An outreach counselor with Volunteers of America, she had visited Puente before placing him in her care. Know Her Death House Now When she was eight her father died of tuberculosis. For years, the disappearances of these so-called shadow people who lived at the margins of society went unnoticed. They belong to a litany of famous names she drops during our meetings. Even probation officers who stopped by accepted Puentes explanation that the people living at her house were guests or friends not boarders. (A charity she declines to name sends her $15 a month, her sole source of money.) Her father died of tuberculosis in 1937; her mother, who worked as a sex worker, lost custody of her children in 1938 and died in a motorcycle accident by the end of the year. The press dubbed Dorothea Puente the 'Death House Landlady.' The name sharply contrasted with her perception in the community. In June 2020, the house was featured in a ten-minute documentary with 60 Second Docs about the purchase and renovation of the house by the current owners. Six months after her release, she left Riverside. Owen Brewer/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesDorothea Puente awaiting arraignment in Sacramento, California on November 17, 1988. Her lawyers argued that she might be a thief, but not a murderer. McFaul split from his young wife in 1948. (Courtesy of John Cabrera). 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. Tempers spiked as the impasse stretched to its third week. Dorothea Montalvo Puente might seem like "a grandmotherly figure," says prosecutor John O'Mara. With Bill Courage, John Cabrera, Bill Clausen, Judy Moises. [2], Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California, to Trudy Mae (ne Yates) and Jesse James Gray. Puente's crimes were featured on the Netflix show . However, Dorothea's outward demeanor was a smokescreen, concealing [] So when I wrote to Puente last summer, nearly 20 years after the discovery of her victims, I had little expectation she would respond, let alone agree to talk. The hospitalization occurred a year after Sacramento police busted Dorothea in a raid on a residential house of ill fame on Fulton Avenue that had fronted as a bookkeeping service, according to court records. I was bewildered as to what in the world was going on with all these people in her yard.. Puente died of natural causes at the Central . She had seven. 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. Dick Schmidt/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty Images. A well-researched play by Mark Loewenstern entitled "Dorothea Puente Tells All!" The family suspected Puente of poisoning her. Not everybody running them is being nefarious, but nefarious activity can crop up.. In April 2020, the house and current owners were showcased in the Quibi series Murder House Flip. That is mitigating. Eventually, the "Death House Landlady" would then drug her tenants to the point of rendering them incapacitated. We spent 2 hours in here looking and reading most of the items. Then, she asked if it would be ok if she went to buy a coffee. Would you want that to happen to your children? Puente cashed in the Social Security checks of the elderly and disabled boarders living in her house. Puente passed away in 2011 at the Central California Women's Facility at age 82 from natural causes. Puente was charged for seven murders, but her trial wouldn't begin for another four years. A human leg and a badly discomposed foot were dug up separately in another part of the yard. Well regarded for taking in substance abusers and the homeless, she had earned respect in political circles for her charity work. I wonder what she wants when death does come. We lapse into a short silence, and in that span, the incredible feats of a younger Dorothea diminish in the distance. The detective had yet to realize that, in the 59-year-old Puente, he had another serial killer on his hands. 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. Federal law shields inmate medical records from the public, leaving open the question of whether she has had three surgeries since entering prison. Authorities alleged that, by poisoning her boarders, she wanted to collect their benefits checks without risk of them notifying social workers or police. She this Dorothea Puente, was an elderly lady (think a widow at that) that housed boarders, a care home, or is it care house? Six more corpses would follow, but Puente was still on the run. Among them were four of her five husbands, two children, her two sisters, her mother, a grandson and a mother-in-law. She moves toward the front of the room, where a guard seated behind a metal desk tells her my table number. Dorothea Puente awaiting arraignment in Sacramento, California on November 17, 1988. WITH her chiffon dresses, thick-rimmed glasses, grey hair and litter of kittens, Dorothea Puente looked like a sweet old lady - even insisting to some, "Call me Grandma". As we talk on Valentines Day, I broach her long-ago brushes with the law, only to find myself stymied again. Not yet considering the sweet lady to be a suspect, the officers obliged at the 59-year-old's request to go down the street to buy a cup of coffee - but she had no intention of returning. They wanted to question her about Bert Montoya, her onetime tenant who had been reported missing. I wonder if she ever wishes she had received the death penalty. Puentes next two marriages would be short-lived. There, the former prostitute turned back to a life of crime. 