This is Jeffrey Roberts with 2020. For more than four decades, 2020 has brought you an incredible variety of compelling stories. Well, now we're going to bring you back to some of the most heart stopping ones from the 2020 true crime vault. And we're going to give you updates on what happened to the people involved. Thanks for listening.

Coming up, you, two, stories of perfect marriages. Smiling couple, beautiful couple with their baby, and wives who thought they had successful, caring husbands.

I love being married to James. Julie kept saying, aren't we so lucky that we all married so well?

But were they living a lie?

He had built up this Persona he just couldn't live up to. She thought he was taking care of her and he was doing just the opposite.

Love turns to murder, and soulmates become prime suspects.

I am truly in the presence of an evil person.

Deadly deceptions. I'm John Quinones. By the time most couples are standing at the altar saying, I do, they know each other pretty well. But there are some people that you can't really know at all. Their true selves are hidden. And the women who love and live with them may not find out who they are until it's too late. Julie Cowen thought she married a great guy. He was smart, charismatic, bound for success. But as Jim Avila first reported in 2008, this husband's life was a lie that would end in murder.

I've been married for five years. We've had our ups and downs. But for 95% of it, I love being married to James.

These are notes from Julie, the life of a farm girl unfolding in messages to friends, her dreams of motherhood.

I think, well, the plan is to start trying in the fall. James is completely okay with it. Actually, I think he's ready of making.

The academic big time.

Hey, ladies. I just wanted to share my exciting news. My husband James has been accepted to Harvard Business School.

Then emails suddenly filled with fear when Julie began suffering mysterious symptoms.

I had garbled speech and unable to move my legs and arms and hands. At least I have my MRI done last night, so hopefully I will know more in a week. What's going on?

One week later, 31 year old Julie Cowan was dead. But how? And why? Turns out that buried in those emails to friends about her wonderful life was a clue to her death. A clue that would go undiscovered for a very long time. Julie Cowan's life story began as a love story on this peaceful Baptist college campus in Missouri, where she met a copper headed charmer named James Cowan. Layla Wilmore was one of Julie's best friends.

She was sending me letters, calling me and telling me, hey, I met this guy and I don't know what's happening, but I think I'm falling for him.

Julie's parents, Nancy and Jack Oldag, were impressed with James too.

I thought he was a very nice, intelligent, witty, fine young fella.

Extremely good people skills. I was just amazed that men 1920 years old could be as comfortable talking to strangers as he was. Soon Julie and James married, settling down in Kansas City.

I wish sometimes I could clone my husband for some of my girlfriends that are in bad relationships. He is a light of my life.

Julie became a nurse, but James never graduated. Instead, he got a job in radio, eventually becoming a popular local personality known by the initials JP. I felt happy and I felt complete and I felt as whole as I could be. He was an ambitious up and comer with a sense of style, say colleagues like Tony messenger.

And you know, JP liked the trappings of success. I mean, he had the Rolex and the three piece suit. I saw him driving a jaguar.

He was a bigger than life sort of character.

He was sort know the one you expected to watch and end up at the networks.

Although both worked hard, James branching out from radio to a job in marketing at a company called the Learning Exchange. Julie worried about James'big spending ways.

I think every two years he got a different car and that was an issue with their marriage. Julie didn't think that was necessary for him to drive these fancy, expensive cars. He looked on it as a status symbol and Julie didn't. Money is always an issue. He married Miss Farm girl who came from working her ass off for very little. James works hard, but he dreams hard.

Then in 2004, it seemed all James's dreaming was paying off. Despite not graduating college, James announced he'd managed to get into the ultra prestigious Harvard Business school. Mr. Cowan, the letter read. I would like to congratulate you on your acceptance to the MBA program. We look forward to seeing you in the yard this fall. Julie had strong midwest roots and moving across country back east meant leaving her close family and her friends behind. But she was willing to make that sacrifice for James. So the couple moved to Waltham, Massachusetts and rented this house on School Street. James had worked out a deal to keep his job at the learning exchange while going to Harvard.

Julie kept saying over and over, aren't we so lucky that we all married so well?

And all was well until eight months after the couple's moved to Massachusetts the Cowan's world turned upside down.

She woke up in the middle of the night, and her motor skills were all out of whack and slurred speech. Yeah. And that she couldn't talk. Right. And she said she woke James up and told her, you need to take me to the hospital.

