During my meetings with Puente, a number of prisoners softly greet herHi, Miss Dorothea; How are you, Miss D?as they walk past. I have read books and hundreds of news articles and file after file of court records related to her crimes. Sacramento Bee Two more murders She'd. Joy the last person to have seen her alive. Im not that kind of person. I prod for more, to no avail. Her goodwill earned her the honorific title la doctora and flattering write-ups in local Spanish publications. [6], In 1978, Gray was charged and convicted of illegally cashing thirty-four state and federal checks that belonged to her tenants. Vera Faye Martin, 64. Finding nothing, they asked permission to dig up the yard. The psychologist morphed into a prophet with the discovery of seven bodies in Puentes backyard in November 1988. I ask why shes here. 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. Shed give advice to all these young Mexican women who came to her when they were trying to get divorced., Puente poses next to California Gov. A person like her, the retired sergeant says, theres no forgetting. (Photo by Jeremy Sykes). I realize today will be our last conversation when Puente sits down at my table and makes a request. Cops hauling away body bags. 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. To give strength to other people. She lifts the paper towel to her eyes. Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray on January 9, 1929. But God always puts obstacles in peoples way. But in reality, he contends, she is the nation's most prolific female serial murderer ever . 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. Not everybody running them is being nefarious, but nefarious activity can crop up.. According to an interview in the documentary, The House is Innocent, and the couple believed that changing the . The Story Of The Unsolved Delphi Murders And The Chilling Video Evidence Left Behind, Scaleless, Slimy, And Extremely Rare: Introducing The Deep-Sea Oarfish, What Stephen Hawking Thinks Threatens Humankind The Most, 27 Raw Images Of When Punk Ruled New York, Join The All That's Interesting Weekly Dispatch, Owen Brewer/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty Images. Thats when the gray door clanks open once more. Her lawyers argued that she might be a thief, but not a murderer. 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. She would flee the city that morning. She gasped at sight of the remains, hands bracketing her cheeks. The four women and three men, ages 52 to 79, had boarded at the two-story, powder-blue Victorian. Trial began in October 1992 and ended a year later. Owen Brewer/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesDorothea Puente awaiting arraignment in Sacramento, California on November 17, 1988. Cabreras superiors approved her request, deciding they held insufficient evidence to detain her. Julio Santana dropped to his left knee and propped his right elbow on his . The three law officers had stopped by the house to try to learn the whereabouts of Alvaro Bert Montoya, who had gone missing three months earlier. Do not sell or share my personal information. Puente arrived at the Central California Womens Facility following her conviction in 1993, and her appeals expired early last year. Jodi Picoult mentions Puente's crimes and cookbook in her novel House Rules. In her telling, after showering and dressing, she prays, recites the rosary and reads a few pages of the Bible, favoring Proverbs and Romans. It is a stifling backdrop in which to live out the years. Tempers spiked as the impasse stretched to its third week. She answers with a look of mild reproach that pulls taut her soft fist of a face. When police arrived at 1426 F Street in Sacramento, they noticed some disturbed soil in a vegetable patch, but not thinking Puente to be a suspect they allowed the grandmother to flee the scene, In her absence, the officers dug-up the entire garden (left) where they discovered seven bodies. 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. 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. Dorothea Puente. The three men carried shovels as they fanned out across the backyard of the two-story Victorian at 1426 F Street. However, in 1978, she was convicted of illegally cashing state and federal assistance checks that belonged to her tenants. The conversation soon veers toward why I want to interview her, and before I finish explaining, she interrupts. 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. Judy Moise, an outreach counselor with Volunteers of America, became suspicious when Montoya vanished. 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. She'd later return to smother her incapacitated prey. In the 1980s, she worked as a personal caretaker who drugged her clients and stole their valuables. During her trial, the persecution said. William Vicary spoke with Puente for the first time about two months after her arrest. One of the bodies was missing its head, hands and feet, Body parts were also found scattered across the property. To reduce chest pain, she wears a nitroglycerin skin patch. 