Police and forensics experts swarmed Puentes property the next morning. Sacramento Co. By Remy Millisky / March 14, 2022 11:13 am EDT. ), Puente relates that, as a Rockette, she met John Kennedy, then a U.S. senator, and his wife, Jackie, and befriended actress Rita Hayworth. Forensic testing had failed to determine a definitive cause of death in any of the victims. I am led to believe if there is any reason for us to be living here on this Earth, it is to somehow enhance one another's humanity, to love, to touch each other with kindness, to know that you have made just one person breathe easier because you have lived. The police dug up 78-year-old Leono Carpenter and then six more bodies. My question about the incident draws an explanation akin to the one Puente gave a county judge nearly a half century earlier: I was there visiting a friend when the cops came. She refuses to elaborate. Then learn about Aileen Wuornos, historys most terrifying female serial killer. Several were swaddled in bed sheets that matched linens found in the house. ), Thanks to her ties to Reagan, Puente tells me, she met Vice President Spiro Agnew and U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston, and in the mid-70s, she ate dinner with longtime Republican booster Clint Eastwood when he visited town. [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. Published: 17:09 EST, 21 January 2019 | Updated: 17:42 EST, 21 January 2019, Dorothea Puente was arrested in 1988 after the dismembered bodies of seven residents were found in the garden of her home in Sacramento, California. 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. I know her only through the words of others. Others spoke of a calculating criminal who feigned altruism to mask her avariceand a homicidal bent. See how its bulging? Clymo responded by evoking Dorothea the child and caregiver. 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. I dont know what to tell you, she said. An officer dispatched to the house that morning interviewed Puente and one of her tenants, John Sharp. Years later, her granddaughter visits the spot. I now see them as tokens of loneliness, trifles to mark the time. Vera Faye Martin, 64. Puente was convicted in. Round-framed glasses too large for her face magnify a pair of pale blue eyes. But there were seven dead bodies in your yard. Puente drugged three women with tranquilizers to steal checks, money and valuables from their homes in the early 80s, as recounted in court records. A prison official describes her as very low-key, very quiet. If discreet, however, Puente, who stands 5-foot-3, bears an outsized notoriety. The four women and three men, ages 52 to 79, had boarded at the two-story, powder-blue Victorian. 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. Puente's total count reached nine murders; she was convicted of three and the jury hung on the other six. But, behind the scenes, Puente had embarked on a path that would lead her to murder. So we knew wed have an uphill battle in convincing the jurors that all of those were accidental deaths.. 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. These people were human beings, they had a right to live-they did not have a lot of possessions-no houses-no cars-only their social security checks and their lives. Officers rushed to the hotel to arrest Puente, but by then, she had bolted. Disguised as a kind-hearted boarding house owner, Dorothea Puente allegedly murdered tenants who lived on her property, and buried them in her backyard, according to the Los Angeles Times. The boarding house at 1426 F Street in Sacramento was included in the 2013 home tour held by the Sacramento Old City Association. Beneath the rooms ashen lighting stand neat rows of small round tables, some 50 in all. Others disparaged the closet alcoholic who on occasion punctuated roof-raising, cuss-filled tirades with a piece of furniture heaved down the stairs. Subscribe to Sactown Magazine . She gave them clothing, she gave them food. 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. Tests revealed high levels of unprescribed drugs in their systems, and in time, the physicians fingered her as the culprit. (AP Photo/Walt Zeboski). Retired social worker Mildred Ballenger first met Puente in the late 1970s. 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. Investigators opened the box and found the badly decomposed and unidentifiable body of an elderly man inside. Pathologists testified that they hadnt been able to fix the cause of death for any of the corpses. 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. 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. They had two daughters between 1946 and 1948; Gray sent one child to live with relatives in Sacramento, and placed the other for adoption. Sacramento Bee Two more murders She'd. She had a traumatic childhood after being raised by alcoholic parents. In 2004, she released a cookbook titled Cooking with a . [citation needed]. In the landladys presence, he corroborated her story about Montoya. The initial jolt of uncovering a dead body on Nov. 11 ebbed as Cabrera weighed three factors. Federal law shields inmate medical records from the public, leaving open the question of whether she has had three surgeries since entering prison. Trial began in October 1992 and ended a year later. She professed her innocence until she died. After several days of deliberations, the jury was deadlocked 75; Judge Michael J. Virga declared a mistrial when the jury said further deliberations would not change their minds. Dorothea Puente was a California landlady who ran a boarding house in Sacramento during the 1980s. 'I saw her as a human - despite her crimes.'