After noticing disturbed soil on the property, they uncovered the body of tenant Leona Carpenter, 78. Designers Joelle and Mikel visit the current owners to replace the home's negative energy with a new makeover. She falls silent for a moment. During the initial investigation, Puente was not immediately a suspect, and she was allowed to leave the property, ostensibly to buy a cup of coffee at a nearby hotel. Setting his feet, he grabbed hold of the object and, with a violent jerk, loosed it from the earths grip. Time has deepened the creases between her potato-like nose and dumpling cheeks, and her blanched skin has slackened at the neck. If you lived in Sacramento in the late 80s, you recognize her name. These were peoplethe Salvation Army wouldnt take them. Dick Schmidt/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesDorothea Puente after her arrest in Los Angeles, en route back to Sacramento. 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. 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. ), 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. Puente drugged three women with tranquilizers to steal checks, money and valuables from their homes in the early 80s, as recounted in court records. Aug. 27, 1993 12 AM PT. 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. When she was eight her father died of tuberculosis. On a subsequent visit, her vanity recedes when a guard, apparently new to working the visitors hall, asks her name. and other board games that the prison makes available to visitors. The detective had yet to realize that, in the 59-year-old Puente, he had another serial killer on his hands. Her goodwill earned her the honorific title la doctora and flattering write-ups in local Spanish publications. In 1952, Gray married merchant seaman Axel Bren Johansson in San Francisco. Anyway, so she had six boarders! Puentes vanishing ignited a manhunt that stretched to Mexico. I know her only through the words of others. Her past crimes belied her pose of pure benevolence, yet she had submitted to the house and yard searches without protest. She had seven. She this Dorothea Puente, was an elderly lady (think a widow at that) that housed boarders, a care home, or is it care house? 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. That I can die peacefully in my sleep without being sick or being a cripple. The grandmother would then sneak into the rooms of her incapacitated prey and smother them to death with a pillow. 104-107. For five days, Dorothea Puente was on the lam. She moves toward the front of the room, where a guard seated behind a metal desk tells her my table number. Even probation officers who stopped by accepted Puentes explanation that the people living at her house were guests or friends not boarders. Several were referred there by social workers who viewed the home as a last-resort refuge for their ailing or most erratic clients. Between 1982 and 1989, Puente would take in the vulnerable and homeless people. (Photo by Jeremy Sykes). Maybe I would have been better off. The impending anniversary, if tracked only by media types and those who sell serial-killer novelties online, had stirred my curiosity. I wait for her to speak. By 1982, Puente was sent to prison for her thefts. John Cabrera sits at a long wooden conference table inside Sacramento Police headquarters on Freeport Boulevard. His head cocked to the side, he looks back at her, preparing to usher her past the crowd that looms outside the frame. She was a respected figure to the Mexican community, says Donald Dorfman, a longtime Sacramento criminal attorney who handled some of Puentes legal affairs before her 1988 arrest. She changed her public image to that of a respectable older matron by putting on vintage clothing, wearing large granny glasses, and letting her hair turn gray. However, in 1978, she was convicted of illegally cashing state and federal assistance checks that belonged to her tenants. 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. Since Ive been in here, she says, its like all of that never happened.. The Monstrous Crimes Of The Dorothea Puente, The Death House Landlady. Mental health experts testified of Puente's abusive upbringing and how it motivated her to help the less fortunate. 'I saw her as a human - despite her crimes.'. McFaul split from his young wife in 1948. Throughout the trial, Dorothea Puente was portrayed as either a sweet grandma-like type or a manipulative criminal who preyed on the weak. Its the same thing. 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. World's Most Evil Killers - Season 2, Episode 8 - Dorothea Puente - Full Episode FilmRise True Crime 676K subscribers 160K views 1 year ago #truecrime #famous #truecrimedocs In 1988, Puente had. Word reached Cabrera. Puente's crimes were featured on the Netflix show . Then, she asked if it would be ok if she went to buy a coffee. "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. 