Parents Often Fought, Girl Testifies

The 12-year-old daughter of accused murderer Gladis Soto took the stand Wednesday to describe a stormy relationship between her parents that sometimes erupted in violence.

But the night her mother is accused of killing her father, the girl remembers the two cuddling, with him resting his head in Soto’s lap as they watched television.

As a petite and timid Jazmin Alba was sworn in to testify, Soto’s loud sobs filled the Ventura County Superior courtroom, prompting her attorney to place a comforting arm around her.

From the witness stand, in a voice at times barely audible, Jazmin said her parents often fought about her father’s drinking and infidelity, and added that she once saw Pedro Alba slap her mother across the face.

Soto, 38, is accused of shooting her 35-year-old husband in the head and then cutting up his body with an electric saw before trying to burn his remains in a secluded area of Ventura.

Prosecutors allege Soto is a jealous and vindictive woman who had been planning to kill her husband for weeks before pulling the trigger. Defense attorneys, however, argue Soto is a classic battered woman, whose fragile state of mind at the time of the shooting makes her guilty of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.

The mother of six faces 50 years to life in prison if found guilty of premeditated murder.

Jazmin, the second oldest of Soto’s children, said her parents had a contentious marriage even when she was younger, when the family lived in Los Angeles in the early 1990s.

“They used to argue a lot,” Jazmin said. “Just because my dad used to get drunk and he had lots of girlfriends.”

One fight in particular, the girl recalled, went beyond heated words.

Alba had come home drunk, she said, and Soto accused him of having another girlfriend.

“They were arguing and she said something about my dad and my dad just slapped her,” Jazmin said. “Across the face.”

In another incident the girl witnessed, Pedro Alba hurled a remote control at his wife, missing her and instead striking the couple’s small son. And in yet another incident, which she did not witness, Jazmin said when her mother broke her ankle years ago, Soto said it was because Alba had pushed her down a flight of stairs.

Soto also told her daughter that she often went through Alba’s pockets and found phone numbers for various women. And sometimes her mother took Jazmin and her siblings along when she confronted the women with whom she suspected her husband was having affairs.

“I went once with her,” Jazmin said. “We went to the lady’s house and my mom [told her] he had kids.”

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The relationship seemed to improve when the family moved into a house on El Dorado Avenue in Oxnard about five years ago, the girl said. Alba told his daughter he was eager to get away from bad influences in Los Angeles. He admitted to her that he used drugs and said a new place would help him get away from his problems.

It was then that her mother seemed happy at last, she said.

“She was really nice,” Jazmin said. “She was always there for us.”

But after Soto enrolled in Ventura College, hoping to become a teacher, things began to unravel again. Her father was not happy with the decision, believing his wife was no longer providing proper care for their children.

And he became jealous. A few times, Alba took Jazmin outside his wife’s classroom, propped the girl on his shoulders, and asked her who her mother was talking to and what was she doing.

After Soto’s graduation, Alba drove his family to Mexico, where he left them with Soto’s mother. He returned to Oxnard with the hope of making some extra money before moving back to Mexico to buy a home with his family, Jazmin said. Soto, meanwhile, landed a teaching job in Mexico and enrolled her children in school.

But after a few months, Soto learned through relatives that Alba had a girlfriend, Jazmin said. Angry, Soto packed up her children and returned to Oxnard.

“She wanted to meet the lady my dad was cheating on her with,” Jazmin testified.

Alba denied the relationship, and the couple began living together in a garage behind his brother’s home in Port Hueneme.

Testimony showed that the couple’s problems soon escalated.

Jazmin said her mother believed Alba was still having an affair. She said her mother learned that Maria Esther Ortega, an Oxnard stylist who met Alba while cutting his hair, was his girlfriend.

Ortega testified Tuesday that she and Alba were merely “best friends,” not lovers.

*

Jazmin, however, said her father confided in her that he loved the woman.

Soto confronted Ortega several times, often with Jazmin and her siblings tagging along.

Frustrated with her husband’s alleged straying, Soto moved with her children to a friend’s home in North Carolina.

“Did she say she didn’t want anything to do with your dad anymore?” asked Deputy Dist. Atty. Patricia Murphy.

“Yes,” Jazmin said.

Jazmin said the family was content in North Carolina, and she didn’t want to return. She said she knew her father was with Ortega then because he told her so on the telephone.

“I was happy in North Carolina,” Jazmin told jurors. “I knew he wasn’t going to change, no matter what he said.”

But the family did return. Soto said she did not want her children to grow up without a father, Jazmin testified.

*

The couple and their children moved into a small two-bedroom apartment in Ventura--with Soto hoping to put some distance between her husband and Ortega. Still, they continued to see each other, Jazmin said.

Soto, enraged to find her husband’s van outside Ortega’s home one day in January, rammed the vehicle with her blue Chevy Nova.

But on the night Alba died, Jazmin said, her parents were not fighting.

Things seemed “just normal,” she said. It was a Saturday night in February when Jazmin left for a church outing with a friend. Her dad rested his head in Soto’s lap and watched television as his children left the house for the outing. By the time Jazmin returned, her father was gone.

Jazmin said she and her siblings went to bed about 11 p.m. She said she heard nothing unusual throughout the night, sleeping soundly until the following morning.

But authorities say sometime that night, Alba came home. According to Soto’s account to police, her husband had been at Ortega’s house. She alleges her husband had sex with her before he left and raped her when he got home, then fell asleep.

Soto told police she was pushed to the brink and picked up a .25-caliber handgun and shot him in the head as he slept. She then dragged the body into a closet.

Jazmin said she awoke the next morning to find her mother making breakfast.

“Did she look different than the night before?” Murphy asked.

“No.”

“Did you see any injuries on her?” Murphy asked.

“No.”

“Did she look like she’d been crying the night before?” she questioned.

“No,” said Jazmin; her mother looked and acted normal.

*

Later in the day, she went to the store with her mother, put gas in the family’s van, and then they all went to the beach for a while.

By Sunday night, Jazmin asked where her father was.

“She said he was probably with Esther,” Jazmin said.

Jazmin had no idea anything was wrong until the police came knocking on the door late Monday night.

Soto kept her head buried in her arms through most of her daughter’s testimony, looking up only once to lean on her attorney and wipe tears from her face.

Jazmin said she still has a relationship with her mother, visiting her at the jail every other week.

“When you go, does she ever talk to you about your dad?” Murphy asked.

“No,” Jazmin said.