A T-shirt designed to cash in on Puente mania (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives). The serial killer shuffles into the room with a chickens hitched gait. Im here until I die.. Instead, after buying the coffee, she fled immediately to Los Angeles, where she befriended an elderly male pensioner whom she had met in a bar. Dorothea Puente spent much of the 1980's providing shelter for the elderly and infirm in her Sacramento boardinghouse. 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. It was always moving. Genaro Molina/Sacramento Bee/MCT/Getty Images. Throughout the trial, Dorothea Puente was portrayed as either a sweet grandma-like type or a manipulative criminal who preyed on the weak. Im certain they were just dying of natural causes, and she started burying them so she could keep the checks coming. I inquire how she juggled the demands of professional golf with her Rockettes career while flying between San Francisco and New York every week. I dont give a shit what anyone else thinks., Did you like what you read here? Clymo responded by evoking Dorothea the child and caregiver. A lot of people saw your running away as a sign of guilt. Thats between me and my God., Until 2006, Puente rotated through assorted prison jobs, cleaning cells, giving haircuts, toiling on a landscaping crew. See that one? she asks, nodding toward a gaunt, gray-haired woman with stooped posture. Driven by routine, Puente rises by 4:30 a.m. most days, long before her seven cellmates. One was missing its hands, head and feet. His head cocked to the side, he looks back at her, preparing to usher her past the crowd that looms outside the frame. "They immediately died," says Warren's grandson, Warren W. Bogle, who today serves as President and Vineyard Director. I have listened to the lingering grief and anger of a man whose mother died mysteriously while in her care. 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. Federal law shields inmate medical records from the public, leaving open the question of whether she has had three surgeries since entering prison. 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. 13 and watch the prisons visitors hall gradually fill, my doubts that she will appear grow with the rooms din. I was struck by how pleasant and socially intact and intelligent she was, says Vicary, who works in Los Angeles. I wonder what she wants when death does come. Shes making me lie for her.. A few wander over to a colorful mural of Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Tigger and Piglet, who prance beneath a banner reading Family Is Love, Love Is Family. None of the kids acts bothered that mom or grandma or big sister is doing time. 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. Four days later, Munroe died at Puentes home. During the 1992 proceeding, investigators revealed that Puente - who was then 63 - had been killing the tenants for money, making $4,000 a month from cashing their social security checks. It was a human leg bone, he recalls. Given Dorothea Puente's image, this meant the controversial artist, Shane Bugbee, would collaborate with her on a cookbook. This woman is a disturbed woman who does not appear to have remorse or regret for what she has done, he wrote. 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. A state psychologist who evaluated Puente before her release from prison in 1985 diagnosed her as schizophrenic. Con su simpata lograba escapar de la. ), Puente relates that, as a Rockette, she met John Kennedy, then a U.S. senator, and his wife, Jackie, and befriended actress Rita Hayworth. I get pushed in a wheelchair. She speaks in clipped sentences, her voice, so rarely shared with journalists, scratchy but strong. Despite the guilty verdict of her . A year later her mother died in a motorcycle accident. I watch the scenes unfold from table No. This page was last edited on 18 February 2023, at 18:08. SPECIAL TO THE TIMES. So we knew wed have an uphill battle in convincing the jurors that all of those were accidental deaths.. An outreach counselor with Volunteers of America, she had visited Puente before placing him in her care. Their first series of holes dislodged only soft dirt and a vague sense of futility. 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. 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. Dorothea Puente is an American chronic executioner. 104-107. Dalmane, which is a drug used for insomnia, was found in all seven of the exhumed bodies. She steams the tamales in plastic bags placed in a pan of water warmed with two electric immersion coils. During her trial, the persecution said. 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. A pen pal friendship developed, and when Puente was released in 1985 after serving three years of her five-year sentence, he met her outside the prison, driving a red 1980 Ford pickup. They had two daughters between 1946 and 1948; Gray sent one child to live with relatives in Sacramento, and placed the other for adoption. Granddaughter Of Dorothea Puente Victim Visits Boarding House Exclusive Granddaughter Of Dorothea Puente Victim Visits Boarding House Dorothy Miller was eventually found buried in the yard of Dorothea Puente's boarding house. They dont have all the facts, she tells me one morning, dismissing those who judge her a murderer. Then you will understand why these people believe Dorothea's life is worth saving. 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. It doesnt fit., At least three peopledefense attorneys Kevin Clymo and Peter Vlautin and their clientharbored scarce empathy for the prosecutor. She responds with a burst of words, scanning the room as she talks. Disguised as a kind-hearted boarding house owner, Dorothea Puente allegedly murdered tenants who lived on her property, and buried them in her backyard, according to the Los Angeles Times. She was incarcerated at Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla, California. In her telling, after showering and dressing, she prays, recites the rosary and reads a few pages of the Bible, favoring Proverbs and Romans. [citation needed]. 