And, she says, They like my tamales.. Moise alerted police, who went to the boarding house. 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. Marathon Man 63m Heres this grandmotherly figure in this beautiful, restored Victorian house with all these azaleas and other flowers, OMara says. Her eyes would fill with tears, but she would never admit it, he says. George Deukmejian and Bishop Francis Quinn decorated her home at 1426 F Street But setting aside such fleeting charity-event encounters, her stories hew closer to fable than fact. When they returned to his apartment, he watched in a stupor as Puente helped herself to his checks and cash; before leaving, she slipped a diamond ring off his pinky. She sent one child to live with relatives while another was put up for adoption. Pathologists testified that they hadnt been able to fix the cause of death for any of the corpses. She also established herself as a respected member in Sacramento's Hispanic community, funding charities, scholarships, and radio programs. When they finished without noticing anything suspicious, Cabrera asked if they could dig in her yard. 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. It wasnt until 1988 that suspicions first arose about Puente, after one of her tenants, 52-year old Alvaro Montoya, went missing. That is the question. It had about $2,500, $3,000 in it. Cabrera shakes his head. 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. Granddaughter of Dorothea Puente Victim Talks About Her Disappearance The granddaughter of one of Dorothea Puente's victims recalls finding out that Puente had run away from the police. She will send me the list in a few daysthe bill will total $114.70but I already know I wont oblige. The serial killer shuffles into the room with a chickens hitched gait. Cabrera scrambled out of the hole, pulse rate and thoughts quickening. (Photo by Jeremy Sykes). 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. They wanted to question her about Bert Montoya, her onetime tenant who had been reported missing. She answers without pause. Beneath the rooms ashen lighting stand neat rows of small round tables, some 50 in all. Now she watched from her second-story porch as the trio began to dig. Retired social worker Mildred Ballenger first met Puente in the late 1970s. While Puente was charged with the murders of nine people, she was convicted of only three of them in 1993: A jury could not decide on the other six deaths. Prosecutors charged Puente with killing nine people. Between 1982 and 1989, Puente would take in the vulnerable and homeless people. 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. The business supplied her with steady revenuesteady and, apparently, inadequate. In addition to the usual fare sold in the halls chow line, there are heart-shaped boxes of chocolates for $7. 3 min read. In her note, written on plain lined paper in a grade-schoolers swirling cursive, she invited me to visit. This is the disturbing story of Dorothea Puente, the Death House Landlady.. Eleven jurors were convinced of Puentes guilt in killing the seven boarders found in her yard; one juror disagreed. 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. Six more corpses would follow, but Puente was still on the run. Puente sah aus wie die Gromutter aus der Nachbarschaft, aber in Wirklichkeit war sie eine kaltbltige Mrderin. [citation needed], A few weeks later, the police returned after Malcolm McKenzie, a 74-year-old pensioner (one of four elderly people Puente was accused of drugging), accused Puente of drugging and stealing from him. She parried, unwavering in her account of Montoyas departure, her voice calm as the detective pressed her. Hayden spent months processing thousands of pieces of evidence related to the case, including a shovel used to dig up human remains. 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. Her bedroom was on the second floor. A year later her mother died in a motorcycle accident. How Did Dorothea Puente Kill Her Victims? 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. But as the police prepared to leave, Sharp slipped them a message. Puentes next two marriages would be short-lived. She recalls the future president and his first wife, Jane Wyman, as her good friends. When I mention the Gippers second wife, she frowns. 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?. Both have died, and police cleared them early in the investigation. [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. 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. Most disregarded the warning in the face of a paucity of housing options for alcoholics, drug addicts and the mentally ill, and even after her release from prison in 1985, social workers and homeless advocates, ignoring or unaware that she was an ex-con running a boardinghouse without a license, sent their clients to her. His eyes popped wide. The police bulletin sent out after Puentes escape (Courtesy of John Cabrera), Throughout our meetings, Puente furtively points out inmates and comments on their crimes. Their theory hardened into subjective truth when they discovered that, following the funeral, the nurse had drained thousands of dollars belonging to Munroe from a joint business bank account. [6], In 1968, Gray married Roberto Jose Puente. 