Caro Found Guilty of Murdering 3 Sons

As Socorro Caro sobbed quietly, a Ventura County jury on Monday convicted her of first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of her three young sons.

The verdict, which came after five days of deliberation, drew mixed reactions.

In a hallway outside, her mother, Juanita Leon, collapsed wailing into the arms of defense attorneys, who led her through a swarm of reporters and TV cameras. Meanwhile, her physician husband, Xavier Caro, was embraced by well-wishers pleased over his vindication.

Caro’s defense hinged on persuading jurors that the wrong person had been accused of the carnage that took place in the Caros’ Santa Rosa Valley home the night of Nov. 22, 1999.

Throughout the nine-week trial, defense attorneys maintained that Xavier Caro framed his wife after killing 11-year-old Joey, 8-year-old Michael and 5-year-old Christopher. They also argued that he pumped a bullet into Socorro Caro’s brain and broke her foot as she struggled to shield the boys from his rage.

The family rift was evident outside the courtroom Monday.

While Xavier Caro acknowledged that he felt relief over the verdict, his wife’s uncle sat on a corridor bench and shook his head.

“He’s a cold person,” said Julian Leon, who drove from San Fernando to Ventura for all but two days of his niece’s trial. “I can’t believe that this took place.”

Socorro Caro pleaded not guilty, later amending her plea to not guilty by reason of insanity. Monday’s verdict set the stage for a hearing in which jurors will determine whether she was sane when she killed three of her four boys. If she was, they will recommend one of two sentences after a final hearing: life without parole or the death penalty.

After the verdict, attorneys were terse. Caro’s defense team declined comment. Prosecutor Jim Ellison said he was satisfied with the outcome but declined further comment, pointing out that the trial has yet to be completed.

The jury of 10 women and two men reached its verdict about six hours after Superior Court Judge Donald D. Coleman replaced one of the panel’s 12 members. In a hearing Monday morning, the man admitted that he had engaged another juror in a conversation about the case--a violation of a court order not to talk about the case outside the jury room.

During the hearing, the man said deliberations had been bogged down by “emotional attacks” from other jurors. Last week, the jury’s foreman complained to Coleman that one of the jurors was refusing to deliberate--another indication of frayed nerves on the panel.

On many days during the emotionally charged trial, Caro wept on the shoulder of one of her attorneys. On a courtroom wall a few feet away, 6-square-foot projected photos showed her boys lying dead on their blood-soaked bedding.

Details of Macabre Murder Scene

During arcane testimony from forensic scientists, the images of childhood were disquietingly mingled with the jargon of a homicide investigation: “projected blood” on the boys’ Goofy doll, “blood-splatter events” in the boys’ beds. At one point during testimony about the pattern of bloodstains on the boys’ bunk bed, the trial was briefly halted after Caro screamed in anguish and burst into tears.

In the autumn of 1999, prosecutors claimed, Caro was seething over her deteriorating marriage. Her husband had fired her from her job as office manager at his Northridge medical practice. Convinced she was secretly funneling money to her parents, he confiscated her checkbook and credit cards. She knew he had conferred with a divorce attorney and suspected--rightly, as it turned out--that he was having an affair with a woman on his staff.

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

Prosecutors painted Socorro Caro as selfish and calculating--a woman willing to punish her husband by sacrificing her children.

Defense attorneys offered a radically different vision. They presented her as a pious woman and loving mother, lavishly praised by her children’s teachers as a classroom volunteer. She was depicted as eager to work out differences with her husband but realistic about the possibility of divorce.

Xavier Caro, on the other hand, was portrayed by the defense as a cruel and brilliant manipulator. Beset by middle-aged angst and passion for a younger woman, he was “so unhappy with his family situation at the time that he would do anything to not have to be with them,” contended Assistant Public Defender Jean Farley.

The case forced jurors to weigh the credibility of husband and wife.

On the witness stand for five days, Xavier Caro told of coming home from his office after a quarrel with his wife and discovering three of his sons dead and his wife moaning in a pool of blood on the bedroom floor. He spoke with the precision of a scientist, but at moments lost his composure.

Recounting how he attempted to resuscitate his son Michael, he faltered. “The back of his head came off in my hand,” he said through his tears. “I saw the sutures. I knew exactly what it was. My baby’s skull in my hand . . .”

Testifying last month, Socorro Caro was calm and articulate. She had little memory of the night that shattered her family; a brain surgeon earlier testified that injuries like hers often result in partial amnesia.

She also had difficulty remembering statements she had made from her hospital bed to a sheriff’s investigator. She had asked, “Is the baby OK?”--a statement prosecutors saw as an admission of guilt because Caro apparently had not been told that 13-month-old Gabriel was the only surviving child.

Gabriel, who was unharmed in the attack, now lives with Xavier Caro.

Despite her memory lapses, Caro vividly recalled the difficulties of her 13-year marriage. She said she was “saddened” by her husband’s growing dissatisfaction--not enraged, as prosecutors insisted. Her attorneys read jurors a contemplative e-mail message she sent her husband the month before the killings.

“Are these the rantings of an incoherent, hysterical woman,” Farley asked, “or do we have instead a woman who reasons logically?”

Whatever jurors thought of the Caros, they also had to evaluate physical evidence from the crime scene.

Boys’ Blood on Hands, Clothing

Prosecutors pointed to a palm print stained with the blood of Christopher and Joey, reminding jurors that Caro had the blood of those boys on her right palm. They also relied on expert testimony showing the boys’ “high-velocity” splattered blood on Caro’s pajama shorts.

In testimony, Caro said she had not put on the shorts she was found wearing that night. They were maternity shorts, she said, and she hadn’t worn them in a year.

The next hurdle for the defense will be the trial’s sanity phase, which is to begin Wednesday. Under California law, Caro’s attorneys must prove their client could not distinguish right from wrong or was so mentally ill that she felt she had no choice but to kill. If the jury agrees, she will be treated in a state mental hospital and released only if she recovers.

*

Times staff writer Holly J. Wolcott contributed to this report.