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The house at 1426 F St., where police found seven of Puentes tenants buried in the yard, as it looks today. Heres this grandmotherly figure in this beautiful, restored Victorian house with all these azaleas and other flowers, OMara says. When we later part, Puente disappears through the gray metal door at the back of the hall. Her words return to me. 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. Shes making me lie for her.. 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. That didnt seem right, but Dorothea had conned our whole family into thinking she was a nurse.. In 2015, the Ghost Adventures crew investigated the house, due to reports of hauntings by the victims and Puente herself. I dont give a shit what anyone else thinks., Did you like what you read here? Dorothea Puente, born Dorothea Helen Gray was born on January 9, 1929 in San Bernardino County, California. 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. Old bones sometimes turned up in downtown and midtown yards, vestiges of the early 20th century, when families unable to afford a cemetery plot interred loved ones on their property. They know what shes done., Puente conveys a pride in her renown that, now and then, gives way to embarrassment, or perhaps weariness. Hayden spent months processing thousands of pieces of evidence related to the case, including a shovel used to dig up human remains. Officers rushed to the hotel to arrest Puente, but by then, she had bolted. Despite lacking formal dance training, she says, I went out there and they hired me. Multiple murder suspect Dorothea Montalvo Puente, right, is brought back to Sacramento from the LA area in the early morning hours of November 17, 1988. The impending anniversary, if tracked only by media types and those who sell serial-killer novelties online, had stirred my curiosity. She then asked Florez to transport the filled, sealed box to a storage depot. Slight and demure, with her ivory-white hair and solicitous demeanor, the landlady resembled any other elderly woman with a kitchen full of pots and pans and a cat calendar hanging next to the stove. Theyve never talked to me. On another occasion, she casts her circumstance in a biblical light. Puente and McCauley had caught a cab from the Clarion Hotel to a West Sacramento bar. Dalmane, which is a drug used for insomnia, was found in all seven of the exhumed bodies. Suspect left her residence for a walk but never returned.. Play it now! (Obituaries for Ingemar Johansson, who died earlier this year, list his sole surviving brother as Rolf.). 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. Maybe I would have been better off. She lost her first boarding house after getting caught signing her own name to tenants benefit checks. cold and calculating female killers the country had ever seen., serial killer known as the Angel of Death, Aileen Wuornos, historys most terrifying female serial killer. Her escape intensified interest in a lurid tale that for a time made Sacramento the center of the media universe. Her evasive answersfirst claiming he had traveled to Mexico, then that he had returned and moved to Utahtripped Moises suspicion. Shane Bugbee. Her memories, I come to understand, blend rote recitation of illusory events with blatant omission of her crimes. In the spring of 1948, Gray was arrested for purchasing women's accessories using forged checks in Riverside. [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. Several were referred there by social workers who viewed the home as a last-resort refuge for their ailing or most erratic clients. She recalls the future president and his first wife, Jane Wyman, as her good friends. When I mention the Gippers second wife, she frowns. During her trial, the persecution said. MONTEREY . As we continue talking, the topic switches to her life before prison, and I ask what she misses most about Sacramento. The penalty phase of the prosecution was highlighted by her prior convictions introduced by O'Mara. Dick Schmidt/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty Images. 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. I wonder if she ever wishes she had received the death penalty. To my surprise, an envelope stamped with the words Central California Womens Facility State Prison arrived a few weeks later. 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. For someone who insists she worried over the well-being of her tenants, Puente tells me that, after her arrest, she fretted about Sam. 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. [citation needed], In November 1985, Puente hired a man named Ismael Florez to install some wood paneling in her apartment. It doesnt fit., At least three peopledefense attorneys Kevin Clymo and Peter Vlautin and their clientharbored scarce empathy for the prosecutor. In addition to the usual fare sold in the halls chow line, there are heart-shaped boxes of chocolates for $7. 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. For her and the others, one factor in particular undercut Puentes claim of innocence. Inmates enter one at a time at irregular intervals through a gray metal door along the rear wall. For the first time, her gaze squarely meets mine. 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. Some of the bodies were mummified in cloth, bed sheets and duct tape. (A charity she declines to name sends her $15 a month, her sole source of money.) 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. [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. Dorothea Puente Dorothea Puente, born Dorothea Helen Gray was born on January 9, 1929 in San Bernardino County, California. I think she truly wanted to rehabilitate [her tenants] as she could not the people in her own family, Vicary says. These entities fall through the cracks, said Kathleen Lammers, executive director of the California Law Center on Longterm Care, about boarding houses like Puentes. He ferried Puente to police headquarters and grilled her for two hours. Explaining away the corpses in her yard, she says, Not one person who worked for me saw me doing anything wrong. High-profile cases dotted his career, including those of convicted mass murderer Morris Solomon and the Unabomber. 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. Tempers spiked as the impasse stretched to its third week. She does not smile, laugh or joke much in my presence, but nor does she betray malevolence. He called over Cabrera and Brown, and after he scooped away more soil, they saw what resembled a tree root. Everybodys heard of me. They were men and women who had skidded toward lifes edges. She trails Cabrera, his police badge clipped to the front of a dark blue jacket and his jeans tucked into knee-high black boots that he had donned for the days dig. 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. I scan the room out of empty impulse, certain I havent missed her. The next spring, with her husband hospitalized by terminal cancer, the 61-year-old Munroe moved in with Puente to save money. Its the same thing. She claims he has sent her Christmas cards in prison, and as she talks about that small act of kindness, her eyes mist over. 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. "Which is gross," Hayden said. I could see the joint., A vial of flurazepam found in Puentes home (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives). 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. The 59-year-old looked like an ordinary grandmother when she was arrested after a five day hunt across California. Beyond that lurked the vexing conundrum of the accused herself. She had breached her federal probation by running a boardinghouse, yet admitted to the offense when asked. As most serial killers, Dorothea had a rough childhood. In 1993, facing nine counts of murder after prosecutors linked her to two other deaths, she stood trial without testifying. 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 . 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. Retired social worker Mildred Ballenger first met Puente in the late 1970s. In April 2020, the house and current owners were showcased in the Quibi series Murder House Flip. A lot of women shouldnt be here., She counts herself among them, even while conceding few people believe in her innocence. He was a good-hearted man, very kind, she says. Others wave and smile. That is the question. I didnt need to kill anyone. A local Spanish-language newspaper that referred to Puente as la doctora (Courtesy of John Cabrera), The unlicensed venture thrived from the start. Its sick., Clausen knows Puentes appeals ran out last year. Puente drugged three women with tranquilizers to steal checks, money and valuables from their homes in the early 80s, as recounted in court records. Look at Job, John, Paul, Moses. Cooking what I want. 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! She gave them clothing, she gave them food. 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. 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. Puente cashed in the Social Security checks of the elderly and disabled boarders living in her house. If you lived anywhere else, theres still a good chance you recognize it, or at least the rough outline of her crimes. Dorothea Puente was a convicted serial killer who ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California in the 1980s.