Police: Father drowned children

ASSOCIATED PRESS

A Montgomery County man charged with drowning his three children in a Baltimore hotel room over the weekend has a history of mental problems and threatened to kill them more than a year ago, his former wife said in court documents.

Mark Castillo, 41, was charged yesterday with first-degree murder and child abuse. Police said he confessed to drowning the children, Anthony, 6, Austin, 4, and Athena, 2, one-by-one Saturday in the bathtub of his room at a Marriott hotel near in the city’s Inner Harbor.

Police charging documents said Mr. Castillo’s motive was his recent divorce. Court records show he was fighting a pitched legal battle over the chldren with his former wife, Dr. Amy Castillo, a pediatrician with Kaiser Permanente.

Dr. Castillo requested a protective order in Montgomery County District Court on Dec. 25, 2006, and asked that her husband receive mental counseling. In her petition, she said her husband had been diagnosed with mood disorder and narcissistic personality disorder two months earlier. And she said he had threatened to kill himself that summer.

“He has never actually hurt [the children] but did tell me that the worst thing he could do to me would be to kill the children and not me so I could live without them,” she wrote in the petition.

Dr. Castillo was given a temporary protective order, but her request for a permanent order was rejected Jan. 10, 2007, by Circuit Judge Joseph A. Dugan Jr. In a form Judge Dugan signed giving his ruling, a box was checked indicating “no clear or convincing evidence that the alleged acts of abuse occurred.”

It was not clear yesterday whether Mr. Castillo had a lawyer. He represented himself throughout most of his divorce proceedings. Dr. Castillo did not respond to an e-mail or phone message left at her Silver Spring home. Her attorney in the divorce also did not return a phone call.

Outside her home yesterday, a family friend handed a statement to reporters that reads: “Dr. Castillo asks for your continued prayers during this unspeakably difficult time. She is surrounded by family and friends and is coping as well as can be expected.”

According to charging documents, Mr. Castillo told police that he drowned the children at about 6 p.m. Saturday, then stabbed himself in the neck several times with a steak knife. He also took about 100 over-the-counter pain reliever pills in an attempt to commit suicide, but woke up at 1 p.m. Sunday. He then called the hotel front desk to say he had killed his children.

Officers went to room 1060 shortly afterward and found the three children’s bodies in a bed and the father on the room’s other bed. Mr. Castillo told police his motive was “a recent divorce stemming from domestic issues with his wife,” charging documents state.

“I know what I did was bad. I did it,” police said he told them.

Mr. Castillo was supposed to return the children to their mother in Silver Spring at 8:30 p.m. Saturday. Dr. Castillo called Montgomery County police shortly after the deadline to say that her husband had not returned the children, Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III said.

Neighbors of Dr. Castillo and those who lived near the Rockville house where Mr. Castillo rented a room said they saw few signs of trouble.

Maria Galvis said the father would bring the children over to her house, where he had been a tenant for two years. He usually seemed happy, she said, especially when he was with the children.

“He is a wonderful father, a wonderful person,” she said yesterday. “He loved the children.”

In Silver Spring, neighbor Maria Habesch said she went to a party a few years ago at the couple’s home. She described Mr. Castillo as “very, very polite,” but said she hasn’t seen him in two years.

Miss Habesch said she saw the children playing Friday in the front yard of their home.

“The situation, it paralyzes you,” she said. “It’s not easy, to know these little kids were jumping [around] and then they are gone.”

After a lengthy court case, the Castillos were divorced in February. Under the agreement, Mr. Castillo had visitation rights, but he and his wife often sparred over planning, according to e-mails between them in court records. Dr. Castillo was fined at one point last year for blocking her husband from seeing the children.

In her protective order petition, Dr. Castillo said her husband was committed to a psychiatric institution in the summer of 2006 for suicidal and manic behavior. At the time, he had been “driving around the country living in the car,” she wrote. But Mr. Castillo appealed his commission and was released a week later.

A psychologist who evaluated Mr. Castillo in September and October of 2006 diagnosed him with mood disorder and “narcissistic personality disorder with borderline and histrionic personality traits.”

He had instability in his personal relationships and recurrent suicidal threats, including an incident where he bought ant poison, duct tape and a utility knife to kill himself, but changed his mind. His goal was to make his wife “feel terrible for taking the children,” according to the report.

But the psychologist, C. David Missar of the District, also concluded that “the acute risk of harm Mr. Castillo poses to his children is low” if he continued to get treatment. A letter from another psychologist filed in June 2007 indicated Mr. Castillo was faithfully attending psychotherapy sessions.

However, the divorce appeared to take a toll on the children, especially 6-year-old Anthony. In an August e-mail to the court, a psychiatrist describes Anthony recoiling when his father cursed at him over a bracelet, blaming it on his mother.

The incident sparked a series of e-mails between the Castillos. Dr. Castillo said it proved her husband’s anger made him unfit to see the children; he accused her of telling the children false stories about him.

“We do miss being your family,” Dr. Castillo wrote wrote to her husband, “but I can’t let the children grow up with this kind of continuing emotional turmoil.”

A bail hearing for Mr. Castillo was scheduled for today in Baltimore.

• AP writers Ben Greene in Baltimore, Sarah Brumfield in Silver Spring and Karen Mahabir in the District contributed to this report.