Widow Pleads Not Guilty in Brutal Killing

A Ventura woman accused of fatally shooting her husband and dismembering his body with an electric saw pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of murder and deadly assault.

Gladis Soto, 38, stood behind a screened courtroom partition with her eyes downcast during an arraignment in Ventura County Superior Court.

Dressed in jail blues, she looked up only once to say, “Yes,” when asked if she waived her right to a speedy trial. Attorney Jorge Alvarado entered the plea on her behalf.

Outside the courtroom, Alvarado said he plans to file a motion to reduce the murder charge to voluntary manslaughter on the grounds his client was a battered woman who acted in self-defense.

“We certainly believe this was a killing that happened in the heat of passion,” Alvarado said, criticizing prosecutors for filing a murder charge despite evidence that Soto was a longtime victim of domestic abuse.

“There is no compassion apparently being shown here,” Alvarado said.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Patricia Murphy defended her office’s decision to charge Soto with murder. Murphy said the case “doesn’t fit squarely into the criteria for battered woman’s syndrome.”

Without going into detail, Murphy said there are other possible motives for the slaying, including jealousy or revenge.

Soto confessed to police that she shot Pedro Alba, her husband of 15 years, once in the head as he slept in their Ventura apartment on Feb. 22. She stashed the body in a closet for nearly 18 hours before dragging it to the garage and cutting off the limbs and head with a saw.

Ventura police arrested Soto, a housewife and mother of six children, ages 6 to 19, after a transient reported seeing a woman burning plastic bags containing human remains in the Ventura River bottom. The remains were Alba’s.

Alvarado contends that Soto lashed out at her husband 20 minutes after he raped her that night. She told police that she bought a gun a week earlier because she feared Alba, 35.

“Because of the rape having occurred just before this took place,” Alvarado said Monday, “we certainly believe this was a killing that happened in the heat of passion.”

The defense made the same argument last month at a preliminary hearing before Judge Charles W. Campbell Jr. The judge refused to reduce the charge, however, saying prosecutors presented sufficient evidence to support charging Soto with murder.

The difference between the two charges is significant in terms of the amount of time Soto could spend in prison.

If a jury finds her guilty of murder, she faces a possible life prison sentence and would be eligible for parole after 15 years. But if convicted of manslaughter, she could be released from prison after 11 years.

Soto, however, faces additional prison time if she were also convicted of deadly assault and other allegations in connection with the slaying.

The assault charge stems from a January incident in which she allegedly rammed her car into her husband’s van while his alleged girlfriend was inside.

Alvarado maintains that the woman was not in the van at the time. If she was, he said, Soto didn’t know it.

Described by a university psychologist as having suffered from depression and flashbacks since last fall, Soto was recently hospitalized in the medical ward of the County Jail after an anxiety attack, Alvarado said.

Alvarado said he plans to file the motion to reduce the murder charge before a pretrial court hearing next month. Soto’s trial date is set for Oct. 18, and she remains jailed on $1-million bail.