Soto Defense Cites Years of Abuse

Setting out to counter the prosecution’s portrayal of Gladis Soto as a vindictive killer, defense attorneys opened their case Thursday by presenting evidence that the 38-year-old housewife endured years of abuse before turning a gun on her husband.

Wiping away tears, 63-year-old Oxnard resident Carmen Mendoza described for jurors how Soto once pulled back her blouse to reveal bite marks on her breasts.

“She had been bitten all over,” Mendoza testified. “I couldn’t count, but I could see the marks where the teeth were.”

Mendoza was among several women called by the defense to testify about bruises and black eyes they observed on Soto while she was living with Pedro Alba, her husband of 15 years.

The 35-year-old welder was shot to death on Feb. 20. Soto confessed to the killing and admitted dismembering the body with a saw and burning his remains in a dry riverbed. She faces 50 years to life in prison if convicted of murder and related charges.

Prosecutors say Soto intentionally killed her spouse in a jealous rage over his infidelities.

But defense attorneys contend the Ventura homemaker lashed out after years of abuse--culminated by a rape the night of the slaying.

As Soto’s trial continued before Judge Herbert Curtis in Ventura County Superior Court, the dark-haired and weepy defendant sat slumped over the defense table.

She rarely looked up--even as longtime friends such as Maria Angeles Fernandez took the witness stand to support her.

Fernandez, who took classes with Soto at Oxnard College, told jurors she often saw bruises on the defendant’s arms, legs and face in the five years since meeting Soto. One day, Fernandez said, she went with Soto to her apartment and found Alba lying shirtless and apparently drunk on the couch.

“He shouted at us when we opened the door,” she testified. Soto, Fernandez said, became “nervous” and took her outside to talk.

Mendoza said when she met Soto last year the defendant had a swollen eye. Soto’s brother, Jorge, was living with Mendoza at the time and Soto sometimes visited, Mendoza testified.

Mendoza told the court that Soto during one visit said she was moving out of state because she could no longer tolerate Alba’s abuse and infidelities.

“I am going to show you something my husband did to me,” Mendoza recalled Soto saying.

“She opened a little blouse she was wearing and showed me her breasts. I am old and felt ashamed and turned away,” she testified through tears.

“I told her, ‘Why don’t you tell the police?’ ” Mendoza said, referring to the bite marks. “She just told me she was going very far away.”

According to court testimony, Soto later moved with her children to North Carolina but returned weeks later to her husband. They moved into a Ventura apartment, where Alba was shot.

Three weeks before the slaying, Soto went to the local offices of the Immigration and Naturalization Service to report her husband as an illegal immigrant, Agent Jose Bayanilla testified Thursday.

In her effort to get Alba deported, Bayanilla said, Soto completed a sworn affidavit stating her husband had been “very abusive” during their marriage, throwing objects such as a remote control at her and threatening her with knives and guns.

Soto, who is a U.S. citizen, stated in the affidavit that she didn’t report the abuse to police because she loved her husband.