Entwistle indicted in double slayings
Decision routine, his lawyer says
Nearly six weeks after his arraignment in the slayings of his wife and 9-month-old daughter, Neil Entwistle was indicted yesterday on murder charges that he shot to death Rachel and Lillian Entwistle as they lay in bed in their Hopkinton home.
Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley's office announced the indictment two days before a grand jury hearing evidence in the case and other unrelated cases was to wrap up three months of work. Entwistle, a native of England, is expected to appear in Middlesex Superior Court within a few weeks.
Entwistle, who was arraigned Feb. 16 in Framingham District Court before his wife's ashen-faced family and live television cameras, has been held without bail in a cell in the infirmary of the Middlesex County Jail. He is segregated from other detainees for his protection because of the intensive publicity surrounding his case, jail officials say.
His court-appointed lawyers said the indictment was a routine step to transfer the case to Superior Court for a trial expected to take place within about a year.
''This decision by the grand jury was completely expected," said Elliot M. Weinstein, lead counsel for the defense team. ''Mr. Entwistle denied the charges by his plea of not guilty in the district court arraignment, and he will maintain the plea of not guilty at the arraignment in Superior Court."
Joseph Flaherty, a spokesman for Rachel Entwistle's mother and stepfather, Priscilla and Joseph Matterazzo, said the couple feels the indictment ''moves things one step closer to justice."
They plan to attend the arraignment, as they did Neil Entwistle's earlier court hearing, he said.
Entwistle, a 27-year-old unemployed electrical engineer, is accused of shooting his 27-year-old wife and their daughter on Jan. 20 with a .22-caliber revolver that he took from the gun collection of Joseph Matterazzo in his Carver home.
Just after the slayings, prosecutors say, Entwistle drove the 50 miles from Hopkinton to Carver to secretly return the gun before flying the next day to England. State Police say he told an investigator in a phone conversation from his parents' home in England that he returned home from doing errands to find his wife and daughter dead, considered killing himself, but could not go through with it.
The case, the state's most closely watched homicide investigation in years, has attracted widespread news coverage on both sides of the Atlantic, partly because of sensational allegations contained in unsealed police affidavits.
The same week of the killings, Entwistle allegedly surfed the Internet for websites that described how to kill people and commit suicide and also looked for escort services, according to an affidavit.
Prosecutors have theorized that Entwistle was so despondent over his finances and family situation that he planned a murder-suicide.
Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com. 