She was in the hospital for three days after a battery of tests. Disturbing news. Julie had a chronic kidney disease, and sometime in the future, she'd need dialysis. But even that could not explain the severity of Julie's symptoms.

I'm still in the crisis shock stage. They have not totally ruled out cancer, so I pray that isn't what's going on. I'm sure my illness is scaring James more than he'll let on. I hate seeing the worry on his face. All I can do is wait and think positively. Julie.

Then, just two weeks later, Labor Day weekend, James drives Julie back to the emergency room. By the time she sees a doctor, she cannot walk or talk. Back in Missouri, the old ags get a call from James.

He said Julie had another attack and that she was in hospital again.

And how was his demeanor this time?

He didn't seem very alarmed.

A short time later, Julie slips into a coma. Still stumped, doctors now begin to suspect a more sinister explanation. And test her blood for a toxin called ethylene glycol, commonly found in antifreeze. In high doses, it can cause the exact symptoms Julie Cowan is now suffering. The test comes back positive. By now, the old dags have arrived at the hospital.

They told us that they were 100% sure she had ethylene glycol in her system.

And could you figure any reason why that would be in her system?

That's what set my head spinning. How could this have happened?

But though ethylene glycol poisoning is treatable, it was too late for Julie. We realized that we were going to have to take her off in the life support, and there was no hope. Faced with Julie's imminent death, the old dags make a painful decision to take a trip to the Waltham police station without telling James. And we said, we're just going for a drive. So you weren't telling him you were going to the police? No, absolutely not. In fact, you kind of hid that from him. Absolutely. Mr. Oldag said, I don't understand how this can happen. James and Julie were the only two in the house that day, and I know she didn't do it. Police are about to discover Julie's husband had a secret life. Stay with me. It's 2024. And in case you haven't heard, there's a presidential election this fall, Americans will head to the polls to make their voices heard. But between now and then, there's going to be a lot of news and a lot of noise. I'm Galen. Dr. Rook. And every Monday and Thursday on the 538 Politics podcast, we cut through the noise with data and research to get a clearer picture of the race for the White House.

What do voters really think? And which game changers will actually change the game? That's 538 politics every Monday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. It has been just a few weeks since Julie Cowan died. A mysterious case of ethylene glycol poisoning. Walton police suspect antifreeze and are deep into their investigation when they get a surprising call from Cowan's landlord. The husband has vanished. Detective John Bailey pays a visit to the home he had abandoned, everything, big screen tv, brand new furniture, thousands and thousands of dollars worth of property. It was bizarre. James Cowan had headed back to his hometown, Jefferson City, Missouri, and a new job as the host of a radio talk show at Klik. My wife Julie passed away in September. I came back to Jefferson City. I just decided this is the place where I'm supposed to be. Good to have you back, buddy. Thank you, sir. Party line 09:00 around town, James had been telling people two stories about Julie's death. Some that she died of a tragic illness, others that she committed suicide. Either way, James seemed ready to start a new life. He had just started dating somebody, and he seemed to be very interested in kind of settling down and maybe having kids.

But close family and friends like Layla and Ted Wilmore knew the real story, that Julie had died of ethylene glycol poisoning. And police were asking a lot of questions about James. He was their prime suspect. We asked know, aren't you a little bit worried about the way things look? And he said, you know, guys, I don't think I would be indicted for this. And if I were indicted, I wouldn't be convicted. It'd be a circumstantial case. We knew the case was circumstantial. We did the best we could as far as investigating. Over the following months, police discover a series of disturbing secrets about James, information they were quietly sharing with Julie's parents, who eventually came to the horrifying conclusion their son in law might be guilty of killing their only daughter. I asked the detective, I said, do you care if I confront him? He, eh, don't. So you took their advice.

It's not that we didn't want to. We just knew that it would not be a productive thing to do.

So the old ags wait. Finally, more than a year after Julie Cowan's death, Detective Bailey travels to Missouri to make a dramatic arrest. During the middle of James'radio show, we knew he was on the air. I saw him coming out of his radio booth. Do you know why we're here? And do you know who we are? And James said, I know. What did you think when you heard James had been arrested?

I was very, very happy that they finally decided they had enough evidence to bring him to court.

