I wait for her to speak. When we later part, Puente disappears through the gray metal door at the back of the hall. Pathologists testified that they hadnt been able to fix the cause of death for any of the corpses. Its sick., Clausen knows Puentes appeals ran out last year. Setting his feet, he grabbed hold of the object and, with a violent jerk, loosed it from the earths grip. As we continue talking, the topic switches to her life before prison, and I ask what she misses most about Sacramento. Familiar in name, she remained an enigma. However, Dorothea's outward demeanor was a smokescreen, concealing [] (Obituaries for Ingemar Johansson, who died earlier this year, list his sole surviving brother as Rolf.). They belong to a litany of famous names she drops during our meetings. (Courtesy of John Cabrera). She married Roberto Puente in 1968, but the relationship dissolved sixteen months later. She seems entirely harmless. See how its bulging? Johansson divorced Dorothea in 1966. Instead, Puente opened up her second boarding house. Florez agreed, and Puente assisted him. I watch the scenes unfold from table No. But she has shown too much interest in my visits for me to believe her. Not everybody running them is being nefarious, but nefarious activity can crop up.. Thats when the gray door clanks open once more. She received a life sentence without possibility of parole, and as before the trial, she granted few interviews in its wake, observing a self-imposed gag order. We hold each others stare. "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. 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. We lapse into a short silence, and in that span, the incredible feats of a younger Dorothea diminish in the distance. Dalmane, which is a drug used for insomnia, was found in all seven of the exhumed bodies. On her fourth day as a fugitive, she dropped by a dive bar near the motel, introducing herself as Donna Johansson to a retired carpenter named Charles Willgues. The Victorian on F Street. & Brucato, Gary, Ph.D., The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books), pp. A 22-year-old soldier who had returned to the U.S. from the Pacific after World War II, he married Dorothea in 1945, and they moved to Gardnerville, Nevada to start a family. 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. O'Mara's closing argument focused on Puente's acts of murder: Does anyone become responsible for their conduct in this world? After sixteen months, the couple separated, with Gray citing domestic abuse. A couple who braved the stigma of the house's curse purchased the home, fully aware of the history. [6], Following her divorce, Gray focused on running a boarding house located at 21st and F streets in Sacramento. But the passage of months and years since the victims had died reduced the toxicology results to educated guesswork. Behind them, a twentysomething blonde clutches the hands of a young man with a sun tattoo on his forearm. The jokes on me. Unlike many who passed through Puentes boarding house, however, someone had their eye on Montoya. Orphaned, Puente and her siblings splintered off in different directions, bouncing between foster care and relatives homes. After their deaths she continued to draw their social security cheques. But, behind the scenes, Puente had embarked on a path that would lead her to murder. 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. Finding nothing, they asked permission to dig up the yard. Its like she was watching a movie she wasnt particularly interested in., Jury deliberations commenced in July 1993 and soon stalled. In her note, written on plain lined paper in a grade-schoolers swirling cursive, she invited me to visit. 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. That was my tomcat. It was always moving. 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. Now, as I sit at table No. Dorothea Puente, ne Dorothea Helen Gray, was born on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California. Hes not a flirt.. George Deukmejian (second from left) in this undated photo. 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 . Puente arrived at the Central California Womens Facility following her conviction in 1993, and her appeals expired early last year. Authorities alleged that, by poisoning her boarders, she wanted to collect their benefits checks without risk of them notifying social workers or police. Petitioner raises several claims and a request for a federal evidentiary hearing. Waking at 5:30 a.m., I drove 135 miles south to Chowchilla, slowed by low-hanging fog as opaque as her reasons for ending years of public silence. After her mother passing Dorothea and her 18 siblings . 13 and watch the prisons visitors hall gradually fill, my doubts that she will appear grow with the rooms din. 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. In the narrative of her life that unfurled at her murder trial and in news reports and books about the case, she grew up poor, deprived in equal measure of material comforts and parental nurturing. By 1952, she had wed Johansson, whom she met in San Francisco. A prison official describes her as very low-key, very quiet. If discreet, however, Puente, who stands 5-foot-3, bears an outsized notoriety. She recalls the future president and his first wife, Jane Wyman, as her good friends. When I mention the Gippers second wife, she frowns. In her absence, investigators dug up the whole yard and discovered the body of 78-year-old Leona Carpenter. 