Woman to Face Murder Trial in Husband’s Death

A 38-year-old Ventura woman who confessed to fatally shooting her husband and then dismembering his body with an electric saw was ordered Friday to stand trial on charges of murder.

For the past three days, attorneys for Gladis Barreras Soto had tried to show that she was a battered woman who lashed out at an abusive husband after he raped her.

But Superior Court Judge Charles W. Campbell Jr. rejected the defense argument that Soto should face a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.

“The defense evidence may explain why she did what she did,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Patricia Murphy said after the ruling. “But it doesn’t excuse it legally.”

Soto, a homemaker and part-time community college student, shot her husband, Pedro Alba, to death on Feb. 20 as he slept in their Ventura apartment.

Soto also told authorities she sawed off her husband’s arms, legs and head in an attempt to dispose of his body and then tried to burn the parts in the Ventura River bottom.

A transient sleeping near the dry riverbed saw Soto and the burning bags and called police.

Nancy Kaser-Boyd, a UCLA clinical psychologist, testified Friday that Soto “has battered woman’s syndrome. She has many, many of those symptoms, including flashbacks and dissociation.”

But Prosecutors have portrayed Soto as more vengeful than victimized. She bought a gun from a group of unidentified men on Ventura Avenue days before the killing. She also admits to intentionally ramming her car into a van carrying Alba’s girlfriend in January. She faces a charge of assault with a deadly weapon in that incident.