Orphaned, Puente and her siblings splintered off in different directions, bouncing between foster care and relatives homes. Its sick., Clausen knows Puentes appeals ran out last year. Dorothea Puente was arrested in 1988 after the dismembered bodies of seven residents were found in the garden of her home in Sacramento, California Being escorted to a police car after her. In November 1985, Dorothea Puente hired a handyman named Ismael Florez to install some wood paneling in her home. She had a terrible adolescence after being . Her father died of tuberculosis when Puente was eight while her mother, an alcoholic, routinely abused her children and died in a motorcycle accident a year later. Dorothea Puente looked like a sweet grandmother but looks can be deceiving. I talk about the foggy drive to the prison, she recounts her trip to the visitors hall. When the police arrived, Puente told them that Monroe had been depressed due to her husbands terminal illness. I wait for her to speak. Puente died in prison at Chowchilla on March 27, 2011, from natural causes; she was 82. Given Montoyas history as a transient, his disappearance would have escaped notice without the persistence of Judy Moise. Several were referred there by social workers who viewed the home as a last-resort refuge for their ailing or most erratic clients. As far as theyre concerned, Im dead.. [8], Puente told Florez to stop while they were on Garden Highway in Sutter County and dump the box of "junk" on the riverbank at an unofficial household junk dumping site. Dalmane, which is a drug used for insomnia, was found in all seven of the exhumed bodies. An undercover cop posing as a trucker arrested her after she offered to perform fellatio on him; she served 90 days in county lockup. [citation needed], The defense called several witnesses, who showed Puente had a generous and caring side to her. Dorothea - Dorothea (also spelled Dorothe, Dorotea or other variants) is a female given name from Greek (Drotha) meaning "God's Gift". Jodi Picoult mentions Puente's crimes and cookbook in her novel House Rules. The serial killer shuffles into the room with a chickens hitched gait. Puente took in so-called shadow people people who were marginally homeless without close family or friends. But the jury had a difficult time believe the matronly grandmother was capable of carrying out such menacing crimes. Procedural wrangling moved the trial to Monterey, after a judge ruled that the intense media coverage of Puente in the Sacramento region would preclude her from receiving a fair trial here. She came on a little hard, what with her questions about his Social Security benefits and abrupt suggestion that they consider living together. A person like her, he says, theres no forgetting.. Moise alerted police, who went to the boarding house. Tempers spiked as the impasse stretched to its third week. Dorothea Puente awaiting arraignment in Sacramento, California on November 17, 1988. The theory, while perhaps logical to anyone unfamiliar with Puente before her name hit the headlines, brought disparate reactions from those who already knew her. [17] The result was Cooking with a Serial Killer (2004),[18] which included a lengthy interview, almost fifty recipes, and various pieces of prison art sent to Bugbee by the convicted murderer. Despite lacking formal dance training, she says, I went out there and they hired me. Dorothea Puente after her arrest in Los Angeles, en route back to Sacramento. For the first time, her gaze squarely meets mine. She trails Cabrera, his police badge clipped to the front of a dark blue jacket and his jeans tucked into knee-high black boots that he had donned for the days dig. During discussions that typically lasted two to three hours, she proved by turns defiant and self-pitying, disavowing she killed anyone while reserving words of sorrow for herself. Her lawyers argued that she might be a thief, but not a murderer. Cooking what I want. They made a date to go shopping the next day, but Willgues returned to his apartment shadowed by an inkling that he somehow knew her face. It wasnt until 1988 that suspicions first arose about Puente, after one of her tenants, 52-year old Alvaro Montoya, went missing. (She garnished her war story with accounts of surviving the 1942 Bataan Death March, a lie she repeated to The Sacramento Bee in a 1982 article on the march; in truth, she was 13 years old and living in California at the time.) In the spring of 1948, Gray was arrested for purchasing women's accessories using forged checks in Riverside. A year later her mother died in a motorcycle accident. [2], Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California, to Trudy Mae (ne Yates) and Jesse James Gray. He was good to me. (Johansson did not respond to interview requests.). Despite the guilty verdict of her . For his labor and $800, Puente gave him the red Ford pickup, which she stated belonged to her boyfriend in Los Angeles, who no longer needed it. Ruth was not just Puente's friend but was also her business partner and had moved in with her just three weeks before the murder. Dorothea Puente, also known as the Death House Landlady, was a little-old-lady serial killer who preyed on the elderly and drug-addicted men and women of Sacramento, CA in the 1980s. Prison persuades some inmates to repent, their perspective evolving with time as they forsake their younger selves. These entities fall through the cracks, said Kathleen Lammers, executive director of the