Apr 3, 2008 4:53 pm US/Eastern
Man Accused Of Killing 3 Kids Faces Death Penalty
BALTIMORE (WJZ) ―
Eyewitness News was first to bring you access to intimate details of the bitter child custody dispute between a mother and father now charged with killing his children at a Baltimore hotel.
Mike Hellgren brings you new insight on the critical challenges facing the justice system so tragedies like this don't happen again.
Audio recordings obtained by
Eyewitness News reveal how Mark Castillo fought a protective order to keep him away from his children. His wife, pediatrician Amy Castillo, told a judge he threatened "to kill the children and not me so I would have to live without them." The judge refused that protective order.
Fourteen months later, police charged Castillo with drowning the couple's three children.
"The judge did rely on experts in the case who convinced him or were convincing to him that he would not harm his children," said Barbara Babb with UB Center for Families, Children and the Courts. "It's a monumental task to ask judges to make these kinds of weighty decisions without being equipped adequately with the resources they need."
She says the nearly 120 minute-long hearing is more time than most judges spend with more than 100,000 family cases flooding the system.
"There simply are not enough judges to handle this volume of cases," Babb said.
Amy Castillo recounted her husband's suicide attempts to the judge, how she would have sex with him out of fear and how he broke into her home.
"Many, many times it's intentional on the part of the abusive parent to use the children to control her, knowing that no mother if she can possibly avoid it is going to do anything to allow the children to be harmed," said Carole Alexander with House of Ruth.
Although these cases are extreme, they've been happening with alarming frequency. In March 2007, a father killed his four children and then hanged himself in Frederick. In April, a father shot and killed his one- and three-year-old children and then killed himself in Barnesville. In November, a father killed his three children at a park in Laytonsville and committed suicide.
"As a society, we have got to determine our priorities and the justice system is only as good as the resources we can make available to it," Babb said.
The Castillo case lives on in the justice system. Mark Castillo now faces the death penalty. He is now in a mental hospital on suicide watch with another court appearance scheduled for later this month.
Babb does point out Maryland's courts have made a number of reforms in recent years but more must be done.
The Montgomery County Circuit Court has barred
Eyewitness News from airing the audio recordings.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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