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. Dorothea Puente, born Dorothea Helen Gray was born on January 9, 1929 in San Bernardino County, California. Puentes vanishing ignited a manhunt that stretched to Mexico. For the first time, her gaze squarely meets mine. The Montoya file landed on Cabreras desk within a day. Many of them found dead and buried in the boarding house's yard. The two would continue to have a turbulent relationship, and Gray filed a restraining order in 1975. Someone reached across the table at one point and almost got into a fistfight with him, says Hewlett, who now lives in Oregon. It had about $2,500, $3,000 in it. Cabrera shakes his head. The Boarding House Killer: Directed by Steve Allen. Season 1 Episode 2 - Videos 1:11 Preview Dorothea Puente Runs From Police Gawkers gather outside 1426 F St. (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives), Domestic bliss and her maternal instinct failed to take root. The three men carried shovels as they fanned out across the backyard of the two-story Victorian at 1426 F Street. (A charity she declines to name sends her $15 a month, her sole source of money.) She had a traumatic childhood after being raised by alcoholic parents. Tempers spiked as the impasse stretched to its third week. Kara Goldfarb is a writer living in New York City. The conversation soon veers toward why I want to interview her, and before I finish explaining, she interrupts. In the 1980s, she worked as a personal caretaker who drugged her clients and stole their valuables. Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray on January 9, 1929. During discussions that typically lasted two to three hours, she proved by turns defiant and self-pitying, disavowing she killed anyone while reserving words of sorrow for herself. Retired social worker Mildred Ballenger first met Puente in the late 1970s. April 27, 2019 1:12pm. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. Hard living had stolen much of Dorotheas youthful beauty by the time she landed her third husband in 1968 and settled in Sacramento. That I can die peacefully in my sleep without being sick or being a cripple. 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. In April 2020, the house and current owners were showcased in the Quibi series Murder House Flip. I started working her, Cabrera says, but all along, she was working me. Dorothea Puente looked like a sweet grandmother but looks can be deceiving. 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. 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. Word reached Cabrera. These were peoplethe Salvation Army wouldnt take them. Dorothea Puente's former boarding house is at 1426 F Street in Sacramento, California, between 14th and 15th streets. That is a human quality that deserves to be preserved. And, she says, They like my tamales.. Soon after, Monroe died from an overdose of codeine and acetaminophen. He was going with another movie star, she says. 31 of the Royal Viking. 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. Forensic testing had failed to determine a definitive cause of death in any of the victims. I wonder if she ever wishes she had received the death penalty. Dick Schmidt/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesDorothea Puente after her arrest in Los Angeles, en route back to Sacramento. Unchanged are his lean, square-shouldered build and animated manner, his eyebrows spiking and hands windmilling as he recounts the investigation. She took it all Death is the only appropriate penalty. For her and the others, one factor in particular undercut Puentes claim of innocence. 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. I had such a sick feeling, he says. Puente claims she spent time in the 70s with California governors Pat Brown, Jerry Brown and Ronald Reagan. Working in my yard. Jodi Picoult mentions Puente's crimes and cookbook in her novel House Rules. There, she quickly got back to her old tricks. 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.. At the time of her 1988 arrest on murder charges, photos of Puente with Jerry Brown, former California Gov. A gentle bear of a man, the 52-year-old Montoya suffered from untreated psychosis, a condition that for years had consigned him to the streets and homeless shelters. Dorothea followed up the drugging by carrying out the . 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. But looks can be ext I now see them as tokens of loneliness, trifles to mark the time. She falls silent for a moment. Dorothea Puente awaiting arraignment in Sacramento, California on November 17, 1988. Next, Dorothea Puente went to San Francisco, where she married her second husband, Axel Bren Johansson, in 1952. 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. [6], Gray and Johansson divorced in 1966, although she continued to use Johansson's name for some time following their separation. Been here 27 years. A search of the home showed nothing amiss. & Brucato, Gary, Ph.D., The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books), pp. Only after unearthing seven corpses at 1426 F Street in November 1988 would prosecutors charge Puente with killing Munroe. On the other hand, when these people, as could be expected, would act upat that point, she snapped and decided to kill them.. 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. If you lived anywhere else, theres still a good chance you recognize it, or at least the rough outline of her crimes. 