True Crime Update 4/18/06

It's All About Duke-Was There a Crime or Is It All an Election Day Ploy? Entwistle Update.
Pic of the Day

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"Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small steps." --Henry Ford

 


Entwistle Update

Neil Entwistle is a lovely man who is accused of shooting his wife and baby daughter. This case is back in the news because on April 11, Mr. Entwistle pleaded not guilty to the charge of these murders.

The damning thing about Neil Entwistle is that shortly after his wife and child "disappeared" (more on this later), it was learned that Mr. Entwistle was busy on a plane to his home country of Great Britain. Entwistle did NOT attend the funerals of his wife and baby daughter.

For a while there was speculation that Entwistle would try to avoid extradition back to the U.S. but England has one of the most liberal extradition treaties with the United States of any country on the planet.

Another intriguing thing about this case is how the bodies of the victims were discovered. The Entwistles had planned a dinner party on a night when the hostess, Mrs. Entwistle, and her young baby were laying dead in the bed. The guests that evening phoned the police for a so-called "wellness check" as, insert common sense here, people don't generally invite people for a dinner party to have their guests greet an empty house and unanswered knocks.

The police did NOT discover the dead bodies during that initial check and this fact will no doubt cause some harm to the case. The Sunday following the scheduled dinner party friends and family again searched the house. Police were notified again and this time these forensic fiends finally found the dead bodies.

I made two posts about this crime. One has a quote from a Massachusetts former police officer regarding how wellness checks should be conducted and how those first cops on the scene totally messed up. Another has a timeline as compiled by this amateur sleuth of this heart-breaking crime.

How could any man aim a gun and shoot his own baby daughter?

Assuming Entwistle did it, of course. The man did plead not-guilty at his arraignment.

First Entwistle Post
Entwistle Timeline
From MSNBC.com

Neil Entwistle, the British man accused of murdering his wife and baby, pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and firearm charges.

What the Hell is Going On At Duke University?

Every day there is a different leak about this case and each tidbit is intriguing. I made an initial post on this alleged crime here. Even as I dutifully typed the narrative more leaks were pouring out over the cable news shows, so much so that I had to put a disclaimer at the top of the post before it was even published.

The latest tidbits coming from the constant updates on this "crime" are that the first officer called to the scene found the accuser passed out drunk. There's also assertions that existing time-stamped pictures prove the alleged victim showed up on the scene with bruises already in place. Bruises that the victim alleges happened during a gang rape by members of Duke's Lacrosse team in the hosting house's bathroom.

Before catching up below, let's review some other tidbits, some verified, some heard, some revealed by defense attorneys.

The first bit of rumor to fly across the radar regarding this alleged crime was that even before the two exotic dancers showed up at the party a female had called 911 to complain about racial slurs coming from the home of the party. This tidbit has all but disappeared from the radar but I did write about it in my initial post and it had been reported somewhere.

A strange email surfaced, again documented and verified in my first post. Seems one of the students sent out an email about his plans to murder and skin the scheduled strippers alive. Very odd but this is a true fact.

No one's seen alleged pictures that show that the victim showed up at the party where she was scheduled to strip but defense attorneys leaked their existence. I'm supposing the defense doesn't want to release them as the pictures likely make their clients look bad. Don't forget, whatever happened that night, the Lacrosse team did have a big bawdy party and invited a couple of "exotic dancers" to perform. Hardly the stuff of dedicated athletes.

Early on it was reported that the alleged victim had several of her fingernails torn off and left her cell phone and pocketbook in the bathroom of the attack when she allegedly fled after the alleged attack.

Some pundits are already suggesting that this might be another Tawana Brawley hoax as perpetrated by Al Sharpton. There's some sort of election upcoming involving the prosecutor involved with this case, District Attorney Mike Nifong. It's being suggested that this case was set up by Nifong himself to aid in a re-election bid.

No, nada, zero, zip DNA of any of the accused Lacrosse players have been found on the body of the alleged victim. This fact is verified. Additional DNA test results are still coming.

Details of an earlier crime of the alleged victim herself were leaked. I included this in my first post.

The alleged victim supposedly phone 911 from the parking lot of a nearby liquor store. She reportedly got into a car that was not hers. Responding police allegedly found her passed out drunk, assumingly below the strange car's driver door.

Now let's catch up with the newest tidbits.


From the Herald-Sun:

What to Make of This?