Cowan is accused of slowly and methodically poisoning his wife to death behind the closed doors of their supposedly happy home. The charge is first degree murder, the motive yet to be explained, guilty or not guilty. On one side of the courtroom, Julie's parents. On the other, James'mother Betty. In the defendant's chair, James sits by calmly as his attorney points out the weaknesses in the prosecution's case. There are no eyewitnesses here. There is no physical evidence. There is no confession or admission by James Cowan.

He kind of sat there with a halfway grin on his face thinking that he was probably going to get away with this.

With no direct evidence, prosecutors attacked James'credibility starting with his supposed acceptance letter to Harvard Business School. It had looked convincing to Cowan's former boss.

I would like to congratulate you on your acceptance to the Harvard Business School MBA program. And it is signed by Britt K. Dewey. Yes, I'm Britt K. Dewey. That is not my signature.

The letter was a fake. Turns out all the time Cowen was supposed to be going to Harvard and working, he was doing neither.

I fired, JP.

Fired. After his boss found out about another Cowan deception, he had been stealing money from the company and apparently forged yet another signature on a contract to cover his tracks.

It is not my signature.

Faced with the prospect of having to tell his wife that he was now accused of fraud, that his job was lost, and that whole story about the Harvard business school was a big lie. Prosecutors say James Cowan was desperate, his house of cards collapsing. Prosecutors say money was the motive. The Cowens were broke, and James hoped to cash in on his wife's $250,000 life insurance policy by killing her in midaugust. Just before Julie became ill, investigators testified someone using James Cowan's computer googled these terms. Homemade poisons, rice, chloroform poisoning, bi arsenic in Boston, and antifreeze, human death. Antifreeze, which commonly contains ethylene glycol, the poison that killed Julie Cowan.

When they showed the number of times he searched on how to poison someone. I think, how many times did he sit down in front of his computer and decide, I'm going to kill my wife? At any one of those times, he could have thought, well, maybe I shouldn't do this. Maybe this is wrong. But he didn't. He just kept searching and searching.

Prosecutors say James probably learned online how to mask the sweet taste of antifreeze by mixing it with Gatorade, which is nearly the same color and just as sweet. That's antifreeze on the right and Gatorade on the left. Toxicologist Alphonse Poklus, who specializes in poisoning cases, has actually taste tested the toxic mixture. I took drinks of it. I didn't swallow, but I took drinks and I've swashed it around in my mouth. Ethylene glycol just tasted like Gatorade. This is not the only time someone has been accused of poisoning a spouse with antifreeze.

I.

Back in March of 2009, Stacy Castor, the woman who became known as the Black Widow, was convicted for killing her second husband with antifreeze. And in 2007, Lyn Turner was convicted of poisoning her boyfriend, apparently with jello laced with anaphreeze. In both cases, it was later discovered that the women's previous husbands had also died of antifreeze poisoning. Evidence of a person's. And in 2008, Kenosha County, Wisconsin, Da Bob Jamboys successfully prosecuted Mark Jensen for murdering his wife, Julie, using antifreeze. Jamboy says it's an agonizing death. You start having difficulty breathing, there's a rapid pulse rate, you start vomiting, you become nauseous, you become terribly thirsty. And then in the third stage, your kidneys start to shut down. And as your body is shutting down, you're experiencing this terrible, this agonizing, horrible way of dying. It's a terribly sick healing, and then ultimately, you can become comatose. According to the American association of Poison Control Centers, in 2007, there were more than 5700 intentional and unintentional cases of ethylene glycol anaphyze poisoning in the US, resulting in 27 deaths. But with so many known cases of anaphyze poisoning, why had Julie Cowan's doctors not caught it earlier?

Because Julie had waived them off.

The doctors kept asking her, are you sure you aren't getting some kind of poison? She kind of laughed about that and thought it was completely ridiculous.

But medical examiner Farrell Sandler, who reviewed Julie Cowan's records, says it's clear she was exposed to the deadly chemical. For weeks.

Acute and chronic ethylene glycol intoxication chronic means over a period of time, defense.

Lawyers pressure Sandler to admit poisoning is not always homicide. Another possibility would be an accident. And a third possibility would be a suicide.

Correct.

But the expert is convinced Julie, a registered nurse with access to all kinds of drugs, would not kill herself this way.

This is not a painless way to die. It didn't make sense that a nurse would put herself through that, a suffering type of extended long death like this.

