Caro’s Concern for Son Recalled

As she awoke from surgery, Socorro Caro asked desperately about her youngest child, but not about the other three sons she is accused of killing, according to testimony in her murder trial.

“Where is Gabriel? Where is Gabriel? The baby--is he OK?” Caro asked, an investigator for the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department testified.

Lawyers Wednesday sparred over those questions from the Santa Rosa Valley woman.

As she lay in a hospital bed recovering from a bullet wound to the brain, Caro did not ask about the three sons who died in their beds the night of Nov. 22, 1999, said Sgt. Cheryl Wade, who tape-recorded Caro at Los Robles Regional Medical Center.

During their three-hour session, Caro tearfully said she was “sorry” about what had happened to her children, ages 5 to 11, according to Wade.

Charged with three counts of first-degree murder, Caro has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Her attorneys have suggested her husband, Dr. Xavier Caro, framed his wife in the children’s deaths and made it appear she had attempted suicide.

Worried the questions about 13-month-old Gabriel would be seen as an implicit confession, Assistant Public Defender Jean Farley, Socorro Caro’s lead attorney, tried Wednesday to have them stricken from the record.

Jurors heard Wade on the witness stand earlier this week, but Farley argued Wednesday the testimony was improper. The investigator had no right to be with Caro after telling her she was a suspect and hearing her ask for an attorney, Farley contended.

Prosecutor Jim Ellison disagreed, arguing the questions about Gabriel were voluntary.

Wade testified she had been in the hospital room for some time before advising Caro she had the right to legal representation. After reading her the Miranda warning, Wade said, Caro asked “nothing pertaining to my investigation.” The questions about Gabriel were not a response to an interrogation, but a spontaneous expression of concern, she said.

Superior Court Judge Donald D. Coleman delayed a decision until more testimony is heard this morning.

However he decides, the jury’s nine women and three men will already have heard a number of statements from Caro during her hospital interview.

Hours after her brain surgery, she was in pain and asking for more medication, according to testimony. A drain had been inserted into her skull and a breathing tube in her mouth. Her foot was broken--the result, she told Wade, of wrestling with one of her boys and falling down the stairs.

As her mother, Juanita Leon, prayed over her, Caro clutched her nightgown and said, “My babies. My babies. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Wade testified.

Caro told Wade she did not recall the previous night’s events, an amnesia typical of brain injuries such as hers, according to a neurosurgeon who testified earlier this month.

Asked what she had for dinner before the slayings, she answered salad, leftover lamb chops and two margaritas.

Testimony is to continue today.