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. She does not once voice sadness over the deaths of her boarders, as if fearful that merely referring to them would imply her guilt. 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. A human leg and a badly discomposed foot were dug up separately in another part of the yard. [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 this Dorothea Puente, was an elderly lady (think a widow at that) that housed boarders, a care home, or is it care house? To give strength to other people. She lifts the paper towel to her eyes. In the narrative of her life that unfurled at her murder trial and in news reports and books about the case, she grew up poor, deprived in equal measure of material comforts and parental nurturing. The initial jolt of uncovering a dead body on Nov. 11 ebbed as Cabrera weighed three factors. Inside Dorothea Puente's Tragic Childhood. 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. To reduce chest pain, she wears a nitroglycerin skin patch. 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. In her absence, investigators dug up the whole yard and discovered the body of 78-year-old Leona Carpenter. 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. He stares at the photo and points at her purse. Thats just too much coincidence., Finally, on the 24th day of deliberations, the holdout juror acquiesced, voting guilty on two counts of first-degree murder and one second-degree count. Some touch her shoulder. Or about the white-haired woman who turned the yard into a mass grave. At 39, she was 16 years older than Roberto Puente, a Mexican migr whose interest in his heavyset bride concerned money and American citizenship, as chronicled in Disturbed Ground, a 1994 book about the Puente murder case. The psychiatrist diagnosed Puente as suffering from antisocial personality disorder, a condition marked by deceit and manipulation of others without remorse. I just did, she says. Tom Williams and Barbara Holmes are the new landlords of the "haunted" house. James Gallop, 62, (continued left to right) Dorothy Miller, 64. 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. Dorothea Puente was a California landlady who ran a boarding house in Sacramento during the 1980s. 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. He ferried Puente to police headquarters and grilled her for two hours. 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. Witnesses, including her long-lost daughter, testified how Puente had helped them in their youth and guided them to successful careers. [7] On August 18, 1982, Puente was convicted of three theft charges and sentenced to five years in prison; there, she began corresponding with Everson Gillmouth, a 77-year-old retiree from Oregon. She seems entirely harmless. He pieced the puzzle together a couple of hours after they parted, and later that night, police converged on room No. 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. Explaining away the corpses in her yard, she says, Not one person who worked for me saw me doing anything wrong. Puente claims she spent time in the 70s with California governors Pat Brown, Jerry Brown and Ronald Reagan. How did I know where they were? Absolving herself, Puente fingers McCauley and another former tenant as the possible murder suspects. He speculates that running a boardinghouse began for her as a humane endeavor rooted in a desire to undo painful childhood memories. Eleven jurors were convinced of Puentes guilt in killing the seven boarders found in her yard; one juror disagreed. Puente offered a place where they could hang on. Puente drugged three women with tranquilizers to steal checks, money and valuables from their homes in the early 80s, as recounted in court records. 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. One of the bodies was missing its head, hands and feet, Body parts were also found scattered across the property. She folds the towel several times into a tight square before clasping her hands together on her lap like a child attending Mass. 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. She answers with a look of mild reproach that pulls taut her soft fist of a face. Soon afterward, Chief disappeared. She is a California native, born in Redlands, Calif. 2. Six more corpses would follow, but Puente was still on the run. She was found guilty in three cases and one juror held out on the other four. Dorothea Puente. A person like her, he says, theres no forgetting.. She parried, unwavering in her account of Montoyas departure, her voice calm as the detective pressed her. Investigators soon found the decomposing body of an elderly man inside. For the rest of her life, she maintained her innocence, insisting that all of her boarders had died of "natural causes". I have also done this: Late at night, when it is said her deeds turned darkest, I have pondered the vastness of human nature as I stood outside the tiny yard where she buried her victims. All three revolve around murder, a fact she notes without irony or self-consciousness. She had seven. She eventually met and married Pedro Angel Montalvo, though Montalvo abruptly left the relationship a week after their marriage. Cops hauling away body bags. She pled guilty to two counts of forgery, serving four months in jail and three years' probation. Hayden spent months processing thousands of pieces of evidence related to the case, including a shovel used to dig up human remains. But in reality, he contends, she is the nation's most prolific female serial murderer ever . 