So could it have been an accident? That seemed to be James'story, and he had two wildly improbable versions of what might have happened. He told some people Julie had gone for a walk the day before she lapsed into a coma and died. And strangely, speculated that maybe she had found a Gatorade bottle filled with anaphreeze on the street somewhere and then drank it. He also told other people that he actually saw her drinking from a Gatorade bottle. I mean, these stories just, they were just so far fetched. Police never found antifreeze or gatorade in the Cowan home, but they knew Julie was drinking the brightly colored energy drink. How? Julie told them in one of those chatty, heartfelt emails to friends, in this case to co worker Jill Lawson, Julie.

Responded, I think today is better. I still have episodes where I feel like my face is going to vibrate off my head.

Then buried in the email, the critical.

Clue, James keeps wanting me to drink Gatorade and my taste buds just can't handle anything citric.

There it was from Julie herself. James encouraging her to drink Gatorade was.

Like Julie was there talking about it and she thought he was taking care of her and he was doing just the opposite.

On the outside, he portrayed himself as a caring, loving husband. And the cruelty that goes with a slow poisoning death, I found that very, very cold. The final witness read one of Julie's last emails. As she is drifting towards death, Julie writes not of concern about herself, but of her unending love for James, a man she has no idea may be killing her.

My husband is a wonderful person, going on eight years of marriage in September. He is going to school at Harvard and working full time, so his plate is pretty full. I don't want my illness to mess that up for him. Hope to talk with you soon.

Julie Keown closing arguments he premeditated this. He chose this extremely cruel way to kill him. This couple loved and cared for each other. Julie herself said as much in her emails. James Cowan is not guilty. The verdict and words you rarely hear from the mouth of a judge stay tuned. Jefferson City's new station, the fate of former Jefferson City radio host James Cowan in the hands of a jury today, the local stations are all a buz. The man everyone thought was a great guy had turned out to be a con man. James Cowan had lied about going to Harvard, been fired for stealing, was broke and sliding deeper into debt. Instead of simply confessing to his wife, prosecutors say he killed her in the most painful of fashions to collect on her life insurance. In the courtroom, James'mother and Julie's parents wait for a verdict. It doesn't take long, less than two days for the jury to decide. What say you? Is the defendant guilty or not guilty? Guilty. First degree murder. With deliberate premeditation, James's mother, Betty, his only courtroom supporter, sits alone, listening as the judge says, there will be no delay.

All right, you may proceed.

She will sentence Cowan that very day, first giving Julie's parents a chance to finally confront their son in law.

In my mind, James is no longer a person. He is just a mass of flesh and bone taking up space on this earth. A real person would never have done such an evil thing. Thank you.

And then a surprise, something judges rarely do. Along with a sentence. Sandra Hamlin looks down from the bench and personally lets James have it.

The way in which this defendant secretly and methodically planned and carried out the poisoning of his wife and allowed her to suffer so horribly and die such a slow and painful death makes this court feel that I am truly in the presence of an evil person.

Defendant would please rise. The sentence of James Cowan life in prison. The sentencing may have brought a feeling of justice to Julie's parents, but now they want to change, to antifreeze so others don't suffer the same fate.

I just don't understand why it has to have such a sweet taste to the extent that it can be mixed in with sweet drinks and not know, and it can be put in there and people don't know that it's there. I think it's a very dangerous substance out there that needs to be fixed.

A number of states have enacted legislation requiring the addition of a substance to anaphyze that makes it taste bitter. But that's all too late to help Julie Cowan who leaves behind family and friends still devastated by her death and shaken by the betrayal from the man she thought loved her so much.

He has ruined so many lives. He took her life and robbed us of her. But he's ruined his own life in the process. I think that it was meticulous, it was calculated. It is mind boggling. I think that he is a broken person. I see him as a broken person.

This guy deceived us so badly and so easily. And now I can look back and I can say, I should have seen this and this and this. I didn't check up on it.

Julie was such a good person. It wasn't like he was married to someone who didn't care about him. She would have went to the ends of the earth for anything he wanted.

Loved him till the end. Till the end.

I'm Deborah Roberts with this update. As of 2023, James Cowan has been unsuccessful in appealing his conviction. Major marketers in all 50 states say they now only sell antifreeze. That includes a bitter tasting agent.

