Man pleads guilty to drowning his children at city hotel
Oct 14th, 2009 by Bilal Ali
Mark Castillo, a Montgomery County man who was engaged in a custody dispute with his estranged wife, pleaded guilty Wednesday to drowning their three children at an Inner Harbor hotel last year.
Castillo’s case has been widely publicized since the crime was committed in late March 2008.
After several days of motions hearings before Circuit Judge Wanda K. Heard, Castillo pleaded guilty Wednesday morning to three counts of murder and was sentenced to three life terms without parole.
Castillo, 43, confessed to drowning his two boys and daughter, ages 2 to 6, in a Marriott bathtub and tried to take his own life to punish his
estranged wife. In a recorded confession, made at Maryland Shock Trauma Center the day after the killings, Castillo said he spent the day in downtown Baltimore, hoping to show his children “a good day” before taking their lives, one at a time.