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. Season 1 Episode 2 - Videos 1:11 Preview Dorothea Puente Runs From Police Now Playing Preview Granddaughter of Dorothea Puente Victim Talks About Her Disappearance Genaro Molina/Sacramento Bee/MCT/Getty Images. Many of them found dead and buried in the boarding house's yard. He ferried Puente to police headquarters and grilled her for two hours. 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. (One woman later discovered checks and jewelry missing from her home; her case played a part in Puentes 1982 arrest on theft charges.) Dorothea Helen Gray met the world on Jan. 9, 1929, in Redlands, Calif., the sixth of seven children born to Jesse James Gray and Trudie Gray. After learning about the murders inside Dorothea Puentes house, read about the serial killer known as the Angel of Death. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Dorothea Puente believed herself to be an able caretaker. [17] The result was Cooking with a Serial Killer (2004),[18] which included a lengthy interview, almost fifty recipes, and various pieces of prison art sent to Bugbee by the convicted murderer. Dorothea Puente, ne Dorothea Helen Gray, was born on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California. Eleven jurors were convinced of Puentes guilt in killing the seven boarders found in her yard; one juror disagreed. Dorothea - Dorothea (also spelled Dorothe, Dorotea or other variants) is a female given name from Greek (Drotha) meaning "God's Gift". I just did, she says. The discovery prompted Cabrera to summon Puente to the backyard. For the first time, her gaze squarely meets mine. Dorothea Puente war eine feste Gre in ihrer Gemeinde - sie kmmerte sich um ihre Nachbarn, spendete hufig fr wohlttige Zwecke und nahm diejenigen auf, die die Gesellschaft beiseite geschoben hatte. I am not here to take part in a reunion; I have never so much as glimpsed the woman I am waiting to meet. The Monstrous Crimes Of The Dorothea Puente, The Death House Landlady. Her demeanor is, for the most part, politely docile, and I begin to perceive how so many could consider her trustworthy. John Cabrera sits at a long wooden conference table inside Sacramento Police headquarters on Freeport Boulevard. And she didnt buy Puentes explanation that hed left on vacation. Despite the guilty verdict of her . 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. 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. Hes the brother of Ingemar Johansson, you know, she says, referring to the late heavyweight boxing champ. Officers rushed to the hotel to arrest Puente, but by then, she had bolted. Suspect left her residence for a walk but never returned.. She got life for being with a guy when he killed another guy, Puente says. Dorothea Puente at the Central California Womens Facility, February 21, 2009 (Courtesy of Central California Womens Facility). She donated to Hispanic arts and education programs while providing cheap medical care to her boarders and other patients, falsely claiming she had worked as a nurse in World War II. Inmates eat breakfast and dinner in a dining hall separate from their building units; after breakfast, they receive a cold boxed lunch that they take back to their cells. has sold out to audiences at the California Stage, Wilkerson Theatre, UC Davis, and in January 2023 at Saramento Theatre Company. 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. At the time, she was serving two life sentences and a concurrent 15-year-to-life sentence. A few days later I drive to Chowchilla for my final visit with her. The Montoya file landed on Cabreras desk within a day. 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. Dorothea Puente's former boarding house is at 1426 F Street in Sacramento, California, between 14th and 15th streets. 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. 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. Today she repeats a tale she first spun for me three months ago, showing remarkable fidelity to the specifics of the earlier version. Word reached Cabrera. 4. 