None other than the vaunted Bob Bennett, defense attorney for former President Bill Clinton during the Paula Jones' case, has been hired by some sort of group of FORMER Duke lacrosse players. That is an amusing, if not amazing fact. FORMER lacrosse players hire an attorney to protect the reputations of current Duke lacrosse players accused of this crime?

Bennett doesn't come cheap so somebody with bucks is behind this. Plus, Bennett is a very political type of attorney. Make of that what you will.

Newly formed group retains prominent D.C. attorney
-- By Paul Bonner
The Herald Sun
Apr 11, 2006 : 10:02 pm ET

DURHAM -- Prominent Washington, D.C., attorney Bob Bennett said Tuesday he has been retained by a newly formed committee of former Duke lacrosse players, their families and major Duke contributors. Bennett is not representing anyone in the criminal investigation, he said.

But the Committee for Fairness to Duke Families that he represents is concerned that the current lacrosse team is being unfairly maligned, he said.

"There are families who feel there's a real rush to judgment here before the facts are out," Bennett said.

A former federal prosecutor, Bennett was former President Bill Clinton's personal attorney in the Paula Jones case and also has represented a number of other high-profile government figures, including two secretaries of defense, as well as Enron, HealthSouth and accounting firm KPMG. He is co-leader of Skadden's international Government Enforcement Litigation group and the Criminal and Civil Litigation practice of the firm's Washington office, according to the
firm's Web site.

Nifong claims that 75 to 80% of all sexual attacks result in the finding of no DNA evidence. Nifong does not state where he gets this information but hey, the guy is a District Attorney.

The speculation by the lacrosse side is that this is a hoax. Followers of this theory suspect that Nifong and, I surmise, his political party, schemed this whole thing up so that he may appeal to the racial divide in that area by vigorously pursuing prosecution of the stripper black victim against the wealthy white guys on Duke's lacrosse team. There's also the benefit of big publicity shortly before an election.

Evidence supporting this would include that alleged 911 call before the party had even begun. Details about this are sketchy and it may not even be true. If it is true, it could be how the original plan was to go down but somehow it went awry and the strippers ended up inside the party house. Perhaps the two strippers originally hired were only supposed to go to the house but flee in fear as the story would unfold by lying about supposed racial epithets. Perhaps the two hired hoax perpetrators, as these two would be, were lured by prospects of the money so they nixed the original plan.

Yeah, I know it's a stretch but these kinds of things do happen. The defense has this publicity they select to send out, the prosecutor selects that to broadcast, and for free yon readers have a humble blogger just trying to ascertain the truth. The defense and prosecution spin fail to mention human nature.

IF those time-stamped pictures exist and this stripper did show up with bruises on her body, bruises that she alleges to have happened during the rape well to believe this is just wild if you believe the hoax theory. If these stripper characters were hired to perpetrate this joke, well I have a hard time believing there is enough money in the world to have me get bruises, in any fashion, all over my body just so they would be there to prove the hoax. Because that's how this would have to come down. The stripper with the bruises would have had somehow got bruises earlier in the day, if one suspects this is all a hoax.

Now she COULD have had bruises already on her body but that doesn't prove it was a hoax. The woman could have been raped whether or not she had bruises on her body or not.

If the detail about those torn off fingernails, cell phone, pocketbook being left behind are true, well this could go either way. Torn off fingernails are not all that odd in that, go with me here, fake fingernails come off quite easily. I can imagine a stripper, oh, scuse, "exotic dancer", could have long fake fingernails. It's NOT the same thing as having real fingernails ripped off from their root. The cell phone and pocketbook could have been fake and intended to be left behind. Then again the fingernails, most likely fake in any case, could have been ripped off during a rape, and the victim could well have fled in such fear that she left her belongings behind.

It's kind of sad, this whole thing. In either case, real or hoax, there's players in this thing that are either using a tragedy or faking a tragedy, in order to influence public opinion. Take your pick, it's still a tragedy.

WE are the public these people are trying to influence. Whoever the people are, either the incumbent DA, or those "former lacrosse players that are friends of the current lacrosse players", or the opportunist professional black victim advocates...somebody's playing with our heads out here in la-la land.

Good thing you got humble bloggers who try to get behind their foolishness.

For now I'm glad to admit I don't know the answers. I'm amused to watch these characters take the public stage and act out their assigned parts. As the blogger that I am, I'm trying to read behind their prepared speeches.

And to let them know that we are aware out here in la-la land that there's a lot of tragedy happening here. Sometimes they get so caught up in their "part" that they forget this.

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