Ricardo Caputo confessed in March 1994 to killing four women in the 1970s, each of them a woman he had been romantically involved with. He was 44, an Argentine who had lived for about two decades under false names in the United States, Mexico and Latin America, marrying twice and raising children. He had been wanted in New York since 1974, when a young psychologist who had treated him was killed in Yonkers. He surrendered there on March 9, 1994, with his lawyer at his side, after recording an interview with ABC News.
He was convicted of two of the killings, both in New York, on guilty pleas: the 1971 death of his fiancee, Natalie Brown, on Long Island, and the 1974 death of Judith Becker, the psychologist. The killings he described in San Francisco and Mexico City were never tried. He died of a heart attack at Attica Correctional Facility in October 1997, two years into his sentences.
Caputo was born in 1949 in Mendoza, in western Argentina, the middle of three children. Infobae, in a 2021 account by Eduardo Anguita and Daniel Cecchini, described his parents' marriage as broken and said he was abused as a child by his mother's new partner. Canal 26 reported in 2026 that his brother later said Ricardo had suffered abuse in childhood, and that as a teenager he was hospitalized and diagnosed with an antisocial personality disorder. His family called him Caito.
At 19 he traveled to New York on a tourist visa, according to Infobae, and spent about a year there in poorly paid jobs. He went home to Mendoza for military service at the Fourth Air Brigade, and once discharged he left Argentina for good. Back in New York he held two jobs, Infobae reported: night concierge at the Barbizon, a hotel for women, and day work at the Plaza Hotel facing Central Park.
Natalie Brown was 19 and worked as a bank teller. She lived in Flower Hill, on Long Island, and she and Caputo were engaged. United Press International reported in 1995 that he killed her in 1971 after she tried to end the relationship. She was stabbed to death in Flower Hill.
Caputo called the police himself. Infobae and the Argentine news site Letra P both report that he telephoned to say he had just killed his girlfriend. He was charged with murder in Nassau County, but he was found incompetent to stand trial, and the court committed him to a state hospital. UPI named it as the Matewan State Hospital for the criminally insane. Infobae wrote that forensic psychiatrists had diagnosed schizophrenia and that he spent about two years there, making drawings as occupational therapy and selling some of them.
Judith Becker was 26, a psychologist. She met Caputo while he was confined after the Brown killing, and she was one of the psychologists who treated him.
Infobae reported that Becker supported Caputo's transfer to a more open hospital, one that let patients out on day passes. The two became involved. Letra P wrote that she introduced him to her parents without telling them he had been her patient.
In October 1974 Becker was killed in Yonkers. She had been strangled and beaten, UPI reported. Police said she had apparently become romantically involved with her patient. Caputo, UPI said, apparently killed her while on an unauthorized furlough from the hospital; he then disappeared.
Caputo went west. Infobae reported that he traveled by bus to San Francisco, changed his appearance and began calling himself Ricardo Donoguier, a supposed Uruguayan. Both Infobae and Letra P put the number of false identities he used over the following two decades at about 17, among them Ricardo Martinez Diaz and Roberto Dominguez. In San Francisco, Letra P wrote, he made a living drawing pencil portraits.
In San Francisco he met Barbara Taylor, 28. UPI described her as a woman with whom he had an affair; Infobae and Letra P describe her as an independent woman who worked in documentary film and with whom he lived for a time. She was beaten to death in San Francisco. Reports disagree on the year. UPI's 1995 report dates her death to 1974; Infobae says she ended the relationship in April 1976 and was killed on Good Friday of that year; Canal 26 and other Argentine accounts give 1975. Caputo confessed to her killing when he surrendered, UPI reported. He was never tried for it.
Letra P and Infobae report that in March 1975, in Hawaii, he attacked a young woman who survived, and that he left the islands afterward. Letra P wrote that he had been working as a waiter in Honolulu.
Caputo crossed into Mexico as Ricardo Martinez Diaz, Infobae reported. In Mexico City he became involved with Laura Gomez, 23, the daughter of a Mexico City transport businessman. Infobae wrote that she had found him a senior job in her father's company. She was killed in Mexico City in 1977; Infobae and Letra P date it to June. UPI reported that she was found stabbed to death, while the Argentine accounts describe a beating; both Letra P and Infobae say she was pregnant. Caputo confessed to her killing as well. He was never tried in Mexico.
UPI's 1995 report quoted his lawyer as saying that Caputo stopped killing after what the report called "the 1978 slaying"; the same report dates the Mexico City death to 1977.
He returned to the United States as Roberto Dominguez, according to Infobae, and settled in Los Angeles, where he married and had two children. His wife there disappeared in 1984. Infobae reported that he was cleared as a suspect; Letra P wrote that authorities suspected him but could not prove anything, and that in his 1994 television interview he denied any role. He later married again and, Infobae and Letra P reported, had four children with his second wife, living in Guadalajara and Chicago. UPI summarized the years after Mexico this way: he married twice, had several children and lived in California, Mexico, the Midwest and Latin America.
His lawyers later said that in the early 1990s memories of what he had done began to come back to him in fragments and nightmares, UPI reported. In 1994, according to Infobae and Letra P, he went to Mendoza and told his mother that he had killed four women and that he feared voices urging him to kill again. Infobae wrote that his mother urged him to wait, and that a Mendoza lawyer and a psychiatrist who had treated him as a boy became involved. The lawyer brought in Michael Kennedy, a New York lawyer whose clients had included Ivana Trump.