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. When they finished without noticing anything suspicious, Cabrera asked if they could dig in her yard. The serial killer shuffles into the room with a chickens hitched gait. Puente cashed in the Social Security checks of the elderly and disabled boarders living in her house. The total included a man she had met after her release from prison in 1985 whose body turned up the following year in a wood box next to the Sacramento River; Ruth Munroe, her former business partner; and the seven boarders found in her yard, among them Montoya, whom police speculated may have been unwittingly recruited by Puente to carry wrapped-up bodies out of the house, then perhaps learned the truth and paid with his life. A pair of Christmas ornaments made by Puente in prison. Her upstanding reputation concealed a habit of forging the signatures of tenants on their benefits checks before signing them over to herself. The 59-year-old looked like an ordinary grandmother when she was arrested after a five day hunt across California. Soon afterward, Chief disappeared. Explaining away the corpses in her yard, she says, Not one person who worked for me saw me doing anything wrong. [1] Sua contagem total chegou a nove assassinatos confirmados e seis no . He called over Cabrera and Brown, and after he scooped away more soil, they saw what resembled a tree root. She was notoriously known as the "Death House Land Lady" after committing nine murders. I didnt drug anyone. I dont know what to tell you, she said. Her past crimes belied her pose of pure benevolence, yet she had submitted to the house and yard searches without protest. She recalls the future president and his first wife, Jane Wyman, as her good friends. When I mention the Gippers second wife, Puente frowns. 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. Sacramento landlady Dorothea Montalvo Puente was found guilty Thursday of murdering three of her tenants for their government benefit . Dorothea Puente, ne Dorothea Helen Gray, was born on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California. [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. Everybodys heard of me. First off, I was getting the checks. Her warmth for him appears unrequitedshe hasnt heard from him for awhile nowand reflects rose-tinted nostalgia for a marriage that, despite near constant turmoil, lasted longer than her other three combined. This is the disturbing story of Dorothea Puente, the Death House Landlady.. (She garnished her war story with accounts of surviving the 1942 Bataan Death March, a lie she repeated to The Sacramento Bee in a 1982 article on the march; in truth, she was 13 years old and living in California at the time.) Retired social worker Mildred Ballenger first met Puente in the late 1970s. 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. For the rest of her life, she maintained her innocence, insisting that all of her boarders had died of "natural causes". I wonder if she ever wishes she had received the death penalty. I wonder what its like to be known as a murderer. Puente had welcomed him into her home that February. During my meetings with Puente, a number of prisoners softly greet herHi, Miss Dorothea; How are you, Miss D?as they walk past. But in truth, I approach this task without optimism, anticipating that our meeting will stick to the pattern of previous visits. Barring an unexpected transfer to another prison or a medical emergency, she will die inside this compound. 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. Two decades after he yanked the leg bone from the ground behind the boardinghouse, his dark hair has shaded silver and he has shaved off his boomerang-curved mustache. 3 min read. Her passivity subdues suspicion. Sacramento Bee Two more murders She'd. People viewed Puente as a sweet grandmother committed to giving back to society: she housed the old and homeless, attended political events, and donated money to charitable causes. I could see the joint., A vial of flurazepam found in Puentes home (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives). Puente had a reputation for taking in people considered tough cases recovering alcoholics, drug addicts, the mentally ill, and the elderly. Under the law, Puente received life without the possibility of parole. 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. I want to know what stopped her from killing herself. 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?. 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. In turn, I know that when she receives my letter telling her as much, shell cut off contact. Today the 59-year-old Cabrera works cold cases for the department as a retired sergeant. I realize today will be our last conversation when Puente sits down at my table and makes a request. Does she have to be killed?" I wondered whether, when thinking back to 1988, she saw her past as her own or that of a different Dorothea Puente, one who, over time, had faded into something of a stranger. Her body shapeless under a long-sleeve T-shirt and dungarees, she has pulled back her snowy plume of hair with a pink scrunchie. On January 1, 1986, a fisherman spotted the suspicious looking coffin-like box near the river and called police. The noise inside the prisons visitors hall amplifies on Valentines Day. 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. I inquire how she juggled the demands of professional golf with her Rockettes career while flying between San Francisco and New York every week. As the minutes pass, I prepare to join the long list of people she has duped. The subject of personal health preoccupies Puente as much as the next octogenarian. 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. Dorothea Helen Gray, ms conocida como Dorothea Puente, naci el 9 de enero de 1929 en Redlands (California, Estados Unidos), en el seno de una familia trabajadora. The jury deliberated over a month and eventually found Puente guilty of three murders. As the trial neared, Vicary found her in an agitated, paranoid state. 