Suspect explored killing on Web, affidavit declares

The same week he allegedly killed his wife and 9-month-old daughter in Hopkinton, Neil Entwistle surfed the Internet for websites that describe how to kill people and commit suicide, according to a police affidavit unsealed yesterday.

On Jan. 16 and 17, Entwistle viewed a website that ''describes such things as how to kill people by various methods" and ''typed in Internet searches regarding how to kill yourself, suicide, how to kill someone with a knife, and euthanasia," said an affidavit filed after searches of personal computers Entwistle allegedly used. Prosecutors have theorized that Entwistle, a 27-year-old unemployed electrical engineer, was so despondent about his finances and family situation that he planned a murder-suicide.

The 151 pages of affidavits filed in support of 10 search warrants or filed after the searches portray Entwistle as a man of secrets whose Internet business ventures were in trouble, who was deeply in debt, and who was unable to find a job. After he and his family moved from his native England last year, they spent lavishly on new furniture, a leased BMW, and a four-bedroom rented house.

His in-laws had no idea how he made money, noticed that his business card appeared to be a folded piece of paper held together with tape, and were under the impression he had a secret government job while he lived in England, said the affidavits. He refused to discuss his finances with his wife, Rachel Entwistle, causing stress in their marriage, according to the affidavits.

''I believe that there may be a financial motivation for this murder," State Police said in one affidavit. ''It appears that Neil and Rachel Entwistle had accumulated a sizeable amount of debt and may have been living well beyond their means, even up until the week of the murders when thousands of dollars worth of furniture, purchased on credit, was delivered to the Entwistles' home."

It was unknown whether Rachel Entwistle knew about another aspect of her husband's life described in the affidavits: his alleged interest in escort services. Two days before she and Lillian Entwistle were slain, he searched the Internet for escort services and looked for the names and addresses of several in Boston and Worcester, including Eye Candy Entertainment, Exotic Express, and Sweet Temptations, an affidavit said.

Officials with the escort services either could not be reached for comment yesterday, declined comment, or said Entwistle had not contacted them.

Entwistle, who was arrested last Thursday in London and a day later agreed to be extradited, could be returned to Massachusetts as early as today to face two first-degree murder charges.

The affidavits unsealed in Framingham District Court also allege that:

A day after the bodies of his wife and daughter were discovered, Neil Entwistle spoke for two hours to a State Police detective who called him at his parents' home in England. He told the investigator that he found his family killed after returning from errands around 11 a.m., grabbed a knife from the kitchen to kill himself, ''but then put it down because it would hurt too much."

Neil Entwistle gave a second, different account of how long he was out of the house the morning his family was killed. He told the State Police detective he had been out for two hours, during which he visited a Staples store. But his father, Clifford Entwistle, told Rachel Entwistle's stepfather, Joseph Matterazzo, in a phone call from England that his son told him he had been gone for 20 minutes.

Lillian was found lying in the bed next to her mother with ''indications of trauma" to her face, including a contusion to the left eye, nose, and mouth area. It was unclear how the baby, who died from a gunshot to the torso, received those injuries.

Joseph Matterazzo used a .22-caliber revolver for target practice the day after the killings. Neil Entwistle secretly returned a .22-caliber revolver that was used in the killings to his father-in-law's home in Carver. The documents do not say whether it was the same firearm. An arrest affidavit released last week said that Neil Entwistle's DNA was found on the revolver's handgrip and that Rachel Entwistle's DNA was found on the muzzle.

Joseph Flaherty, a lawyer and spokesman for Rachel Entwistle's family, said he had not seen the newly released information and that the family would not comment on any details in the case.

''The affidavit speaks for itself," he said. ''As far as the family is concerned, he was a loving husband and father and trusted. . . . Nobody is struggling more than this family to find out what went wrong here and what happened. They are devastated. She was a beautiful, intelligent woman with a gorgeous baby, and how things evolved to this point is a mystery to them, too."

Prosecutors fought against the release of the documents. Assistant Middlesex District Attorney Michael Fabbri had argued that the search warrants and related documents should be kept sealed to protect Neil Entwistle's right to a fair trial and to keep information from the public that could hamper the investigation. In a memorandum filed Friday, the prosecutor wrote that the new details ''could dissuade additional witnesses from coming forward, and individuals and entities named in the various affidavits may be prematurely contacted by the media or others."

In releasing the documents, Framingham District Judge Robert V. Greco ordered the name of the website that Neil Entwistle allegedly viewed on killings, as well as financial account numbers of the Entwistles and the names of companies where he had sought employment, blacked out of the affidavits.

Some of the affidavits were filed with the court by police to obtain warrants to search the Hopkinton house where the Entwistles had moved 10 days before the slayings; the BMW that Entwistle allegedly left at a parking garage at Logan International Airport before flying to England the day after the killings; two laptop computers owned by Neil Entwistle; a personal computer owned by Matterazzo; and other items.

The documents appear to support statements by District Attorney Martha Coakley that the Entwistle family had considerable debts and that Neil Entwistle had given assurances to his family that everything was fine.

Rachel Entwistle, who met her husband in 1999 while attending college in England, owed about $18,000 in student loans. The couple was paying $498 a month for a leased BMW and had signed a three-month lease on the spacious $2,700-a-month house.

Days before the slayings, vans delivered $3,000 in furnishings from Rotman's Furniture and $3,000 in items from Mattress Discounters, court documents said.

When Rachel Entwistle's mother, Priscilla Matterazzo, asked her how the couple made ends meet, Rachel told her Neil Entwistle said their money was ''tied up in offshore accounts which Neil would not talk about," according to the affidavits. She told her mother that Neil Entwistle had English credit cards, but when she tried to use one, it was frozen.

State Police Detective Lieutenant James Connolly said in one affidavit that the Matterazzos did not know what Neil Entwistle had done for a living in England, but believed he had a ''secret government job."

Neil Entwistle graduated from York University with a degree in electrical engineering in 2002. While in school, he started working for a large British defense contractor, QinetiQ, which also builds telecommunications equipment for commercial uses.

At QinetiQ, there are hundreds of standout computer technicians, but Neil Entwistle wasn't among them, two former coworkers told the Globe. Nevertheless, he wasn't in danger of losing his job, they said, and the company has said he left by choice in 2005 for ''domestic reasons."

Many who worked with Entwistle say they can't imagine the well-mannered employee they once knew to be capable of harming his wife and child, according to the coworkers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not have permission from the company to speak publicly.

Priscilla Matterazzo told Connolly that her daughter returned to Massachusetts with her husband and baby in part because, the affidavit said, ''Neil would never amount to anything in England because of his accent: He was obviously a coal miner's son from a working class background."

A search of the Registry of County Court Judgments in England and Wales revealed no judgments against Neil Entwistle, his wife, or his three businesses: MillionMaker, srpublications, and Embedded New Technologies.

Creditors, including university financing agencies, attempting to collect money through legal means often will file claims and receive judgments in the county courts, officials said.

John R. Ellement, Shelley Murphy, and Donovan Slack of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Slack reported from England. Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com; Kocian at lkocian@globe.com.