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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. After the notorious female serial killer Dorothea Puente died in prison at the age of 82, the filmmaker Nick Coles stumbled upon her obituary. Kara Goldfarb is a writer living in New York City. But the passage of months and years since the victims had died reduced the toxicology results to educated guesswork. The wanted bulletin for Dorothea Puente. The impending anniversary, if tracked only by media types and those who sell serial-killer novelties online, had stirred my curiosity. Time has deepened the creases between her potato-like nose and dumpling cheeks, and her blanched skin has slackened at the neck. 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. Here are 5 things you may not know about Dorothea Puente: 1. 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. These were peoplethe Salvation Army wouldnt take them. She eventually met and married Pedro Angel Montalvo, though Montalvo abruptly left the relationship a week after their marriage. A prison official describes her as very low-key, very quiet. If discreet, however, Puente, who stands 5-foot-3, bears an outsized notoriety. One was missing its hands, head and feet. After sixteen months, the couple separated, with Gray citing domestic abuse. Designers Joelle and Mikel visit the current owners to replace the home's negative energy with a new makeover. 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. Their relationship developed quickly, and the couple was soon making wedding plans. 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. During a brief in-flight interview with reporter Mike Boyd, she said, I have not killed anyone. He was good to me. (Johansson did not respond to interview requests.). He was a good-hearted man, very kind, she says. Despite being convicted of murder in 1993 and sent to prison, Puente. 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. [citation needed], Granting a change of venue motion filed by Puente's lawyers, Kevin Clymo and Peter Vlautin III, a judge transferred the trial to Monterey County. Does she have to be killed?" 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 drugged three women with tranquilizers to steal checks, money and valuables from their homes in the early 80s, as recounted in court records. Thats when the gray door clanks open once more. 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. But while digging a second hole, Wilson heard a muted thud as his blade struck something hard three feet down. The business supplied her with steady revenuesteady and, apparently, inadequate. 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. Puentes vanishing ignited a manhunt that stretched to Mexico. As the search expanded, cabin fever seized Puente. Despite this, their marriage lasted until 1966. For the rest of her life, she maintained her innocence, insisting that all of her boarders had died of "natural causes". She wound up serving four months in jail and shortly afterward fled Riverside County, flouting the terms of her probation. They appealed to authorities to reexamine their mothers death, a probe that ended with investigators upholding the suicide ruling. Prosecutors said that Puente was one of the most cold and calculating female killers the country had ever seen.. As the trial neared, Vicary found her in an agitated, paranoid state. 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. She watched from her porch, and before Cabrera put spade to soil, she requested a moment of his time. She had a traumatic childhood after being raised by alcoholic parents. Another tenant, John Sharp, backed her up. This page was last edited on 18 February 2023, at 18:08. 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. I dont want to be a burden on anyone.. 'Never judge a book by its cover,' said retired police officer John Cabrera in 2018, the lead investigator on the case. She lost her life in a motorcycle wreck the same year, orphaning Dorothea before she turned 10. 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?. Instead, Puente found a husband. And then theres the contradiction: beneath this house there are all these bodies. [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. Aug. 27, 1993 12 AM PT. Her memories, I come to understand, blend rote recitation of illusory events with blatant omission of her crimes. 13, as designated by the plastic placard atop its faux-wood surface. If she had been held accountable for murdering my mother, Clausen says, then maybe there wouldnt have been any other victims.. The subject of personal health preoccupies Puente as much as the next octogenarian. Puente's crimes were featured on the Netflix show . Shes not hurting there in prison, he says. (Puente tells me she also had twin daughters who as young adults committed suicide one week apart. 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 gasped at sight of the remains, hands bracketing her cheeks. He speculates that running a boardinghouse began for her as a humane endeavor rooted in a desire to undo painful childhood memories. "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. Dorothea Puente awaiting arraignment in Sacramento, California on November 17, 1988. 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. Over the next few years, she adapted by working as an in-home caregiver, affecting a matronly mien with her modest dress, oversized glasses and tremulous voice. 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. That was my tomcat. After Puente was released from her first spell in prison for three counts. So we knew wed have an uphill battle in convincing the jurors that all of those were accidental deaths.. (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. Word reached Cabrera. (Details of reports on such incidents are not public record.) 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. 