Neil Entwistle Files Appeal in Murder Convictions

Neil Entwistle, who was found guilty in the 2006 murder of his wife and 9-month-old daughter, filed an appeal Wednesday, saying that he should get a new trial because police searched his Hopkinton home without a warrant when they went to check on the well-being of his family, according to an Associated Press report carried on BostonHerald.com.

Entwistle was convicted in 2008 in the murders of Rachel Entwistle, and their baby daughter, Lillian Rose. Prosecutors said Entwistle was deeply in debt and had complained about his sex life with his wife.

In an appeal brief filed with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Wednesday, Entwistle’s lawyer, Stephen Paul Maidman, argued that evidence taken from the Entwistle’s rented house in Hopkinton was seized illegally, AP and the Herald reported.

"The two warrantless entries into the defendant’s house by the police violated the federal and state constitutions," Maidman wrote in the appellate brief, according to the Herald report.

"On the two occasions when the police entered the defendant’s house, the police did not have objective knowledge of an emergency inside the house or have objective knowledge that there was a person inside the home in need of immediate aid."

Before Entwistle’s trial, a judge rejected a motion to suppress the evidence based on similar arguments.

Entwistle, who was from Worksop, England, moved to the United States four months before the killings. Prosecutors said he had been unable to find a job, had had several Internet businesses fail and had just moved into a $2,700-per-month rented home in Hopkinton.

Entwistle left the United States the day after the killings and later told police he left because he wanted to be consoled by his parents in England. He said he found his wife and daughter cuddled together in bed, dead of apparent gunshot wounds, after he returned home from running errands.