The case rested on the shifting sands of circumstantial evidence. After the notorious female serial killer Dorothea Puente died in prison at the age of 82, the filmmaker Nick Coles stumbled upon her obituary. 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. The union lasted just two years. 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. As reported by Dailymail, seven year after Puente's death, a man named William Harder had claimed to be his grandson. Police soon figured out why, uncovering the remains of six more bodies. In 2015, the Ghost Adventures crew investigated the house, due to reports of hauntings by the victims and Puente herself. Eventually, the "Death House Landlady" would then drug her tenants to the point of rendering them incapacitated. But as the police prepared to leave, Sharp slipped them a message. 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 didnt need to kill anyone. 3.23. I now see them as tokens of loneliness, trifles to mark the time. A search of the home showed nothing amiss. That is the question. A pair of Christmas ornaments made by Puente in prison. The 9/ . 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. He escorted her out of the propertys wrought-iron front gate, a moment captured in a photo lying on the conference table. Puente cashed in the Social Security checks of the elderly and disabled boarders living in her house. 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. I stare at the brick and wrought-iron front gate through which Dorothea Puente walked for the last time on Nov. 12, 1988. However, in 1978, she was convicted of illegally cashing state and federal assistance checks that belonged to her tenants. She also mentions undergoing major cancer surgery in 1961 to remove her reproductive organs and part of her intestines and stomach. She pled guilty to two counts of forgery, serving four months in jail and three years' probation. The boarding house at 1426 F Street in Sacramento was included in the 2013 home tour held by the Sacramento Old City Association. She had breached her federal probation by running a boardinghouse, yet admitted to the offense when asked. Her passivity subdues suspicion. I dont know what to tell you, she said. Im not that kind of person. I prod for more, to no avail. Forensic testing had failed to determine a definitive cause of death in any of the victims. With a smile, I ask whether she and the actor shared a romantic attraction. Its sick., Clausen knows Puentes appeals ran out last year. The four women and three men, ages 52 to 79, had boarded at the two-story, powder-blue Victorian. We both fell into the orchestra pit and I broke my leg. The other dancer? She'd later return to smother her incapacitated prey. Artifacts from the Dorothea Puente case splay out before him: a faded article published in a local Spanish newspaper with a black and white photo of a younger Puente; a pair of her mug shots, blue eyes dimmed and weary in both; a prescription label in her name for diazepam, a tranquilizer sold as Valium; the original wanted bulletin from Nov. 12, 1988, the day she went on the lam. Puente continued to collect Gillmouth's pension and wrote letters to his family, explaining that the reason he had not contacted them was because he was ill. She continued to maintain a boarding house, taking in forty new tenants. 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. Puentes mechanical response echoes what she has told me during prior meetings, and what I will hear on subsequent visits. But eventually, police searching for a missing tenant spotted a patch of disturbed dirt near the boarding house and uncovered the first of several bodies. SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KTXL) Throughout the 1980s, as many as nine deaths in Sacramento were investigated as being connected to Dorothea Puente. 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.. He says he's often inundated with requests from crazed fans and fellow murder enthusiasts who ask to buy his grandmother's ashes. 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. On her way back, she insisted to reporters that she hadnt killed anyone, claiming: I used to be a very good person at one time.. Her memories, I come to understand, blend rote recitation of illusory events with blatant omission of her crimes. Subscribe to Sactown Magazine . [1] Sua contagem total chegou a nove assassinatos confirmados e seis no . "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? At the time of her 1988 arrest on murder charges, photos of Puente with Jerry Brown, former California Gov. 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. While there, doctors diagnosed her as a pathological liar with an unstable personality. So we knew wed have an uphill battle in convincing the jurors that all of those were accidental deaths.. Six months after her release, she left Riverside. I dont give a shit what anyone else thinks., Did you like what you read here? Nannie Doss admitted to killing 11 people between 1920 and 1954. The subject of personal health preoccupies Puente as much as the next octogenarian. I had such a sick feeling, he says. I could see the joint., A vial of flurazepam found in Puentes home (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives). 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. 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. 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. Pathologists testified that they hadnt been able to fix the cause of death for any of the corpses. By 1982, Puente was sent to prison for her thefts. The two would continue to have a turbulent relationship, and Gray filed a restraining order in 1975. 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. 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. Dorothea Puente at the Central California Womens Facility, February 21, 2009 (Courtesy of Central California Womens Facility). 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. Years later, her granddaughter visits the spot. He ferried Puente to police headquarters and grilled her for two hours. When they came to me, they were so sick, they werent expected to live.. Isabel Vincent. 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. There, the former prostitute turned back to a life of crime. Her body shapeless under a long-sleeve T-shirt and dungarees, she has pulled back her snowy plume of hair with a pink scrunchie. 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". As we continue talking, the topic switches to her life before prison, and I ask what she misses most about Sacramento. 