When we come back, a wife and her child bound, shot to death. The baby was shot through the chest. The bullet went right through her and went into her mother and a husband on the run. What secrets was he hiding? Stay with us. Rachel Endwistle was happily married. She had a beautiful baby daughter, and her husband had a good job and plenty of money. What she didn't know was that her husband was a first class liar. And as ABC News first reported in 2008, he would do anything to keep his lies a secret.

On a cold Friday in Massachusetts, a white suv cruises around the historic suburb of Hopkinton before making the 30 miles journey to Boston Logan airport. The driver, alone but happily married with a beautiful baby daughter, is british born 27 year old Neil Entwistle. He parks his bmw and heads toward the terminal building.

There's pictures of him at ATM machines plugging his code in. You know, this. This very creepy, kind of strange smile, this faraway look that he has.

He doesn't seem to have enough cash in his bank account.

He's going from ATM to ATM to try to get some money. He's very calm.

Third time around, he gets lucky. Accessing a line of credit, Entwistle buys a ticket to London's Heathrow airport. For the first time, he's traveling back to the UK without his american family.

He didn't make a single phone call to anyone.

The flight departs the following morning. So he returns to the bmw and spends the night in the parking lot when surveillance cameras capture Ent whistle heading for British Airways flight two three eight at 820. In the morning, he's carrying no baggage, just his passport and a one way ticket.

He just looked like a nut. He just looked like he's soulless. Like it was gone. Lights out. Vanilla was hope.

He was leaving behind the happiest family imaginable just ten days earlier, they'd rented this gracious four bedroom property and posted pictures online so that family in the U. K. Could share in their happiness.

Smiling couple, beautiful couple on their honeymoon with their baby.

The photographs show a classic, happy, loving family. Neil is hoisting Lily to put Christmas ornaments on top of a tree, and he's laying down on the floor with his baby girl on his belly. And it's all classic images of new dads. And he didn't strike anyone as being anything other than that.

Neil's wife Rachel was planning a big housewarming party for the coming weekend.

She has this new baby. She's nine months old. She wants her friends to know, look at I've arrived. Look at my fantastic life.

But on Friday afternoon, the same day that husband Neil had gone to the airport, Rachel and their infant daughter Lillian were nowhere to be found. When repeated calls went unanswered, Rachel's mother, Priscilla, knocked on the door and heard only the dog barking inside. She called Hopkinson police, who made a quick walk through the house, saw nothing out of order, and then began searching the neighborhood. By morning, the family was frantic. Rachel's stepfather, Joe Matarazzo, called his old friend, former Boston cop Joe Flaherty.

He needed some help that they couldn't find Rachel and Neil and the baby.

Flaherty asked police to search the house again. This time, an overwhelming stench led them straight to the master bedroom. Hidden beneath the stillness of an unmade bed lay Rachel Entwistle and daughter Lillian. They'd been shot dead at point blank range.

The baby was shot through the chest. The bullet went right through her, went out her back and went into her mother. The medical examiner testified that her kidney was macerated, and that means it was just liquefied.

And then the mother was shot a second time.

She was shot in the brain. The bullets broke into two fragments and they both lodged in her frontal lobes.

Why would anyone want to commit such a horrific double murder and devastate the newfound joy of this loving mother and child? Police immediately set about trying to contact the only surviving member of the family.

They didn't know where the kneel was going to be found in the trunk of a car somewhere, and it could have been a home invasion. Something terrible could have happened to the whole family.

Three days later, state trooper Bobby Manning reached Entwistle by telephone at his parents'home in the north of England. He was preparing to describe this unspeakable crime to a much loved husband and father. But it soon became apparent that Neil Entwistle himself had seen the dead bodies in the master bedroom, yet, inexplicably, he didn't call for help.

I pulled the covers back, and that's when I saw Lily was such a mess. He pursued a line of question which revealed that Neil Entwistle must have, or in all likelihood had information about how they were killed, because Neil Entwistle revealed facts that could not have been known to him. Their whole mouth and nose were covered. It was almost like it was bubbles. You pulled the bedsheet over them. Almost felt like I was closing them off. I don't know why I did it.

Entwistle said that having encountered such a horrific scene in his own bedroom, he thought of taking his own life using a knife on the kitchen counter.

I just couldn't do it. I think it was almost the thought of how much it was going to hurt. It never crossed your mind whatsoever to call 911?

No, he didn't call for an ambulance, nor did he call Rachel's parents. The police officer kept him talking for 2 hours.

