Ricardo Luis Melogno was 20 years old in September 1982 when four men were killed, one at a time and at night, in Mataderos, a district on the western side of Buenos Aires, and in Lomas del Mirador, just across the city line. He admitted all four killings. No one, including the psychiatrists who examined him for decades, has been able to name a motive.
The case produced two court outcomes that did not agree. Three of the killings were tried in the Federal Capital, where he was declared "inimputable", the Argentine term for a person who cannot be held criminally responsible. The fourth was tried in the Province of Buenos Aires, where, according to several reports, a court found him criminally responsible and sentenced him to "cadena perpetua", life imprisonment. He spent more than thirty years in prisons and psychiatric units before moving to a clinic in the civil health system.
Melogno was 20 at the time of the killings and had recently finished his compulsory military service, Tiempo Argentino reported in 2018. Infobae described a difficult childhood and wrote in 2018 that during the weeks of the killings he was living on the street and spending his evenings in cinemas and neighborhood restaurants.
The writer Carlos Busqued, who later spent months interviewing him, noted that Melogno committed the killings at the end of the last military dictatorship, two months after Argentina lost the Falklands War. He said that neither Melogno nor the specialists who treated him identified a reason for what he did.
Psychiatric opinion on him has never settled. Reports over the years used a range of labels. Tiempo Argentino listed "personalidad anómala", "trastorno esquizotípico de la personalidad" and "cuadro delirante crónico", among others. Infobae cited "síndrome esquizofrénico sobre una personalidad psicopática" and a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder. In a 2006 report La Nación said psychiatrists who advised against his release described schizophrenia, and quoted him as saying that he heard voices that ordered him to kill. Busqued said that psychiatrists in the city and those of the Province of Buenos Aires disagreed with each other, and that the dispute kept him confined.
The killings took place over about a week. By Infobae's 2020 account, the first one came in Lomas del Mirador, in La Matanza partido on the Buenos Aires Province side of the city line. The name of the man killed there is not on record. A24 and later studies of the case also describe it as the first of the four.
The other three men died in Mataderos, within a few blocks of one another. La Nación described the area as a triangle of about ten blocks, and A24 put the radius at no more than fifteen blocks.
Ángel Redondo, 51 and married, was killed in Mataderos on September 23, 1982, La Nación wrote in 2018. Infobae gave the same date. Carlos Alberto Cauderano, 33, and Juan de la Santísima Trinidad Gálvez, 56, died in the same district in the days that followed. The reports disagree on the exact days. La Nación in 2006 put the second death four days after the first and the third on about September 28; Infobae in 2018 also gave September 27 for the second and September 28 for a third attack; Infobae in 2020 gave September 27 for the Gálvez case. Tiempo Argentino and others described the series simply as three killings in the Federal Capital and one in the province over one week.
Studies drawn from Busqued's interviews describe the Mataderos cases as alike. A police operation sealed off the neighborhood, A24 reported, and it did not catch him.
The press in Buenos Aires followed the cases as a series. Infobae wrote in 2020 that police detained 17 suspects in the first days of October 1982, and that all of them had alibis and were released. Residents of Mataderos were afraid, according to a 2022 Infobae summary of the case.
The case broke on October 15, 1982. That day his brother went to the Palacio de Tribunales, the courthouse district, and told Judge Miguel Ángel Caminos who was responsible, La Nación reported in 2018. Melogno was arrested the same day. Tiempo Argentino wrote that his father handed him over to the justice system, and an academic paper based on Busqued's book says his father and brother together did.
Melogno was questioned for about six hours, A24 wrote. He admitted the killings, and he also confessed to the fourth, the one outside the city. He declined to say why he had done it. In a book excerpt published by The White Review in 2023, Busqued wrote that Melogno admitted the three Mataderos killings and the Lomas del Mirador killing, and denied two other attacks.
His brother told the judge that Melogno had serious mental disturbances and was taking medication, Infobae reported in 2020. Courts ordered psychiatric examinations in 1982.
Because the killings crossed the city line, the case went to two jurisdictions. Three of the killings fell to the courts of the Federal Capital, and one to the Province of Buenos Aires.