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. But the jury had a difficult time believe the matronly grandmother was capable of carrying out such menacing crimes. She took it all Death is the only appropriate penalty. She attends services held at the prisons chapel, but avoids joining inmate worship groups. But 26 years after her conviction - and seven years after her death - a man who claims to Puente's grandson, William Harder, has stepped forward to reaffirm his grandmother's claim that she wasn't always bad. 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. 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. 104-107. They all know who I am, she says. For William Clausen, by contrast, the bodies buried in Puentes yard confirmed what he already considered fact: she killed for profit. She was ultimately convicted in three of the. Dorothea Helen Puente (ne Gray; January 9, 1929 March 27, 2011) was an American convicted serial killer. [citation needed], The defense called several witnesses, who showed Puente had a generous and caring side to her. The penalty phase of the prosecution was highlighted by her prior convictions introduced by O'Mara. A contrary perception derived from Puentes strong ties to Hispanic residents living in downtown and midtown. We break the ice. Their first series of holes dislodged only soft dirt and a vague sense of futility. Barring an unexpected transfer to another prison or a medical emergency, she will die inside this compound. In 1967, she attempted to serve him with a divorce petition[inconsistent], but Puente fled to Mexico; the divorce wouldn't be finalized until 1973. Witnesses, including her long-lost daughter, testified how Puente had helped them in their youth and guided them to successful careers. 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. A pair of Christmas ornaments made by Puente in prison. I was on stage when the girl next to me broke her heel and bumped into me. "Someone. Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray on January 9, 1929. I ask why shes here. In the landladys presence, he corroborated her story about Montoya. She recalls the future president and his first wife, Jane Wyman, as her good friends. When I mention the Gippers second wife, Puente frowns. She never intended to show, I realize. Im here until I die.. To give strength to other people. She lifts the paper towel to her eyes. Nonetheless, with decades to mull what she might say about her case, she sounds as unpersuasive now as during her plane ride from Los Angeles. I felt like someone had pulled my insides out.. FacebookDorothea Puente right before she fled Sacramento. 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. Someone reached across the table at one point and almost got into a fistfight with him, says Hewlett, who now lives in Oregon. She moves toward the front of the room, where a guard seated behind a metal desk tells her my table number. The house at 1426 F St., where police found seven of Puentes tenants buried in the yard, as it looks today. We lapse into a short silence, and in that span, the incredible feats of a younger Dorothea diminish in the distance. 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. Cooking what I want. Today she repeats a tale she first spun for me three months ago, showing remarkable fidelity to the specifics of the earlier version. 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. 'I saw her as a human - despite her crimes.'. [citation needed]. She this Dorothea Puente, was an elderly lady (think a widow at that) that housed boarders, a care home, or is it care house? Authorities alleged that, by poisoning her boarders, she wanted to collect their benefits checks without risk of them notifying social workers or police. In 1961, Johansson had Gray briefly committed to DeWitt State Hospital after a binge of drinking, lying, criminal behavior, and suicide attempts. 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. In any case, after more than 20 years behind bars, and despite the withering of her features, she retains a physical vitality and a fondness for cosmetic excess. After a number of legal hurdles, Puente's trial eventually went ahead four years later. Most of the lot has been paved over. She seems entirely harmless. In April 2020, the house and current owners were showcased in the Quibi series Murder House Flip. A few days later I drive to Chowchilla for my final visit with her. [11], Puente has been featured on numerous true crime television shows, including Crime Stories,[12] Deadly Women,[13] A Stranger in My Home,[14] World's Most Evil Killers,[15] and Worst Roommate Ever.[16]. She asked Florez to build a 6-by-3-by-2-foot box to store "books and other items". Somehow a neighbor got suspicious, when the police officers investigated the house, the back yard, at least five bodies were buried in her back yard! In his sessions with her, Vicary had inched up to the subject of guilt, knowing that she would withdraw if he asked directly whether she had killed people. Puente claims she spent time in the 70s with California governors Pat Brown, Jerry Brown and Ronald Reagan. The family suspected Puente of poisoning her. The prosecution stated that Puente used sleeping pills to drug her tenants, suffocated them, and then hired convicts to bury them in the yard. Puente then married Pedro Angel Montalvo, but he left her only a week after they were wed. When the police arrived, Puente told them that Monroe had been depressed due to her husbands terminal illness. Several were referred there by social workers who viewed the home as a last-resort refuge for their ailing or most erratic clients. 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. (AP Photo/Walt Zeboski). Since Ive been in here, she says, its like all of that never happened.. She met and married Fred McFaul in 1945. The 59-year-old looked like an ordinary grandmother when she was arrested after a five day hunt across California. Drugs Puente used to knock . However, it would be three more years before authorities could identify the body as one of the tenants in Dorothea Puentes house. [citation needed]. Play it now! She is to be considered dangerous, and her living environment and/or employment should be closely monitored. The following year, without a license and in violation of her federal probation, she opened a boardinghouse at 1426 F Street, with enough space for as many as eight tenants. She has sent more than 15 letters and postcards in the months since I first wrote to her. (One woman later discovered checks and jewelry missing from her home; her case played a part in Puentes 1982 arrest on theft charges.) If you lived anywhere else, theres still a good chance you recognize it, or at least the rough outline of her crimes. Explaining away the corpses in her yard, she says, Not one person who worked for me saw me doing anything wrong. 