Nation briefs 4/12/06

Accused killer of wife, baby pleads not guilty

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- A British man accused of killing his wife and infant daughter in their Massachusetts home and then fleeing the country pleaded not guilty Tuesday to murder. Neil Entwistle, 27, is charged with two counts of murder and firearms charges in the Jan. 20 slayings of his wife, Rachel, 27, and their daughter, Lillian Rose, who would have turned 1 on Sunday. Prosecutors allege he shot them in their $2,700-a-month rented home in Hopkinton, a suburb of Boston, after racking up tens of thousands of dollars in debts and becoming dissatisfied with his sex life. Rachel Entwistle's mother and stepfather, Priscilla and Joseph Matterazzo, and about a dozen friends and family members watched the proceedings. A hearing was scheduled for May 23. Entwistle is also charged with illegal possession of a firearm and illegal possession of ammunition. If convicted, he faces a mandatory life sentence; Massachusetts does not have a death penalty.

Woman pleads guilty to slitting baby's throat

BOSTON -- A woman pleaded guilty Tuesday to murder and was sentenced to life in prison for slitting the throat of her friend's baby in retaliation for being kicked out of her apartment. Natalie Rodriguez, 23, blamed her "dysfunctional ways of living" for the drunken rage that led her to snatch 9-month-old Xavier Antonio Miranda from his crib and kill him in a snowbank. "It really hurts to know my only friend did this to me. It destroyed my family. It destroyed everybody," the boy's mother, Giselle Miranda, said as she stared at Rodriguez from the witness stand. Rodriguez will have to serve 26 more years in prison before becoming eligible for parole. Rodriguez is an alcoholic with a history of mental illness and an attempted suicide, her lawyers said. She had been drinking before the slaying.

Lawsuit filed in Detroit over response to 911 call

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. -- A boy who was scolded by a 911 operator while trying to get help for his dying mother is not the only Detroit resident whose emergency call wasn't taken seriously by a dispatcher, the boy's lawyer said. In a series of calls in January 2005, a 911 operator questioned the sanity of a Detroit woman who reported she had been shot in the head. An emergency crew didn't arrive until after the woman called her son in Minnesota and got him to call for help, attorney Geoffrey Fieger said. Fieger played tapes of the woman's phone calls Monday as he announced a wrongful-death lawsuit against two unnamed dispatchers in the case of 6-year-old Robert Turner, whose mother died Feb. 20 before police arrived.

Sailors charged with marrying for allowances

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Eight sailors were charged Tuesday with arranging sham marriages to Polish and Romanian women in a scheme to help the women obtain U.S. citizenship and collect bigger military housing allowances for themselves. An investigation by Naval Criminal Investigative Service and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement found that none of the women lived with the sailors they married. In all, the eight sailors received $35,000 in fraudulent basic housing allowance payments, investigators said. One sailor was allegedly getting $1,836 per month. The Navy terminated the allowances in November. If convicted, the seven current and one former sailor from the USS Kennedy and USS Simpson could face up to five years in prison per count.

-- From wire reports