Juan Catalino Domínguez

Juan Catalino Domínguez (May 4, 1910 – April 18, 1948) was an Argentine ranch hand, outlaw and serial killer who, in-between several prison escapes from 1944 to 1948, killed eight people before being gunned down by the Buenos Aires provincial police in a gunfight.

Background Juan Catalino Domínguez was born in the small town of Rauch on May 4, 1910.

By 1944, Catalino worked as caretaker of a luxiourous residence in La Loma de Stella Maris neighborhood of Mar del Plata, living there with his 18-year-old wife Isabel (née Criado) and their little daughter, Marta. In spite of their financial situation, he hosted a friend of him, Rafael Luchetti, at his house. One day, however, he found his wife having sex with their guest. Upon this discovery, Luchetti drew a revolver on Catalino, who in turn tried to defend himself by punching him, only to be shot in the leg. While he was writhing in pain, Luchetti took Isabel and Marta in a car and drove off. The badly wounded Catalino was soon found and taken to a nearby hospital, where he spent some time recovering from his wounds. Shortly after, he went to the kitchen where, without saying a word, he shot to death both Alberti and another ranch hand, Victoriano Serrano. After he hid Alberti's body under some metal sheets, Catalino tied Serrano's body to a horse and traveled to a pit, where he then dumped it.

Sheltered by the darkness of the icy roads in a small cabin, he prowled around town at night searching for his daughter. However, while loitering around an boy's orphanage, Catalino was spotted by a police commissioner, causing to immediately ride out of town. For the next several days, he wandered in the vicinity, but the strict surveillance prevented him going back in. As a result, Catalino was forced to leave Azul for good.

Final murders Now calling himself Pedro Montenegro or Aguirre, Catalino committed a series of robberies and thefts in Tandil, Rauch, Dolores, El Tordillo, General Juan Madariaga and the surrounding area, before returning to Mar del Plata and settling in the La Juanita neighborhood. He then moved to Colonia Barragán, near Estación Cobo, where he stayed with his neighbor Bienvenido Basualdo, a farmer and renowned cow herder.

On March 7, 1948, in the rural area of El Trio, on the northern environs of General Pueyrredón Partido (a few miles west of Estacion Camet), Catalino found himself on the farm of the Mehatz family, for whom he had worked previously as a gardener. Taking advantage of their absence due to it being election day, he and a 17-year-old accomplice named Orlando Nelson Rosas (or Alberto Gómez), an escapee from a juvenile detention facility, decided to rob the place.

Unexpectedly, the Mehatzes returned to the farm because some of them had forgotten their voting papers. The first to enter the house was Martín (a senior employee in Mar del Plata's Casino Central), whom Catalino shot three times. His sons, 22-year-old Martín Mayo and 19-year-old Marcelo, tried to flee, but the former was shot in the back, causing him to fall on the ground, before Catalino unloaded the rest of his revolver's chamber into him. With no bullets left, Catalino took out a knife and slit Marcelo's throat, but as he was taking too long to die, Rosas gave him a mace with which he crushed his head.

The pair then loaded the bodies into the family car and traveled to General Juan Madariaga, dumping the bodies on the field of farmer Ángel Casales. They then tried to hide the car by "burying" it in the forest, but they simply covered it with firewood and branches, then left.

Exposure and death After the murders, Domínguez went to work in La Eudocia, taking on farm work for Juan Carlos Pétersen. However, while reading the news about the Mehatz family murders one morning, Mrs. Pétersen realized that the farm hand was indeed Domínguez and informed police. Before they could arrest him, however, he had already fled.

In early April 1948, General Madariaga's commissioner Pedro Cavanna received a complaint from a man named Pedro Jaureguiberry, saying that he had been robbed by a man who was riding "a sulky with red wheels". Determined to catch the criminal, Cavanna, together with Corporal José M. Diuberti and watchman Raymundo Manrique, went to the La Espadaña field of General Madariaga in the early morning hours of April 18.

There, they questioned the man in charge of the post, Enrique Merlo, who claimed that there was nobody else in his house. However, the commissioner noticed that a sulky with the characteristics described by Jaureguiberry was parked at the back of the farm, prompting him and his men to start searching the property. Suddenly, an unknown man appeared, took cover, pulled out a revolver and opened fired on them. Almost immediately, the officers fired at him with their Winchester rifles, hitting the individual with four fatal shots and killing him instantly. The man was then quickly identified as Juan Catalino Domínguez, who was apparently sleeping on the farm before being startled by the officers' arrival.

Not long after his death, Rosas was caught in a nearby ranch and imprisoned for his participation in the crimes. Set free after a short term in prison, he continued his criminal career until he himself was killed sometime during the earlier 1960s. Catalino's daughter, Marta, was transferred to La Plata and later to an institute in Ingeniero Maschwitz, where she remained until adulthood.