I realize today will be our last conversation when Puente sits down at my table and makes a request. 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. He sits in his downtown office, shock of silver hair combed straight back from his high forehead, untucked short-sleeved shirt spilling over his jeans. Four days later, Munroe died at Puentes home. Dorothea Puente was a California landlady who ran a boarding house in Sacramento during the 1980s. Though born in Redlands, Puente, who speaks passable Spanish, claimed Mexico as her birthplace, a ruse she perpetuated by alternately using the surnames of her last two ex-husbands, Roberto Puente and Pedro Montalvo. Clymo responded by evoking Dorothea the child and caregiver. 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. But as the police prepared to leave, Sharp slipped them a message. He called over Cabrera and Brown, and after he scooped away more soil, they saw what resembled a tree root. Inmates enter one at a time at irregular intervals through a gray metal door along the rear wall. Dorothea Helen Puente (nascido Gray; 9 de janeiro de 1929 - 27 de maro de 2011) foi uma assassina em srie americana.Na dcada de 1980, Puente mandava numa hospedaria em Sacramento, Califrnia, e assassinou vrios idosos e pensionistas com deficincia mental antes de descontar seus cheques de seguridade social. By 1982, Puente was sent to prison for her thefts. Others wave and smile. [citation needed], On November 11, 1988, police inquired after the disappearance of tenant Alvaro "Bert" Montoya, a developmentally disabled man with schizophrenia, who had been reported missing by his social worker. Sacramento landlady Dorothea Montalvo Puente was found guilty Thursday of murdering three of her tenants for their government benefit . 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. The only time [the boarers] were in good health was when they stayed at my home, Puente insisted from prison. Me and Nancy, Puente says, shaking her head, we never got along. (A similar epitaph could apply to her marriage to her fourth husband, Pedro Montalvo, who left her in 1976, the same year they exchanged vows in Reno. In the narrative of her life that unfurled at her murder trial and in news reports and books about the case, she grew up poor, deprived in equal measure of material comforts and parental nurturing. She established her reputation as a caregiver, providing young women with a sanctuary from poverty and abuse without charge. MONTEREY . She was just pure evil, Ballenger says. I wondered how the last two decades had changed her, how she had endured. 'Death House Landlady' Dorothea Puente possessed 'a black heart In 1993, facing nine counts of murder after prosecutors linked her to two other deaths, she stood trial without testifying. He speculates that running a boardinghouse began for her as a humane endeavor rooted in a desire to undo painful childhood memories. Vera Martin, 64. She does not once voice sadness over the deaths of her boarders, as if fearful that merely referring to them would imply her guilt. The three men carried shovels as they fanned out across the backyard of the two-story Victorian at 1426 F Street. In the 1980s, she worked as a personal caretaker who drugged her clients and stole their valuables. Again and again, it is not her. Betty Palmer, 78. Its like she was watching a movie she wasnt particularly interested in., Jury deliberations commenced in July 1993 and soon stalled. Dorothea Puente. [citation needed], The defense called several witnesses, who showed Puente had a generous and caring side to her. Puente claims she spent time in the 70s with California governors Pat Brown, Jerry Brown and Ronald Reagan. 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 home belonged to seemingly sweet Dorothea Puente, who was arrested in 1988 and later convicted as a serial murderer. Most disregarded the warning in the face of a paucity of housing options for alcoholics, drug addicts and the mentally ill, and even after her release from prison in 1985, social workers and homeless advocates, ignoring or unaware that she was an ex-con running a boardinghouse without a license, sent their clients to her. Puente struck out on her own when she was 16. (Details of reports on such incidents are not public record.) Then there was the riddle of Puente. Police make a grisly discovery in Dorothea Puente's lawn "Murder House Flip" Dorothea Puente Home - Part 1 (TV Episode 2020 Genaro Molina/Sacramento Bee/MCT/Getty ImagesThe boarding house made infamous by Dorothea Puentes murders. That is mitigating. What Happened To Dorothea Puente, AKA The "Death House Lady" - Bustle In theory, the blend of narcotics detected in the victims could have proven lethal, or weakened them to the point of defenselessness against suffocation with a pillow or blanketa nearly untraceable cause of death. Given Montoyas history as a transient, his disappearance would have escaped notice without the persistence of Judy Moise. When we discuss her health or the books she reads, when she makes a rare inquiry about my job or background, the conversation tracks as normal, even mundane. Hed been referred to Dorothea Puentes house because of her sterling reputation welcoming people like him. If you lived anywhere else, theres still a good chance you recognize it, or at least the rough