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. Ill be waiting for her.. The Victorian on F Street. She was found guilty in three cases and one juror held out on the other four. A search of the home showed nothing amiss. Aug. 27, 1993 12 AM PT. After what was then the longest deliberation in a murder case in state history24 daysthe jury convicted her of three killings. As jury foreman Mike Esplin recalls, the man simply said, Thats all Im going to give. Puentes composure cracked after the last verdict was read. After several days of deliberations, the jury was deadlocked 75; Judge Michael J. Virga declared a mistrial when the jury said further deliberations would not change their minds. Dorothea Puente right before she fled Sacramento. 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. Six more corpses would follow, but Puente was still on the run. James Gallop, 62. I didnt know if anyone was going to look after him.. A contrary perception derived from Puentes strong ties to Hispanic residents living in downtown and midtown. 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. She answers without pause. [1] Puente's total count reached nine murders; she was convicted of three and the jury hung on the other six. She established her reputation as a caregiver, providing young women with a sanctuary from poverty and abuse without charge. 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. I dont give a shit what anyone else thinks., Did you like what you read here? Grandson of Dorothea Puente, shared a 'real connection' with her - Daily Newshttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGIQ4XcqArGYqiw70QoKcvw?sub_confirmation=1Grand. (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. I was bewildered as to what in the world was going on with all these people in her yard.. 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 died in prison at Chowchilla on March 27, 2011, from natural causes; she was 82. She claims he has sent her Christmas cards in prison, and as she talks about that small act of kindness, her eyes mist over. Soon after, Monroe died from an overdose of codeine and acetaminophen. Im certain they were just dying of natural causes, and she started burying them so she could keep the checks coming. 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. Newspapers dubbed Puente the "Death House Landlady". Sometimes she includes small handmade gifts. 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. When she was eight her father died of tuberculosis. Published: 17:09 EST, 21 January 2019 | Updated: 17:42 EST, 21 January 2019, Dorothea Puente was arrested in 1988 after the dismembered bodies of seven residents were found in the garden of her home in Sacramento, California. I could see the joint., A vial of flurazepam found in Puentes home (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives). Puente had welcomed him into her home that February. In 1961, Johansson had Gray briefly committed to DeWitt State Hospital after a binge of drinking, lying, criminal behavior, and suicide attempts. I felt like someone had pulled my insides out.. She settled her nerves not with coffee but a few vodkas with orange juice while he drank beer. She parried, unwavering in her account of Montoyas departure, her voice calm as the detective pressed her. Following her year-long trial which ended in 1993, Dorothea was convicted on three counts of murder and was. 22 ratings3 reviews. The 59-year-old looked like an ordinary grandmother when she was arrested after a five day hunt across California. Would you want that to happen to your children? I dont think anyone would pick this kind of life, she says, drying tears with a piece of coarse brown paper towel. 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). They had two daughters between 1946 and 1948; Gray sent one child to live with relatives in Sacramento, and placed the other for adoption. 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. 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. I had such a sick feeling, he says. Wearing purple pumps and a long red coat over a pink dress, Puente carries a large maroon purse and pink umbrella, her eyes cast downward to watch her step. I could give her my answer now, but there are a few more questions to ask. (Obituaries for Ingemar Johansson, who died earlier this year, list his sole surviving brother as Rolf.). She moves toward the front of the room, where a guard seated behind a metal desk tells her my table number. I rise as she approaches and shake a hand that feels skeletal and small. The impending anniversary, if tracked only by media types and those who sell serial-killer novelties online, had stirred my curiosity. The 1991 film Evil Spirits, starring Karen Black and Arte Johnson, is loosely based on the Puente murders. Heres this grandmotherly figure in this beautiful, restored Victorian house with all these azaleas and other flowers, OMara says. . Now she watched from her second-story porch as the trio began to dig. Things happen for a reason., Nov. 12, 1988: Homicide detective John Cabrera (right) ushers Puente out of her home to a nearby hotel. She was notoriously known as the "Death House Land Lady" after committing nine murders. Drab and worn, the space, about the size of a single-car garage, has scuffed concrete flooring, dull fluorescent lighting and two windows; one faces a grassy prison courtyard, the other an interior hallway. In the end, Cabrera erred on the side of skepticism. "They immediately died," says Warren's grandson, Warren W. Bogle, who today serves as President and Vineyard Director. 