It doesnt fit., At least three peopledefense attorneys Kevin Clymo and Peter Vlautin and their clientharbored scarce empathy for the prosecutor. I ask why the cops targeted her. However, Dorothea's outward demeanor was a smokescreen, concealing [] [6], Gray and Johansson divorced in 1966, although she continued to use Johansson's name for some time following their separation. Since Ive been in here, she says, its like all of that never happened.. 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. Between 1982 and 1988, she killed nine people, all of whom were renting rooms at her boarding house. For the rest of her life, she maintained her innocence, insisting that all of her boarders had died of "natural causes". When the police arrived, Puente told them that Monroe had been depressed due to her husbands terminal illness. Setting his feet, he grabbed hold of the object and, with a violent jerk, loosed it from the earths grip. Dorothea Puente's House Has Been Bought. As we continue talking, the topic switches to her life before prison, and I ask what she misses most about Sacramento. Their relationship developed quickly, and the couple was soon making wedding plans. A lot of women shouldnt be here., She counts herself among them, even while conceding few people believe in her innocence. 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. I have listened to the lingering grief and anger of a man whose mother died mysteriously while in her care. In 16 years at the facility, she has accrued only two rules violations, the last occurring in 2004. The jokes on me. As we talk on Valentines Day, I broach her long-ago brushes with the law, only to find myself stymied again. For William Clausen, by contrast, the bodies buried in Puentes yard confirmed what he already considered fact: she killed for profit. Shes making me lie for her.. 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). Puente, meanwhile, was a model prisoner, often cooking for the other prisoners and guards her tamales, in particular, were much loved. She sent one child to live with relatives while another was put up for adoption. It wasnt until 1988 that suspicions first arose about Puente, after one of her tenants, 52-year old Alvaro Montoya, went missing. 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. To give strength to other people. She lifts the paper towel to her eyes. Years later, her granddaughter visits the spot. As it happened, her shovel was used to dig the hole that yielded a human leg bone, a decomposed foot inside a dark dress shoe and what looked like pieces of tattered fabric that in fact were rotting flesh. Puente cashed in the Social Security checks of the elderly and disabled boarders living in her house. Why would I waste all my time to get these people cleaned up, make sure they have no diseases, get all their affairs in order if I was going to kill them?. Hayden spent months processing thousands of pieces of evidence related to the case, including a shovel used to dig up human remains. Know Her Death House Now Old bones sometimes turned up in downtown and midtown yards, vestiges of the early 20th century, when families unable to afford a cemetery plot interred loved ones on their property. By 1982, Puente was sent to prison for her thefts. Cops hauling away body bags. Do not sell or share my personal information. Her narrow lips, pinched and lined at the corners, curl slightly upward. Dorothea - Dorothea (also spelled Dorothe, Dorotea or other variants) is a female given name from Greek (Drotha) meaning "God's Gift". Puente was supposed to stick around to serve out her probation, but in a sign of things to come she skipped town instead. [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 serial killer shuffles into the room with a chickens hitched gait. Dorothea Puente spent much of the 1980's providing shelter for the elderly and infirm in her Sacramento boardinghouse. The penalty phase of the prosecution was highlighted by her prior convictions introduced by O'Mara. 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. Our visit winds down. But while digging a second hole, Wilson heard a muted thud as his blade struck something hard three feet down. Federal probation officers visited her numerous times in the next two years without suspecting she ran a business, lulled by her kindly facade and clean home as much as by her lies that those staying at the house were friends or guests. She holed up in the Royal Viking Motel for the next three days, seldom leaving her room. She also suffered a miscarriage. If Im thinking about getting away, you think Im going to ask permission?, Police escort Puente after apprehending her in L.A.; Cabrera walks behind her. See how its bulging? Their theory hardened into subjective truth when they discovered that, following the funeral, the nurse had drained thousands of dollars belonging to Munroe from a joint business bank account. Behind them, a twentysomething blonde clutches the hands of a young man with a sun tattoo on his forearm. 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. John OMara, the prosecutor, called over 130 witnesses to the stand. Puente died of natural causes at the Central . 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 killed her husband after he abused her and her kids. A Latino woman with shoulder-length dark hair passes our table and whispers hello to Miss Dorothea. In her telling, after showering and dressing, she prays, recites the rosary and reads a few pages of the Bible, favoring Proverbs and Romans. 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. On January 1, 1986, a fisherman spotted the suspicious looking coffin-like box near the river and called police. She also mentions undergoing major cancer surgery in 1961 to remove her reproductive organs and part of her intestines and stomach. 