Bloodstain Expert Re-Creates Shootings

Bloodstains on a pair of baggy striped pajama shorts tell a grim tale of a mother killing her young sons, a crime-scene expert testified Tuesday in the murder trial of Socorro Caro.

Retained by the prosecution, consultant Rod Englert held up the plastic-encased shorts for jurors and pointed to two areas that could be damning for the Santa Rosa Valley woman who has been accused of shooting three of her four boys as they lay in bed.

A “mist” of blood on the inner left leg had burst from the head of Caro’s 5-year-old son Christopher, Englert theorized. And a rust-colored feathery blotch on the right leg was smeared from the blood-soaked hair of 11-year-old Joey, he said.

Caro is charged with three counts of first-degree murder and has pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. Her attorneys say she was framed by her physician husband, Dr. Xavier Caro--a claim that prosecutors on Tuesday tried to debunk through Englert.

Now retired from the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Department in Portland, Ore., Englert has offered bloodstain testimony, predominantly for prosecutors, in about 250 trials across the U.S. He also has lectured at Scotland Yard and trained Russian police chiefs in bloodstain interpretation.

On Tuesday, Englert said that the clothing worn by Xavier Caro on Nov. 22, 1999--the night of his children’s deaths--bore no evidence of the sort of “high-velocity splatter” he would expect from the boys’ fatal wounds.

In the start of her cross-examination at the end of the day, Socorro Caro’s lead attorney tried to suggest that Englert had not been as meticulous as he should have been. In examining Xavier Caro’s sandals, he missed an area of three small bloodstains that other experts later discovered, Assistant Public Defender Jean Farley said.

“I missed it,” he admitted on the witness stand. “I wasn’t that thorough.”

Englert’s specialty is reconstructing crimes by analyzing the patterns of bloodstains at the scene. He pores over investigators’ reports, autopsy photos and other evidence, but relies on DNA experts to pinpoint the individuals linked to various blood samples.

Testifying all day Tuesday, he sketched out a scene of Socorro Caro leaning over the lower berth of a bunk bed in the family’s well-appointed home near Camarillo, holding a gun against Michael’s head and pulling the trigger. Very little “blow back” would be anticipated from such a shot, he said.

In bed next to Michael, Christopher apparently was shot point-blank as he sat up, according to Englert’s interpretation of droplets that streamed on to the boy’s legs and down onto a stuffed Goofy doll on the floor. Apparently still moving after that shot, he was shot again, with the deeper wound spraying blood onto his brother’s face, a wall, a bedpost and Socorro Caro’s shorts, Englert testified.

Asked about Joey’s death in a separate bedroom, Englert said the boy was shot as he lay on his stomach. However, stains on the bedding led the retired investigator to believe that Joey was soon turned over. That echoes a claim made by prosecutor Cheryl Temple, who argued in her opening statement that Socorro Caro arranged the crime scene to inflict as much pain as she could on the husband she was seeking to punish.

Englert illustrated his testimony by using stage blood for a quick lesson to the jury on the physics of splatter. A bunk bed was set up in the courtroom, with foam mannequins standing in for Michael and Christopher.

Testimony is to continue today in Ventura County Superior Court. Farley may question Englert’s credentials, contending--as she did in her opening statement last month--that he uses a psychic from time to time to “form his impressions.”

Under questioning from Temple on Tuesday, he denied that. Englert said he helped his department create a policy on how to deal with self-professed psychics who pop up to aid investigations, but has never hired one himself.

“They’re a pain in the rear,” he said.