. During the 1992 proceeding, investigators revealed that Puente - who was then 63 - had been killing the tenants for money, making $4,000 a month from cashing their social security checks. She answers with a look of mild reproach that pulls taut her soft fist of a face. Today she repeats a tale she first spun for me three months ago, showing remarkable fidelity to the specifics of the earlier version. Unchanged are his lean, square-shouldered build and animated manner, his eyebrows spiking and hands windmilling as he recounts the investigation. When we later part, Puente disappears through the gray metal door at the back of the hall. Going to church every day. "You have heard of the despair which was the foundation of her life, the anger and resentmentIf anyone in the jury room tells you it was not that bad, ask them would you want that to happen to yourself? Dalmane, which is a drug used for insomnia, was found in all seven of the exhumed bodies. (Obituaries for Ingemar Johansson, who died earlier this year, list his sole surviving brother as Rolf.). Prosecutors charged Puente with killing nine people. At the time, the basement floor was covered with a concrete slab. 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. I wondered how the last two decades had changed her, how she had endured. She wound up serving four months in jail and shortly afterward fled Riverside County, flouting the terms of her probation. 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. Dorothea Puente spent much of the 1980's providing shelter for the elderly and infirm in her Sacramento boardinghouse. She recalls the future president and his first wife, Jane Wyman, as her good friends. When I mention the Gippers second wife, she frowns. Murdaugh is heckled as he leaves court, Ken Bruce finishes his 30-year tenure as host of BBC Radio 2, Ukrainian soldier takes out five tanks with Javelin missiles, Family of a 10-month-old baby filmed vaping open up, Missing hiker buried under snow forces arm out to wave to helicopter, Hershey's Canada releases HER for SHE bars featuring a trans activist, Moment teenager crashes into back of lorry after 100mph police race, This Guy Collects Artwork From Serial Killers - VICE. When they finished without noticing anything suspicious, Cabrera asked if they could dig in her yard. On January 1, 1986, a fisherman spotted the suspicious looking coffin-like box near the river and called police. Dorothea Puente fled to Los Angeles. 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. Only after unearthing seven corpses at 1426 F Street in November 1988 would prosecutors charge Puente with killing Munroe. In fact, Puente was a serial killer who committed at least nine murders inside her boarding house in Sacramento, California throughout the 1980s. The prosecution stated that Puente used sleeping pills to drug her tenants, suffocated them, and then hired convicts to bury them in the yard. She filed a missing person report with police on Nov. 7. Dorothea Puente at the Central California Womens Facility, February 21, 2009 (Courtesy of Central California Womens Facility). For a moment the prisons visitors hall feels bereft of other people and sounds. 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. Dorothea Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray in Redlands, California, on January 9, 1929. Six months after her release, she left Riverside. Through her early teen years, young Dorothea found herself handed off to a series of relatives and foster homes, bouncing between Napa and Los Angeles, court records reveal. 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. 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.. Some play Scrabble, Sorry! Would you want that to happen to your children? She would later kill them by poisoning or strangling them. Shes dying of cancer. She this Dorothea Puente, was an elderly lady (think a widow at that) that housed boarders, a care home, or is it care house? They know what shes done., Puente conveys a pride in her renown that, now and then, gives way to embarrassment, or perhaps weariness. I am not here to take part in a reunion; I have never so much as glimpsed the woman I am waiting to meet. That is the question. I ask why the cops targeted her. As far as theyre concerned, Im dead.. Dorothea Puente, born Dorothea Helen Gray was born on January 9, 1929 in San Bernardino County, California. She was incarcerated at Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla, California. Puentes next two marriages would be short-lived. On her lap bounces a pony-tailed girl in a red-buttoned vest who giggles Mama! Two tables over, a stout, fortyish black woman with a toothy smile banters with her parents and younger brother, to judge from the physical semblance. Dorothea was convicted of three out of nine murder counts and sentenced to life in prison in August of 1993. She'd later return to smother her incapacitated prey. Cabreras superiors approved her request, deciding they held insufficient evidence to detain her. I just did, she says. My oldest grandson is 15 and wanted to do this attraction. 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. On a later visit, she brags that she won $10,000 on a 1950s game show on NBC called Feather Your Nest; another time, that she played a few tournaments on the fledgling LPGA tour in the 50s. She recalls the future president and his first wife, Jane Wyman, as her good friends. When I mention the Gippers second wife, Puente frowns. Following her year-long trial which ended in 1993, Dorothea was convicted on three counts of murder and was. Its the same thing. 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. 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. Puente watched the images flicker across the TV screen in her Los Angeles motel room. Since Ive been in here, she says, its like all of that never happened.. She did not strike me as a person who had a major mental illness. She answers without pause. 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. The penalty phase of the prosecution was highlighted by her prior convictions introduced by O'Mara. I ask why shes here. 