In the Federal Capital he was declared "inimputable". A24 reported the finding in 2018 and again in 2022, as did two studies presented at the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Buenos Aires in 2018 and 2019. In 2016 Diario Judicial, writing on his case before the Procuración Penitenciaria, the federal prison ombudsman, quoted the contradiction as Melogno's own complaint: he was found "inimputable en un juicio e imputable en otro por la misma serie de actos". Marisa Mólica Lourido, author of one of those studies, wrote that on the declaration he was given a notice reading "libre de culpa y cargo, sin manchar su buen nombre y honor", and quoted him as saying that in the Capital he was "inimputable".
In the Province of Buenos Aires, according to those studies and to A24 in 2022, the court found him criminally responsible and sentenced him to "cadena perpetua". A 2021 study by A. P. Ribeiro and J. V. Varela says that his acts earned him a life sentence and that a ruling declared him mentally insane, "insania mental", without giving the court or date. The name of the provincial court, the date of its judgment and the exact form of the sentence are not on record.
Some reporting differs on the outcome of the sentence. Busqued said in a 2020 interview with Asymptote that Melogno had completed his full sentence and stayed in custody for almost a year while authorities decided what to do with him. Infobae wrote in 2020 that in 2013 the criminal case was closed and that his care passed to the civil jurisdiction. These accounts do not match a life sentence still running.
Ribeiro and Varela wrote that he served his first five years in the federal prisons of Devoto and Caseros, followed by some months in a provincial psychiatric hospital at Melchor Romero. La Nación reported in 2006 that he had been held in Unit 20, the psychiatric unit of the federal prison service at a city hospital, since February 20, 1987. In 2006 he worked in the prison laundry for a small payment and was thinking about asking for his freedom but did not know where he would go.
La Capital reported in 2018 that he made an escape attempt from Unit 20 in 1991 or 1992 and was then returned to the ordinary prison system and kept in isolation for 15 days.
In July 2011 he was moved to the Interministerial Mental Health Program (PRISMA), a psychiatric unit inside the federal prison complex at Ezeiza, according to A24 and Infobae. The Procuración Penitenciaria had taken up his case in 2010 at his request, Diario Judicial reported, over the length of his confinement without a fixed end.
Busqued interviewed him at Ezeiza every two weeks for about four hours at a time between November 2014 and December 2015, with the permission of the Juzgado de Ejecución Penal No. 1 of Morón, Infobae wrote. The recordings ran to more than 90 hours.
On February 12, 2016, Diario Judicial reported that he had been discharged from PRISMA after 35 years of loss of liberty and moved to a clinic to continue treatment in the civil system, with the aim of eventual social inclusion. Other reports place the move in 2015, 2016 or about 2017.
Busqued's book Magnetizado (Anagrama, 2018), published in English as Magnetized, drew on the interviews. La Nación said in 2018 that Melogno had been without psychiatric medication for ten years and was working. In an interview published in October 2020 Busqued said that Melogno was still locked up, in better conditions, and had read the book and suggested small corrections. Infobae wrote in August 2020 that he was in a private psychiatric clinic and would probably remain there for the rest of his life.
Busqued also described the case as one that drew great attention at first and was then overtaken by other news.
The dates of the second and third Mataderos killings differ between reports. The fourth victim's name is not on record. The court and year of the Province of Buenos Aires judgment are not on record, nor is the basis on which the sentence is said to have ended or continued. Reports give the move to a clinic as 2015, 2016 or about 2017; the Diario Judicial date of February 2016 is the earliest firm one. His situation after August 2020 is not on record.
September 1982: four men killed in separate events, one in Lomas del Mirador and three in Mataderos, between about September 23 and 28.
Early October 1982: police detain 17 suspects, all released.
October 15, 1982: his brother goes to Judge Miguel Ángel Caminos; Melogno is arrested and admits the killings.
1982: courts order psychiatric examinations.
Court outcomes, dates not found: Federal Capital court declares him "inimputable"; Province of Buenos Aires court finds him criminally responsible and, as reported, sentences him to "cadena perpetua".
February 20, 1987: held in Unit 20, the psychiatric unit of the federal prison service.
1991 or 1992: escape attempt from Unit 20.
2010: the Procuración Penitenciaria takes up his case.
July 2011: moved to PRISMA at Ezeiza.
2013: criminal case reported closed and matter moved to the civil jurisdiction.
November 2014 to December 2015: Busqued's interviews at Ezeiza.
February 12, 2016: reported discharged from PRISMA to a clinic.
2018: Magnetizado published.
August 2020: reported in a private psychiatric clinic.