13, as designated by the plastic placard atop its faux-wood surface. She gave birth to a daughter in 1946 followed by a second less than a year later, but public documents suggest she inherited her mothers aversion to childrearing. That didnt seem right, but Dorothea had conned our whole family into thinking she was a nurse.. I watch as she pushes away the empty plastic container of fried chicken strips and french fries that she finished eating earlier. Questions about her criminal record will elicit short answers trailed by awkward silence, during which she will stare at the table or the far wall, in the direction of Winnie and friends. 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. She had a terrible adolescence after being . On January 1, 1986, a fisherman spotted the suspicious looking coffin-like box near the river and called police. He was a good-hearted man, very kind, she says. [citation needed]. Police found seven bodies. Sometimes she includes small handmade gifts: Christmas ornaments constructed from cardboard and yarn, a greeting card stitched with fine thread. When attempts to extract it with a shovel failed, Cabrera climbed into the hole. The four women and three men, ages 52 to 79, had boarded at the two-story, powder-blue Victorian. Betty Palmer, 78. Next, Dorothea Puente went to San Francisco, where she married her second husband, Axel Bren Johansson, in 1952. "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 told me Dorothea had given it to her to help calm her down, says the 55-year-old Clausen, who runs a furniture upholstery shop in South Land Park. She gasped at sight of the remains, hands bracketing her cheeks. Round-framed glasses too large for her face magnify a pair of pale blue eyes. Puente was convicted of three of the murders, although the jury could not agree on the other six. She parried, unwavering in her account of Montoyas departure, her voice calm as the detective pressed her. When they returned to his apartment, he watched in a stupor as Puente helped herself to his checks and cash; before leaving, she slipped a diamond ring off his pinky. A person like her, he says, theres no forgetting.. An alarmed Ballenger urged fellow counselors to steer clear of Puente. [6], Gray was arrested in 1960 for owning and operating a bookkeeping firm as a front for a brothel in Sacramento;[5] she was found guilty and was sentenced to ninety days in the Sacramento County Jail. The Montoya file landed on Cabreras desk within a day. Look at Job, John, Paul, Moses. Dorothea Puente at the Central California Womens Facility, February 21, 2009 (Courtesy of Central California Womens Facility). 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. McFaul left her in late 1948.[5][6]. Subscribe to Sactown Magazine . She watched from her porch, and before Cabrera put spade to soil, she requested a moment of his time. Suspect left her residence for a walk but never returned.. 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. After spending part of Valentines Day with Miss Dorothea, as other inmates call her, I returned later in February and stopped by for a final chat in April. She lost her life in a motorcycle wreck the same year, orphaning Dorothea before she turned 10. The business supplied her with steady revenuesteady and, apparently, inadequate. Dorothea Puente spent much of the 1980's providing shelter for the elderly and infirm in her Sacramento boardinghouse. I am not here to take part in a reunion; I have never so much as glimpsed the woman I am waiting to meet. Me and Nancy, she says, shaking her head. Dorothea Puente's reign of terror began in 1982 when her friend, Ruth Monroe, was found dead in a boarding house Puente was running at that time. It is a wistfulness that lays bare the depth of chaos that defined Puentes status quo long before they married in 1952. [citation needed]. 'I saw her as a human - despite her crimes.'. To vary her diet, Puente sometimes cooks in her room, making tamales with tortillas, canned chili, cheese and other ingredients bought in the prisons canteen or mail-ordered through a food-delivery service. She never intended to show, I realize. Charged with a total of nine murders, Puente was flown back to Sacramento. She consented again, even lending a shovel to the men, who had brought only two. Puentes mechanical response echoes what she has told me during prior meetings, and what I will hear on subsequent visits. The two talked through the afternoon, with Willgues both attracted to and wary of the well-dressed stranger who sipped screwdrivers. The 1991 film Evil Spirits, starring Karen Black and Arte Johnson, is loosely based on the Puente murders. She was known as the "step house lady" after filing nine homicides. Later that year, Dorothea moved to San Bernardino and picked up her first criminal conviction after trying to float a check under a false name. 'We had a real connection,' Harder told VICE. [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. Im here until I die.. Puente claims she spent time in the 70s with California governors Pat Brown, Jerry Brown and Ronald Reagan. Puente told police that the woman was very depressed because her husband was terminally ill. Prison persuades some inmates to repent, their perspective evolving with time as they forsake their younger selves. For a moment the prisons visitors hall feels bereft of other people and sounds. (Clymo died in 2006.) For the rest of her life, she maintained her innocence, insisting that all of her boarders had died of "natural causes". Her eyes fix on the mural of Winnie the Pooh. On Nov. 11, 1988, acting on the concerns of a social worker looking for a client who had disappeared, homicide detectives dropped by the mans last known address: a boardinghouse for derelicts and the mentally ill that Puente operated at 1426 F Street, within a mile of the Hall of Justice and the Capitol. Dorothea Helen Puente (ne Gray; January 9, 1929 March 27, 2011) was an American convicted serial killer. In 2004, she released a cookbook titled Cooking with a . One of the bodies was missing its head, hands and feet, Body parts were also found scattered across the property. And she didnt buy Puentes explanation that hed left on vacation. He called over Cabrera and Brown, and after he scooped away more soil, they saw what resembled a tree root. The subject of personal health preoccupies Puente as much as the next octogenarian. 