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. John OMara, the prosecutor, called over 130 witnesses to the stand. Everybodys heard of me. 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. Dorothea Puente was a convicted serial killer who ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California in the 1980s. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Dorothea Puente believed herself to be an able caretaker. Dorothea Puente at the Central California Womens Facility, February 21, 2009 (Courtesy of Central California Womens Facility). 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. Its about a mile from my building to here, she says. Yet for all the local, national and international coverage of the bizarre case in ensuing years, the public heard virtually nothing from its main character. He remains convinced of her innocence, arguing that her crimes were limited to filching the benefits checks of her tenants. The psychiatrist diagnosed Puente as suffering from antisocial personality disorder, a condition marked by deceit and manipulation of others without remorse. In 1993, facing nine counts of murder after prosecutors linked her to two other deaths, she stood trial without testifying. FacebookDorothea Puente right before she fled Sacramento. Dorothea Puente was arrested in 1988 after the dismembered bodies of seven residents were found in the garden of her home in Sacramento, California Being escorted to a police car after her. 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. The police dug up 78-year-old Leono Carpenter and then six more bodies. Clymo responded by evoking Dorothea the child and caregiver. They were men and women who had skidded toward lifes edges. She watched from her porch, and before Cabrera put spade to soil, she requested a moment of his time. According to Dailymail, seven years after the death of Puente, a man named William Harder had claimed to be her grandson. In 1952, Gray married merchant seaman Axel Bren Johansson in San Francisco. She would later kill them by poisoning or strangling them. Years later, her granddaughter visits the spot. has sold out to audiences at the California Stage, Wilkerson Theatre, UC Davis, and in January 2023 at Saramento Theatre Company. She has sent more than 15 letters and postcards in the months since I first wrote to her. Dorothea Puente - Dorothea Helen Puente (January 9, 1929 - March 27, 2011) was an American convicted serial killer. What he did know was that her public image as a shepherd of the dispossessed veiled the past of an ex-con who preyed on the weak. Dorothea Puente is an American chronic executioner. Dorothea Puente had several children with McFaul but didnt raise them. That I can die peacefully in my sleep without being sick or being a cripple. Dorothea Puente Home - Part 1: Directed by Star Price. I was struck by how pleasant and socially intact and intelligent she was, says Vicary, who works in Los Angeles. Going to church every day. Between 1982 and 1988, she killed nine people, all of whom were renting rooms at her boarding house. Acres of almond trees and farmland border the prison, a vast archipelago of dun-colored, low-slung buildings moored inside electrified fences topped with razor coil. Know Her Death House Now 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. I watch the scenes unfold from table No. Dorothea Puente's reign of terror began in 1982 when her friend, Ruth Monroe, was found dead in a boarding house Puente was running at that time. Among them were four of her five husbands, two children, her two sisters, her mother, a grandson and a mother-in-law. In another twist to the case, Sacramento police escorted her back to the city on a plane chartered by KCRA for its news crew. 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. 