This story has been running for a few days but I can’t get my head around what’s going on:
The above from CNN.
Flying overseas around the time your wife is killed strikes me as suspicious. There may be a good reason he’s not a suspect but the newspapers aren’t speculating. Any ideas?
Well, it says that they haven’t determined if he left the country before or after his wife’s death. If he left before, then that’s a pretty rock solid alibi, wouldn’t you say?
Besides Neurotik’s comment, it also seems like (from my admittedly slim recollection) a number of police representatives seem to be using “person of interest” as a term for “maybe a suspect, maybe a witness, we’re not telling the press and public which, if any.” Besides, the police can always use that as a fall-back so that they’re not labeled as prematurely pinning the “suspect” label on a truly innocent and grieving family member, etc.
(Considering that this guy hasn’t even tried to return to the US, even for their funeral, and cancelled a planned meeting with police from Massachusetts, I do feel safe enough in prejudging him as having done it, but that’s beside the point.)
Not if he arranged to have them killed, no.
If you don’t have any evidence that he did that, he can’t really be a suspect yet. The whole situation looks suspicious, but that’s not enough to declare someone a suspect, apparently. You need some evidence that he did something illegal first, and it appears that the police don’t have that yet.
I was answering Neurotik’s question about his being out of the country before they were killed as being a rock solid alibi.
It isn’t clear when the murders happened. The bodies were found on 1/22, but a day after police first visited the house in response to a neighbor’s concern. Entwistle apparently flew to England on 1/21. He has refused to talk to police, and did not attend the funeral service.
Obviously media attention is not diverted by not calling him a “target”.
The police have to go by the book or else risk making evidence inadmissible. They have time to proceed with caution, even if it looks excessive. Entwistle isn’t going anywhere soon. If the police can’t make a solid case against Entwistle without his confession, they have to treat him carefully, and using a meaningless term might be helpful.
I don’t understand a few things about this…
The time of his departure should be pretty easy to determine. Either check the check-in time with the airline, or the time that he cleared customs/immigration in the UK and track backwards.
What kind of husband doesn’t return for the funeral of his wife and child? I could see, perhaps, not attending the wife’s funeral, if you were really angry with her/divorced/seperated etc, but for the funeral of your own kid???
Seems fishy to me. Also seems like extradition wouldn’t be a big deal from England to MA. No death penalty to fight (if that’s an issue for the UK).
It all sounds highly fishy, but there are potentially logical explanations; for example: if he’s fleeing for his life from the people who killed his family; moreso if the pursuers are (or appear to be) government or law enforcement agents - that would explain his reluctance to return for questioning.
I’m guessing that they can’t determine if he left prior to the shootings because they can’t determine when the wife and child were killed, since they may have been dead for over a day before they were found.
It is. The time of the *murders * isn’t determined.
Um, a guilty one? Here in the court of public opinion, that is.
Got to have a charge first.
True, and it is.
Mangetout, this sounds imaginative:
They’d been selling porn and apparently had recently stopped delivering merchandise.
Come on back home dude, you’re not a suspect…realllllly.
The death penalty may be a problem, even if MA doesn’t have the death penalty (and for some embarrassing reason I can’t remember if we do or not) because if he ends up charged with a federal crime, we do have a federal death penalty that he could be subject to, no?
Of course, this all hinges on some things I am unclear about:
AFAIK, the UK won’t extradite if the person is going to face being tried for a capital crime (if this is true, I’m not sure if they are picky about whether or not a particular US state practices capital punishment, since the US does on the federal level)
Does the accused have to be indicted, or just charged with the crime?
I’m pretty sure that this is state jurisdiction. The federal death penalty would only be involved if certain criteria were met. If one of the children were a USDA Chicken Inspector, for example. I am not a lawyer, though.
I don’t know the details of this case but my first thought was people morn in different ways.
The guy lost his wife and kid. Perhaps being “home” is what he needs right now.
Not everyone feels closure from a funeral.
I saw some talking heads rambling about this on MSNBC and one lawyer said that if this guy was her client she might tell him to stay in England because if he shows up in the US th police would probably just arrest him on the spot. Kinda hard to go to a funeral when you are in jail.
I have no idea, obviously, if this guy did it. At the same time, if someone was out to kill the wife the timing makes perfect sense. Wait until the husband leaves. My understanding, though I could be wrong, is that this trip wasn’t a spur of the moment thing.
Slee
People are regularly extradited from other countries even if they are going to be charged with a capital crime, the U.S. just has to agree not to seek the death penalty in the given case.
It took awhile to find (just the list of current treaties in force with the UK is over 9 pages long, with 3 columns in each page) but I found the UK-US extradition treaty’s number and such, but apparently it has yet to be published to the web via THOMAS in the U.S. or via the British government web pages I searched, so I’m not sure on the specific terms.
Honestly, if my wife and kid died, whatever the cause, I might flip my shit and stumble to the airport to go back home to my secondary family - my friends in Colorado. And if I was innocent, I wonder if I’d even consider what the police would think. Me innocent = me innocent.
I’ve thought about this before, and up until recently I felt that if they were not around, I’d probably move back to Colorado. Now, however, that has changed and I’m not leaving no matter what. But a homing instinct is pretty strong, especially in times of stress.
-Tcat
I’m a little surprised that ebay has left his account and item history visible; you can see it here. He was selling dodgy software and get-rich-quick scams. Not great, but rather common on ebay.
It’s all a little unclear, well beyond the “reasonable doubt” level anyway.
Did he do it himself and go home, knowing that then he’d escape the death penalty?
Did he order a hit to occur while he had an alibi?
Did he leave in an attempt to protect his wife and child (and if he did, can you imagine how he’s feeling now)?
Did he merely discover the bodies and panic?
Was the trip planned anyway and the killer took advantage of his absence?
There is very little evidence that he had a motive for killing them himself, and planty of evidence that there were disgruntled customers who were a tad unhinged.
I don’t think “suspect” would be the right description until they’ve heard his story.