The light in the upstairs bedroom

The prosecution had depicted Neil Entwistle as a failure, a cold-blooded killer who shot his wife and child in the couple's master bedroom, then made good his escape all the way back home to England.

But the defense attorneys were about to sketch a very different picture of Entwistle:  Adoring Neil.

Eliot Weinstein, lead defense attorney: Neil loved his wife, and Neil loved his daughter. On January 20th, he lost them both. Everything that he said and everything that he did thereafter, he did because he loved them.

The defense attorney advised the jurors that Neil Entwistle had been a loving husband and devoted father. That much, everyone -- from family to friends -- seemed to agree on.

Priscilla Mattarazzo: They seemed to have a friendship, as well as seemed to love and respect each other.

Benjamin Prior: They were very devoted to each other, yes.

Joanna Gately: They seemed very happy and excited.

The defense would call no witnesses of its own.  The defendant declined to take the stand and tell the jury his story, as was his right. 

But his lawyers had plenty to say, using cross-examination of the prosecution's witnesses to suggest to jurors that perhaps Rachel Entwistle wasn't the engaging lively young mother with everything to live for as she'd been portrayed.  Maybe Rachel was suffering from post-partum depression?  Did she feel unexpectedly isolated back home in America? 

The defense asked the jury to ponder whether this case before them wasn't a double murder at all, a gun in the hand of the husband, but rather a murder-suicide.  Was it possible that the gun was actually fired by Rachel? Shooting the baby first, and then herself?

Weinstein: Everyone's mindset, everyone's frame of reference, filtered information to solve a murder.  No one was open to even considering possibility of suicide.

Dennis Murphy: So your theory of the crime, and it is a crime, it's a murder suicide, you have to believe that Rachel Entwistle held the gun to her child's torso shot her and turned the gun on herself.

Weinstein: Yes.             

In this defense theory, the single most important piece of evidence was gunshot residue found on both of Rachel Entwistle's hands. 

More damaging still for the prosecution was the fact that in cross examination, the defense got the medical examiner to admit that he was never even made aware of the residue on the dead woman's hands. 

Zane: No, I was not informed.

And a forensic chemist conceded in cross examination that when technicians did that same kind of gunshot residue test on the things that Neil Entwistle was known to have touched that day, no traces of gunpowder were found.

Weinstein: You tested and had negative results with respect to the BMW keys.

John Dygan: Yes

Weinstein: You tested and had negative results with result the BMW steering wheel.

Dygan: Yes.

Weinstein: And you tested and you had a positive test result with respect to Rachel Entwistle's hands.

Dygan: Yes.

If the jury was following the assertion that the gun may have been in the hand of a depressed young mother, then maybe other pieces of evidence could be seen in a new light.  Like those Internet searches on how to commit suicide.

As for the prosecution's offer of a motive for murder, the sexually frustrated husband, hopelessly in debt, the defense countered that that wasn't the way things were.  Entwistle's finances may have been wobbly, argued the defense, but they certainly weren't spiraling out of control.

The couple's landlord told defense attorney Stephanie page that they'd paid three months rent in advance.

Defense: Two checks came from Citizens Bank, is that correct?

Kim Puig: Yes.

Defense: And of course they cleared?

Puig: Yes, they did. 

Dennis Murphy: Was this guy dead broke?

Weinstein: The evidence that was presented absolutely to the contrary. We all know what dead broke is, that wasn't their financial picture.  Neil's a computer engineer. He had fine computer-based employment in London. He was going to get a job.

And as far as the kinky websites Entwistle visited, his lawyer argued that millions of men do the same thing everyday, and they don't kill their wife and child as a result. 

Of course, there was an obvious problem with the defense assertion the Rachel had killed her daughter then herself.  How did the gun end up back in her step-father's collection at his home an hour's drive away?

The defense asked the court to remember that Neil had admitted going to his in-law's house, in telephone conversations with both the police investigators and Rachel’s step-father.  Neil now said through his lawyer that he entered his in-law's house that morning and put the handgun he'd found with Rachel and the baby back in her step-father's gun case.  Why?  Because he was protecting her reputation.  

Dennis Murphy: The neon sign, call 911, call the police, call her parents, call somebody.

Weinstein: But Dennis, when you call 911, what's going to happen?  The police are going to show up, and if the police show up what are they going to find? They're going to find what Neil found. That Rachel has killed her child and killed herself.

Dennis Murphy: You argued in court later that this was really an act of love and devotion?

Weinstein: I argued that it was conduct designed to protect Rachel's memory.

Dennis Murphy: Because he saw suicide as a stigma.

Weinstein: He did.

Fleeing back to the childhood home in England, well, that was explained by his being a dazed and distraught husband.

Weinstein: What did he do on the day of Rachel's funeral? Neil went to place where he first proposed to Rachel. He went to the place where he first asked her to spend their lives together.

And so, more than two years after Neil Entwistle was charged with murder, the defense told the court that the police ever had only one suspect in their sites and couldn't think broadly enough to consider that this was really a murder suicide in the house on cub's path. 

It was at the very least a novel spin on the Neil Entwistle presented to the jury as a heartless killer.

Was it enough to create reasonable doubt?  The case was about to be the jurors to decide.

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