'Never judge a book by its cover,' said retired police officer John Cabrera in 2018, the lead investigator on the case. The visitors hall at the Central California Womens Facility in Chowchilla brings to mind a church social as hosted for state convicts. Puente died of natural causes at the Central . Both have died, and police cleared them early in the investigation. Puentes vanishing ignited a manhunt that stretched to Mexico. The prosecution stated that Puente used sleeping pills to drug her tenants, suffocated them, and then hired convicts to bury them in the yard. Con su simpata lograba escapar de la. She took it all Death is the only appropriate penalty. In the 1980s, she ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California, and murdered various elderly and mentally disabled boarders before cashing their Social Security checks. How Did Dorothea Puente Kill Her Victims? Puente was convicted in. [citation needed]. Dorothea Puente was a California landlady who ran a boarding house in Sacramento during the 1980s. 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. Cops hauling away body bags. That is the question. 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. Well regarded for taking in substance abusers and the homeless, she had earned respect in political circles for her charity work. She was just pure evil, Ballenger says. [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. Thats between me and my God., Until 2006, Puente rotated through assorted prison jobs, cleaning cells, giving haircuts, toiling on a landscaping crew. An officer dispatched to the house that morning interviewed Puente and one of her tenants, John Sharp. Look at Job, John, Paul, Moses. MONTEREY . According to an interview in the documentary, The House is Innocent, and the couple believed that changing the . 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. A gentle bear of a man, the 52-year-old Montoya suffered from untreated psychosis, a condition that for years had consigned him to the streets and homeless shelters. Despite lacking formal dance training, she says, I went out there and they hired me. The boarding house made infamous by Dorothea Puentes murders. A person like her, he says, theres no forgetting.. 'We had a real connection,' Harder told VICE. These entities fall through the cracks, said Kathleen Lammers, executive director of the California Law Center on Longterm Care, about boarding houses like Puentes. 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. That same year, the Victorian bungalow Puente used to commit her crimes was sold to a Sacramento couple at a public auction for $215,000. 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. There, the former prostitute turned back to a life of crime. Several were swaddled in bed sheets that matched linens found in the house. Federal law shields inmate medical records from the public, leaving open the question of whether she has had three surgeries since entering prison. They described a woman of contradictions. In a low, almost plaintive voice, she replies, Puente. Dorothea Puente's House Has Been Bought. But there were seven dead bodies in your yard. She consented again, even lending a shovel to the men, who had brought only two. Marathon Man 63m 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. The psychiatrist diagnosed Puente as suffering from antisocial personality disorder, a condition marked by deceit and manipulation of others without remorse. Court files indicate Johansson had his wife committed to a psychiatric ward in 1961, and doctors placed her on antipsychotics. How many other boardinghouses have one person die? Tom Williams and Barbara Holmes are the new landlords of the "haunted" house. Puente had stayed poised a day earlier when Cabrera showed up with a fellow homicide detective and a federal probation agent. 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. 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. She was given five years' probation and ordered to pay $4,000 in restitution. "They immediately died," says Warren's grandson, Warren W. Bogle, who today serves as President and Vineyard Director. She was the sixth of seven children born to Trudy Mae Gates and Jesse James Gray, whose "lungs were damaged from a gas attack" while fighting in World War I. Puente's crimes were featured on the Netflix show . 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 after her arrest in Los Angeles, en route back to Sacramento. When police arrived at 1426 F Street, Puente told the cops Montoya was on vacation, but they noticed some undisturbed soil among a vegetable patch in the garden. 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). But you gotta do something so you dont go crazy.. Would you want that to happen to your children? Shes been in for 12 years. 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. 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".
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