outline of her crimes. Her rapid decline perplexed her loved ones until they read the coroners report: the death was labeled a suicide caused by an overdose of codeine and acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. She gasped at sight of the remains, hands bracketing her cheeks. McFaul split from his young wife in 1948. I started working her, Cabrera says, but all along, she was working me. Puente was convicted in. Dorothea Puente, ne Dorothea Helen Gray, was born on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California. I watch the scenes unfold from table No. I could see the joint., A vial of flurazepam found in Puentes home (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives). The jury deliberated over a month and eventually found Puente guilty of three murders. He also knows what will happen if by some unimaginable spasm of fate she should ever walk free. Puente had welcomed him into her home that February. Dorothea Puent Wiki, Biography, Age, Spouse, Net Worth, Fast Facts 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. Dorothea Puente fled to Los Angeles. Landlady Guilty in Murders of Three Tenants - Los Angeles Times The Bogle Family's winemaking story begins in 1968 when Warren V. Bogle wanted to try a new crop and planted potatoes on their farm just south of Clarksburg. Con su simpata lograba escapar de la. She answers with a look of mild reproach that pulls taut her soft fist of a face. I dont want to be a burden on anyone.. She answers without pause. Owen Brewer/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesDorothea Puente awaiting arraignment in Sacramento, California on November 17, 1988. Common sense says that if youve got [seven] people who have died in your house, somethings gone wrong, says Vlautin, who retired from the Sacramento Public Defenders Office in 2005. Some praised the soft-hearted landlady who cooked big meals for her low-income tenants, handed out vegetables from her garden to neighbors and adopted stray cats. Somehow a neighbor got suspicious, when the police officers investigated the house, the back yard, at least five bodies were buried in her back yard! 4. Then, she asked if it would be ok if she went to buy a coffee. Dorothea Puente war eine feste Gre in ihrer Gemeinde - sie kmmerte sich um ihre Nachbarn, spendete hufig fr wohlttige Zwecke und nahm diejenigen auf, die die Gesellschaft beiseite geschoben hatte. I pass through the check-in station, a process that requires visitors to pull pants pockets inside-out, remove their shoes and lift their stocking feet for inspection by guards. That didnt seem right, but Dorothea had conned our whole family into thinking she was a nurse.. At 39, she was 16 years older than Roberto Puente, a Mexican migr whose interest in his heavyset bride concerned money and American citizenship, as chronicled in Disturbed Ground, a 1994 book about the Puente murder case. Barring an unexpected transfer to another prison or a medical emergency, she will die inside this compound. After Florez finished the job, Puente had one more request: to build her a six-foot-long box so she could fill it with books and a few other assorted items before the pair of them would bring the box to a storage facility. [7] On August 18, 1982, Puente was convicted of three theft charges and sentenced to five years in prison; there, she began corresponding with Everson Gillmouth, a 77-year-old retiree from Oregon. 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. She was the sixth of seven children, all of whom struggled in a less-than-stable family environment, with little income and love to speak of in the Gray house. For her and the others, one factor in particular undercut Puentes claim of innocence. 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. I am not here to take part in a reunion; I have never so much as glimpsed the woman I am waiting to meet. 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. She established herself as a genuine resource to the community to aid alcoholics, homeless people, and mentally ill people by holding Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and assisting individuals to sign up to receive Social Security benefits. To reduce chest pain, she wears a nitroglycerin skin patch. Dismembering their corpses, she threw their remains into a mass grave in her garden, telling neighbors the foul smell emanating from the ground was sewage and dead rats, rather than dead residents. In November 1992, the same month jury selection started, she rejected a plea deal that would spare her the death penalty if she pleaded guilty to all nine murders. She has sent me more than 15 letters and postcards in the months since I first wrote to her. 