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. In a low, almost plaintive voice, she replies, Puente. Be Careful of the Quiet Ones 45m When college student Maribel Ramos goes missing, detectives turn their focus to her roommate, K.C. It wasnt until 1988 that suspicions first arose about Puente, after one of her tenants, 52-year old Alvaro Montoya, went missing. As the others begin to stir, she tidies up the space, a boardinghouse landlady to the last. I started working her, Cabrera says, but all along, she was working me. However, Dorothea's outward demeanor was a smokescreen, concealing [] She professed her innocence until she died. There, the former prostitute turned back to a life of crime. After sixteen months, the couple separated, with Gray citing domestic abuse. I am not here to take part in a reunion; I have never so much as glimpsed the woman I am waiting to meet. She responds with a burst of words, scanning the room as she talks. Puente got the second-degree charge for Carpenter's death, as. In summer 1982, Clausen and his siblings spotted a story in the Bee about Puentes conviction on theft and forgery charges related to her drugging four elderly people. Puente, meanwhile, was a model prisoner, often cooking for the other prisoners and guards her tamales, in particular, were much loved. Shes been in for 12 years. 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. 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. Puente was charged with a total of nine murders: Puente's boyfriend, Everson Gillmouth, 77; and eight tenants who lived at the boarding house: Ruth Munroe, 61; Leona Carpenter, 78; Alvaro "Bert/Alberto" Gonzales Montoya, 51; Dorothy Miller, 64; Benjamin Fink, 55; James Gallop, 62; Vera Faye Martin, 64; and Betty Palmer, 78. Dorothea Puente is an American serial killer. Dorothea Puente is one of the criminals whose crimes are detailed in 'Worst Roommate Ever.' Puente was known in her neighborhood for housing individuals who were homeless, elderly, or otherwise unable to care for themselves. The first episode centers around one of the worst of all: Dorothea Puente, a Sacramento, California woman who has been dubbed Sacramento's most notorious murderer. Some of the remains were in a mummified state - bound in bed sheets, cloth and duct tape (above), Puente would lure her victims to their deaths by baking them cake laced with sleeping pills. 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! As the minutes pass, I prepare to join the long list of people she has duped. It is late March and after midnight, the hour when shepossibly with the help of an unsuspecting Montoya or another accomplice, a mystery police never solvedburied bodies in the yard. But while digging a second hole, Wilson heard a muted thud as his blade struck something hard three feet down. The wanted bulletin for Dorothea Puente. Coverage spanned from the national networks and Time, Newsweek and The New York Times to the National Enquirer, National Examiner and news outlets from as far away as England and France. [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. When she was eight her father died of tuberculosis. As it happened, her shovel was used to dig the hole that yielded a human leg bone, a decomposed foot inside a dark dress shoe and what looked like pieces of tattered fabric that in fact were rotting flesh. The home belonged to seemingly sweet Dorothea Puente, who was arrested in 1988 and later convicted as a serial murderer. ', Puente died in 2011 aged 82 in her prison cell at the Central California Facility, in Chowchilla. By 1982, Puente was sent to prison for her thefts. We hold each others stare. After noticing disturbed soil on the property, they uncovered the body of tenant Leona Carpenter, 78. Explaining away the corpses in her yard, she says, Not one person who worked for me saw me doing anything wrong. She was the sixth of seven children but didnt grow up in a stable family environment. They were met by Dorothea Puente, an elderly woman with big glasses, who repeated her story that Montoya was simply on vacation. They share a gray cinderblock room furnished with eight metal lockers, four slender bunk beds, two sinks, a toilet and a shower. A stream of people tour Dorothea Puente's former home on Sept. 15, 2013. Hayden spent months processing thousands of pieces of evidence related to the case, including a shovel used to dig up human remains. 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. She asked Florez to build a 6-by-3-by-2-foot box to store "books and other items". She was just pure evil, Ballenger says. Gray would continue to use the surname Puente for more than twenty years. Some touch her shoulder. A nonfiction book, "The Bone Garden" (1994), is the definitive account of serial killer Dorothea Puente, who was the subject of a nationwide hunt after nine bodies were dug up from her Sacramento, California yard. To vary her diet, Puente sometimes cooks in her room, making tamales with tortillas, canned chili, cheese and other ingredients bought in the prisons canteen or mail-ordered through a food-delivery service. April 27, 2019 1:12pm. They dont have all the facts, she tells me one morning, dismissing those who judge her a murderer. "Someone. She was incarcerated at Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla, California. 13, as designated by the plastic placard atop its faux-wood surface. (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.) Here are 5 things you may not know about Dorothea Puente: 1. Her narrow lips, pinched and lined at the corners, curl slightly upward. 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.