Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Mark Castillo Pleads Guilty

... while jury selection was still underway, Castillo pleaded guilty to murdering his three children, Anthony, Austin and Athena, and received three life sentences without parole.
Amy Castillo to JZ: "I've lost my husband and three children ... Jesus .. has given me the power to forgive."
Are we nuts, or does it sound like she's still in love with him?!
Update: more horrible details in the Sun story, and a PDF of the statement of facts, which you should not read.

20 comments:

ppatin said...

What is the point of enrolling Castillo in "therapy?" He will never, ever be released from prison, so the smartest thing to do now is to warehouse him for the rest of his life at the lowest possible cost. "Treatment" should be saved for those who will actually be released someday. Hell, a suburban white guy who murdered his three kids had better hope he ends up in Supermax, he'll be eaten alive in gen pop.

Cham said...

You can give Mark Castillo all the therapy you want, he probably suffers from narcissistic personality disorder. In which case he may not respond to therapy because first he would have to admit there is something wrong with him which will never happen.

I say put him in the general prison population where he can meet others with the same disorder. Then we can study what happens after that. A cell in Supermax is expensive. I'd rather give those rooms to people more deserving.

It's bad enough he wasted the taxpayers money making a prosecutor prep for a trial, he could have pleaded guilty a long time ago and saved everyone the effort. Arrogance.

Anonymous said...

he could have bought Tylenol instead of Motrin and saved everyone even more effort.

ppatin said...

Mark Castillo should get the same "treatment" that Steven Oken got. So far it has proven 100% effective!

Anonymous said...

His last days were spent in the "Blue Room" at the Baltimore City Detention Center. I asked him if he wanted to eat and he didn't respond to me. He didn't eat breakfast or lunch during my shift. He started to pace at about 1400 and continued until I left. His orange juice and milk were left there for him, but he didn't drink or respond to anyone for the two days he was there. He was reluctant to get into the suicide smock and took a swing at a female officer. I think he waited until I left to start acting up. It was probably a smart move on his part. I wish nothing but the worst for him.

John said...

@ Anonymous

What is the quote/comment from? Who is it in regards to?

ppatin said...

Hopefully Castillo will meet the same fate as Richard Spicknall.

BTW, the irony of the Spicknall case really hit me today for some reason. He originally faced the the death penalty but ended up pleading guilty, got LWOP, and was murdered in the shower in Jessup a few years later. If Spicknall had gotten the big D he would almost certainly still be alive today. Funny how life works sometimes.

Cham said...

Ppatin:

That's the whole point of putting Castillo in the general prison population. The government's judicial system has reached a verdict on him, to the system a criminal is much like any other criminal.

But we should allow the criminals to judge him. Within the criminal system there is a big difference between a man who kills another for infringing on his drug sales territory and one that drowns his own 3 small kids to punish the wife who understandably left him. Let the inmates decide the fate of Mark Castillo.

Maurice Bradbury said...

Obviously this guy planned out these murders, down to the stopwatch.
He wasn't delusional, thinking the children were demons.
But if killing your own kids isn't insane, then what is?

ppatin said...

Cham:

Let's not be naive about the likelihood of "prison justice" doing its job. In general there is no honor among thieves. Has the guy who murdered the Dawson family been shanked yet? How about elderly woman rapist/murderer Raymond Hopewell? I wouldn't want to be in Castillo's shoes, but I wouldn't be surprised if he lives a long life.

Cham said...

The Dawson family was murdered because the parents were trying to better their community by working with the police. They didn't kill their own kids. Raymond Hopewell raped and murdered a woman, not a child Again, criminals see things differently from the judicial system.

Cham said...

What is insanity, MJB? 90% of convicted criminals have some sort of dysfunction. There are several different personality disorders including severe depression. If you are a positive well-adjusted person most likely you won't be committing a heinous crime.

Mark Castillo is now willing to say that he might be a little touched and will agree to go to Patuxent for his therapy only because he is terrified of what the other inmates will potentially do to him elsewhere. He's playing the system like a violin.

ppatin said...

"Raymond Hopewell raped and murdered a woman, not a child"

Hopewell raped and murdered multiple elderly women. If violating people's grandmothers in the most vile ways possible doesn't earn you a shank between the ribs then I don't know what does.

BTW, according to the Sun's Castillo article:

"He broke into sobs when the judge acknowledged some unidentified "abuse" he'd been subject to in lockup"

Good. I hope it hurt.

Maurice Bradbury said...

I suspect the Patuxent/therapy thing was his incentive to plead guilty.

Cham said...

Of course they abused him in the lock up. What did he think was going to happen?

This whole thing was was premeditated. The guy drove his kids 30 miles in order to drown them in Baltimore City, because he knew that would be the one place he wouldn't get the death penalty for his crime. Who does that?

Now he's squirming out of life with the general population. The gall. I notice the judge can only "recommend" Patuxent. I hope the prison system declares him all peachy and sane after 6 months in the prison loony bin and then sticks him unattended in the shower up in Cumberland somewhere.

buzoncrime said...

Generally, they try to reserve "treatment" slots for someone who is going to get out relatively soon, as PPatin has pointed out. There's really no point in treating Mr. Castillo's various disorders, since he is unlikely to get free anytime soon. (Except, some would say for "humanitarian" reasons).

I don't think the kid who went to Dulaney and killed his parents and 2 brothers was placed in a treatment program the judge recommended because he was not getting out anytime soon (perhaps as he gets closer to his release umpteen years from now).

Too bad the judge didn't allow him to be declared insane: a sentence to Clifton Perkins "Hospital" would have been just. I learned from a counselor who worked there recently: it's in the outer circle of hell. Roaches and crazy people everywhere. If you're not crazy when you get there, you will be after a few months. Inmates begged to have her get them out of there. They said the walls "moved" at night--with waves of roaches, etc.

Maurice Bradbury said...

I've never even heard of Clifton Perkins! Where is it? Who's in it?

buzoncrime said...

MJB---Clifton Perkins is the state's maximum security mental hospital, generally for people who have been determined to be "criminally insane". It's now there near the other state prisons in Jessup way. But it's not run by the Division of Corrections; it's run by the state department of Health and Mental Hygiene, so that the inmates can get "treatment".

One CO told me many of the inmates are very manipulative in getting there, figuring a better deal than DOC places. If they can deal with their really crazy neighbors. Most are extremely dangerous and are never getting out.

ppatin said...

"I've never even heard of Clifton Perkins! Where is it? Who's in it?"

Perkins made the news a while back because triple-murderer Kevin Johns was supposed to be sent there after being found NCR for murdering another inmate on a prison bus. The problem is that while Perkins is a maximum-security hospital it isn't nearly as secure as a real maximum security prison. Since Johns had already murdered two other inmates he was kept at Supermax despite the pissing a moaning of his lawyers, and a few months later he did the world a favor and hung himself.

buzoncrime said...

PP--You are right! I remember that someone declared Johns to be far too dangerous even for Perkins--perhaps the director of Perkins?

But, you know, as Cham points out, there is a thin line between being "insane" and nutty enough to be to commit serious crimes with a whole menu of various social and personality disorders, not to mention alcohol and drug abuse thrown in.