Seeking to explain a heartless crime
THERE’S something riveting about the moment in a murder trial when the jury delivers a verdict that could send the defendant to prison for the rest of his life. And about the minutes when the judge imposes a sentence that does just that.
So my eyes were glued to the TV screen on Wednesday when Neil Entwistle stood in Middlesex Superior Court, listening to the jury return its decision that he was guilty of killing his wife and daughter, and again yesterday when Judge Diane Kottmyer sentenced Entwistle to life without the possibility of parole.
Watching the proceeding, I looked for some clue to what was going on within Entwistle. But except for a barely perceptible shake of his head and the brief closing of his eyes, he betrayed little emotion on Wednesday — and even less on Thursday, except when he seemed on the verge of smirking.
On one level, you wonder how Entwistle could ever have believed he could get away with it, what egoism could have led him to think that he wouldn’t be caught.
You wonder it even more after a trial in which his defense team piled the ridiculous atop the preposterous in an attempt to create reasonable doubt.
First they offered the theory that a supposedly depressed Rachel Entwistle had shot her own child, badly wounding herself in the process, and then committed suicide by shooting herself in the head.
Then they contended that upon finding Rachel and Lillian Rose dead, Neil Entwistle had returned the weapon to his in-laws’ home — while declining to call the police and later fleeing the country — out of a stunned husband’s desire to protect his wife’s memory from the stigma of suicide.
Imagine such selfless nobility — and from a man who, only four days earlier, had been searching the Internet for ways to kill with a knife!
His mother obviously could imagine it. In a jarring statement after the verdict, Yvonne Entwistle said that the evidence pointed to Rachel ‘‘murdering our grandchild and then committing suicide.’’ Chalk that up to the deep and desperate denial of someone who can’t face the enormity of what a loved one has done.
The careful jury, however, decided that simply wasn’t a logical possibility.
But what’s even harder to fathom is the lupine cold-bloodedness that could lead someone to contemplate these crimes in the first place. Every time a murder like this occurs, I find myself dumbfounded that a man could entertain, much less carry out, the slaying of his wife and child as a way to get free of a marriage.
As Judge Kottmyer said in sentencing Entwistle, ‘‘These crimes ... defy comprehension because they involved the planned and deliberate murders of the defendant’s wife and 9-month-old child in violation of bonds that we recognize as central to our identity as human beings, those of husband and wife and parent and child.’’
How to explain them, then?
Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox says Entwistle’s behavior is consistent with that of known sociopaths, who are willing to murder those they’ve come to think of as nuisances — and who imagine themselves clever enough to get away with the crime.
‘‘For them, image is everything,’’ says Fox. ‘‘That’s why many times they will commit murder as opposed to getting a divorce. Divorce makes you look like you are defective. However, being a widower can actually be an asset in the singles bars.’’
Speaking to the media after Wednesday’s verdict, Joseph Flaherty, spokesman for Rachel’s family, said that Entwistle ‘‘will now live with his evil deeds for the rest of his natural life ...’’
I’d like to think that’s true. I’d like to think that the horror of what he has done will haunt Entwistle, so much so that he will someday acknowledge his guilt.
But if he’s true to sociopathic form, says Fox, Entwistle will never feel remorse or accept responsibility, but rather will protest his innocence until the day he dies. Instead, we’ll have to settle for the satisfaction that the 29-year-old murderer will now spend a living eternity behind bars.
Scot Lehigh’s e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.