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. (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives), Dorfman drew up Puentes will years agoI dont know if its any good anymore; shes probably given away stuff she doesnt [even] ownand still receives Christmas cards from her. The unreliable narrator breaks the hush. Theres a waiting list of people who want to be in my room. (This is true in the broadest sense: The prisons population hovers around 4,000 from month to month, roughly double its capacity. Prosecutors said that Puente was one of the most cold and calculating female killers the country had ever seen.. 3 min read. Social workers in the 1970s looked upon Dorothea Puente and her boarding house with admiration. Puente had Chief dig in the basement and cart soil and rubbish away in a wheelbarrow. '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. Kara Goldfarb is a writer living in New York City. When we later part, Puente disappears through the gray metal door at the back of the hall. Cabrera scrambled out of the hole, pulse rate and thoughts quickening. The Victorian on F Street. Puente and McCauley had caught a cab from the Clarion Hotel to a West Sacramento bar. How Did Dorothea Puente Kill Her Victims? Hes the brother of Ingemar Johansson, you know, she says, referring to the late heavyweight boxing champ. Puente was acquitted in the poisoning death of his mother, Ruth Munroe, and Clausen, who testified at trial, regards the convicted killers every living day as a denigration of his mothers memory. Does she have to be killed?" Again and again, it is not her. Then aged 63 (above), 103 witnesses were called to testify against her in the trial, Suspicion arose in 1988 when Alberto Montoya, a mentally disabled and schizophrenic tenant, was reported missing by a social worker, Puente's victims: (left to right)Everson Gillmouth, 77. Anyway, so she had six boarders! I felt like someone had pulled my insides out.. "Which is gross," Hayden said. I just did, she says. Some of the bodies were mummified in cloth, bed sheets and duct tape. This woman is a disturbed woman who does not appear to have remorse or regret for what she has done, he wrote. A stream of people tour Dorothea Puente's former home on Sept. 15, 2013. Mental health experts testified of Puente's abusive upbringing and how it motivated her to help the less fortunate. After their deaths, Puente collected . Her eyes would fill with tears, but she would never admit it, he says. In addition to the usual fare sold in the halls chow line, there are heart-shaped boxes of chocolates for $7. They described a woman of contradictions. I rise as she approaches and shake a hand that feels skeletal and small. 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. 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. Only after unearthing seven corpses at 1426 F Street in November 1988 would prosecutors charge Puente with killing Munroe. (Courtesy of The Sacramento Bee/Genaro Molina). She seems entirely harmless. Clymo responded by evoking Dorothea the child and caregiver. Con su simpata lograba escapar de la. A year earlier, he had probed the case of Morris Solomon, a Sacramento handyman who would be convicted of murdering six women across the city. I now see them as tokens of loneliness, trifles to mark the time. If you lived anywhere else, theres still a good chance you recognize it, or at least the rough outline of her crimes. Despite being convicted of murder in 1993 and sent to prison, Puente. More than 130 witnesses were called to the stand by the prosecution, and eventually the devilish landlady was convicted for three of the murderers and ordered to serve back-to-back life sentences. A few days later I drive to Chowchilla for my final visit with her. I now see them as tokens of loneliness, trifles to mark the time. Some play Scrabble, Sorry! Being escorted to a police car after her capture in 1988, serial killer Dorothea Puente told gathering reporters 'I used to be a very good person, at one time'. I started working her, Cabrera says, but all along, she was working me. She turns to look at me. Grandson of killer granny Dorothea Puente, who laced cakes with sleeping pills and then smothered them at her California boarding house, reveals how he shared a 'real connection' with her and . Police and forensics experts swarmed Puentes property the next morning. A man identifying himself as a talent scout for the Radio City Rockettes, the famed New York City dance troupe, sized her up and, on the spot, invited her to fly east for an audition. READ: Serial Killer Puente's Former Home Becomes Classroom For Law. With Jeff Rechner, Joelle Uzyel, Mikel Welch. Shes making me lie for her.. Her bedroom was on the second floor. Vera Faye Martin, 64. Soon after, Monroe died from an overdose of codeine and acetaminophen. Puente passed away in 2011 from natural causes at the Central California Facility in Chowchilla, aged 82. Once, when I asked if she ever hears from her surviving siblings or two daughters, she shook her head. His eyes popped wide. Around the same time, she slipped a heavy sedative into the drink of a 74-year-old man she met at the Zebra Club in midtown. