Strange smell that alerted police to the crime

Neil Entwistle was on a British Airways flight bound for the UK when police were first alerted to a strange smell emanating from his home in Massachusetts on 21 January 2006. The keys to his wife's BMW were still in the ignition in a car park at Logan airport, Boston.

When officers made their second search the following day at the house where the IT worker's 27-year-old wife and nine-month-old daughter lived, Mr Entwistle was with his parents back in Worksop, Nottinghamshire.

In the master bedroom, lying on the bed, hidden under a blanket, police found the bodies of Rachel and Lilly Entwistle.

Mr Entwistle was still in Worksop when his wife and child were buried in the same coffin on 1 February.

Two days after first speaking to Mr Entwistle, Massachusetts detectives flew to England to investigate. Having initially refused to return to the US, he was arrested on 9 February and, at 2.30pm six days later at Gatwick airport, was handed over by Scotland Yard into the custody of US marshals. Put on a private flight, he would return to the country from which he fled less than a month before, a mere one day after the shootings and just 11 days after he had settled with his wife and child in their new home.