Socorro Caro Takes the Stand

After six weeks of sitting through often plodding testimony, jurors Wednesday finally heard from Socorro Caro, the physician’s wife who is accused of pulling the trigger on three of her four young sons as they slept.

Late in the afternoon, Caro grasped the arm of Deputy Public Defender Nicholas Beeson and slowly made her way to the witness stand. Asked, as all witnesses are, if she swore to tell the whole truth, so help her God, she choked back tears before exclaiming “I do!”

Caro is not legally obligated to testify and prosecutors have not taken her appearance as a witness as a given. Twice during the lengthy trial, Caro has been removed from the courtroom after prolonged, tearful outbursts. The more recent one prompted a warning from the judge.

Caro’s testimony Wednesday lasted just 24 minutes before jurors were excused for the night. She is to return to the stand today.

Under gentle questioning from her attorney, Assistant Public Defender Jean Farley, Caro described her marriage to Dr. Xavier Caro in 1984 and her job as office manager at his medical practice in Northridge. When asked for the birth dates of her children, she wept.

Charged with three counts of first-degree murder, Caro has pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. If convicted, she faces either a life term in prison or the death penalty.

She told the jury of nine women and three men that she had been studying for a degree in nursing before Xavier Caro asked her to be his office manager. Her job, she said, entailed keeping track of office finances.

Prosecutors contend that she secretly channeled office money to her aging parents. That was one reason, they have suggested, that her husband was thinking about a divorce--a prospect, they say, that sparked a tragic rage on the night of Nov. 22, 1999.

Caro’s lawyers argue that her husband framed her, both in the deaths of the children and in her own apparent attempt to kill herself with a bullet to her brain.

Her voice quavered and became very soft as she answered questions about her boys, Joey, 11, Michael, 8, and Christopher, 5.

Earlier in the day, jurors heard from Caro’s parents, Greg and Juanita Leon.

A retired brick mason, Greg Leon testified that most of the money he received from his daughter was payment for his labor and supplies. He said he did extensive repairs on the Caros’ Santa Rosa Valley home, which was damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Juanita Leon testified of strained relations between her and Xavier Caro after the boys’ slayings. She cried as she recalled an angry Xavier Caro ushering her through the bedrooms of his home.

“He said, ‘This is the way Cora did it,’ ” she said. “He showed me every step of the way.”