Caro Testifies She Never Put On the Bloody Pajamas She Wore

Supporting the theory that her husband framed her, Socorro Caro testified at her trial in Ventura on Thursday that she had never put on the pajamas in which she was found, splattered with her sons’ blood, the night they were killed.

Under questioning from her attorneys, Caro acknowledged that she was wearing the bloody striped pajama shorts when she was discovered lying on her bedroom floor with a gunshot wound to the head the night of Nov. 22, 1999, as three of her sons lay dead in their beds.

But she told the jury she hadn’t put on the shorts that night, suggesting that someone else put 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 said she had never before seen the T-shirt she was found wearing that night.

Caro has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to three counts of first-degree murder. Her lawyers claim 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 tragedy that night in her Santa Rosa Valley home. But she recalled in detail the outfit worn by her physician husband as he left after a quarrel that night: A maroon USC jacket, blue Docker pants, a white “casual dress” shirt and tennis shoes.

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

Caro’s attorneys have argued that her husband 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 crying softly into the shoulder of one of her attorneys.

On Thursday, Caro acknowledged that her marriage had been falling apart.

But 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.

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.