Bill Cosby’s daughter buried next to her murdered brother [Funeral Pictures]

Bill Cosby’s daughter Ensa was laid to rest next to her beloved brother Ennis on the comic’s Massachusetts estate on Wednesday afternoon.

In a half-hour, private service, Ensa, 44, was buried in a plot of land known as ‘Ennis’ Garden’ hidden from the road behind a large wooden barn.

Only family members were at the outdoor service that took place on a crisp day with a watery sun peeking through the clouds.

Ensa died on Friday from renal failure while waiting for a kidney transplant.

A hearse carrying her casket left the Smith-Kelleher funeral home in picturesque Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, at 1.30pm for the 15-minute drive to the Cosby compound.

The vehicle turned in a side gate to the 21-acre property and drove up to the burial area which workers had sealed off with mismatched blue and brown tarps. Earlier in the day a back hoe was spotted digging the grave.

Cosby, 80, Camille — his wife of 54 years — and their remaining children, Erika, 52, Erinn, 51, and Evin, 41, all remained out of sight, on the compound.

Martin McLean, Ensa’s husband of four years, left the compound immediately after the service.

The funeral came 21 years and 40 days after Ennis was buried — in a similarly small service — but the differences between the two occasions could not have been more stark.

Ennis died at the age of 27 when he was shot dead in a botched robbery in Los Angeles in January 1997.

After his murder, President Bill Clinton and vice-president Al Gore both called Cosby personally to offer their condolences and flowers by the truckload were delivered to his many homes.

California state officials and tabloid magazines offered hundreds of thousands of dollars in reward for the capture of Ennis’ killer as his slaying captivated the nation.

More than 800 tipsters called police and the murderer was caught two months after Ennis’ death.

For Ensa, just one tiny posy was delivered to the family compound. Perhaps nothing illustrates just how far Bill Cosby has fallen in the eyes of America than the reaction to the tragic deaths of his third and fourth-born children than those few flowers.

Though Ennis’ funeral was small, Shelburne Police closed the roads for the funeral to prevent a media scrum.

This time the town’s top cop heard nothing from the family. ‘All I know is what I’ve read on the Internet,’ Chief Gregory Bardwell told DailyMail.com.

Ensa’s death was not as shocking as the brutal roadside murder of her 27-year-old brother. The mother to a young daughter had suffered from kidney problems for years but she still died years before her time.

The difference in the reaction to the twin tragedies lies wholly in the dead siblings’ father. In 1997, he was still America’s dad.

Though the groundbreaking Cosby Show had been off the air for nearly five years, its successor, Cosby, was still getting decent ratings and he was a television icon like no other.

Now after more than three years of repeated claims that he drugged, molested and even raped up to 50 young women, the 80-year-old comic’s supporters are few and far between, his avuncular image tarnished beyond repair.

Cosby certainly had plenty on his mind as he planned Ensa’s funeral.

On Monday he is due in court in Norristown, Pennsylvania, for a pretrial hearing and in four weeks-time jury selection will begin as he faces a retrial in the single sexual assault case that has been allowed to proceed to criminal court.

He faces up to 30 years in prison if found guilty of the aggravated indecent assault of basketball coach Andrea Constand.

The first trial ended in a mistrial last June after more than 50 hours of jury deliberation.

Ensa, a yoga instructor, was one of his fiercest defenders, claiming shortly before his trial that racism was behind the allegations.

‘How my father is being punished by a society that still believes black men rape white women but passes off ‘boys will be boys’ when white men are accused, and how the politics of our country prove my disgust,’ she said, apparently referring to allegations against President Donald Trump.

‘My father has been publicly lynched in the media,’ she added, saying that she liked to live out of the spotlight but felt she ‘couldn’t sit quietly anymore.’

‘My family, my young daughter, my young niece and nephew have had to stand helplessly by and watch the double standards of pretending to protect the rights of some, but ignoring the rights of others and exposing innocent children to such appalling accusations about someone they love dearly and who has been so loving and kind to them is beyond cruel,’ she said.

In Shelburne Falls — a quaint New England town that served as backdrop to both the Kate Winslet/Josh Brolin movie Labor Day and The Judge starring Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall — news of Ensa’s death has slowly seeped in over the past few days.

Despite Cosby’s immense fame he and the rest of the family are not well-known in the town of fewer than 2,000 people.

‘He is very private. You wouldn’t know he lives here,’ said newsagent Ellen Eller. ‘But he does put up the most beautiful lights at Christmas.’

Cosby has never endeared himself to the town despite being its most famous resident.

 He is only ever seen on election days when he and Camille make a point of being among the earliest voters.

Locals are grateful the couple has bought up tracts of land close to their compound, some five miles south-east of Shelburne Falls town center, to prevent it from being developed.

But that is a double-edged sword as access to much of that land is now barred by signs sternly declaring ‘If you are not invited DO NOT pass through these gates.’

And the mixed feelings of the town were best summed up by a young woman at Shelburne Falls Coffee Roasters — where years ago Cosby had donated a now-defunct antique espresso machine — who hadn’t heard of Ensa’s death until Wednesday.

‘That’s terrible,’ the woman said. ‘Didn’t he have a son that died too?

‘I would feel sorry for him. I would say ‘Poor Bill Cosby…but it’s Bill Cosby.’