It was a truly professional piece of police work, and Neil fell right into the trap.

As the two hour conversation came to a close, Neil Entwistle, grief stricken father, had become Neil Entwistle, the prime murder suspect. A warrant was issued for his arrest. British police officers picked up Entwistle at a subway station in London and prepared to fly him back to Boston. But even as they did, it still seemed inconceivable that Neil Entwistle could have committed such an unspeakable crime.

People swear up and down that this guy was a loving dad and a doting husband. And people were willing to accept Neil because Rachel was so happy, like she was blissful.

The romance of Rachel and Neil Antwistle began on the banks of the River Ooze in York. 19 year old Rachel had arrived at the university on a twelve month scholarship. A small but successful track athlete in high score, she was selected to cox the rowing team. Neil Antwistle was one of the crew.

So you can just picture it. I mean, she's on the back of the boat and they're living the college dream.

Neil was immediately smitten with Rachel. She was this bubly american. He was kind of the shy, very quiet, very reserved, and the two just kind of fell in love.

Just two and a half years after meeting at York University, their wedding would take place in Massachusetts. It was a classic New England affair attended by both sides of their transatlantic family.

People describe that wedding as glorious, affectionately.

Known as Ente Rachel became the most popular teacher at St Augustine's Catholic high School in Worcestershire. Meanwhile, husband Neil had found a job as a computer specialist, doing what he claimed was intelligence work for the british government. But he was soon disenchanted.

Neil started to gripe that he'll never amount to anything. I'm just a coal miner's son, everyone. I'll never get anywhere with this accent.

So after Lillian, nicknamed Lilybean, came along, the ant whistles made plans to start a new life in America, living with Rachel's parents until Neil could find work. The family embraced him too. Neil's father in law, Joe Matarazzo, included him in weekly outings to a gun club, where he practiced with Joe's 22 caliber pistol. Neil certainly acted like he was on his feet financially. He told Rachel that he was still receiving a monthly income of $10,000 from that top secret intelligence contract back in the U. K. Antwistle would even pay for the meals. When the family went out to eat.

It would be with a credit card. Every indication to them was that he was secure. He was secure in the relationship and he was secure in his financial situation.

But it was all a lie. Entwistle wasn't receiving money from the UK, and his credit cards he held at least eight, were all maxed out. District Attorney Jerry Leone says it became apparent that Neil Entwistle had become an expert at hiding the truth from his family.

There were two sides to Neil Entwistle. We know this because each and every day of his life, as we developed the evidence, we find that there's a kneel and twistle that people knew by way of appearance. But now there's a kneel and twistle we know because of what the reality was.

Overdue bills and shutoff notices were mounting. Secretly, his life was unraveling. And the US job search wasn't going too well either. Another even more disturbing side of Neil Entwistle later emerged when police investigators found that on the slide, he'd launched several shady Internet businesses.

And here's Neil. He had built up this Persona he just couldn't live up to. And instead he started selling penis enlargement kits online and trying to bilk eBay customers.

But even with angry customers refusing to pay, Ent whistle would not admit to his family that he was close to broke. Instead, he kept up the roose, the James Bond like man of means with a cash flow problem. Nevertheless, after just a few months with the in laws, he moved Rachel and Lillian into an expensive new home. And his private relationship with Rachel was changing, too. Entwistle became obsessed with Internet sex. He joined a service called adult friendfinder and took a picture of himself reclined in a lawn chair at the home.

Of Rachel's parents, naked and fully aroused, laying in his in law's backyard. It would have meant that he had to lay down in the backyard of the suburban house, take his clothes off, and take his own photograph. It's just shocking.

Ent Whistle's attorney says this is not his client. But investigators did confirm that Entwistle posted this caption along with the image, I am looking for one on one discreet relationships with american ladies.

The location of information on his computer which revealed that he was unhappy with his sex life. That, in his words, he was looking for more fun in the bedroom. That just helped us develop his state of mind. But it was also critical to a central theme in this case, which is appearance versus reality. The Neil end twistle that he wanted people to believe he was, which was this loving, doting father versus he's a murderer.

When the case went to trial, the prosecution painted a portrait of Neil Entwistle that was unrecognizable to anyone who knew him. Not the suave's successful intelligence contractor, but a cold, heartless killer who didn't even bother returning for his wife and daughter's funeral. But Entwistle was nothing if not determined, and his attorney would mount an audacious defense. But would it prove successful? When we return.

