"I lost my husband," she said, once her best friend.
After 10 years of marriage, the Castillos wound up in a bitter divorce with Amy Castillo fighting unsuccessfully to persuade the courts to keep her children away from their father for their safety. Records show that he had twice been involuntarily committed for psychiatric care and had tried to take his own life, as he did again on March 29, 2008.
Before accepting his guilty plea, Heard asked Mark Castillo a series of questions meant to convince her that he knew what he was doing.
A medical evaluator had found him competent to stand trial earlier in the year, and Castillo said the finding was accurate when the judge asked about it. He gave his full name and the name of his high school in California. He said he accepted "full responsibility" for his actions.
"I understand I'll be in jail for the rest of my life," he said, not consulting his two public defenders, Joan Fraser and Natasha Moody, who the judge said fought aggressively on behalf of their client.
"He's an intelligent and articulate man," Heard said, finding Castillo competent and in possession of a "full understanding of the gravity of the offense and the seriousness of it and the sentence that will be imposed."
The horror of the drownings was detailed by Assistant State's Attorney Julie Drake, chief of the Felony Family Violence Division, who read into the court record a statement of facts.
Adhering to a Montgomery County visitation order, Amy Castillo released the children into their father's care that Saturday. He spent the day with them at the Maryland Science Center in the Inner Harbor, before checking into a reserved hotel room at the Marriott hotel on Eutaw Street, near Camden Yards. They ordered room service and ate, then Castillo distracted the boys with a video game and his laptop computer, while he took Athena into the bathroom.
"He undressed her, filled the tub with water, submerged her in the water, and held her down while she struggled," measuring 10 minutes by a stopwatch he hung on the towel bar, "to ensure that she would not recover," Drake read.
He tucked her into bed and repeated the process with Austin, who "kicked and struggled." And finally, with Anthony, who was bigger and stronger than his siblings, and suspicious. "The defendant indicated he had a sad, then scared look on his face," Drake said. Castillo held him underwater until he was still, then placed him beside the others and put the stopwatch in the baby's bag.