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. He remains convinced of her innocence, arguing that her crimes were limited to filching the benefits checks of her tenants. Finally, four days after she skipped town, authorities traced her to a tumbledown motel in Los Angeles. She falls silent for a moment. I have listened to the lingering grief and anger of a man whose mother died mysteriously while in her care. Judy Moise, an outreach counselor with Volunteers of America, became suspicious when Montoya vanished. See how its bulging? I made them change their clothes every day, take a bath every day and eat three meals a day When they came to me, they were so sick, they werent expected to live.. 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. She married Roberto Puente in 1968, but the relationship dissolved sixteen months later. She does not smile, laugh or joke much in my presence, but nor does she betray malevolence. McFaul split from his young wife in 1948. Didnt know that at the time., The detective walked about halfway to the Clarion with Puente and her boarder, John McCauley. For years, the disappearances of these so-called shadow people who lived at the margins of society went unnoticed. Shes dying of cancer. Puente occupies a lower bunk owing to her age and tenure at the prison, sleeping on the same kind of thin, lumpy mattress as other inmates. I wait for her to speak. She was incarcerated at Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla, California. I didnt need to kill anyone. Federal law shields inmate medical records from the public, leaving open the question of whether she has had three surgeries since entering prison. Puente, meanwhile, was a model prisoner, often cooking for the other prisoners and guards her tamales, in particular, were much loved. Dorothea Puente was a convicted serial killer who ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California in the 1980s. Vera Faye Martin, 64. Dorothea Puente, ne Dorothea Helen Gray, was born on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California. 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. Puente had Chief dig in the basement and cart soil and rubbish away in a wheelbarrow. As the others begin to stir, she tidies up the space, a boardinghouse landlady to the last. She declines to disclose the fathers name, when and where they were born and died or the circumstances of their deaths.). Be Careful of the Quiet Ones 45m When college student Maribel Ramos goes missing, detectives turn their focus to her roommate, K.C. Nannie Doss admitted to killing 11 people between 1920 and 1954. Dorothea Helen Puente (ne Gray; January 9, 1929 - March 27, 2011) was an American convicted serial killer.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. Dorothea Puente ran a boarding house for down and outs. The erstwhile prostitute had turned a new trick. . Gawkers gather outside 1426 F St. (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives), Domestic bliss and her maternal instinct failed to take root. Dorothea Puente, ne Dorothea Helen Gray, was born on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California. Cooking what I want. The Victorian on F Street. I was bewildered as to what in the world was going on with all these people in her yard.. However Harder insists that's where he draws the line. The jury deliberated over a month and eventually found Puente guilty of three murders. High-profile cases dotted his career, including those of convicted mass murderer Morris Solomon and the Unabomber. Orphaned, Puente and her siblings splintered off in different directions, bouncing between foster care and relatives homes. [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. [6], In April 1982, 53-year-old Ruth Munroe began living with Puente in her upstairs apartment, but soon died from an overdose of codeine and acetaminophen. Instead, Puente opened up her second boarding house. He stares at the photo and points at her purse. 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. 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 dont give a shit what anyone else thinks., Did you like what you read here? We next met days before Thanksgiving, when the recent election of Barack Obama had boosted her hopes for the countrys future, and again in mid-December. 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. First off, I was getting the checks. 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. 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. 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. Puente has told me during previous meetings that her case still attracts worldwide attention, and that she recently spurned interview requests from a British newspaper and an Australian TV station. Some lauded the tireless advocate whose charitable work benefited the Hispanic community. She steams the tamales in plastic bags placed in a pan of water warmed with two electric immersion coils. 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. In 1952, Gray married merchant seaman Axel Bren Johansson in San Francisco. The grandmother would then sneak into the rooms of her incapacitated prey and smother them to death with a pillow. 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. In the 1970s, she opened her first boarding house in Sacramento. Her body shapeless under a long-sleeve T-shirt and dungarees, she has pulled back her snowy plume of hair with a pink scrunchie. 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 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. 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. Anyway, so she had six boarders! She turns to look at me.