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HILLSBOROUGH -- As the days counted down toward Aug. 30, 2006, Alvaro Castillo seemed to be living two lives -- one in which he appeared to be recovering from a suicide attempt, and the other in which he bought weapons, watched violent movies and made hours of videotapes detailing his suicidal and murderous plans.
Even as he told his mother, father and therapists that he had no plans to kill himself or hurt anyone else, he was secretly buying firearms, making bombs in his house, ordering the items he would need for the massacre he planned for Orange High and making videotapes to explain his actions.
Castillo, 21, is standing trial for first-degree murder of his father, Rafael Castillo, and for shouting at and wounding students at Orange High School on Aug. 30, 2006.
Castillo's defense team hopes to convince a jury that he is not guilty by reason of insanity because he didn't know right from wrong when he committed the acts.
On the other hand, the prosecution is trying to prove that Castillo did know what he was doing when he killed his father and later shot at students at the high school.
Although the defense is presenting its case, Orange-Chatham District Attorney Jim Woodall spent a good portion of Wednesday cross-examining the defense's witnesses. One was Castillo's mother, Vicky Castillo.
Under questioning by Woodall, Vicky Castillo said she was unaware of any of her son's secret activities that were taking place in his bedroom and didn't believe he would hurt himself or anyone else.
Yet she also testified she found two firearms under his mattress even after he had tried to kill himself. Although Castillo's father wanted to remove the weapons from the house, Vicky Castillo thought her son should be allowed to keep the weapons because they seemed to provide him comfort.
In an attempt to show that Castillo did know right from wrong, Woodall also asked Vicky Castillo about a statement she made to investigators after the shootings. In the statement, she said her son asked for forgiveness, but on the stand, she changed her story and said didn't recall her son telling her that.
"Two days after this Alvaro didn't know what he did was wrong. I could tell that," she testified.
Deborah Grey, a social worker who was hired by the defense, testified that she prepared a bio-psycho-social history of Castillo that required her to delve into the history of his family, interview old friends of the family, his teachers, his family members and Castillo himself.
She spoke of the problems in the family caused by the cultural and philosophical differences between Castillo's mother and father. While his mother came from a wealthy family in Madrid, his father came from a small town in El Salvador.
During the early part of their marriage, the parents often fought angrily with each other. Throughout his life, Castillo's mother often confided her marital problems to her children, Grey said, which put the children in the role of being the parents to their parents.
Vicky Castillo also began experiencing intense panic attacks, Grey testified.
"She would start to scream, 'I'm dying. I'm dying,'" Grey said. "The children were terrified for their mother, that she was dying."
"Alvaro thought his mother was indeed dying, and felt responsible to make it better, to take care of her," Grey said.
Alvaro Castillo never showed any anger, according to the people she interviewed, Grey said. Instead he began to wall off his feelings for fear that his father would become enraged if he did.
Woodall challenged Grey's report asking why she focused so much on Castillo's idea of "sacrificing" his father, rather than on other motives he mentioned in his journal, such as wanting to impress Anna Rose, a girl he was obsessed with, or the attention he would receive for being a mass murderer, like Eric Harris, one of the Columbine shooters.
During the testimony, it was also revealed that Castillo's family has a long history of mental illness. Within his immediate family, Castillo's mother suffered from depression and panic attacks; his sister, Victoria, was bulimic during the spring and summer of 2006, and another sister is autistic.
On his mother's side of the family in Spain, her mother and some of her 10 siblings suffered from depression, anxiety and psychosis. A couple of relatives attempted suicide and at least one succeeded.