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. Genaro Molina/Sacramento Bee/MCT/Getty ImagesThe boarding house made infamous by Dorothea Puentes murders. In turn, I know that when she receives my letter telling her as much, shell cut off contact. In the landladys presence, he corroborated her story about Montoya. She was released just three years later, although a state psychologist diagnosed her as a schizophrenic with no remorse or regret who should be closely monitored.. The infamous home Dorothea Puente lived in is along F Street in Sacramento. 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'. Despite this, their marriage lasted until 1966. There, she quickly got back to her old tricks. It's been 20 years since Sacramento's most notorious murderer, Dorothea Puente, buried seven bodies in the garden of her F Street boardinghouse. Despite being convicted of murder in 1993 and sent to prison, Puente denied killing the victims until the day she died . 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. Suspect left her residence for a walk but never returned.. 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. Puente and McCauley had caught a cab from the Clarion Hotel to a West Sacramento bar. Speaking softly, she asked, Am I under arrest? When the detective told her no, she explained that the police presence and the growing mob of onlookers had her on edge. Joy the last person to have seen her alive. Silver-haired, dressed in a long red coat and wearing large rounded glasses, the 59-year-old resembled just a regular grandmother - proving looks truly can be deceiving. Bogle Family Vineyards Ryan, Jody & Warren Bogle Thank goodness the potato crop failed. Investigators soon found the decomposing body of an elderly man inside. A pen pal friendship developed, and when Puente was released in 1985 after serving three years of her five-year sentence, he met her outside the prison, driving a red 1980 Ford pickup. This page was last edited on 18 February 2023, at 18:08. Inmates enter one at a time at irregular intervals through a gray metal door along the rear wall. Her shoulders shake as she laughs, her open mouth exposing a white flash of dentures. Some of the bodies were mummified in cloth, bed sheets and duct tape. Thats just too much coincidence., Finally, on the 24th day of deliberations, the holdout juror acquiesced, voting guilty on two counts of first-degree murder and one second-degree count. Some touch her shoulder. After noticing disturbed soil on the property, they uncovered the body of tenant Leona Carpenter, 78. Dorothea Puente was a California landlady who ran a boarding house in Sacramento during the 1980s. She created a fake persona, calling herself "Teya Singoalla Neyaarda", a Muslim woman of Egyptian and Israeli descent. Their first series of holes dislodged only soft dirt and a vague sense of futility. Police found seven bodies. High-profile cases dotted his career, including those of convicted mass murderer Morris Solomon and the Unabomber. She was tough. But in truth, I approach this task without optimism, anticipating that our meeting will stick to the pattern of previous visits. Or about the white-haired woman who turned the yard into a mass grave. I now see them as tokens of loneliness, trifles to mark the time. She'd later return to smother her incapacitated prey. Puentes neighbors and acquaintances murmured disbelief that the white-haired landlady who handed out homemade tamales and fussed over her rose beds and vegetable garden could be a mass murderer. 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. Frequent quarrels and separations marred the marriage, with much of the discord brought on by Dorotheas appetites for drinking, gambling and other men. 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Puente had a reputation for taking in people considered tough cases recovering alcoholics, drug addicts, the mentally ill, and the elderly. 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. Sacramento Co. By Remy Millisky / March 14, 2022 11:13 am EDT. Charged with a total of nine murders, Puente was flown back to Sacramento. 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. A few wander over to a colorful mural of Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Tigger and Piglet, who prance beneath a banner reading Family Is Love, Love Is Family. None of the kids acts bothered that mom or grandma or big sister is doing time. Wood earlier sent Puente to prison for drugging and robbing the elderly. When attempts to extract it with a shovel failed, Cabrera climbed into the hole. In the 70s, while running her first boardinghouse at 21st and F streets, Puente cultivated a strong rapport with social workers. The Story Of The Unsolved Delphi Murders And The Chilling Video Evidence Left Behind, Scaleless, Slimy, And Extremely Rare: Introducing The Deep-Sea Oarfish, What Stephen Hawking Thinks Threatens Humankind The Most, 27 Raw Images Of When Punk Ruled New York, Join The All That's Interesting Weekly Dispatch, Owen Brewer/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty Images. 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. I wonder if she ever wishes she had received the death penalty. Didnt know that at the time., The detective walked about halfway to the Clarion with Puente and her boarder, John McCauley. 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. Dick Schmidt/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty Images. Her eyes would fill with tears, but she would never admit it, he says. Infamous serial murderer . [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]. These entities fall through the cracks, said Kathleen Lammers, executive director of the California Law Center on Longterm Care, about boarding houses like Puentes. It had about $2,500, $3,000 in it. Cabrera shakes his head. By 1952, she had wed Johansson, whom she met in San Francisco. Dorothea Puente after her arrest in Los Angeles, en route back to Sacramento. 