Alleged Suicide Attempt by Caro Is Discounted

The gunshot wound to Socorro Caro’s head was probably not self-inflicted, according to a retired Ventura County medical examiner testifying Tuesday as an expert witness in her trial on three counts of first-degree murder.

Dr. Warren Lovell’s opinion bolsters defense assertions that the Santa Rosa Valley woman was framed by her physician husband in the fatal shooting of three of the couple’s four young sons and in her apparent suicide attempt.

Caro has pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. Her husband, Dr. Xavier Caro, has never been named as a suspect by police.

Lovell acknowledged under cross-examination a number of inconsistencies in his theory that someone other than Caro had held a .38-caliber handgun to her head, just above her right ear, and fired at a slightly downward angle.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jim Ellison alluded to ricochet marks from bullet fragments that purportedly hit the bedroom ceiling above the severely wounded Caro. If the gun were pointed slightly downward, those marks would pose a mystery, Ellison said.

Referring to a pretrial meeting between Lovell and attorneys for both sides, the prosecutor asked, “Did you tell me there was no way a bullet fragment could have glanced off the defendant’s skull and hit the ceiling?”

“I said I didn’t have the slightest idea how it got there,” replied Lovell, Ventura County’s chief medical examiner from 1981 to 1993.

Ellison persisted, asking, “Didn’t you tell me, ‘There are a lot of things about this case I don’t understand’?”

“There sure are,” Lovell said.

Even so, he contended that the location of Caro’s near-fatal wound made it “highly unlikely” that she had pulled the trigger herself. Typically, suicide victims prop the gun’s muzzle against their temple, he said. It would have been “very unusual” for Caro to hold the firearm in a position where she would have to reach up and twist slightly, he said.

Lovell conceded, however, that in his years as a coroner he had seen people shoot themselves from a number of angles.

“You’ve seen gunshot wounds underneath the chin, haven’t you?” Ellison asked. “And gunshot wounds inside the mouth, and gunshot wounds to the forehead. . . .”

Added Lovell: “I saw one in the back of the head.”

At one point, Ellison pointed his index finger just above his ear. Slumping forward in his seat with his head down, he tried to suggest the posture Socorro Caro might have assumed on the night of Nov. 22, 1999.

But the demonstration didn’t sway Lovell.

“It’s possible but highly unlikely,” he said. “Pointing a finger and holding a gun are different.”

Lovell’s testimony is to continue today.

Earlier in the day, prosecutors temporarily blocked testimony by Laura Gillard, a former employee at Xavier Caro’s medical practice in Northridge. On the witness stand last month, the doctor acknowledged an affair with Gillard about the time of the killings. That admission prompted prosecutors to object to Gillard’s testimony as the defense’s “attempt to engage in sordid discussion and throw mud at a previous witness.”

Superior Court Judge Donald D. Coleman set an Oct. 12 hearing on the issue.