Search for missing foster baby shifts
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BOYLSTON - As the search for a missing baby moved to a new area this weekend, the Worcester County district attorney said he was close to naming suspects in the boy's disappearance from a foster home a year ago.
"Next week, we may be able to name some suspects, although not right now," said District Attorney John J. Conte.
Investigators have said they suspect 5-month-old Marlon Devine Santos was suffocated, and had focused their search in one section of woods off the Wachusett Reservoir.
The search for the infant shifted over the weekend to an area about three miles southeast, off Diamond Hill Avenue near Routes 70 and 140, in a watershed protection area owned by the Metropolitan District Commission.
Investigators found a baby blanket, diaper and about a dozen other pieces of potential evidence at the first site, though Conte cautioned none of it had been definitively linked to the missing child.
Conte said he has asked state police to "hasten examination of them, so we can determine this and bring it to a head," he told the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester.
Liz Stammo, a spokeswoman for Conte, said Conte would not publicly identify a suspect until the analysis was complete.
Investigators said they also plan to explore the scene by air Tuesday night with infrared detection equipment normally used in drug investigations.
The baby was reported missing from his Worcester foster home on Nov. 7, 1998. Foster parents Jose M. Castillo and Yolanda I. Castillo said he had disappeared from their home two days earlier.
Neither foster parent is cooperating with investigators in the suspected murder of the baby, Conte has said.
In an unrelated case, Jose Castillo was arrested in December on charges of raping a girl, then 11, in 1992. He was also charged with sexually assaulting two foster girls who lived in his home.
The first girl later recanted the rape accusation.
Castillo, 52, a church pastor, is being held on $100,000 cash bail while awaiting trial.
Over a period of several years, the Castillos cared for 52 foster children. The couple was removed from the state Department of Social Services' roster of qualified foster parents after the baby was reported missing.



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