To pay for his defense, Infobae reported, Caputo agreed to an interview with ABC News for its prime-time newsmagazine, conducted by Chris Wallace, for which he was to be paid about $100,000. In it he said yes when asked whether he had killed Natalie Brown, Judith Becker, Barbara Taylor and Laura Gomez. Asked why, he answered, in Infobae's Spanish rendering, that he thought it was because of his childhood. Of Brown's death he said he knew he was doing something bad but did not know what he was doing, and of Becker's that he had been mentally ill. Before his arrest he issued a statement, quoted by UPI: "I feel only remorse for what I've done and sadness for the families of these women."
On March 9, 1994, he surrendered in New York, accompanied by Kennedy, Infobae reported. His second wife told reporters, in Infobae's account, that he had always been an excellent father and husband and that she had never suspected him. Canal 26 reported in 2026 that he had returned to Mendoza to tell his mother before surrendering to the FBI, and that he said in the interview he had come forward so that there would be no more deaths.
The 1971 case came first. Caputo was held at the Nassau County Correctional Center. By May a court had found him competent to stand trial, and on May 11, about two months after he surrendered, UPI reported from Mineola that a Long Island grand jury had re-indicted him on two counts of murder in Natalie Brown's death. He faced 25 years to life. Prosecutors said then that he had not been charged with any of the other killings and that investigations were continuing. Kennedy's statement, as UPI paraphrased it, said that after the 1974 escape Caputo began a three-year spree, and that he had committed four killings in the United States and Mexico, Brown's among them.
Caputo later pleaded guilty to Brown's killing and was sentenced to between 8 and 25 years in prison, UPI reported at his Westchester sentencing. The offense he pleaded to and the date of that sentence have not been reported.
He was then prosecuted in Westchester County for Judith Becker's death. Canal 26 dates his sentencing for the Becker killing to August 1995. He pleaded guilty to killing her, and on August 16 a court in White Plains sentenced him to the maximum, 25 years to life, to run consecutively with the Nassau sentence, UPI reported. The Westchester district attorney, Jeanine Pirro, said: "Twenty years after a young woman was brutally, senselessly murdered, her killer has been brought to justice." Infobae reported that in his last words to the judge Caputo said he had turned himself in to prevent more deaths.
Neither California nor Mexico brought him to trial for the deaths of Barbara Taylor and Laura Gomez.
Caputo served his sentences at Attica Correctional Facility in New York State. He died there of a heart attack on October 1, 1997, at 48, Canal 26 reported in 2026. Letra P, in 2012, wrote that he collapsed while playing basketball in the prison. Infobae put his death about four years after the television confession.
Caputo admitted four killings, and only two were tried. The other two, in San Francisco and Mexico City, rest on his own confession as reported in 1994 and 1995; no court ruled on them.
The dates of the San Francisco killing differ across reports (1974, 1975 and 1976), and the reports also differ on how Laura Gomez died. UPI's 1995 report refers to a 1978 killing while dating the Mexico City death to 1977.
Canal 26 reported in 2026 that he was suspected of two later killings, of Devon Green in Los Angeles in 1981 and of Jacqueline Bernard, 64, in New York, but that authorities found no conclusive evidence. He was never charged with either. The journalist Linda Wolfe wrote a book about Caputo, Love Me to Death, and Infobae reported that she interviewed him for it.
The disappearance of his first wife in Los Angeles in 1984 was investigated, and accounts differ on whether he was cleared or simply never charged. He denied any part in it.
Infobae wrote in 2021 that he had at one time topped an FBI list of most-wanted fugitives. The 1994 and 1995 UPI reports describe him as a fugitive who eluded the authorities for two decades, without reference to any such list.
1949: Ricardo Silvio Caputo is born in Mendoza, Argentina.
About 1970: emigrates to New York at 19 on a tourist visa (Letra P); Infobae adds a return home for military service before he settles there.
July 1971: Natalie Brown, 19, his fiancee, is killed in Flower Hill, Long Island; he calls the police, is charged with murder, is found incompetent to stand trial and is committed to the Matewan State Hospital, as UPI spelled it.
1973 (Letra P): leaves the Beacon hospital; later held at a less secure hospital that allowed day passes (Infobae).
October 1974: Judith Becker, 26, a psychologist who had treated him, is killed in Yonkers; he disappears.
1974 to 1976 (reports differ): Barbara Taylor, 28, is killed in San Francisco.
March 1975: attacks a woman in Hawaii, who survives (Letra P, Infobae).
1977: Laura Gomez, 23, is killed in Mexico City.
Late 1970s to early 1990s: lives under false names in Los Angeles, Mexico, Chicago and Latin America; marries twice, with two children in his first marriage and four in his second (Infobae, Letra P).
1984: his first wife disappears in Los Angeles; he is never charged.
1994: tells his mother in Mendoza about the killings; records an ABC News interview confessing to four.
March 9, 1994: surrenders in New York with his lawyer, Michael Kennedy.
About two months after the surrender: re-indicted in Nassau County on two counts of murder in Natalie Brown's death after being found competent.
By August 1995: pleads guilty to Brown's killing; sentenced to 8 to 25 years.
1995: pleads guilty in Westchester County to killing Judith Becker.
August 1995: sentenced in White Plains to 25 years to life, consecutive (Canal 26; UPI).
October 1, 1997: dies of a heart attack at Attica Correctional Facility, aged 48.