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. Puente was charged for seven murders, but her trial wouldn't begin for another four years. I could give her my answer now, but there are a few more questions to ask. Investigators soon found the decomposing body of an elderly man inside. I dont want to be a burden on anyone.. 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. Didnt know that at the time., The detective walked about halfway to the Clarion with Puente and her boarder, John McCauley. He claims to have had a regular relationship with her, The Founder of MurderAuction, a website that sells serial killer memorabilia, Harder says he sees his grandmother as human, despite her crimes (pictured: Harder with cult leader Charles Manson). [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]. A lot of women shouldnt be here., She counts herself among them, even while conceding few people believe in her innocence. 13, as designated by the plastic placard atop its faux-wood surface. 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. Sometimes she includes small handmade gifts: Christmas ornaments constructed from cardboard and yarn, a greeting card stitched with fine thread. Or about the white-haired woman who turned the yard into a mass grave. I pass through the check-in station, a process that requires visitors to pull pants pockets inside-out, remove their shoes and lift their stocking feet for inspection by guards. 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. (Courtesy of The Sacramento Bee/Genaro Molina). People were always coming and going. Authorities alleged that, by poisoning her boarders, she wanted to collect their benefits checks without risk of them notifying social workers or police. Puente was supposed to stick around to serve out her probation, but in a sign of things to come she skipped town instead. She got in serious trouble for the first time in her life after bouncing a check in San Bernadino and spent four months in jail. But Puente has lodged in his psyche as the rarest predator he confronted: in age, gender and disposition, she inhabits an extremely narrow strata of serial killers. Beyond that lurked the vexing conundrum of the accused herself. The lone drug present in all of them was Dalmane, a sedative for which Puente had obtained more than three dozen prescriptions of 30 pills each between October 1985 and November 1988, according to court records. She holed up in the Royal Viking Motel for the next three days, seldom leaving her room. I know her only through the words of others. Investigators opened the box and found the badly decomposed and unidentifiable body of an elderly man inside. 'Never judge a book by its cover,' said retired police officer John Cabrera in 2018, the lead investigator on the case. This was a money-making scheme, but I do not believe she was a murderess.. 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. Her past crimes belied her pose of pure benevolence, yet she had submitted to the house and yard searches without protest. That didnt seem right, but Dorothea had conned our whole family into thinking she was a nurse.. 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. Despite being convicted of murder in 1993 and sent to prison, Puente. She answers without pause. 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 . Puente told police that the woman was very depressed because her husband was terminally ill. She was tried for killing seven people by drugging them with Dalmane and alcohol. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Dorothea Puente believed herself to be an able caretaker. She this Dorothea Puente, was an elderly lady (think a widow at that) that housed boarders, a care home, or is it care house? I think she truly wanted to rehabilitate [her tenants] as she could not the people in her own family, Vicary says. She recalls the future president and his first wife, Jane Wyman, as her good friends. When I mention the Gippers second wife, she frowns. She met and married Fred McFaul in 1945. One was missing its head, hands and feet. [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. The boarding house made infamous by Dorothea Puentes murders. Seven bodies were eventually found buried on the property.[10]. 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. and other board games that the prison makes available to visitors. 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. The noise inside the prisons visitors hall amplifies on Valentines Day. Her shoulders shake as she laughs, her open mouth exposing a white flash of dentures. [citation needed], In November 1985, Puente hired a man named Ismael Florez to install some wood paneling in her apartment. I get pushed in a wheelchair. She speaks in clipped sentences, her voice, so rarely shared with journalists, scratchy but strong. April 27, 2019 1:12pm. To my surprise, an envelope stamped with the words Central California Womens Facility State Prison arrived a few weeks later. After sixteen months, the couple separated, with Gray citing domestic abuse. Dorothea Puente is an American serial killer. [1] Puente's total count reached nine murders; she was convicted of three and the jury hung on the other six. 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. 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. As most serial killers, Dorothea had a rough childhood. Puente, meanwhile, was a model prisoner, often cooking for the other prisoners and guards her tamales, in particular, were much loved. She did not strike me as a person who had a major mental illness. [4], Gray's first marriage at age sixteen, in 1945, was to a soldier named Fred McFaul, who had just returned from the Pacific theater of World War II. FacebookDorothea Puente right before she fled Sacramento. Among them were four of her five husbands, two children, her two sisters, her mother, a grandson and a mother-in-law. The candy proves popular with youngsters, whose sporadic laughter pierces the rooms hum. She would later kill them by poisoning or strangling them. Once free of the throng, Cabrera stopped and watched the pair until they entered the hotel. Bogle Family Vineyards Ryan, Jody & Warren Bogle Thank goodness the potato crop failed. I made them change their clothes every day, take a bath every day and eat three meals a day. Dorothea Puente, a notorious, grandmotherly boarding house operator convicted in the 1990s of killing her tenants, has died in prison aged 82. Going to church every day. Con su simpata lograba escapar de la. I dont know that she ever did anything good without a bad motive.. [6], Gray and Johansson divorced in 1966, although she continued to use Johansson's name for some time following their separation. For someone who insists she worried over the well-being of her tenants, Puente tells me that, after her arrest, she fretted about Sam. Puente arrived at the Central California Womens Facility following her conviction in 1993, and her appeals expired early last year. [citation needed], The defense called several witnesses, who showed Puente had a generous and caring side to her. But the passage of months and years since the victims had died reduced the toxicology results to educated guesswork. 