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. Dorothea Puente ran a boarding house for down and outs. Her shovel was used to dig the hole that yielded a human leg bone, a decomposed foot inside a dress shoe and what looked like pieces of tattered fabric that in fact were rotting flesh. It seems fitting that a published recipe collection by serial killer Dorothea Puente, aka the "Death House Landlady," includes how-to's for whipping up . Season 1 Episode 2 - Videos 1:11 Preview Dorothea Puente Runs From Police Gillmouth's body remained unidentified for three years. READ: Serial Killer Puente's Former Home Becomes Classroom For Law. Puente had stayed poised a day earlier when Cabrera showed up with a fellow homicide detective and a federal probation agent. Scant evidence exists to suggest she socialized with Reaganwhen he divorced Wyman, Puente was 20 years old and living in the Bay Areaany more than she danced with the Rockettes. In addition to the usual fare sold in the halls chow line, there are heart-shaped boxes of chocolates for $7. This is the disturbing story of Dorothea Puente, the Death House Landlady.. The visit was my first of six with Puente, who turned 80 in January. Its sick., Clausen knows Puentes appeals ran out last year. Removed from her violent crimes, it actually makes perfect sense to use Puente's image on a cookbook, as she has the perfect visage of a kind old lady who probably knows a secret recipe or two that her tenants all would . Then you will understand why these people believe Dorothea's life is worth saving. She parried, unwavering in her account of Montoyas departure, her voice calm as the detective pressed her. 'Never judge a book by its cover,' said retired police officer John Cabrera in 2018, the lead investigator on the case. I get pushed in a wheelchair. She speaks in clipped sentences, her voice, so rarely shared with journalists, scratchy but strong. I was struck by how pleasant and socially intact and intelligent she was, says Vicary, who works in Los Angeles. Look at Job, John, Paul, Moses. She was tough. 13 and watch the prisons visitors hall gradually fill, my doubts that she will appear grow with the rooms din. That was my tomcat. The boarding house at 1426 F Street in Sacramento was included in the 2013 home tour held by the Sacramento Old City Association. Her bedroom was on the second floor. The two talked through the afternoon, with Willgues both attracted to and wary of the well-dressed stranger who sipped screwdrivers. She was known as the "step house lady" after filing nine homicides. Dorothea Puente, ne Dorothea Helen Gray, was born on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California. Tom Williams and Barbara Holmes are the new landlords of the "haunted" house. 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. After their deaths, Puente collected . The comments below have not been moderated. 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 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. First off, I was getting the checks. Puente had welcomed him into her home that February. Her shoulders shake as she laughs, her open mouth exposing a white flash of dentures. This woman is a disturbed woman who does not appear to have remorse or regret for what she has done, he wrote. "I was hooked when I saw that she had published a. 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. I talk about the foggy drive to the prison, she recounts her trip to the visitors hall. 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. An officer dispatched to the house that morning interviewed Puente and one of her tenants, John Sharp. At the same time, they agreed she had an evil side brought on by the stress of caring for her down-and-out tenants. One decomposed leg was found on one side of the garden, and a foot was found on the other (Pictured: Investigators compile miscellaneous body parts found in the ground, 1988). In effect, every cell has a waiting list.) He neither explained his motive for capitulating nor discussed why he agreed to convict her of only three killings. Gray would continue to use the surname Puente for more than twenty years. 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. "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? The guards will come by and go, What you got cooking today? , She marks much of the day reading mind-candy fictionshes a fan of John Grisham and Dan Brownand watching TV; her favorite prime-time shows include CSI, Criminal Minds and Cold Case. The police dug up 78-year-old Leono Carpenter and then six more bodies. See how its bulging? 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. After I cleared the prisons background check, we arranged a date in mid-October; an early riser, she told me she preferred to meet in the morning. Benjamin Fink, 55. She took it all Death is the only appropriate penalty. I just dont believe that strongly in coincidence. Once free of the throng, Cabrera stopped and watched the pair until they entered the hotel. [3] Her parents were both alcoholics and her father repeatedly threatened to commit suicide in front of his children. Another tenant, John Sharp, backed her up. That is mitigating. Tempers spiked as the impasse stretched to its third week. 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. I had such a sick feeling, he says. Authorities alleged that, by poisoning her boarders, she wanted to collect their benefits checks without risk of them notifying social workers or police. She lost her life in a motorcycle wreck the same year, orphaning Dorothea before she turned 10. 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. Puente died in prison at Chowchilla on March 27, 2011, from natural causes; she was 82. Then working as an in-home caregiver, Puente displayed an odd obsession with her own health, lamenting to clients and caseworkers alike that she suffered from cancer. Among them were four of her five husbands, two children, her two sisters, her mother, a grandson and a mother-in-law. Puente was found guilty of the murders of 64-year-old Dorothy Miller, 55-year-old Benjamin Fink, and 78-year-old Leona Carpenter. I dont want to be a burden on anyone.. Her statement hangs between us. I now see them as tokens of loneliness, trifles to mark the time. Dorothea Puente was a convicted serial killer who ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California in the 1980s. Drugs Puente used to knock . Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray on January 9, 1929. 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. The Victorian on F Street. I think she truly wanted to rehabilitate [her tenants] as she could not the people in her own family, Vicary says. 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. 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. Newspapers dubbed Puente the "Death House Landlady". Dorothea Puente was a convicted serial killer who ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California in the 1980s. A lot of people get old in here really quickly cause they just kind of stop doing anything., Ruth Munroe, believed by authorities to be Puentes first victim (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives). Eventually, the "Death House Landlady" would then drug her tenants to the point of rendering them incapacitated. Her upstanding reputation concealed a habit of forging the signatures of tenants on their benefits checks before signing them over to herself. When she was eight her father died of tuberculosis. 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. She was the sixth of seven children but didnt grow up in a stable family environment. An extensive five-day search for the elderly fugitive ended when a stranger she'd befriended in Los Angeles recognized her face from the news and turned her into police. 'We had a real connection,' Harder told VICE. Suspect left her residence for a walk but never returned.. 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. 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. I have also done this: Late at night, when it is said her deeds turned darkest, I have pondered the vastness of human nature as I stood outside the tiny yard where she buried her victims. With Jeff Rechner, Joelle Uzyel, Mikel Welch. 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. 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. In 1993, after several days of deliberations and a deadlocked jury (due in part to her grandmotherly disposition), Dorothea Puente was ultimately convicted of three murders and received back-to-back life sentences. 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. 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. Scattered about the house were photos of her with the likes of California governors George Deukmejian and Jerry Brown, who once danced with her at a fundraising ball. 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. People were always coming and going. She was just pure evil, Ballenger says. When the police arrived, Puente told them that Monroe had been depressed due to her husbands terminal illness. But as the police prepared to leave, Sharp slipped them a message. A dark thought arrived. The business supplied her with steady revenuesteady and, apparently, inadequate. There, she quickly got back to her old tricks. The 1991 film Evil Spirits, starring Karen Black and Arte Johnson, is loosely based on the Puente murders. I was bewildered as to what in the world was going on with all these people in her yard.. [9], Puente continued to accept elderly boarders and was popular with local social workers because she accepted referrals of the "tough cases", including drug addicts and abusive tenants. The family suspected Puente of poisoning her. See that one? she asks, nodding toward a gaunt, gray-haired woman with stooped posture. 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. 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. Julio Santana dropped to his left knee and propped his right elbow on his . A lot of people saw your running away as a sign of guilt. Dorothea Puente - Dorothea Helen Puente (January 9, 1929 - March 27, 2011) was an American convicted serial killer. Been here 27 years. Within two weeks, Munroe fell ill, her body so weak she struggled to stand. Finally, four days after she skipped town, authorities traced her to a tumbledown motel in Los Angeles. In fact, Puente was a serial killer who committed at least nine murders inside her boarding house in Sacramento, California throughout the 1980s. A T-shirt designed to cash in on Puente mania (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives). The infamous home Dorothea Puente lived in is along F Street in Sacramento. 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 seven tenants who had lived at 1426 F Street died with a variety of drugs in their bodies: anticonvulsants, antidepressants, antipsychotics, painkillers, tranquilizers. He pieced the puzzle together a couple of hours after they parted, and later that night, police converged on room No. SPECIAL TO THE TIMES. 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. Sacramento landlady Dorothea Montalvo Puente was found guilty Thursday of murdering three of her tenants for their government benefit . Next, Dorothea Puente went to San Francisco, where she married her second husband, Axel Bren Johansson, in 1952. Dick Schmidt/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty Images. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group, '2023 will be our year of victory! Puente had Chief dig in the basement and cart soil and rubbish away in a wheelbarrow. 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.