Next, Dorothea Puente went to San Francisco, where she married her second husband, Axel Bren Johansson, in 1952. She responds with a burst of words, scanning the room as she talks. Dorothea Puente is an American chronic executioner. 'The contents might be what you'd never expected. Some of them began to disappear. 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. 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. I now see them as tokens of loneliness, trifles to mark the time. I ask why the cops targeted her. Despite lacking formal dance training, she says, I went out there and they hired me. Puente had a reputation for taking in people considered tough cases recovering alcoholics, drug addicts, the mentally ill, and the elderly. 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. Her passivity subdues suspicion. To reduce chest pain, she wears a nitroglycerin skin patch. When she was eight her father died of tuberculosis. 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. The silence here feels powerful enough to swallow space. Between 1982 and 1988, she killed nine people, all of whom were renting rooms at her boarding house. During the initial investigation, Puente was not immediately a suspect, and she was allowed to leave the property, ostensibly to buy a cup of coffee at a nearby hotel. 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. Beneath the rooms ashen lighting stand neat rows of small round tables, some 50 in all. Betty Palmer, 78. Today the 59-year-old Cabrera works cold cases for the department as a retired sergeant. Vera Faye Martin, 64. He ferried Puente to police headquarters and grilled her for two hours. She was notoriously known as the "Death House Land Lady" after committing nine murders. 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. An undercover cop posing as a trucker arrested her after she offered to perform fellatio on him; she served 90 days in county lockup. She consented again, even lending a shovel to the men, who had brought only two. 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?. This woman is a disturbed woman who does not appear to have remorse or regret for what she has done, he wrote. They described a woman of contradictions. 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. The three men carried shovels as they fanned out across the backyard of the two-story Victorian at 1426 F Street. Joy the last person to have seen her alive. She was paralyzed. (The Rockettes alumni association has no record of someone named either Sharon Neyaarda or Dorothea McFaul performing with the company, nor of two dancers tumbling into an orchestra pit. Their first series of holes dislodged only soft dirt and a vague sense of futility. Her lawyers argued that she might be a thief, but not a murderer. With Bill Courage, John Cabrera, Bill Clausen, Judy Moises. 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. It was a human leg bone, he recalls. She would later kill them by poisoning or strangling them. 'I saw her as a human - despite her crimes.'. Tempers spiked as the impasse stretched to its third week. Since Ive been in here, she says, its like all of that never happened.. Me and Nancy, she says, shaking her head. The Victorian on F Street. 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. Johansson divorced Dorothea in 1966. 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 . I dont want to be a burden on anyone.. In the 70s, while running her first boardinghouse at 21st and F streets, Puente cultivated a strong rapport with social workers. She also mentions undergoing major cancer surgery in 1961 to remove her reproductive organs and part of her intestines and stomach. She marks much of the day reading mind-candy fictionshes a fan of John Grisham and Dan Brownand watching TV; her favorite prime-time shows include CSI, Criminal Minds and Cold Case. Grandson of Dorothea Puente, shared a 'real connection' with her - Daily Newshttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGIQ4XcqArGYqiw70QoKcvw?sub_confirmation=1Grand. 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. One was missing its head, hands and feet. "They immediately died," says Warren's grandson, Warren W. Bogle, who today serves as President and Vineyard Director. Shes been in for 12 years. Some lauded the tireless advocate whose charitable work benefited the Hispanic community. When police arrived at 1426 F Street, Puente told the cops Montoya was on vacation, but they noticed some undisturbed soil among a vegetable patch in the garden. Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray on January 9, 1929. James Gallop, 62. 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. On January 1, 1986, a fisherman spotted the suspicious looking coffin-like box near the river and called police. 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". The 1991 film Evil Spirits, starring Karen Black and Arte Johnson, is loosely based on the Puente murders. 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. After their deaths she continued to draw their social security cheques. The inmates know who she is, the official says. Most of the lot has been paved over. The house at 1426 F St., where police found seven of Puentes tenants buried in the yard, as it looks today. Dorothea Helen Gray met the world on Jan. 9, 1929, in Redlands, Calif., the sixth of seven children born to Jesse James Gray and Trudie Gray. Once, when I asked if she ever hears from her surviving siblings or two daughters, she shook her head. 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'. I just did, she says. The jury was deadlocked eleven to one for conviction on all counts, and the lone holdout finally agreed to a conviction of two first-degree murder counts, including special circumstances, and one second-degree murder count. Authorities unearth a corpse buried in the lawn of 59-year-old Dorothea Puente's home in Sacramento, California.Puente operated a residential home for elderly people, and an investigation led to . 