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. He claims to have had a regular relationship with her, The Founder of MurderAuction, a website that sells serial killer memorabilia, Harder says he sees his grandmother as human, despite her crimes (pictured: Harder with cult leader Charles Manson). Newspapers dubbed Puente the "Death House Landlady". Dorothea Puente at the Central California Womens Facility, February 21, 2009 (Courtesy of Central California Womens Facility). The serial killer shuffles into the room with a chickens hitched gait. FacebookDorothea Puente right before she fled Sacramento. I didnt know if anyone was going to look after him.. (Puente tells me she also had twin daughters who as young adults committed suicide one week apart. Even probation officers who stopped by accepted Puentes explanation that the people living at her house were guests or friends not boarders. When attempts to extract it with a shovel failed, Cabrera climbed into the hole. In 1952, Gray married merchant seaman Axel Bren Johansson in San Francisco. [citation needed]. Vera Faye Martin, 64. Police and forensics experts swarmed Puentes property the next morning. dorothea puente grandson - Las Palmas Grandson of Dorothea Puente, shared a 'real connection' with her Familiar in name, she remained an enigma. Nonetheless, with decades to mull what she might say about her case, she sounds as unpersuasive now as during her plane ride from Los Angeles. The comments below have not been moderated. Subscribe to Sactown Magazine . One girl was placed in the care of relatives, the other put up for adoption. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. Unbeknownst to Puente, the pensioner recognized her as the woman he saw on television news reports. They first spoke with Dorothea Puente, who ran the clean, cozy home as a boardinghouse for low-income tenants. Her cancer story, on the other hand, sounds consistent with her peculiar, decades-long charade of claiming to suffer from the disease in a ploy to gain sympathy. Next, Dorothea Puente went to San Francisco, where she married her second husband, Axel Bren Johansson, in 1952. 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. 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. Some months earlier, another tenant, a longtime alcoholic on a bender, had vanished after Puente went to his room to make him feel better. The acrid stench of rotting flesh soon spread through the home and beyond, an odor she blamed on sewer problems and that drew complaints from neighbors. She resembles a wizened owl. [19] It was then the subject of the 2015 documentary short The House Is Innocent and was again opened to tours for one day in conjunction with a local film festival's showing of the film.[20]. The string of thefts led to her arrest, and in 1982, a Superior Court judge sentenced her to five years in prison at the California Institution for Women in Corona. 15 Notorious Female Serial Killers - The Lineup Does she have to be killed?" John Cabrera and Terry Brown, homicide detectives with the Sacramento Police Department, and Jim Wilson, a federal probation agent, had arrived at the house late on the morning of Nov. 11, 1988. She had breached her federal probation by running a boardinghouse, yet admitted to the offense when asked. Cops hauling away body bags. During her trial, the persecution said. But a bit of digging in the backyarda tenant had reported seeing large holes excavated and filled behind the houseunearthed a human leg bone and a decomposed foot. Meet the Couple Who Live in a Serial Killer's House SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KTXL) Throughout the 1980s, as many as nine deaths in Sacramento were investigated as being connected to Dorothea Puente. In effect, every cell has a waiting list.) She married Roberto Puente in 1968, but the relationship dissolved sixteen months later. One of the bodies was missing its head, hands and feet, Body parts were also found scattered across the property. With age and health concerns relieving her of work duty, she considers her self-assigned morning chores, attending chapel and other diversions a means of survival. 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. . EXCLUSIVE: 'I killed JonBent Ramsey! Convicted pedophile Rose West's son breaks silenceto tell how his killer mother Isabel Oakeshott receives 'menacing' message from Matt Hancock, Insane moment river of rocks falls onto Malibu Canyon in CA, Mom who lost both sons to fentanyl blasts laughing Biden, Pavement where disabled woman gestured at cyclist before fatal crash, Pro-Ukrainian drone lands on Russian spy planes exposing location, 'Buster is next!' When they came to me, they were so sick, they werent expected to live.. Despite being convicted of murder in 1993 and sent to prison, Puente. But the passage of months and years since the victims had died reduced the toxicology results to educated guesswork. The infamous home Dorothea Puente lived in is along F Street in Sacramento. Lifestory of Serial Killer Dorothea Puente Analysis - GraduateWay Granddaughter Of Dorothea Puente Victim Visits Boarding House We lapse into a short silence, and in that span, the incredible feats of a younger Dorothea diminish in the distance. Puente was found guilty of the murders of 64-year-old Dorothy Miller, 55-year-old Benjamin Fink, and 78-year-old Leona Carpenter. 