinner party.

Police did not see the bodies in what Coakley said was “basically an unmade bed.”

The next day, family members and police returned and discovered the bodies. Rachel Entwistle was wrapped around her daughter, as if they had been sleeping. Coakley said there was no indication that a struggle had taken place.

Coakley said police thought Entwistle took the weapon from a firearms collection belonging to Rachel Entwistle’s stepfather, who lives near Boston. Investigators said Entwistle returned the gun after the killings.

The district attorney said an Internet business in which Entwistle sold how-to manuals for pornography sites had failed and that he also had debts in England.

The couple had moved to the large, rented home in Hopkinton 10 days before the crime was believed to have occurred. Coakley said Entwistle’s wife and in-laws apparently were unaware of the extent of his financial difficulties.

“The picture we had was of a young couple starting out on a happy future,” she said.

Entwistle, with “no visible means of support,” tried unsuccessfully to buy an airline ticket to England at Boston Logan International Airport early on the morning of Jan. 21, Coakley said. He was later able to buy a one-way ticket by telephone, using a credit card.

Entwistle had been in seclusion at his parents’ home in Worksop, England, near Nottingham, and had refused to meet with Massachusetts authorities who flew there to interview him. He did not attend his wife’s and daughter’s funeral in Massachusetts.

Coakley said that when Entwistle was stopped at the Royal Oak subway station in London on Thursday, he was not attempting to flee.

“We do not believe he was trying to get away from authorities,” she said. “We believe he was trying to get away from the press.”

A spokesman for Rachel Entwistle’s relatives said Thursday that the family was shocked by the arrest and charges brought against the man Rachel had met while studying in England.

“Rachel and Lily loved Neil very much,” said Joe Flaherty, the family spokesman. “Neil was a trusted husband and father, and it is incomprehensible how that love and trust was betrayed in the ultimate act of violence.”