Caro Attorney Says Evidence Was Planted

A defense attorney for Socorro Caro on Thursday charged that her client’s husband planted evidence and faked anguish over the slayings of their three young sons in an effort to frame her.

Deputy Public Defender Jean Farley also alleged that the apparent suicide attempt by Socorro Caro on the night of the boys’ shootings was an attack by someone else.

Returning to his Santa Rosa Valley home from his Northridge medical office on Nov. 22, 1999, Xavier Caro discovered three of his four sons shot to death in their beds, according to police. Socorro Caro lay on their bedroom floor, shot in the head.

Elaborating on themes from an opening statement that began Wednesday, Farley told jurors they will hear a forensics expert testify that “Socorro Caro’s wound was not consistent at all with a suicide.”

Dr. Warren Lovell, a retired Ventura County medical examiner, will tell them that the bullet wound’s location and size, as well as other evidence, “are consistent with someone else holding a gun in a downward fashion,” Farley said.

Defending a woman charged with three counts of first-degree murder, Farley used her opening statement to cast suspicion on the husband, who has never been named by police as a suspect.

Outside the courtroom, Raul Caro, Xavier’s brother, called her contention “a preposterous, ludicrous, hurtful claim.”

“It’s absurd,” said Caro, a U.S. Border Patrol agent who lives in Imperial. “He loved his children more than he loved himself.”

Socorro Caro, 44, has pleaded not guilty, later amending her plea to not guilty by reason of insanity. If convicted, she will either spend the rest of her life in prison or face execution.

On Wednesday, jurors heard a 911 tape on which Xavier Caro broke into pained cries as he discovered his children’s bodies.

But on Thursday, Farley said she and Deputy Public Defender Nicholas Beeson would cast doubt on the authenticity of Xavier Caro’s anguish.

“We will show you the staging that is taking place,” she said.

The couple had been in the throes of marital problems for some time, according to both prosecutors and defense attorneys. Xavier Caro had an affair with a woman who worked for him. Upset with the state of his marriage, he conferred with a divorce attorney--something he didn’t tell his wife until she found the attorney’s card attached to a work sheet that toted up a division of the couple’s assets.

Farley said Socorro Caro wanted their 13-year marriage to continue, but that Xavier Caro had other plans.

That is why he left a letter purporting to be from Socorro Caro to him in a place where investigators would find it, Farley said.

The letter--a disjointed note that conveys Socorro Caro’s depression--was meant to mislead police, according to Farley.

“There’s a problem when you don’t have a suicide note as to how to explain why Mrs. Caro would kill herself,” Farley said.

A handwriting expert will testify that “the document does not come back to Mrs. Caro’s handwriting,” she said, promising that “Mrs. Caro will tell you whose handwriting it is.”

Farley also indicated she would challenge the prosecution’s assertions about DNA material from the slain boys being found under Socorro Caro’s fingernails.

“There are at least 100 reasons that DNA would be under her fingernails,” Farley said, pointing out that she had put her boys to bed only a few hours before the shootings.

“The children said their prayers every night,” Farley said. “Mrs. Caro said their prayers with them.”

Later Thursday, jurors received a grim photo tour of the family’s million-dollar home near Camarillo. Laying the legal foundation to admit crime-scene photos as evidence, prosecutors had a former sheriff’s department employee verify hundreds of photos she took. They saw antique furniture and collectible dolls in the well-appointed home--as well as bloodstains, bullet fragments, and the bodies of Joey, 11; Michael, 8; and Christopher, 5.

The family’s youngest son, Gabriel, is now 3 and living with Xavier Caro.