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. In April 2020, the house and current owners were showcased in the Quibi series Murder House Flip. A 22-year-old soldier who had returned to the U.S. from the Pacific after World War II, he married Dorothea in 1945, and they moved to Gardnerville, Nevada to start a family. Instead, after buying the coffee, she fled immediately to Los Angeles, where she befriended an elderly male pensioner whom she had met in a bar. Chief later dismantled a garage in the backyard and installed a fresh concrete slab there as well. Know Her Death House Now Her narrow lips, pinched and lined at the corners, curl slightly upward. Some of them began to disappear. Puente then married Pedro Angel Montalvo, but he left her only a week after they were wed. She sat there so totally motionless and emotionless, says Honey Hewlett, one of 12 jurors seated for the trial, who stopped buying Giorgio perfume after learning Puente also wore the scent. With Jeff Rechner, Joelle Uzyel, Mikel Welch. Dorothea Puente: Death House Landlady | by DeLani R. Bartlette - Medium She also suffered a miscarriage. She settled her nerves not with coffee but a few vodkas with orange juice while he drank beer. Wood earlier sent Puente to prison for drugging and robbing the elderly. Dorothea Puente is one of the criminals whose crimes are detailed in 'Worst Roommate Ever.' Puente was known in her neighborhood for housing individuals who were homeless, elderly, or otherwise unable to care for themselves. George Deukmejian (second from left) in this undated photo. Ballenger began to suspect Puente of more nefarious behavior after learning that two elderly women in her care had suffered recurring spells of illness that baffled doctors. Exploiting her appearance of the sweet old lady, Puente would lure unsuspecting tenants to their grisly deaths by baking them cakes laced with sleeping pills. Once free of the throng, Cabrera stopped and watched the pair until they entered the hotel. Others spoke of a calculating criminal who feigned altruism to mask her avariceand a homicidal bent. Under the law, Puente received life without the possibility of parole. The couple, Barbara Holmes and Tom Williams, renovated the . Authorities alleged that, by poisoning her boarders, she wanted to collect their benefits checks without risk of them notifying social workers or police. Despite the guilty verdict of her . It was too humiliating, too shameful for her to admit responsibility for these crimes. No, Dorothea Puente is no longer alive as of 2022 as she died on March 27th, 2011. and other board games that the prison makes available to visitors. 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. Con su simpata lograba escapar de la. 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 you gotta do something so you dont go crazy.. I felt like someone had pulled my insides out.. 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. Dorothea Puente - Wikipedia He was a good-hearted man, very kind, she says. I have talked to her attorneys, to the cop who unmasked her, to the prosecutor who tried her for murder, to jurors who found her guilty. These entities fall through the cracks, said Kathleen Lammers, executive director of the California Law Center on Longterm Care, about boarding houses like Puentes. . Intense news coverage led to Puentes trial moving to Monterey. First off, I was getting the checks. A dark thought arrived. As reported by Dailymail, seven year after Puente's death, a man named William Harder had claimed to be his grandson. But eventually, police searching for a missing tenant spotted a patch of disturbed dirt near the boarding house and uncovered the first of several bodies. '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. He neither explained his motive for capitulating nor discussed why he agreed to convict her of only three killings. For William Clausen, by contrast, the bodies buried in Puentes yard confirmed what he already considered fact: she killed for profit. Soon afterward, Chief disappeared. Her bedroom was on the second floor. That same year, the Victorian bungalow Puente used to commit her crimes was sold to a Sacramento couple at a public auction for $215,000. The wanted bulletin for, I think she truly wanted to rehabilitate [her tenants] as she could not the people in her own family, psychiatrist William Vicary says. I wondered whether, when thinking back to 1988, she saw her past as her own or that of a different Dorothea Puente, one who, over time, had faded into something of a stranger. They appealed to authorities to reexamine their mothers death, a probe that ended with investigators upholding the suicide ruling. The conversation soon veers toward why I want to interview her, and before I finish explaining, she interrupts. In another twist to the case, Sacramento police escorted her back to the city on a plane chartered by KCRA for its news crew. It occurs to me that if I were unaware of her past and talking with her outside of prison, she could come across as the little old lady next door. Everything Worst Roommate Ever Leaves Out About Dorothea Puente "Which is gross," Hayden said. The only time they were in good health was when they stayed at my home. Investigators soon found the decomposing body of an elderly man inside. He ferried Puente to police headquarters and grilled her for two hours. Sometimes she includes small handmade gifts: Christmas ornaments constructed from cardboard and yarn, a greeting card stitched with fine thread. Beyond that lurked the vexing conundrum of the accused herself. Still, prison has changed Puente in one profound aspect, reforming her into an obedient citizen. In a low, almost plaintive voice, she replies, Puente. Kara Goldfarb is a writer living in New York City. Puente watched the images flicker across the TV screen in her Los Angeles motel room. 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.