Caputo was born in 1949 in Mendoza, Argentina, and came to the United States as a young man. He was charming, articulate and multilingual, and the American press called him the Lady Killer.
In 1971 he killed Nathalie Brown, nineteen, in Yonkers, New York, stabbing her; he was arrested, found incompetent, and sent to a psychiatric hospital, from which he walked out in 1974. In 1974 he killed Judith Becker, twenty-six, in Mexico City; in 1975 Barbara Ann Taylor, twenty-eight, in San Francisco; and in 1977 Laura Gomez, twenty-three, in Mexico. He worked as a waiter and a hotel employee across several countries, married twice under other names, and had children.
He was on the FBI's wanted list for years. On January 18, 1994 he surrendered voluntarily in New York, arriving with a lawyer and his sister, saying he wanted to end it and that he had heard voices for years.
He pleaded guilty in New York to the Brown murder and to a second count and was sentenced in 1995 to twenty-five years. He died in prison of a heart attack in October 1997, aged forty-eight.
The seventeen years at liberty are the substance of the case: he had been committed for a killing, left the institution unimpeded, and killed three more women in two countries. The higher figure reflects further deaths attributed and not charged.