Friend describes search for Entwistle family

June 10, 2008 04:29 PM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +

By Franci R. Ellement, Globe Correspondent and Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff

WOBURN -- A longtime friend of Rachel Entwistle described an agonizing search for the young mother and her family after they went missing in January 2006, testifying today about keeping vigil all night in a cold car outside their Hopkinton home.

Joanna Gately and her sister, Maureen, had driven to Hopkinton for a dinner party, but no one answered the door and the Entwistle home was mostly dark. The sisters drove around Hopkinton looking for the Entwistles' white BMW sport utility vehicle but found no sign of it and Rachel, Neil Entwistle, and their 9-month-old daughter, Lillian Rose. Accompanied by two Hopkinton police officers, the sisters ventured inside the rented home on Cubs Lane and discovered Sally, the family basset hound, barking in her crate in the living room, Joanna Gately testified.

They found no signs of the Entwistle family and the police left. The Gately sisters stayed all night in their car.

"I stayed up watching," Gately said during her methodical and often meticulous testimony, "waiting for the white BMW to pull in the driveway."

But that BMW never arrived. It would be another full day of driving and searching before Joanna Gately learned what happened. Police searched the home a second time and found Rachel and Lillian Rose shot to death in the master bedroom, their bodies tucked under a comforter.

Neil Entwistle is accused of killing his wife and child on Jan. 20 and flying the next day to his native England. Earlier today, Entwistle's mother welled up with tears this morning and had to be escorted out of her son's double-murder trial.

Yvonne Entwistle began to sob when an employee from Massport took the stand to describe where her son parked his white BMW at Logan International Airport the night after the killings. The previous witness was a "welcoming lady" for the town of Hopkinton who recalled Entwistle as a doting father when she visited the family five days before the slayings.

Clifford Entwistle put his arm around his crying wife and led her out of the courtroom.
Neil Entwistle's parents and their younger son, Russell, have attended the entire trial, traveling from their home in Worksop, which is three hours north of London. The family has said little to the horde of reporters covering the case in Middlesex Superior Court since Clifford Entwistle declared at the start of the trial, "Our son Neil is innocent -- 100 percent innocent."

It was not clear which testimony caused Yvonne Entwistle to break down. The "welcoming lady," Pamela Jackson, described encountering a happy young family when she visited the Entwistles shortly after they moved to town. The Massport employee, Michael Sheehan, testified about Entwistle's movements in the west parking garage at Logan.

The morning after his wife and daughter were killed, Entwistle flew to England, where he was arrested Feb. 9, 2006. The prosecution today displayed images taken from surveillance cameras and black-and-white security videos from the west parking garage and bank machines at Logan.

The video and images showed Entwistle dressed in blue jeans and a dark-colored fleece or turtleneck. The defense pointed out that it was evident from the images that he was wearing his wedding ring.

According to security cameras and payment receipts, Entwistle arrived at the parking garage at 8:14 p.m. on Jan. 20, the day of the alleged murders. He paid $8 for parking at 9:39 p.m. and left the garage 10 minutes later. He returned to the garage some time later and parked again, leaving the BMW when he flew to London the next day.