You see Neil and Wessel, and he looks like the GQ type of husband.

He said he was going to the gun club.

He's tall and slim. His hair is always perfect. You know, he's always in control.

Watching Neil in court, I almost believe that he thinks that he was the man he portrayed to the outside world. He was pleasant, he was calm, polite, like, there's something about Neil. He has shut himself down from reality completely. At that point, we knew that the victims were under the comforter. Here's a guy whose entire ego was based on this false identity.

It looked consistent with a gunshot.

And when Rachel started to note the little flaws in his story, that's when he snapped.

What result did you get on those two blood tests?

They were both positive.

What you can't tell is how they got there.

Through twelve days and 45 witnesses, Neil ent whistle displayed emotion just once when pictures of his murdered wife and infant daughter were displayed to the jury. Apart from that, he was inscrutable. The husband, father, and brilliant mathematician would be described as a calculating killer.

Ladies and gentlemen, I suggest to you, Rachel and Lillian are lying in that bed. He walks up to that bedroom and he kills him. He shoots Rachel. He shoots Lillian. The crying and screaming coming out of Lillian, I suggest he could not handle and tolerate. He closes them out is the word that he said. I'm closing them off. He closed them off when he covered them with that blanket.

The prosecutor pointed out that Entwistle had been lying about his future and his finances. Soon all his lies would be exposed. He took a gun from the in law's house, a gun that he was taught to use by his father in law and murdered his baby daughter and then his wife. He went home to England and didn't even bother returning for the funeral.

Neil Entwistle was closing off life as he knew it in the United States, and he was returning to life as he wanted it to be in the UK.

Entwistle did not take the stand. Defense attorney Elliot Weinstein called no witnesses.

Looking at what a trial is about, looking at where the burdens of proof lie, looking at the evidence that we.

Had, we believe that failures of proof.

Left fair and reasonable doubt such that we didn't have to take on the responsibility of calling witnesses.

In his final summation, Weinstein presented a scenario that seemed to come out of nowhere. He suggested this wasn't homicide, but suicide.

The crime scene investigators only considered this a murder.

They were not open to the possibility.

Of suicide, and thus they failed to collect gunshot residue stubs from Rachel's wrists from around her hands.

He argued that Neil came home to find the bodies and then, to save Rachel from the stigma of suicide, took the gun back to her parents'home.

Prosecutor had its theory. We had an alternative view of the evidence.

The jury deliberated for two days, evaluating Antwistell's secret appetite for online sexual encounters. His two hour phone call with the state trooper. They even tested the claim that Rachel took her own life.

There is a woman in the jury who is roughly Rachel Antwistell's size. So we had her actually hold the gun to her head. The gun was fired from a further distance away than she could possibly have held it. What say you're four person? Is the defendant guilty or not guilty? Guilty of murder in the first degree of Rachel and Whistle? Guilty of murder in the first degree of William and Whistle.

Nevertheless, ent whistle's parents maintained his innocence.

And we are devastated to learn that the evidence points to Rachel.

We will continue to fight for our innocent son with the hope that one day justice will prevail. We are not making any further statements at this time and ask that you refer any before the sentencing.

Rachel's family, who've never spoken to the media, addressed the court.

Our dreams as a parent and grandparent have been shattered by the shameful, selfish act of one person, Neil and twistle. Suffering does not begin to describe what we have been enduring without our beloved Rachel and Lillian, who gave our lives such purpose and meaning. The jury has found the defendant.

Then the man who appeared to be a loving father and doting husband was given two concurrent life sentences.

These crimes are incomprehensible. They defy comprehension because they involve the planned and deliberate murders of the defendant's wife and nine month old child.

Just nine days before she died, Lillian Entwistle was baptized in a ceremony at the family's catholic church. Photographs show different generations welcoming her into the family of God. Yet in those same happy images is the man who would commit the most horrendous betrayal imaginable. He won the trust of an entire family, a family that he would ultimately destroy.

This is Deborah Roberts. As of 2023, Neil Entwistle has exhausted his appeals and remains in prison. You've been listening to the 2020 true crime vault. We hope you'll tune in on Friday nights at 09:00 for all new broadcast episodes of 2020 on ABC. Thanks for listening. You.