UPDATE, Tuesday 4:25 p.m.: The Loudoun County jury who convicted Braulio Castillo on Monday heard evidence and argument Tuesday morning, and then sentenced him to life plus 16 years in prison Tuesday afternoon. Loudoun Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Plowman said the jury deliberated for about three hours before returning a life sentence on the first-degree murder charge, which had a minimum 20-year term, plus 15 years for burglary and one year for violating a protective order, for entering his former Ashburn home after being prohibited by the order.
Loudoun Circuit Court Judge Stephen E. Sincavage set sentencing for Oct. 6, where he can impose the jury’s sentence, suspend or reduce it, but not increase it. Defense attorney Peter Greenspun told reporters Castillo would appeal the convictions.
ORIGINAL POST, Monday, 8:30 p.m.: Braulio Castillo, an Ashburn IT executive who claimed his estranged wife committed suicide in 2014, was convicted of first-degree murder by a Loudoun County jury Monday night and immediately sent to jail. He had been free on $2 million bond for the last two years.
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The jury, which deliberated for more than nine hours Monday, will return Tuesday morning to hear evidence and consider a sentence for Castillo, 50, which could range from 20 years to life in prison without parole.
The trial lasted more than five weeks, and prosecutors claimed that Castillo had suffocated his wife, Michelle Castillo, with a pillow, and then strung her up in a basement shower to make her death look like a suicide. The Virginia medical examiner’s office ruled that Michelle Castillo had been asphyxiated but that the cord around her neck had not caused her death.
The Castillos had been married for nearly 18 years and had five children. In early 2012, they bought a small company, renamed it Strong Castle, and quickly began receiving tens of millions of dollars in federal IT contracts from the IRS, which attracted Congressional scrutiny.
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In March 2013, Michelle Castillo obtained an emergency protective order against her husband, claiming he tried to force her to have sex, was verbally abusive and had imprisoned her at times in their $1.1 million home on Belmont Station Drive. In two subsequent hearings, Braulio Castillo fought to have the order removed, but judges ruled against him both times, and he was banned from the 8,000-square-foot house he and his wife had built in 2005. He moved into another house the couple owned in the same subdivision a few blocks away.
The jury was not told the specifics of what Castillo had done to deserve a protective order, but they were aware of the order and that he was not allowed in the house.
A year later, in March 2014, the couple was moving toward a divorce trial in which Braulio Castillo was likely to give up the house to his wife and at least $14,000 a month in child and spousal support payments. Castillo’s lawyers, Peter Greenspun and Jonathan Shapiro, argued that the divorce was amicable and proceeding toward a mutually agreed resolution. Loudoun Chief Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Nicole Wittmann argued that Castillo did not want his ex-wife controlling access to his children and wanted to share his life with a triathlete he had begun dating.
Castillo took the witness stand in his own defense last week, looked directly at the jury and calmly denied he killed his wife or entered his former house.
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On the night of March 19, 2014, Castillo had dinner with four of his children, ages 3, 6, 9 and 11 — his oldest, Nicholas, was away at college — and his sister then drove them to be picked up by their mother. Prosecutors believe that during that period, Braulio Castillo entered his former home, captured on a grainy surveillance tape from a neighbor’s camera, then left the home about four hours later. Both Nicholas Castillo and the neighbor identified the shadowy figure as Braulio Castillo.
The Castillo children called their father in the morning when they couldn’t find their mother. Braulio Castillo and a neighbor went inside, searched the house, and then Castillo took the children to school while the neighbor called police. Sheriff’s deputies found Michelle Castillo hanging in a basement shower with bruises on her face and her hair hanging over her face. Braulio Castillo’s DNA was found on her bed and on her sweatshirt, prosecutors said. The shower in her master bathroom was running all night, water records showed.
Greenspun argued that Braulio Castillo, a respected member of McLean Bible Church, had no motive or disposition to kill his wife. Wittmann said that Castillo’s letters and hundreds of phone calls from jail, prior to being granted bond, to his girlfriend Kristin White, as well as shipping some of his deceased wife’s clothes to her, indicated he wanted Michelle Castillo dead.
Wittmann said she had never conducted a trial where so many of the victim’s friends were present every day. “She was obviously a very well-loved person,” Wittmann said. “This is a victory for her friends and her children.”
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