Caro Testifies About Clothes

Supporting the theory that her husband framed her, Socorro Caro suggested an explanation Thursday for the damning blood stains on the pajamas she wore the night her three young sons were slain.

Under questioning from her attorneys, Caro acknowledged wearing the striped pajama shorts on which splatters of her boys’ blood and brain matter were found.

She was discovered in them on the night of Nov. 22, 1999, as her sons lay dead in their beds and she lay on her bedroom floor with a near-fatal gunshot wound to the head.

However, her testimony in a Ventura County courtroom raised questions about the baggy, blood-caked shorts, which have been a piece of persuasive evidence for the prosecution.

She told the jury Thursday that she hadn’t put them on that night--an assertion that suggests someone else wore the shorts and slipped them on her after the crimes were committed.

“I wouldn’t ever wear them,” she said. “They were too big on me. They were pregnancy pajama shorts.”

She also told the jury that she had never before seen the T-shirt she was found wearing that night.

Charged with three counts of first-degree murder, Caro has pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity.

Her attorneys allege that her husband, Dr. Xavier Caro, framed her in the deaths of the boys and in her own apparent attempted suicide.

Tearfully, Caro said she has little memory of the domestic tragedy that shattered her Santa Rosa Valley home. But she vividly recalled the outfit worn by her physician husband as he left after a quarrel that night: A maroon USC windbreaker, blue Docker pants, a white “casual dress” shirt and tennis shoes.

If her recollection is correct, her husband would have had to change swiftly after he returned from his Northridge office, discovered the carnage upstairs, and then frantically called 911. When police arrived, he was wearing black sweatpants, a T-shirt, a dark jacket, white socks and sandals.

Caro’s attorneys have argued that Xavier Caro was at home for about 45 minutes before calling 911. Prosecutors have vigorously disputed that calculation, adding that no evidence links him to the crimes.

As she testified, Caro choked back tears but generally was poised and articulate--a marked contrast to the pale woman jurors have viewed for six weeks, sometimes sobbing softly into the shoulder of one of her attorneys.

On Thursday, Caro acknowledged that her marriage had been falling apart before her sons were slain.

However, she disputed the prosecution’s depiction of her as a woman given to frightening and dramatic threats--a selfish and vengeful mother who punished her errant husband by killing three of their four sons.

‘He Stopped Telling Me He Loved Me’

She denied ever contemplating suicide, as a friend testified last month. And she said her husband’s testimony that she brandished a gun at him after an argument in 1995 was untrue.

By the autumn of 1999, she said, the couple were arguing bitterly over money. In August, she was fired from her job as his office manager for allegedly funneling thousands of dollars from the practice to her aging parents.

He had made an appointment with a divorce lawyer. She said she opposed the meeting, but dutifully noted it in the family’s appointment book.

“He stopped telling me he loved me,” she said. “He was absolutely critical of anything and everything I did. He had deep-seated anger. Communication between us was becoming very difficult.”

Still, she said, she was hopeful her marriage could be saved, chalking up her husband’s increasing coldness to a midlife crisis.

Faded Memories of a Grim Night

Recounting her sketchy memories of the night her sons were killed, Caro recalled arguing with her husband about his discipline of 11-year-old Joey. Upset that his father wouldn’t immediately come upstairs to see the Nintendo game level he had reached, Joey made a remark about the margaritas his parents were sipping after dinner.

“Oh, I get it,” he said. “You have to have your little drinks.”

In response, Xavier Caro confiscated his son’s Nintendo and TV, at least until the family was to leave for their Thanksgiving vacation the next morning.

“We started arguing,” Socorro Caro said. “I didn’t believe what he was doing was right.”

As they argued, he went to his upstairs closet and told his wife he was leaving.

After that, Caro said, she remembers only waking up in a bed at Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks.

“Did you have a memory of hurting your children?” asked Assistant Public Defender Jean Farley.

“No,” Caro said through tears. “I didn’t hurt my children.”