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. Her evasive answersfirst claiming he had traveled to Mexico, then that he had returned and moved to Utahtripped Moises suspicion. The three men carried shovels as they fanned out across the backyard of the two-story Victorian at 1426 F Street. has sold out to audiences at the California Stage, Wilkerson Theatre, UC Davis, and in January 2023 at Saramento Theatre Company. According to Dailymail, seven years after the death of Puente, a man named William Harder had claimed to be her grandson. Shes been in for 12 years. For the rest of her life, she maintained her innocence, insisting that all of her boarders had died of "natural causes". Designers Joelle and Mikel visit the current owners to replace the home's negative energy with a new makeover. The jury deliberated over a month and eventually found Puente guilty of three murders. Their first series of holes dislodged only soft dirt and a vague sense of futility. Then, she asked if it would be ok if she went to buy a coffee. That was my tomcat. I didnt know if anyone was going to look after him.. Beneath a black and white mug shot of Puente wearing a polka dot dress and round glasses, the bulletin reads, The above suspect wanted for murder after several bodys (sic) found buried in her backyard. He was going with another movie star, she says. Clausen checked on her in April 1982 and saw his pallid, suddenly enfeebled mother, who rarely drank alcohol, sipping crme de menthe. I wait for her to speak. Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray on January 9, 1929. It is a wistfulness that lays bare the depth of chaos that defined Puentes status quo long before they married in 1952. The serial killer shuffles into the room with a chickens hitched gait. Dorothea Puente awaiting arraignment in Sacramento, California on November 17, 1988. George Deukmejian (second from left) in this undated photo. He was good to me. (Johansson did not respond to interview requests.). I watch as she pushes away the empty plastic container of fried chicken strips and french fries that she finished eating earlier. . Betty Palmer, 78. The forensic psychiatrist, assigned to evaluate the alleged serial killer as her case proceeded toward trial, would spend 12 hours talking with her over the next four years. Prison persuades some inmates to repent, their perspective evolving with time as they forsake their younger selves. Florez agreed, and Puente assisted him. The house at 1426 F Street, now painted a shade of gingerbread, appears occupied on the first floor and empty on the second, where she used to sleep. During this period, parole agents visited Puente at least fifteen times; though she had been ordered to keep away from the elderly and refrain from handling government checks, no violations were ever noted. 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. She answers without pause. 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. I am waiting for one of the countrys most infamous female serial killers, an inmate whose notoriety leaves her without peer among women murderers in California history. We both fell into the orchestra pit and I broke my leg. The other dancer? The impending anniversary, if tracked only by media types and those who sell serial-killer novelties online, had stirred my curiosity. 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. Still, prison has changed Puente in one profound aspect, reforming her into an obedient citizen. (Clymo died in 2006.) Some of the bodies were mummified in cloth, bed sheets and duct tape. Aug. 27, 1993 12 AM PT. Gillmouth's body remained unidentified for three years. In the 70s, while running her first boardinghouse at 21st and F streets, Puente cultivated a strong rapport with social workers. She settled her nerves not with coffee but a few vodkas with orange juice while he drank beer. 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. 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Dorothea Puente - Dorothea Helen Puente (January 9, 1929 - March 27, 2011) was an American convicted serial killer. Jodi Picoult mentions Puente's crimes and cookbook in her novel House Rules. Her goodwill earned her the honorific title la doctora and flattering write-ups in local Spanish publications. I now see them as tokens of loneliness, trifles to mark the time. Driven by routine, Puente rises by 4:30 a.m. most days, long before her seven cellmates. She was given five years' probation and ordered to pay $4,000 in restitution. 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. The silence here feels powerful enough to swallow space. Beyond that lurked the vexing conundrum of the accused herself. Axel Johansson rates as Puentes favorite of her four ex-husbands, a presumably unwanted distinction. Moise alerted police, who went to the boarding house. In late 1981, his mother, Ruth Munroe, went into business with Puente, leasing and running the restaurant side of the Round Corner Tavern in midtown. (To the question of which verse most resonates with her, she shrugs and replies, All of em.) She then quietly gathers the clothing of her slumbering roomies to wash later in the morning, when prisoners are allowed out of their cells. The two would continue to have a turbulent relationship, and Gray filed a restraining order in 1975. 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. Its like she was watching a movie she wasnt particularly interested in., Jury deliberations commenced in July 1993 and soon stalled. 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. As we continue talking, the topic switches to her life before prison, and I ask what she misses most about Sacramento. I dont want to be a burden on anyone.. As the story goes, while shopping at a department store called The Emporium in San Francisco in 1948, a 19-year-old Puente felt a tap on her shoulder. 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. It was always moving. Genaro Molina/Sacramento Bee/MCT/Getty Images. She sits erect, legs crossed at the ankles and tucked beneath her chair. In 16 years at the facility, she has accrued only two rules violations, the last occurring in 2004. She eventually met and married Pedro Angel Montalvo, though Montalvo abruptly left the relationship a week after their marriage. 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. SPECIAL TO THE TIMES. I dont feel like confessing my sins to anyone, she says sharply. After their deaths, Puente collected . I think they needed somebody and I was the easiest one around., Yet the most illuminating aspect of talking with Puente in prison arises from her silence about the dead.
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