Woman Held in Slaying of Sons Was Abused, Her Mother Says

Speaking through tears, Socorro Caro’s mother testified Wednesday that her daughter was an abused wife who had endured a beating from her husband the night she fatally shot three of their four children in the head.

But prosecutors presented evidence that Caro had a quick temper and was desperate at the thought of her successful physician husband leaving her and her children penniless.

“He doesn’t want us anymore, mother,” Caro’s mother, Juanita Leon, testified that her daughter said in the hours before the shooting. “He’s gone now, I don’t have any money, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Caro’s mother was the chief witness Wednesday at her daughter’s hearing in Ventura County Superior Court. At its conclusion, the judge ruled there was enough evidence to send Caro, 42, to trial in the deaths of her three boys. She could be eligible for the death penalty.

Christopher Caro, 5, Michael Caro, 8, and Joseph Caro, 11, were killed as they slept in the family’s upscale Santa Rosa Valley home on Nov. 23. A fourth son, an infant, was unharmed.

Authorities said Caro fired a single shot into her own head.

Caro, her closely cropped hair growing out after surgery, wailed loudly and buried her head on the defense table as her mother testified.

Leon, who said she often spent as many as five nights a week at her daughter’s home to help care for her grandchildren, said the Caros’ marriage had been rocky since about last summer.

Leon said the couple fought often. Dr. Xavier Caro, a physician with a private practice in Northridge, lost weight. He stripped his wife of her credit cards and checkbook, Leon said.

An investigator for the district attorney’s office, Dan Thompson, testified that Xavier Caro told him hours after the shooting that his marriage was troubled. Caro also said he recently had learned the couple was in dire financial straits, Thompson said.

The cause, Caro said, was his wife’s spending, Thompson testified. Caro said he learned his wife had put her parents on the payroll at the medical office, even though they did not work there. Her mother and father also lived rent-free in a Granada Hills home that Caro owns.

After learning of the payroll situation, Caro fired his wife and restricted her access to the family’s money, Thompson said.

Caro also acknowledged he had a brief affair in August, Thompson said. Around that time, he visited a divorce attorney, he said.