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. Barring an unexpected transfer to another prison or a medical emergency, she will die inside this compound. Charged with a total of nine murders, Puente was flown back to Sacramento. Her bedroom was on the second floor. I now see them as tokens of loneliness, trifles to mark the time. After her mother passing Dorothea and her 18 siblings . She professed her innocence until she died. She never blinked, never broke a sweat. After the interview, he allowed her to return to the house, where a patrolman stood sentinel outside through the night. Dorothea Helen Puente (nascido Gray; 9 de janeiro de 1929 - 27 de maro de 2011) foi uma assassina em srie americana.Na dcada de 1980, Puente mandava numa hospedaria em Sacramento, Califrnia, e assassinou vrios idosos e pensionistas com deficincia mental antes de descontar seus cheques de seguridade social. I dont want to be a burden on anyone.. Court files indicate Johansson had his wife committed to a psychiatric ward in 1961, and doctors placed her on antipsychotics. Puente had Chief dig in the basement and cart soil and rubbish away in a wheelbarrow. 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. The detective had yet to realize that, in the 59-year-old Puente, he had another serial killer on his hands. McFaul left her in late 1948.[5][6]. When attempts to extract it with a shovel failed, Cabrera climbed into the hole. And she didnt buy Puentes explanation that hed left on vacation. 22 ratings3 reviews. It occurs to me that if I were unaware of her past and talking with her outside of prison, she could come across as the little old lady next door. Prosecutors charged Puente with killing nine people. When Puente offered to perform a sex act on an undercover cop at a house of ill-repute, her husband sent her to a psychiatric ward. Dorothea Puente, also known as the Death House Landlady, was a little-old-lady serial killer who preyed on the elderly and drug-addicted men and women of Sacramento, CA in the 1980s. Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray on January 9, 1929. 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! 13, as designated by the plastic placard atop its faux-wood surface. The case rested on the shifting sands of circumstantial evidence. Trapped by tan cinderblock walls that climax in a Tsteepled ceiling, chatter and laughter create a kinetic mood amid the dense scent of microwaved pizza, burgers and fried chicken strips. . Between 1982 and 1988, she killed nine people, all of whom were renting rooms at her boarding house. After noticing disturbed soil on the property, they uncovered the body of tenant Leona Carpenter, 78. 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 . Some months earlier, another tenant, a longtime alcoholic on a bender, had vanished after Puente went to his room to make him feel better. The acrid stench of rotting flesh soon spread through the home and beyond, an odor she blamed on sewer problems and that drew complaints from neighbors. She watched from her porch, and before Cabrera put spade to soil, she requested a moment of his time. As the minutes pass, I prepare to join the long list of people she has duped. The erstwhile prostitute had turned a new trick. An alarmed Ballenger urged fellow counselors to steer clear of Puente. So you knew she was a liar.. The visitors hall at the Central California Womens Facility in Chowchilla brings to mind a church social as hosted for state convicts. She was tried for killing seven people by drugging them with Dalmane and alcohol. 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. The boarding house at 1426 F Street in Sacramento was included in the 2013 home tour held by the Sacramento Old City Association. 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. 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. These people were human beings, they had a right to live-they did not have a lot of possessions-no houses-no cars-only their social security checks and their lives. Me and Nancy, Puente says, shaking her head, we never got along. (A similar epitaph could apply to her marriage to her fourth husband, Pedro Montalvo, who left her in 1976, the same year they exchanged vows in Reno. Gray assumed the identity of "Sharon Johansson", hiding her delinquent behavior by portraying herself as a devout Christian woman. But she has shown too much interest in my visits for me to believe her. The 59-year-old looked like an ordinary grandmother when she was arrested after a five day hunt across California. The next day, under suspicion but not yet under arrest, Puente, then 59 and ostensibly the essence of grandmotherly virtue, fled the city. She created a fake persona, calling herself "Teya Singoalla Neyaarda", a Muslim woman of Egyptian and Israeli descent. 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. Ballenger began to suspect Puente of more nefarious behavior after learning that two elderly women in her care had suffered recurring spells of illness that baffled doctors. [1] Sua contagem total chegou a nove assassinatos confirmados e seis no . 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. They know what shes done., Puente conveys a pride in her renown that, now and then, gives way to embarrassment, or perhaps weariness. Its sick., Clausen knows Puentes appeals ran out last year. Designers Joelle and Mikel visit the current owners to replace the home's negative energy with a new makeover. Despite being convicted of murder in 1993 and sent to prison, Puente denied killing the victims until the day she died . Back in Sacramento, police were digging up five more bodies, including Bert Montoyas. Familiar in name, she remained an enigma. With a smile, I ask whether she and the actor shared a romantic attraction. 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. And it was so counter to her strenuous effort all her life to be somebody who was respected, somebody important., Puente received a prison term of life without parole after the jury deadlocked on whether to give her the death penalty, an ending that deepened William Clausens bitterness.
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