California Law Center on Longterm Care, about boarding houses like Puentes. She balanced her dance career with a second job as a cook at a San Francisco seafood restaurant, she tells me, shuttling between coasts until her dance career came to a sudden end in 1957. With Bill Courage, John Cabrera, Bill Clausen, Judy Moises. Another tenant, John Sharp, backed her up. Hayden spent months processing thousands of pieces of evidence related to the case, including a shovel used to dig up human remains. Sometimes she includes small handmade gifts: Christmas ornaments constructed from cardboard and yarn, a greeting card stitched with fine thread. The checks I cashed, yes. In a cryptic aside, she added, I used to be a very good person at one time., The public heard little from Puente for more than 20 years after that clip aired. The guards will come by and go, What you got cooking today? , She marks much of the day reading mind-candy fictionshes a fan of John Grisham and Dan Brownand watching TV; her favorite prime-time shows include CSI, Criminal Minds and Cold Case. The authorities left the cause of death as undetermined, since there was such an excessive amount of both these drugs, and she was bedridden at the time. But while digging a second hole, Wilson heard a muted thud as his blade struck something hard three feet down. (Courtesy of The Sacramento Bee/Genaro Molina). It was a human leg bone, he recalls. Dorothea Puente Dorothea Puente, born Dorothea Helen Gray was born on January 9, 1929 in San Bernardino County, California. Seven bodies were eventually found buried on the property.[10]. We both fell into the orchestra pit and I broke my leg. The other dancer? The serial killer shuffles into the room with a chickens hitched gait. She had a traumatic childhood after being raised by alcoholic parents. & Brucato, Gary, Ph.D., The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books), pp. Dorothea often took in the elderly and homeless and placed them as her tenants. Many of them found dead and buried in the boarding house's yard. I didnt know if anyone was going to look after him.. She received a life sentence without possibility of parole, and as before the trial, she granted few interviews in its wake, observing a self-imposed gag order. Puente has told me during previous meetings that her case still attracts worldwide attention, and that she recently spurned interview requests from a British newspaper and an Australian TV station. Sharp also told police that Puente had hired prisoners on work furlough to dig and fill large holes in the backyard, and that some of the holes were covered with concrete. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. Dorothea Puente was a convicted serial killer who ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California in the 1980s. If you lived in Sacramento in the late 80s, you recognize her name. She watched from her porch, and before Cabrera put spade to soil, she requested a moment of his time. The first episode centers around one of the worst of all: Dorothea Puente, a Sacramento, California woman who has been dubbed Sacramento's most notorious murderer. Con su simpata lograba escapar de la. 3.23. She wound up serving four months in jail and shortly afterward fled Riverside County, flouting the terms of her probation. But every time youd go to see her, Ballenger says, her cancer had moved from her brain to her breast to her liver. I didnt need to kill anyone. Dorothea Puente, born Dorothea Helen Gray was born on January 9, 1929 in San Bernardino County, California. Between 1982 and 1989, Puente would take in the vulnerable and homeless people. Alcoholics dont stay in one place for long. Shane Bugbee. (One woman later discovered checks and jewelry missing from her home; her case played a part in Puentes 1982 arrest on theft charges.) As the search expanded, cabin fever seized Puente. They had a turbulent marriage; Gray took advantage of Johansson's frequent trips to sea by inviting men to their home and gambling away his money. This was a money-making scheme, but I do not believe she was a murderess.. As police exhumed corpse after corpse, TV crews jammed F Street while gawkers scaled trees to peer into the yard. Puentes mechanical response echoes what she has told me during prior meetings, and what I will hear on subsequent visits. She did not strike me as a person who had a major mental illness. 'Executing Puente would be like executing your grandmother', one juror is reported to have said in response to the death sentence looming over the defendant at the time. I am waiting for Dorothea Puente. Johansson divorced Dorothea in 1966. Dorothea Puente's former boarding house is at 1426 F Street in Sacramento, California, between 14th and 15th streets. (A charity she declines to name sends her $15 a month, her sole source of money.) And she didnt buy Puentes explanation that hed left on vacation. Some touch her shoulder. When attempts to extract it with a shovel failed, Cabrera climbed into the hole. Puente had a reputation for taking in people considered tough cases recovering alcoholics, drug addicts, the mentally ill, and the elderly. Didnt know that at the time., The detective walked about halfway to the Clarion with Puente and her boarder, John McCauley. See that one? she asks, nodding toward a gaunt, gray-haired woman with stooped posture. The lone drug present in all of them was Dalmane, a sedative for which Puente had obtained more than three dozen prescriptions of 30 