Opening Statements Given in Mother’s Murder Trial

Socorro Caro shot her three young sons to death in their beds nearly two years ago to punish their father for curbing her extravagant spending and threatening a divorce, a prosecutor told Ventura County jurors Wednesday.

The contention was made by Deputy Dist. Atty. Cheryl Temple during an opening statement illustrated with blow-ups of the children’s bodies, a computer-animated video and a wrenching 911 call from the Caro home.

Temple called Caro “a calculating, very selfish woman who wanted to hurt her husband in the most horrible way imaginable.”

But Assistant Public Defender Jean Farley told the jury that her client, far from being the cold-hearted monster portrayed by prosecutors, was in fact another victim. Farley contended that Caro’s husband, Dr. Xavier Caro, a physician who practiced in Northridge, was nothing so innocent as a grieving father.

Evidence and testimony will raise “a substantial inference that Dr. Caro has attempted to frame his wife,” Farley said, depicting her client as a zealously devoted mother and a woman eager to mend the deep rifts in her 13-year marriage.

Xavier Caro has never been named by the police as a suspect in the killing of his sons.

While the opposing arguments were delivered, Socorro “Cora” Caro, 44, sat at the defense table in a green plaid suit, occasionally wiping tears from her eyes with a wadded-up tissue. As photos of her slain children and their blood-soaked bedding were projected onto a courtroom wall, she burrowed her head in the shoulder of Deputy Public Defender Nicholas Beeson and wept.

Caro has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, later amending her plea to not guilty by reason of insanity. If convicted, she faces either the death penalty or life in prison.

The killings occurred on Nov. 22, 1999, in the family’s home in the upscale Santa Rosa Valley near Camarillo. After sons Joseph, 11, Christopher, 8, and Michael, 5, died, Caro shot herself in the head, according to police. The fourth son, Gabriel, now 3, was unharmed. Caro has told investigators that she has no memory of that night.

Prosecutors played a recording of Xavier Caro’s call to a 911 operator.

“The horrific animal sound you next hear comes from Dr. Caro,” Temple told the jury. “You’ll hear a man spiral into a desperate wailing; you’ll hear a father who has just found his murdered children.”

Xavier Caro had returned from his office after some evening work to find his wife bleeding in their bedroom, Temple said. Only after a 911 dispatcher asked him whether any children were in the house did he discover the boys.

“My son was gonna be somebody!” he wailed at one point. “Oh God! Oh Jesus!”

In the months before that night, Temple said, the Caros had battled over money.

Xavier Caro had imposed financial restrictions on his wife, Temple said. As office manager for his medical practice, Socorro Caro had funneled $105,000 to her parents, driving the practice into debt, Temple contended, although the defense disputes that account.

In retaliation, Caro fired her and took her checkbook and credit cards from her, Temple said.

Compounding the couple’s difficult times, Xavier Caro was having an affair with a biofeedback technician who had worked in his office, Temple said. While Socorro Caro didn’t know just who her husband was seeing, Temple said, she told friends that she suspected an affair--a suspicion that was deepened when she found a work sheet from a divorce attorney in one of his drawers.

“Her little empire was crumbling,” Temple said, “and she lashed out at the man she blamed for it.”

On the night of the killings, the Caros shared a dinner time margarita. Temple said their relationship had improved somewhat in the fall. After Xavier Caro had persuaded his wife to take the antidepressant Prozac, she told friends she was feeling better and things were going more smoothly at home.

But Temple said the couple argued that night. Their son Joey had made a crack about his parents’ drinking. Convinced he should be disciplined, Xavier Caro removed the TV and Nintendo game from his room. But Socorro Caro objected and grew strident. Her mother, Juanita Leon, who lived with the family part time, heard the commotion and screamed at Xavier Caro to get out.

As he had during confrontations in the past, Xavier Caro left for the office, Temple said. Juanita Leon left shortly after for her home in Granada Hills.

When Xavier Caro returned about 11:20 p.m., he found his family shattered.

The defense’s account of that night and the events leading to it is starkly different.

Temple took pains to point out that DNA tests showed blood from Joey and Christopher on Socorro Caro’s shorts and beneath her fingernails, and that more blood from both boys was discovered on the sinks in the master bathroom.

But the defense attorney’s first comment to the jury was that the prosecution’s forensic expert “has no scientific background, has never testified for the defense and . . . uses a psychic periodically to form his impressions.”

Farley described Xavier Caro as controlling and deceitful, and called Socorro Caro a “great, caring, conscientious, kind person.”

While Temple illustrated her statement with the murder-scene photos and a computer-animated rendition of the deaths of two of the Caro sons, Farley propped cardboard displays on easels and spoke to the jury in soft, measured tones.

Farley also read an e-mail to the jury which she said was sent by Xavier Caro to the woman he was seeing.

“I love you and miss you and want to be with you,” it said. “I guess I just want a taste of you to hold me over . . . it’ll work out. I have ideas. Perhaps you do too.”

The affair was more serious than prosecutors conveyed, Farley said, but Socorro Caro didn’t think her marital problems were insurmountable.

Prosecutors have said that Xavier Caro couldn’t persuade his wife that she’d come out of a divorce with half his estate--at least $1 million. But Farley said Socorro Caro, who “knew full well” about community property, didn’t want a divorce.

Socorro Caro thought her husband’s dissatisfaction was the product of a midlife crisis, compounded by a frustrating managed-care medical system shrinking his revenue, Farley said.

“She didn’t believe--even if he was having an affair--that would be a reason to divorce,” Farley said. “They’d get marriage counseling; they’d work it through.”

That was not to be.

On the night of Nov. 22, Xavier Caro picked a fight with his wife and let it escalate, Farley said. That way, he would be able to skip the family’s Thanksgiving trip to their lakeside vacation home near Modesto, she said; that way, he would get to spend more time with his girlfriend in Los Angeles.

When he came home, Farley said, it may not have been to the grim and silent house the prosecution suggested.

Citing telephone records, a parking-lot surveillance photo and witnesses at the Northridge Medical Center, Farley said the defense would prove that Xavier Caro got home “a minimum of 30 minutes before he called 911.”

Farley’s opening statement is to continue today.