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From Griffith REVIEW Edition 22: MoneySexPower
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Jonathan Raban
A man faced with certain imminent arrest might be expected to rid himself of incriminating evidence beforehand, and a Borough of Kensington rubbish bin would have been the best place for two of the three documents found in Entwistle's travelling bag. The first was a one-page eulogy to Rachel, perhaps meant as the text for the final home page at rachelandneil.org. It began: ‘Rachel only knew how to care for others. Selfless to the end. As a husband I could never dream for more. She was my soul mate and my very best friend.' Its most striking sentence was: ‘We believed that true love was not about gazing deeply into each other's eyes, but staring out together in the same direction, the desire to reach those common goals being the strength that would drive us forward.' This turns out to be a mangled version of an internet-famous quote from Saint-Exupéry. Always imitating, copying, cribbing, Neil could never resist the lure of the ready made, whether inaccurately plagiarising Saint-Exupéry or committing a slipshod version of an American movie murder.
The second document was the beginning of a scripted phone call that he apparently intended to make to editors of the London tabloids: ‘Good afternoon, my name is ____________. I am a close friend and confidant of Neil Entwistle. I am approaching you because I feel that Neil is in a frame of mind to tell his side of the story. What is of interest to us is what price you would be willing to pay for exclusive rights to the full story. There is no loyalty to any particular paper because all have printed slanderous comments, so we are leaning it goes to the highest bidder.'
It was another of his millionmaker wheezes. The third document was a page torn from Wednesday's Daily Sport, advertising the services of prostitutes and escort agencies – adultfriendfinder in hard-copy form.
The contents of his bag were like his online life, as he flipped from screen persona to screen persona, switching identities and avatars on his internet journeys. By the time of his arrest, all that seems to have been left of Neil Entwistle was the accent of the Nottinghamshire mines, nearly all now abandoned: a polite, bemused and childish voice speaking, as if on echo, from a past England.
Entwistle is now spending twenty-three hours a day in solitary confinement in the maximum-security wing of the state correctional centre at Shirley, Massachusetts, where he's said to pass the time ‘losing himself in books'. An automatic appeal against his conviction is pending. The lead prosecutor in his case, Michael Fabbri, was recently interviewed by the MetroWest Daily News. Asked what possible motive Entwistle could have had for doing what he did, Fabbri – who must have studied the murders in more detail than anyone on earth – said with commendable philosophy: ‘Sometimes you just don't know why ... No "why" would really explain this. There is no why.' ♦