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. Soon after, Monroe died from an overdose of codeine and acetaminophen. 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. [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. Discovery posts $217 MILLION loss in its streaming business after adding just 1.1M subscribers last quarter - despite HBO Max debuts like White Lotus and House of the Dragon, $113 BILLION on a war with no end in sight: DailyMail.com breaks down Joe Biden's enormous military package for Ukraine on the first anniversary of Vladimir Putin's brutal invasion, DAILY MAIL COMMENT:Make this Ukraine's last year of horror, 'Before the war, we saw Russians alive. Her body shapeless under a long-sleeve T-shirt and dungarees, she has pulled back her snowy plume of hair with a pink scrunchie. They share a gray cinderblock room furnished with eight metal lockers, four slender bunk beds, two sinks, a toilet and a shower. On subjects unrelated to her misdeeds, she will open up, weaving anecdotes that are sometimes embroidered, sometimes made from whole cloth. For the rest of her life, she maintained her innocence, insisting that all of her boarders had died of "natural causes". Prosecutors said that Puente was one of the most cold and calculating female killers the country had ever seen.. 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. Between 1982 and 1988, the elderly and disabled people living in Dorothea Puentes house had no idea that was she was poisoning and strangling some of her guests before burying them on her property and cashing their Social Security checks. The police returned and searched the house. Drugs Puente used to knock . The higher volume results from the presence of more children, most of whom exhibit the happy symptoms of a sugar buzz. & Brucato, Gary, Ph.D., The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books), pp. Puente offered a place where they could hang on. The two then separated, with McCauley returning downtown and Puente taking another cab to Stockton, where she hopped a bus to Los Angeles. Cabrera, lead detective on the Puente case, stands with the shovel that she lent to law officers to dig in her backyard on Nov. 11, 1988. 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. Those cases were lies, she says, voice flat. Bodies were found buried in what is now the yard at left. (Photo by Jeremy Sykes). She purchased the refills through a pair of doctors who, presumably oblivious to her past drugging of clients, trusted her stories that she simply wanted to help boarders sleep. 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. She was ultimately convicted in three of the. Dorothea Puente was a convicted serial killer who ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California in the 1980s. But on the way to the storage facility, Puente abruptly asked Florez to pull over near a riverbank and just push the box into the water. 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. An undercover cop posing as a trucker arrested her after she offered to perform fellatio on him; she served 90 days in county lockup. Several were referred there by social workers who viewed the home as a last-resort refuge for their ailing or most erratic clients. I felt like someone had pulled my insides out.. Im certain they were just dying of natural causes, and she started burying them so she could keep the checks coming. I now see them as tokens of loneliness, trifles to mark the time. ), 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. Does she have to be killed?" 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. I wonder what its like to be known as a murderer. She sits erect, legs crossed at the ankles and tucked beneath her chair. 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. [6], Gray was arrested in 1960 for owning and operating a bookkeeping firm as a front for a brothel in Sacramento;[5] she was found guilty and was sentenced to ninety days in the Sacramento County Jail. Dorothea Puente after her arrest in Los Angeles, en route back to Sacramento. I leave through a different door and make my way out of the prison, stepping into the cool afternoon air. But volatility seemed to follow Puente wherever she went and the new couple argued frequently about Puentes drinking and gambling. As most serial killers, Dorothea had a rough childhood. In 1952, Gray married merchant seaman Axel Bren Johansson in San Francisco. Going to church every day. In 1993, facing nine counts of murder after prosecutors linked her to two other deaths, she stood trial without testifying. Joy the last person to have seen her alive. She has sent me more than 15 letters and postcards in the months since I first wrote to her. On her release from prison, she began killing her victims. I talk about the foggy drive to the prison, she recounts her trip to the visitors hall. They prized her willingness to accept alcoholics, drug addicts and other difficult clients into her home, a sprawling, three-story Victorian that could sleep more than two dozen tenants. In fact, Puente was a serial killer who committed at least nine murders inside her boarding house in Sacramento, California throughout the 1980s. Then, she asked if it would be ok if she went to buy a coffee. She was found guilty in three cases and one juror held out on the other four. Dorothea Helen Puente (ne Gray; January 9, 1929 March 27, 2011) was an American convicted serial killer. Judy Moise, an outreach counselor with Volunteers of America, became suspicious when Montoya vanished. Within two weeks, Munroe fell ill, her body so weak she struggled to stand. 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. 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. Around the same time, she slipped a heavy sedative into the drink of a 74-year-old man she met at the Zebra Club in midtown.

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