Mark Castillo of Rockville walked with his three young children Saturday afternoon through Baltimore's Inner Harbor, where tourists congregate along the city's waterfront promenade.
About 5 p.m., he checked into the Marriott Hotel near Camden Yards and took his children into Room 1060, a top-floor room with two beds.
An hour later, one by one, Castillo drowned his children in the bathtub, police said. When he was done, he laid their tiny, naked bodies on one bed: Anthony, 6, Austin, 4 and Athena, 2.
Then he swallowed 100 Motrin pills and cut himself in the neck with a steak knife in an apparent suicide attempt, police said. He woke up about 1 p.m. Sunday, after sleeping for hours - his dead children in the same room - and called the front desk, police said, to report what he had done.
Hotel security alerted police and paramedics and, using a master key, opened the door.
"I know what I did was bad," Castillo told medics who arrived first, according to police charging papers filed with the court. "I did it. I drown the kids last night around 6 p.m."
Yesterday, police charged Castillo with three counts of first-degree murder and a dozen related charges, including child abuse and assault. He was ordered held without bail and is scheduled to have a hearing in District Court today.
Since Saturday night, his estranged wife, Dr. Amy Castillo, had been calling police, desperately trying to find her children while fearing that he had followed through on his threats.
Yesterday, Amy Castillo, a pediatrician with Kaiser Permanente's Mid-Atlantic region, was in her Silver Spring home on Waterford Road.
A family friend, Cheryl Wharton, read a brief statement to reporters: "Amy 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. We ask that members of the press respect Amy's privacy as she bears this solitary cross."
Beginning at 10:30 Saturday night, she had called Montgomery County police to report that her husband, who according to court documents has a history of mental problems, was late dropping off the children. But police told her they could not begin a search because Castillo had the legal right to be with them and he had made no new specific threats.
