Authorities in San Jose are continuing their investigation into a man who allegedly approached a police officer last week, confessed to killing someone, then led the officer to a body.
In what Santa Clara County Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Gadeberg said was an unusual set of circumstances, authorities allege that 28-year-old Marcelino Castro killed two people, possibly more, for reasons they still haven’t determined.
The first victim knew Castro, the second victim did not, Gadeberg said.
“The fact that he would progress to what appears to be a total stranger is certainly concerning and suggests there may not be a conventional motive other than compulsion to kill,” he said.
Asked if there were possibly more victims, Gadeberg said “he wouldn’t be shocked.”
According to a police department news release, on Sept. 19 around 5:14 p.m., Castro flagged down a San Jose Police Department officer and confessed that he had killed someone.
Officers responded to the area of Lelong Avenue and Alma Avenue just off State Route 87 near a train station, where they found the body of a man, according to the release.
Castro then provided information about a possible second homicide about three miles away, according to the release. Detectives responded to the scene and located a second body.
“It’s an unusual case,” Gadeberg said. “To have someone to plan out a murder, to lure someone that they know to a secluded location, to take their life, to take the opportunity to cool off and reflect and evade detection and then go on and take another life. For someone to take someone’s life at random in this way.”
Castro was arrested and booked into the Santa Clara County Main Jail on suspicion of murder, according to the release. The motive and circumstances of the killings are still under investigation.
The identities of those killed haven’t been publicly released.
According to the statement of facts in Castro’s criminal complaint, Castro told police he buried the body in a creek across from Tamien Station. He pointed to an opening in a wire fence leading to the Guadalupe riverbed and said that the grave was near a trail below the roadway.
Officers found a shallow grave and used shovels to find a human foot, leg and knee. The body had a laceration across the neck, the document said.
Castro told officers that he killed another person near the Guadalupe River Park trail and showed detectives where he left the body, the complaint said. He showed detectives a red tent wrapped around a body. He told officers he lured the man to a secluded grassy area to smoke, then strangled him and bludgeoned him with a rock, prosecutors said. He then wrapped the body in the tent and dropped it in the grass near the shore, according to the document.
Gadeberg said that the first homicide occurred on Sept. 13, and the second days later.
Castro allegedly tried to turn himself in at the Main County Jail in San Jose, but when deputies didn’t believe him, he flagged down someone at police headquarters, according to Gadeberg.
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