The Raleigh News and Observer report on material from the Castillo videos that they did not release…
HILLSBOROUGH – On a homemade video, Alvaro Castillo confesses to shooting his father four times, then walks into a room and records the sheet-draped corpse.
“Look at me. I’m not even crying. I just killed him, and I feel fine,” the Hillsborough teenager says into the camera.
“I’m not afraid anymore,” he says in the video’s final scene. “I have to die.”
The tape, along with a handwritten letter, arrived at the office of The Chapel Hill News on Thursday, the day after Castillo was arrested and charged with a shooting at Orange High School, and told sheriff’s deputies he had killed his father.
In the video, Castillo holds the camera close to his face and says he plans to kill himself and his father. Later, the teenager records a body slumped on a sofa. Two bare legs stick out from under a blood-flecked sheet.
Most of the hour-plus video shows Castillo aiming the camera at a small television playing violent movies. They include “Scarface,” “Predator,” “The Shining,” “Natural Born Killers” and a documentary, “Zero Hour: Massacre at Columbine High.”
Castillo narrates the violence, sometimes chiming in word-for-word with actors. He repeatedly uses the mute button to silence profanity.
Grisly scenes prompt a throaty laugh.
“Beautiful,” Castillo says, during “Scarface’s” final bloody scene, when the lead character floats dead in a swimming pool.
On the video, Castillo notes that he first watched these movies when he was 8 to 10 years old. He taped them, he says, to show how violent the world is.
Castillo also says on the video that his father slapped — but never punched — his head, back and rear. His father disciplined his mother “like a child,” he says.
The letter also claims abuse: “His threats and abuse took their toll on me.”
In another scene, Castillo cocks a shotgun and puts the barrel in his mouth, then points it at the camera. The word “Arlene” is written on a scrap of paper taped to the weapon.
Castillo says his suicide would be “the perfect instant killing.”
Near the end of the video, Castillo addresses the parents of the students he plans to kill, displaying a shotgun shell and a 9 mm bullet. He encourages parents to shoot themselves and reunite with their children in the afterlife.
“Once again, parents, I’m sorry about this. I’m sorry about the pain you’ll go through,” Castillo says. “If you want to be with your children, go with them.”
Castillo pants in front of the camera, describing his father’s killing.
Before turning off the camera, he says, “It’s time.”
We were selective, however. We decided not to do what Castillo had asked in his letter — simply make the tape public and allow him, in the letter writer’s mind, to join the high school violence pantheon. Instead, we chose the four brief clips that illustrated the progress of the video and complemented the rest of our reporting.
We did not excerpt the graphic sections of the video (where he shows the camera his father’s body, for instance) or scenes where he clearly seeks to glamorize his actions.
We will not post the entire video, nor will we give copies to other media. We will work with the AP to make one of the excerpts available to other news outlets.
