(CBS/AP) A man who had argued with his estranged wife over the custody of their three children has confessed to drowning them in a hotel bathtub on the night they were to go back with their mother, police said Monday.
Mark Castillo, 41, of Rockville was charged with three counts of first-degree murder and six counts of child abuse. Police say he was charged about 1 p.m. Monday after being treated at a hospital for self-inflicted cuts to his neck.
Police did not cite a motive.
But his wife wrote in court documents that her husband had threatened to make her suffer by killing the children. She sought a protective order Dec. 25, 2006, and asked that the court order Castillo to receive counseling.
“He has never actually hurt (the children), but did tell me that the worst thing he could do to me would be to kill the children and not me so I could live without them,” she wrote in the petition.
The Washington Post reports court records state Castillo suffers from bipolar disorder, and that his wife told the court that he had undergone a week of involuntarily commitment to a psychiatric hospital.
“He had a manic episode,” she wrote, and “was driving around the country living in the car and threatened to kill himself.”
She also wrote that when her husband took the children for visits, he would not tell her where they were staying.
A temporary protective order was approved three days after the petition was filed, but Circuit Judge Joseph Dugan rejected a permanent order Jan. 10, 2007. In explaining his decision, Dugan wrote there was “no clear or convincing evidence that the alleged acts of abuse occurred.”
Police identified the children as Anthony, 6, Austin, 4, and Athena, 2.
Castillo and the children spent time Saturday afternoon at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, then checked into the Baltimore Marriott Inner Harbor. The children were drowned, one at a time, in the tub that night, Bealefeld said.

cbsnews.com