The Big-Eared Kid: Monster or Victim of Misery

The Big-Eared Kid: Monster or Victim of Poverty: The case of Argentina's first serial killer. A nine-year-old boy was taken by his own father to the police station asking to be jailed. No one listened to him. Eight years later, that same boy had killed four children and attacked seven more. Cayetano Santos Godino, known as the Big-Eared Kid, embodies the darkest contradiction of Argentine criminology: was he born a criminal or was he shaped by systematic violence? In this episode, we explore the unresolved tensions that defined the case: the acquittal due to insanity while confessing to murders with deliberate calculation, the skull scars that evidenced severe abuse against the premeditation in victim selection, and the death shrouded in mystery in Ushuaia. We unravel how a nineteenth-century justice system protected someone who should not have been protected and condemned someone who was also a victim. Could it all have been avoided? Victim: Cayetano Santos Godino Date: 31/10/1896 - 15/11/1944 Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina Status: Case resolved (1914), died in prison (1944) - His father turned him over to the police in 1906 begging them to jail him; he was released in two months. - He confessed to four murders but retracted the first (Arturo La Aurora), creating doubts about authorship. - He carried a newspaper clipping about his own crime in his pocket, stating that it made him feel important. - He was acquitted due to insanity on the same day as his birthday thirty years after he was born. Cayetano Santos Godino, Big-Eared Kid, Buenos Aires, 1912, serial killer, investigation, mystery, forensic, Argentine justice, criminality, scientific debate, Spanish true crimeTo listen ad-free and access premium episodes, start your 30-day free trial at obomedia.comOBOMEDIA presents true crime storiesa true crime podcast built on real cases.Every true crime story in our crime files follows the crime investigation from the missing person report to the trial: investigators and police building a murder case, a police investigation gone cold, justice for the victim and those who survived.We open the unsolved murder, the cold case reopened decades later, the mysterious death, the disappearance, the serial killer, the family murder, the murder mystery; the missing persons  a missing woman, a missing girl, a missing man found dead and the missing and murdered.From the infamous case to the unsolved case, from classic true crime to dark true crime and disturbing true crime: true crime reports, real crime stories, real murder cases, true murder stories and unsolved mysteries one true crime case at a time, from the OBOMEDIA true crime vault.© 2026 Created with OBOMEDIA technology. All rights reserved. This episode and its content (audio, text and related materials) are the property of their respective creator and are distributed under the OBOMEDIA name on platforms such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and Pocket Casts. Reproduction, distribution, editing or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission is prohibited. For permissions, licensing and business inquirie