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. Police later accused Puente of lacing food or drinks she served her victims with a lethal mix of prescription drugs, poisoning them to collect their Social Security checks, a scheme that netted more than $5,000 a month. Everybodys heard of me. A contrary perception derived from Puentes strong ties to Hispanic residents living in downtown and midtown. But as the police prepared to leave, Sharp slipped them a message. Puente was supposed to stick around to serve out her probation, but in a sign of things to come she skipped town instead. When Puente offered to perform a sex act on an undercover cop at a house of ill-repute, her husband sent her to a psychiatric ward. But you gotta do something so you dont go crazy.. 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. 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. An Asian woman in her mid-thirties, with sharp cheekbones framed by long glossy black hair, wears standard-issue prisoner garb: white T-shirt with long navy blue sleeves, dungarees and blue sneakers. Aug. 27, 1993 12 AM PT. Finally, four days after she skipped town, authorities traced her to a tumbledown motel in Los Angeles. She claims he has sent her Christmas cards in prison, and as she talks about that small act of kindness, her eyes mist over. 22 ratings3 reviews. 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. Some might interpret that as a kind of confession, I finally say. But, behind the scenes, Puente had embarked on a path that would lead her to murder. She falls silent for a moment. She answers without pause. An officer dispatched to the house that morning interviewed Puente and one of her tenants, John Sharp. [citation needed], In November 1985, Puente hired a man named Ismael Florez to install some wood paneling in her apartment. They share a gray cinderblock room furnished with eight metal lockers, four slender bunk beds, two sinks, a toilet and a shower. She eventually met and married Pedro Angel Montalvo, though Montalvo abruptly left the relationship a week after their marriage. Her words return to me. I was struck by how pleasant and socially intact and intelligent she was, says Vicary, who works in Los Angeles. Puente struck out on her own when she was 16. Then there was the riddle of Puente. 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. One-time hitman Julio Santana (right) stopped counting after he reached 492 kills. Amanda Sedlak-Hevener. 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. Explaining away the corpses in her yard, she says, Not one person who worked for me saw me doing anything wrong. It was too humiliating, too shameful for her to admit responsibility for these crimes. She was notoriously known as the "Death House Land Lady" after committing nine murders. Satisfied, the authorities ruled Monroes death a suicide and moved on. And it was so counter to her strenuous effort all her life to be somebody who was respected, somebody important., Puente received a prison term of life without parole after the jury deadlocked on whether to give her the death penalty, an ending that deepened William Clausens bitterness. 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. At the same time, they agreed she had an evil side brought on by the stress of caring for her down-and-out tenants. 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He stares at the photo and points at her purse. Nor could anyone rule out that the four women and three men had taken the drugs on their own, considering their assorted substance addictions, physical maladies and mental illnesses. At the time, she owned a solid reputation among Sacramentos social workers, who referred clients to her that other boardinghouses turned away: the mentally ill, recovering alcoholics and drug addicts, those with chronic physical maladies who had no one to care for them. She established her reputation as a caregiver, providing young women with a sanctuary from poverty and abuse without charge. Following her year-long trial which ended in 1993, Dorothea was convicted on three counts of murder and was. That was my tomcat. Vlautin spoke gently about Puente's childhood touching on the traumatic aspects that shaped her life and urged the jurors to see the world through her eyes. Stone, Michael H., M.D. Most of the lot has been paved over. Given Dorothea Puente's image, this meant the controversial artist, Shane Bugbee, would collaborate with her on a cookbook. She played the stoic in court, her face as frozen as her mug shot. Her escape brought coast-to-coast ridicule of Police Chief John Kearns and his department while authorities chased dead-end leads from Las Vegas to Mexico. Her father died of tuberculosis when Dorothea was 8; her mother, an alcoholic who alternated between abusing and deserting her children, lost custody of them in 1938. I think she truly wanted to rehabilitate [her tenants] as she could not the people in her own family, Vicary says. The couple moved to Sacramento a short time later and lived in the city off and on for the next decade. The couple, Barbara Holmes and Tom Williams, renovated the . She came on a little hard, what with her questions about his Social Security benefits and abrupt suggestion that they consider living together. Most of the luminaries are connected to her years in Sacramento, where she moved in the mid-50s with her second husband, Axel Johansson, who now lives in Orangevale. But before the cop left, Sharp managed to slip him a hand-written note that read, Shes making me lie for her. He later divulged unsettling details about life at the house. She has sent me more than 15 letters and postcards in the months since I first wrote to her. Gawkers gather outside 1426 F St. (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives), Domestic bliss and her maternal instinct failed to take root. The Boarding House Killer: Directed by Steve Allen. People were always coming and going. . 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.