Framingham, Mass. ? Priscilla Matterazzo never took her eyes off her son-in-law, from the moment he walked into the courtroom.

She and other family and friends filled the first three rows for Neil Entwistle’s arraignment Thursday on charges of murdering his wife and daughter. The women held bouquets of lilies and roses in memory of Rachel Entwistle and her baby, Lillian Rose.

The case has sparked an avalanche of media coverage here and in Britain, where Neil Entwistle was born and where the young father fled after his wife and 9-month-old daughter were killed Jan. 20 in their suburban Boston home. The result, his attorney charged, is that multitudes of people are presuming his client guilty.

“I don’t know that Mr. Entwistle will ever be able to get a fair trial on these charges,” Elliot Weinstein said.

Entwistle, 27, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Arrested in England last week and flown back to the United States on Wednesday, he kept his head bowed Thursday as officers led him into the building wearing shackles and a bulletproof vest.

He was ordered held without bail pending a hearing March 15 and taken to the jail inside the Middlesex Superior Court building in Cambridge.

“To think that someone we loved, trusted and opened our home to could do this to our daughter and granddaughter is beyond belief,” Matterazzo and her husband said in a statement. “Neil betrayed our trust in so many different ways that it is almost impossible to describe.”

In court documents, law officers have portrayed Entwistle as a secretive man who was sinking into debt. The documents say that in the days before the killings, he trolled the Internet looking for sexual partners and information on ways to kill people and commit suicide.