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. Shes not hurting there in prison, he says. But the jury had a difficult time believe the matronly grandmother was capable of carrying out such menacing crimes. In November 1985, Dorothea Puente hired a handyman named Ismael Florez to install some wood paneling in her home. 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. That was my tomcat. When attempts to extract it with a shovel failed, Cabrera climbed into the hole. When we later part, Puente disappears through the gray metal door at the back of the hall. Dorothea Puente Home - Part 1: Directed by Star Price. To soothe her anxiety, she wanted to walk to the nearby Clarion Hotel with one of her boarders to meet her nephew for a cup of coffee. I just dont believe that strongly in coincidence. She sat there so totally motionless and emotionless, says Honey Hewlett, one of 12 jurors seated for the trial, who stopped buying Giorgio perfume after learning Puente also wore the scent. 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. During her trial, the persecution said. Soon afterward, Chief disappeared. She attends services held at the prisons chapel, but avoids joining inmate worship groups. 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. As the search expanded, cabin fever seized Puente. I think she truly wanted to rehabilitate [her tenants] as she could not the people in her own family, Vicary says. Puente cashed in the Social Security checks of the elderly and disabled boarders living in her house. 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. 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. "Someone. As far as theyre concerned, Im dead.. Puente struck out on her own when she was 16. Cabreras superiors approved her request, deciding they held insufficient evidence to detain her. The only time [the boarers] were in good health was when they stayed at my home, Puente insisted from prison. Their dismembered bodies were then placed in holes in the garden she'd paid ex-convicts to dig. In another twist to the case, Sacramento police escorted her back to the city on a plane chartered by KCRA for its news crew. 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. The union lasted just two years. Jodi Picoult mentions Puente's crimes and cookbook in her novel House Rules. Prosecutors said that Puente was one of the most cold and calculating female killers the country had ever seen.. 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. Some might interpret that as a kind of confession, I finally say. 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. With Jeff Rechner, Joelle Uzyel, Mikel Welch. 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. Dorothea Puente spent much of the 1980's providing shelter for the elderly and infirm in her Sacramento boardinghouse. Puente was convicted in. The conversation soon veers toward why I want to interview her, and before I finish explaining, she interrupts. Hard living had stolen much of Dorotheas youthful beauty by the time she landed her third husband in 1968 and settled in Sacramento. Her lawyers argued that she might be a thief, but not a murderer. In her absence, investigators dug up the whole yard and discovered the body of 78-year-old Leona Carpenter. 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. The penalty phase of the prosecution was highlighted by her prior convictions introduced by O'Mara. Her rapid decline perplexed her loved ones until they read the coroners report: the death was labeled a suicide caused by an overdose of codeine and acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. For my benefit, she recites her prison medical history: a tumor removed from behind one knee last year; angioplasty in 2003; repair of a ruptured artery in 1998. [citation needed]. This was a money-making scheme, but I do not believe she was a murderess.. Most of the lot has been paved over. (Clymo died in 2006.) Puente, meanwhile, was a model prisoner, often cooking for the other prisoners and guards her tamales, in particular, were much loved. She declines to disclose the fathers name, when and where they were born and died or the circumstances of their deaths.). Once free of the throng, Cabrera stopped and watched the pair until they entered the hotel. Her escape intensified interest in a lurid tale that for a time made Sacramento the center of the media universe. At the time, the basement floor was covered with a concrete slab. Only after unearthing seven corpses at 1426 F Street in November 1988 would prosecutors charge Puente with killing Munroe. 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. She stuck to her story that he had left for Utah after a trip to Mexico, and agreed to let her three visitors search the two-story house. Betty Palmer, 78. Sacramento Co. By Remy Millisky / March 14, 2022 11:13 am EDT. 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". Her upstanding reputation concealed a habit of forging the signatures of tenants on their benefits checks before signing them over to herself. 