pills each between October 1985 and November 1988, according to court records. She recalls the future president and his first wife, Jane Wyman, as her good friends. When I mention the Gippers second wife, Puente frowns. Shes dying of cancer. The grandmother would then sneak into the rooms of her incapacitated prey and smother them to death with a pillow. She professed her innocence until she died. 3 min read. In 1952, Gray married merchant seaman Axel Bren Johansson in San Francisco. But in the 1980s, their residence was a boarding house owned by Dorothea Puente, who killed her elderly and disabled tenants to steal their Social Security checks. George Deukmejian and Bishop Francis Quinn decorated her home at 1426 F Street But setting aside such fleeting charity-event encounters, her stories hew closer to fable than fact. She changed her public image to that of a respectable older matron by putting on vintage clothing, wearing large granny glasses, and letting her hair turn gray. Everybodys heard of me. Chief later dismantled a garage in the backyard and installed a fresh concrete slab there as well. The seven tenants who had lived at 1426 F Street died with a variety of drugs in their bodies: anticonvulsants, antidepressants, antipsychotics, painkillers, tranquilizers. But no one noticed. In Olympia, Washington, she tried to make a living as a prostitute. Dick Schmidt/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty Images. She purchased the refills through a pair of doctors who, presumably oblivious to her past drugging of clients, trusted her stories that she simply wanted to help boarders sleep. Beyond that lurked the vexing conundrum of the accused herself. They were met by Dorothea Puente, an elderly woman with big glasses, who repeated her story that Montoya was simply on vacation. Puente was charged with a total of nine murders: Puente's boyfriend, Everson Gillmouth, 77; and eight tenants who lived at the boarding house: Ruth Munroe, 61; Leona Carpenter, 78; Alvaro "Bert/Alberto" Gonzales Montoya, 51; Dorothy Miller, 64; Benjamin Fink, 55; James Gallop, 62; Vera Faye Martin, 64; and Betty Palmer, 78. O'Mara's closing argument focused on Puente's acts of murder: Does anyone become responsible for their conduct in this world? Scant evidence exists to suggest she socialized with Reaganwhen he divorced Wyman, Puente was 20 years old and living in the Bay Areaany more than she danced with the Rockettes. La historia de Dorothea Puente: la dulce abuela que mataba jubilados y los enterraba en el jardn La anciana era duea de una casa para adultos mayores. Now 80, she speaks out in a series of rare interviews on her crimes, her "relationships" with the Kennedys and the Reagans and whyin the endthe person she really wanted to kill was herself Martin Kuz She donated to Hispanic arts and education programs while providing cheap medical care to her boarders and other patients, falsely claiming she had worked as a nurse in World War II. What he did know was that her public image as a shepherd of the dispossessed veiled the past of an ex-con who preyed on the weak. The conversation soon veers toward why I want to interview her, and before I finish explaining, she interrupts. Play it now! Her evasive answersfirst claiming he had traveled to Mexico, then that he had returned and moved to Utahtripped Moises suspicion. [1] Sua contagem total chegou a nove assassinatos confirmados e seis no . The jury was deadlocked eleven to one for conviction on all counts, and the lone holdout finally agreed to a conviction of two first-degree murder counts, including special circumstances, and one second-degree murder count. But you gotta do something so you dont go crazy.. [citation needed], In November 1985, Puente hired a man named Ismael Florez to install some wood paneling in her apartment. The four women and three men, ages 52 to 79, had boarded at the two-story, powder-blue Victorian. Within two weeks, Munroe fell ill, her body so weak she struggled to stand. One decomposed leg was found on one side of the garden, and a foot was found on the other (Pictured: Investigators compile miscellaneous body parts found in the ground, 1988). Scattered about the house were photos of her with the likes of California governors George Deukmejian and Jerry Brown, who once danced with her at a fundraising ball. Her escape intensified interest in a lurid tale that for a time made Sacramento the center of the media universe. The reality, in fact, was that across a period of 10 years, Puente had meticulously murdered at least seven tenants at the boarding lodge she ran in Sacramento, California. Benjamin Fink, 55. So you knew she was a liar.. As most serial killers, Dorothea had a rough childhood. I leave through a different door and make my way out of the prison, stepping into the cool afternoon air. She never blinked, never broke a sweat. After the interview, he allowed her to return to the house, where a patrolman stood sentinel outside through the night. She parlayed its success by pumping money into political campaigns and charitable causes, contributions that bought her the appearance of legitimacy and access to elite circles. As jury foreman Mike Esplin recalls, the man simply said, Thats all Im going to give. Puentes composure cracked after the last verdict was read. A dark thought arrived. Those cases were lies, she says, voice flat. She sits erect, legs crossed at the ankles and tucked beneath her chair. Sir, she said, I have not killed anybody. She