Woman Faces Murder Trial in Dismemberment

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 and assault with a deadly weapon.

For the past three days, attorneys for Gladis Barreras Soto have attempted to show 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.

Instead, the judge concluded that prosecutors presented sufficient evidence to support a charge of murder.

“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 the bedroom of their Ventura apartment, authorities said.

She admitted to the shooting during an interview with police two days later.

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, authorities said. Alba was identified by fingerprints.

When officers went to the apartment to inform Soto of her husband’s slaying, she confessed to the killing and told a detective that Alba had raped her 30 minutes before the shooting, according to court testimony.

On Friday, defense attorneys called to the witness stand an expert in battered woman’s syndrome who examined Soto twice in the past month.

Nancy Kaser-Boyd, a UCLA clinical psychologist, told the judge that Soto clearly exhibits the characteristics of a battered woman. On a 1-to-10 scale for domestic violence victims, with 10 being the most severe, she said Soto ranks as a 10.

“I believe she has battered woman’s syndrome,” Kaser-Boyd testified. “She has many, many of those symptoms, including flashbacks and dissociation.”

Soto’s flashbacks include images of her husband choking and raping her and striking their five children, as well as visions of Soto shooting and dismembering her husband with the saw, Kaser-Boyd testified.

The psychologist testified Soto was suffering a flashback at the moment she shot her husband.

She also concluded Soto was a traditional woman who rarely discussed the sexual, physical and psychological abuse that allegedly occurred throughout her 15-year marriage.

About four months before the slaying, Kaser-Boyd testified, Soto began to slide into a severe depression and felt fearful of her spouse.

“She also felt helpless, like she could never get out of her situation,” she said.

Defense attorneys Jorge Alvarado and Kay Duffy contend Soto’s homicidal actions came as a result of Alba’s abuse, which twice resulted in criminal convictions.

They argued Friday that Soto was suffering from battered woman’s syndrome at the time of the slaying, killing her husband in the heat of the moment and as a form of self-defense.

But prosecutors have portrayed Soto as more vengeful than victimized.

They said 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.

Prosecutor Murphy contends Soto was influenced by jealousy, not fear. And she argued for a murder charge, not manslaughter.

Soto is scheduled for an arraignment on two charges, murder and deadly assault, Aug. 16. She has a right to trial three months after that date and remains held in County Jail on $1-million bail.