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. Puente's alleged grandson, William Harder (pictured), insists his grandmother wasn't all bad. At age 16, she drifted off on her own to Olympia, Wash. Comely and flaxen-haired, with soft blue eyes and a beguiling smile, she worked as a prostitute to earn money and caught the attention of Fred McFaul. 'I saw her as a human - despite her crimes.'. I inquire how she juggled the demands of professional golf with her Rockettes career while flying between San Francisco and New York every week. To give strength to other people. She lifts the paper towel to her eyes. One of the bodies was missing its head, hands and feet, Body parts were also found scattered across the property. Ruth was not just Puente's friend but was also her business partner and had moved in with her just three weeks before the murder. One-time hitman Julio Santana (right) stopped counting after he reached 492 kills. Puente died in prison at Chowchilla on March 27, 2011, from natural causes; she was 82. Finally, four days after she skipped town, authorities traced her to a tumbledown motel in Los Angeles. 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. For her and the others, one factor in particular undercut Puentes claim of innocence. [1] Sua contagem total chegou a nove assassinatos confirmados e seis no . On subjects unrelated to her misdeeds, she will open up, weaving anecdotes that are sometimes embroidered, sometimes made from whole cloth. The hospitalization occurred a year after Sacramento police busted Dorothea in a raid on a residential house of ill fame on Fulton Avenue that had fronted as a bookkeeping service, according to court records. Get Sactown's top stories in your inbox by signing up for our weekly newsletter. I was on stage when the girl next to me broke her heel and bumped into me. The infamous home Dorothea Puente lived in is along F Street in Sacramento. It is a wistfulness that lays bare the depth of chaos that defined Puentes status quo long before they married in 1952. For someone who insists she worried over the well-being of her tenants, Puente tells me that, after her arrest, she fretted about Sam. I dont know what to tell you, she said. 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. Seven bodies were eventually found buried on the property.[10]. She gave birth to a daughter in 1946 followed by a second less than a year later, but public documents suggest she inherited her mothers aversion to childrearing. But, behind the scenes, Puente had embarked on a path that would lead her to murder. She turns to look at me. She then asked Florez to transport the filled, sealed box to a storage depot. The checks I cashed, yes. In a cryptic aside, she added, I used to be a very good person at one time., The public heard little from Puente for more than 20 years after that clip aired. The boarding house made infamous by Dorothea Puentes murders. The serial killer shuffles into the room with a chickens hitched gait. 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. Ive given up hope of getting out, she says. She also mentions undergoing major cancer surgery in 1961 to remove her reproductive organs and part of her intestines and stomach. Her past crimes belied her pose of pure benevolence, yet she had submitted to the house and yard searches without protest. Police found seven bodies. As most serial killers, Dorothea had a rough childhood. For a moment the prisons visitors hall feels bereft of other people and sounds. She folds the towel several times into a tight square before clasping her hands together on her lap like a child attending Mass. 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. Despite being convicted of murder in 1993 and sent to prison, Puente denied killing the victims until the day she died . 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. 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. Others spoke of a calculating criminal who feigned altruism to mask her avariceand a homicidal bent. The candy proves popular with youngsters, whose sporadic laughter pierces the rooms hum. They appealed to authorities to reexamine their mothers death, a probe that ended with investigators upholding the suicide ruling. Being escorted to a police car after her capture in 1988, serial killer Dorothea Puente told gathering reporters 'I used to be a very good person, at one time'. 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. A dark thought arrived. Gray would continue to use the surname Puente for more than twenty years. Her evasive answersfirst claiming he had traveled to Mexico, then that he had returned and moved to Utahtripped Moises suspicion. "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? Most of the luminaries are connected to her years in Sacramento, where she moved in the mid-50s with her second husband, Axel Johansson, who now lives in Orangevale. She inflated her age by 10 to 15 years to further disarm her elderly clients, whom she set about exploiting under the guise of ministering to them. Trial began in October 1992 and ended a year later. She settled her nerves not with coffee but a few vodkas with orange juice while he drank beer. Know Her Death House Now Genaro Molina/Sacramento Bee/MCT/Getty Images. She gasped at sight of the remains, hands bracketing her cheeks. 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