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. If you lived anywhere else, theres still a good chance you recognize it, or at least the rough outline of her crimes. Even probation officers who stopped by accepted Puentes explanation that the people living at her house were guests or friends not boarders. 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. Vera Faye Martin, 64. At the age of 64, Puente - who was born Dorothea Helen Gray - was tried in 1993 for the murders of nine people after police found seven bodies buried in the garden of her home and two more. The home belonged to seemingly sweet Dorothea Puente, who was arrested in 1988 and later convicted as a serial murderer. She took it all Death is the only appropriate penalty. The seven tenants who had lived at 1426 F Street died with a variety of drugs in their bodies: anticonvulsants, antidepressants, antipsychotics, painkillers, tranquilizers. Florez agreed, and Puente assisted him. Johansson divorced Dorothea in 1966. However, it would be three more years before authorities could identify the body as one of the tenants in Dorothea Puentes house. Before leaving, I decide to return to the subject of Los Angeles, to the despair that descended as she watched the news in her motel room. Puente's heinous crimes were eventually discovered in 1988, when Alberto Montoya, a mentally disabled and schizophrenic tenant, was reported missing by a social worker. I get pushed in a wheelchair. She speaks in clipped sentences, her voice, so rarely shared with journalists, scratchy but strong. She would flee the city that morning. [1] Sua contagem total chegou a nove assassinatos confirmados e seis no . 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. Me and Nancy, she says, shaking her head. She tells me they appreciate the advice she provides them, whether informal legal counsel on their cases or how to traverse the social services network after their release. 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. So after that, I was out in New York on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and then Id come back to California the rest of the week. Known at the time as Dorothea McFaul, the last name of her first husband, whom she had recently divorced, she performed on stage as Sharon Neyaarda. He says he's often inundated with requests from crazed fans and fellow murder enthusiasts who ask to buy his grandmother's ashes. Puente's alleged grandson, William Harder (pictured), insists his grandmother wasn't all bad. She folds the towel several times into a tight square before clasping her hands together on her lap like a child attending Mass. Twenty-one minutes laterhe remembers the time preciselyhe exhumed sufficient evidence: the remains of a second body buried about a foot deep in the earth. I just did, she says. Intense news coverage led to Puentes trial moving to Monterey. But you gotta do something so you dont go crazy.. This is the disturbing story of Dorothea Puente, the Death House Landlady.. She reveals as much when, unbidden, she yanks down her shirt collar, baring a white patch the size of a silver dollar stuck to ghostly blue-veined flesh. I am not here to take part in a reunion; I have never so much as glimpsed the woman I am waiting to meet. Artifacts from the Dorothea Puente case splay out before him: a faded article published in a local Spanish newspaper with a black and white photo of a younger Puente; a pair of her mug shots, blue eyes dimmed and weary in both; a prescription label in her name for diazepam, a tranquilizer sold as Valium; the original wanted bulletin from Nov. 12, 1988, the day she went on the lam. But the passage of months and years since the victims had died reduced the toxicology results to educated guesswork. Betty Palmer, 78. She had a traumatic childhood after being raised by alcoholic parents. One was missing its hands, head and feet. Still, prison has changed Puente in one profound aspect, reforming her into an obedient citizen. Not everybody running them is being nefarious, but nefarious activity can crop up.. Her demeanor is, for the most part, politely docile, and I begin to perceive how so many could consider her trustworthy. Dorothea Puente, ne Dorothea Helen Gray, was born on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California. She has sent me more than 15 letters and postcards in the months since I first wrote to her. She wants me to buy dozens of food and beauty care items for her from a prison-approved vendor that will mail the goods to her. The pensioner contacted local law enforcement who then quickly arrested Puente. Sacramento Bee Two more murders She'd. Her upstanding reputation concealed a habit of forging the signatures of tenants on their benefits checks before signing them over to herself. Dorothea Montalvo Puente might seem like "a grandmotherly figure," says prosecutor John O'Mara. After a number of legal hurdles, Puente's trial eventually went ahead four years later. In 1952, Gray married merchant seaman Axel Bren Johansson in San Francisco. Dorothea Puente is an American serial killer. 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. Only after unearthing seven corpses at 1426 F Street in November 1988 would prosecutors charge Puente with killing Munroe. Some of the remains were in a mummified state - bound in bed sheets, cloth and duct tape (above), Puente would lure her victims to their deaths by baking them cake laced with sleeping pills. Prosecutor John OMara, then as now head of the Sacramento District Attorneys homicide unit, recognized the difficulty of cultivating compassion for victims he dubbed the shadow people. He had the added burden of building his case with witnesses of the same ilk: alcoholics, the homeless, once and future convicts. [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. I wondered if she maintained her innocence or felt bowed by remorse. If she had been held accountable for murdering my mother, Clausen says, then maybe there wouldnt have been any other victims..