Do you remember the bizarre case of Neil Entwistle, the British entrepreneur who murdered his wife and baby daughter in Massachusetts in January 2006?

The Times did a fascinating in-depth piece on this curious individual in the Sunday paper.   

The fact that he killed his wife and daughter with a shotgun and hid their bodies under a duvet in the master bedroom before hot-footing it back to Blighty is the principle subject for discussion. But reporter Jonathan Raban also opens up interesting facets of his business life.

Worksop-born Entwistle had an online empire comprising websites like porn-hosting millionmaker.co.uk, which claimed to make subscribers £6,000 a month within six months, and deephotsex.co.uk, a shabby live sex website.

He must have been doing pretty well as these sites were his sole source of income for a number of years. Companies House shows no records for the company names cited, so it’s impossible to speculate turnover.

According to Raban, SR Publications was one of his more successful ventures. Under the pseudonym Mark Smith he sold various book titles from this company, including the best-selling 600 Famous Cheesecake, Fudge and Truffle Recipes, and the Big Penis Manual (“No Pills! No Pumps! No Surgery!”).

But as his online fortunes shrivelled and died, he became obsessed with escort and adult dating portals like adultfriendfinder.co.uk. It’s a cautionary tale for all online entrepreneurs who spend the largest proportion of their time surfing virtual worlds. Entwistle appears to have lost sight of what was real and what was imaginary.

His business nous, though fatally flawed, was present to the last, however. Upon his arrest, the police found documents detailing his bids to the tabloid press for the story of the murder. He promised the gory details to the highest bidder, and was no doubt hoping for a serialisation of his salacious tale.

Now however, he’s wiling away his days in a Massachusetts jail, unable to trade. But watch out, world. An appeal is pending, and should the case prove successful, this murdering entrepreneur will no doubt come stalking the web, vending his penis enlargement manuals all over again.  

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