I never expected the trial of Alvaro Castillo to be riveting. I thought it was just one more school-shooting copycat. But the trial has become a train wreck from which I cannot turn away. There is much to learn about human nature in Castillo’s tragedy.

It seems to me that all the participants in the trial are tiptoeing around the defendant’s mother. The defense is making his abusive father its centerpiece and has tried to portray his mother as a victim, too. But as more defense witnesses testify, we are learning about the parents’ mutual dependency and the mother’s role in her children’s hellish lives.

I’m not saying that the mother intentionally harmed her children (although that scenario has captured my imagination, and I’m developing a fictional mother who does just that). Mrs. Castillo clearly was an abused wife, and she clearly tried to do the best she could for her children.

But it is impossible to explain many things that went on in the Castillo home without acknowledging that even Mrs. Castillo contributed (probably unwittingly) to her son’s deterioration into psychosis and violence.

For example, yesterday a commentator on TruTV’s InSession coverage of the trial remarked that numerous social-service agencies were available to the family when they discovered their son was suicidal, but, instead of turning to one of them for help, the father took his son to a shooting range. A couple of years earlier when Alvaro begged his mother for meds, she refused to take him to a psychiatrist, because she “had heard” that antidepressants can cause adolescent suicide. I suppose you can forgive her for thinking this, since just that message has been sent out “over the airways” time and time again. TV ads for antidepressants now include a disclaimer that they might cause suicidal thoughts in adolescents.

But when he told his mother he was concerned that he was a pedophile, her solution was not to take him to a therapist; she told him to stop thinking about it. If she was smart enough to know that some antidepressants ought not to be given to some adolescents, she ought to have been smart enough to know that therapy was necessary for her son. (My guess is that she was afraid he was right, and she didn't want anyone to know about it, not even a mental-health professional. Her self-image couldn't take the stress of having a pedophile for a child.)

Then there’s the bizarre episode when the defendant’s mother took him on a car tour of Columbine, CO. She claims she had no idea he was obsessed with that school shooting. So, why was it she took him there of all places on vacation? Disneyworld is a lot closer to North Carolina than Colorado.

• Sidebar: Here’s another thing I know nothing about (as if this whole blog post isn’t about things of which I am completely ignorant). Was the father on this Colorado vacation, too? If not, it sounds as if Mrs. Castillo had a great deal of freedom of movement. She could have parked the car in Boulder and found a shelter for battered wives.

She also claims she had no idea he was keeping diaries and notebooks on school shootings or that he was making his video journals. If it is true that she did not know what was in his diaries, then I truly think she must be the only mother on planet Earth who never rummaged through her child’s dresser drawers. And since Alvaro Castillo shouted into the camera when making his video journals, his mother must have been absent without leave from the house.

The mother also claims she did not think it was odd that her son slept with his guns, one of which he named after a young woman with whom he was infatuated. She said she thought it had something to do with military readiness – this after he was discharged from the National Guard (presumably not honorably).

The family is Catholic. Mrs. Castillo’s theology is rather confused, though (at least it seems so to this non-Catholic). When the prosecutor questioned her about whether she was concerned because her husband died without receiving the last rites, she said she was not. She knew he was in heaven, just as her son had told her after the incident. I guess she never learned about Purgatory.

In addition, yesterday social-worker Deborah Grey told the jury that Mrs. Castillo conceived her third child (an autistic girl) when she decided she needed another child and went off her birth-control pills. Not only would her parish priest find the birth-control method disturbing, it seems to me that her abusive, Catholic husband would have found it equally disturbing. And, frankly, as a non-Catholic who believes in birth control, why a woman would want to bring another child into a world of pain like hers is completely beyond me—unless she was using pregnancy to keep her husband from beating her. (Deborah Grey, BTW, is an excellent expert witness. She introduced the idea of hereditary mental disorders into the trial very forcefully and clearly.)

I suspect that Mrs. Castillo did use her children as a shield from her husband’s abuse. She once told her son he ought to protect her from the man. She claims to have shielded the children from their father’s belt, but it’s just as likely that she put them physically between her husband and herself sometimes, too.

I might have been able to attribute Mrs. Castillo’s behavior to ignorance or even low IQ were it not for the fact that she is clearly intelligent and well-informed. She comes from an urbane Madrid background, and she knew enough to tell her son that antidepressants can cause suicide in adolescents. When she says she doesn’t speak or understand English very well, I’m sure the lady doth protest too much.

The Jury

The law in North Carolina, apparently (and I am not a lawyer) requires the defense to prove that Alvaro Castillo did not know right from wrong when he committed the crimes. I could argue either side in this case, but it really comes down to what the meaning of “know” is and, for that matter, what is “right” and what is “wrong.”

If I was on the Castillo jury, I would vote “not guilty” simply because the real evil-doers in this case are the defendant’s parents. Yes, you might scream, “stupid jury nullification.” But I know he will spend his life in one sort of institution or another no matter what the verdict. Alvaro Castillo should be adjudged incompetent and be removed from society. (I still predict a hung jury.)

Beth Karas's blog on yesterday’s trial is also riveting reading if you don’t have access to cable during the coverage.