Photographer describes grisly images of Caro boys' killings
Patty
By Aron Miller, Staff writer
Ventura County Star
Hours after the three Caro boys were killed in November 1999, investigators
assigned Judi Garcia the grim task of taking dozens of crime-scene photos.
Some were benign enough: pictures of the house's staircase, spots of blood on
the carpet and shots of the upstairs foyer.
But Garcia's camera also caught images nobody would want to see -- an
11-year-old boy in bed, his sheets steeped in a pool of blood; 8- and 5-year-old
brothers side by side on the bottom bunk, mouths slightly open, gaping gunshot
wounds on their heads lying on Winnie-the-Pooh pillow cases.
Later, Garcia had the equally grisly assignment of photographing the boys'
autopsies, where the focus was their specific injuries and their highly graphic
nature.
On Friday, 21 months after the crime, Garcia shared those photos with a jury
that eventually will decide whether Cora Caro, the boys' mother, is responsible
for the killings.
Garcia, a former Ventura County sheriff's field-evidence technician who now
works for the Johnson County, Kan., Sheriff's Department, testified for almost
an entire day between Thursday and Friday.
In a nuts-and-bolts day in court, prosecutors asked her to examine the photos
and confirm she took them, so they could enter them into evidence.
The day also included testimony regarding Caro's husband, Xavier, and his
apparent visit to his doctor's office in Northridge the night of the crime.
Cora Caro, 44, has pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity in
the deaths of the boys -- Joey, 11; Michael, 8; and Christopher, 5. They were
shot to death Nov. 22, 1999, inside their Santa Rosa Valley home.
Prosecutors say she shot Joey and Michael once each in the head with her
38-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver, used two bullets on Christopher and then
shot herself in the head. A fourth child, 1-year-old Gabriel, was unharmed.
They have portrayed her as a jealous wife who knew her husband was preparing to
divorce her. She wanted to hurt him, and killing their children was the best way
for her to do that, the prosecution believes. But the defense said in its
opening statement that Xavier Caro framed his wife. He's the real killer, the
attorneys say, and they will prove it.
On Friday, Garcia testified about the days she spent inside the Caros' hilltop
mansion documenting the crime scene with her camera. She also viewed and
photographed the autopsies at the Ventura County Medical Examiner's Office,
including close-up shots of the boys' gunshot wounds.
Five witnesses followed Garcia to the stand, all of whom discussed a security
camera photo taken at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, where Xavier Caro's
rheumatology practice is located.
The camera took two pictures, one of the front half of a Mercedes Benz entering
the hospital's parking garage at 9:24 p.m. on Nov. 22, the other of what appears
to be the back half of the same car leaving the garage at 10:36 p.m.
Prosecutors say the photos are significant because they contend Xavier Caro
fought with the defendant earlier that night and drove to his office, which is
at least a 30-minute drive away, to cool off. At the time, he drove the same
type of Mercedes pictured in the photos.
Patty
Steve Chawkins:
Photos of Car Could Damage Caro's Defense
Los Angeles Times
Courts: Prosecutors say the images show husband's auto at work late on the night
sons were allegedly killed by their mother at home
Blurry photos from a parking lot surveillance camera were introduced in the
Socorro Caro trial Friday--images that could weaken the defense's contention
that her husband framed her in the slayings of their three young boys.
The photos were shot from a camera mounted in a Northridge hospital parking
garage. Stamped with the time they were taken, they show what prosecutors
contend is Xavier Caro's Mercedes Benz entering the garage at 9:24 p.m. on Nov.
22, 1999, and exiting at 10:36 p.m.
The timing is crucial. Prosecutors say a 10:36 p.m. departure verifies Xavier
Caro's account of returning about 11:20 p.m. to his Santa Rosa Valley home,
where he discovered his sons' bodies in their beds and his wife nearly dead from
a gunshot wound to the head. Defense attorneys, however, say that phone logs and
witnesses will prove that Xavier Caro left his office earlier, arriving at his
home near Camarillo at least 30 minutes before his panic-stricken call to 911.
Socorro Caro, 44, faces a life prison term or the death penalty if convicted of
killing her sons, ages 5 to 11, as they slept. Charged with three counts of
first-degree murder, she has pleaded not guilty, later amending her plea to not
guilty by reason of insanity.
In pretrial hearings, her attorneys tried unsuccessfully to have the parking lot
film excluded as potential evidence.
In court documents, prosecutors offered a blunt opinion for the opposition
expressed by Deputy Public Defender Jean Farley, Socorro Caro's lead attorney.
"The defense doesn't want the photo admitted because it ruins her claim that Dr.
Caro is the real killer," they wrote.
Farley said before the trial that the black-and-white photos, which do not show
license plates, were too blurry to make a positive identification of Xavier
Caro's maroon 1989 Mercedes. She also pointed to data indicating that about 70
of the 570 doctors with permits to park in the Northridge Hospital Medical
Center garage own a Mercedes.
On Friday, a jury of nine women and three men heard witnesses called by the
prosecution in an effort to prove the photos' accuracy.
Kenneth Baloun, a video specialist with the National Law Enforcement and
Corrections Technology Center in El Segundo, said he was asked by prosecutors in
June to enhance the quality of the parking lot film.
He said he did so by modulating its brightness and contrast without altering the
images.
Even enhanced, the photos do not show the entire car. The earlier photo shows
only the front half on the driver's side, while the exit photo shows only the
rear half on the passenger side.
Even so, a 22-year Mercedes employee testified that the lines of the car and
details like window molding and a distinctive bumper tell the tale.
The film shows a Mercedes made between 1986 and 1991, said Ernest Suman, service
and parts director of Silver Star AG Ltd., a Mercedes dealership in Thousand
Oaks.
Suman also said that the pictured car was of the top-of-the-line luxury S class
and that it had a longer-than-standard body and a 126 chassis--features shared
by Xavier Caro's car.
Shown a color photo of that car, Suman said it could have been the one
photographed the night of the children's deaths.