explained that she had buried excess trash in the backyard holes that a tenant mentioned to police, and covered some of them with concrete to stunt weed growth. Her father died of tuberculosis when Puente was eight while her mother, an alcoholic, routinely abused her children and died in a motorcycle accident a year later. According to an interview in the documentary, The House is Innocent, and the couple believed that changing the . Her warmth for him appears unrequitedshe hasnt heard from him for awhile nowand reflects rose-tinted nostalgia for a marriage that, despite near constant turmoil, lasted longer than her other three combined. People viewed Puente as a sweet grandmother committed to giving back to society: she housed the old and homeless, attended political events, and donated money to charitable causes. Dorothea Helen Puente (ne Gray; January 9, 1929 - March 27, 2011) was an American convicted serial killer.In the 1980s, she ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California, and murdered various elderly and mentally disabled boarders before cashing their Social Security checks. On her release from prison, she began killing her victims. In the landladys presence, he corroborated her story about Montoya. However, Dorothea's outward demeanor was a smokescreen, concealing [] The three men carried shovels as they fanned out across the backyard of the two-story Victorian at 1426 F Street. She settled her nerves not with coffee but a few vodkas with orange juice while he drank beer. Still, prison has changed Puente in one profound aspect, reforming her into an obedient citizen. "KRON Newscenter 4 11/13/88 Part 1 of 2", Last edited on 18 February 2023, at 18:08, List of serial killers in the United States, List of serial killers by number of victims, "Death House Landlady Got Drugs From Doctor, Prosecutors Contend", "Dorothea Puente dies at 82; boarding house operator who killed tenants", "Guide to the California Superior Court (Sacramento County) case files for The People v. Dorothea Montalvo Puente (criminal case #18056) CNTY0004", "Dorothea Puente and the Boarding House of Death", "Watch Worst Roommate Ever | Netflix Official Site", "In Print: Dorothea Puente's killer cookbook", "Sacramento serial killer's former home renovated, ready for visits", "Tours, documentary focus on Sacramento house of murderer Dorothea Puente", "No Cause Determined in Deaths of Boarders", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dorothea_Puente&oldid=1140147573. She parried, unwavering in her account of Montoyas departure, her voice calm as the detective pressed her. The house at 1426 F St., where police found seven of Puentes tenants buried in the yard, as it looks today. Yet for all the local, national and international coverage of the bizarre case in ensuing years, the public heard virtually nothing from its main character. As we continue talking, the topic switches to her life before prison, and I ask what she misses most about Sacramento. Despite being convicted of murder in 1993 and sent to prison, Puente. Now, as I sit at table No. Today she repeats a tale she first spun for me three months ago, showing remarkable fidelity to the specifics of the earlier version. 4. Puente surrendered quietly. I dont think anyone would pick this kind of life, she says, drying tears with a piece of coarse brown paper towel. Her narrow lips, pinched and lined at the corners, curl slightly upward. Since Ive been in here, she says, its like all of that never happened.. EXCLUSIVE: 'I killed JonBent Ramsey! 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I wonder if the tenants know about the homes notorious history. (Obituaries for Ingemar Johansson, who died earlier this year, list his sole surviving brother as Rolf.). She tends to wear thick violet eye shadow and pink lipstick, both of a hue common to Toulouse-Lautrec paintings, and her body lotion of choice, Victorias Secret Love Spell, gives her the subtle bouquet of cherry blossoms. We next met days before Thanksgiving, when the recent election of Barack Obama had boosted her hopes for the countrys future, and again in mid-December. When police arrived at 1426 F Street in Sacramento, they noticed some disturbed soil in a vegetable patch, but not thinking Puente to be a suspect they allowed the grandmother to flee the scene, In her absence, the officers dug-up the entire garden (left) where they discovered seven bodies. I just did, she says. But to the end of her life, Dorothea Puente insisted that she was innocent and that she had been taking good care of the people under her charge. The founder of MurderAuction - an auction house for serial killer memorabilia - Harder's macabre obsessions have also seen him befriend the likes of Charles Manson and Richard Ramirez. Florez agreed, and Puente assisted him. Things happen for a reason., Nov. 12, 1988: Homicide detective John Cabrera (right) ushers Puente out of her home to a nearby hotel. In her note, written on plain lined paper in a grade-schoolers swirling cursive, she invited me to visit. Inmates eat breakfast and dinner in a dining hall separate from their building units; after breakfast, they receive a cold boxed lunch that they take back to their cells. I started working her, Cabrera says, but all along, she was working me. After I cleared the prisons background check, we arranged a date in mid-October; an early riser, she told me she preferred to meet in the morning.

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