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. I stare at the brick and wrought-iron front gate through which Dorothea Puente walked for the last time on Nov. 12, 1988. A lot of women shouldnt be here., She counts herself among them, even while conceding few people believe in her innocence. "Someone. She would flee the city that morning. 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. Dorothea Puente at the Central California Womens Facility, February 21, 2009 (Courtesy of Central California Womens Facility). Speaking softly, she asked, Am I under arrest? When the detective told her no, she explained that the police presence and the growing mob of onlookers had her on edge. These entities fall through the cracks, said Kathleen Lammers, executive director of the California Law Center on Longterm Care, about boarding houses like Puentes. READ: Serial Killer Puente's Former Home Becomes Classroom For Law. The boarding house made infamous by Dorothea Puentes murders. 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. Four days later, Munroe died at Puentes home. 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. It seems fitting that a published recipe collection by serial killer Dorothea Puente, aka the "Death House Landlady," includes how-to's for whipping up . In 2015, the Ghost Adventures crew investigated the house, due to reports of hauntings by the victims and Puente herself. The reality, in fact, was that across a period of 10 years, Puente had meticulously murdered at least seven tenants at the boarding lodge she ran in Sacramento, California. The union lasted just two years. [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]. Puente told police that the woman was very depressed because her husband was terminally ill. [3] Her parents were both alcoholics and her father repeatedly threatened to commit suicide in front of his children. After their deaths, Puente collected . O'Mara's closing argument focused on Puente's acts of murder: Does anyone become responsible for their conduct in this world? Only after unearthing seven corpses at 1426 F Street in November 1988 would prosecutors charge Puente with killing Munroe. Mental health experts testified of Puente's abusive upbringing and how it motivated her to help the less fortunate. 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. 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. 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. Im here until I die.. 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. The Montoya file landed on Cabreras desk within a day. Released after three for good behavior, she returned to Sacramento, with her federal probation extended to 1990 due to the state conviction. The erstwhile prostitute had turned a new trick. Then you will understand why these people believe Dorothea's life is worth saving. The two talked through the afternoon, with Willgues both attracted to and wary of the well-dressed stranger who sipped screwdrivers. 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. 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. 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. 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 neither explained his motive for capitulating nor discussed why he agreed to convict her of only three killings. She folds the towel several times into a tight square before clasping her hands together on her lap like a child attending Mass. Intense news coverage led to Puentes trial moving to Monterey. 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. Throughout the trial, Dorothea Puente was portrayed as either a sweet grandma-like type or a manipulative criminal who preyed on the weak. In her note, written on plain lined paper in a grade-schoolers swirling cursive, she invited me to visit. 22 ratings3 reviews. 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. 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. Or about the white-haired woman who turned the yard into a mass grave. Shes dying of cancer. Within two weeks, Munroe fell ill, her body so weak she struggled to stand. 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. 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. Puente had already been convicted and executed in the media, and the attorneys understood the long odds of winning in court. A couple who braved the stigma of the house's curse purchased the home, fully aware of the history. I think you can only truly understand why so many people testified and asked you to spare Dorothea's life only if you have ever fallen down and stumbled on the road of life and had someone pick you up, give you comfort, give you love, show you the way. Isabel Vincent. After Florez finished the job, Puente had one more request: to build her a six-foot-long box so she could fill it with books and a few other assorted items before the pair of them would bring the box to a storage facility. Even probation officers who stopped by accepted Puentes explanation that the people living at her house were guests or friends not boarders. In April 2020, the house and current owners were showcased in the Quibi series Murder House Flip. An extensive five-day search for the elderly fugitive ended when a stranger she'd befriended in Los Angeles recognized her face from the news and turned her into police. Cooking what I want. Aug. 27, 1993 12 AM PT. My oldest grandson is 15 and wanted to do this attraction. 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. She moves toward the front of the room, where a guard seated behind a metal desk tells her my table number. [citation needed]. After noticing disturbed soil on the property, they uncovered the body of tenant Leona Carpenter, 78. After Puente was released from her first spell in prison for three counts. The press dubbed Dorothea Puente the 'Death House Landlady.' The name sharply contrasted with her perception in the community. Amanda Sedlak-Hevener. 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. These were peoplethe Salvation Army wouldnt take them. Others disparaged the closet alcoholic who on occasion punctuated roof-raising, cuss-filled tirades with a piece of furniture heaved down the stairs. Hayden spent months processing thousands of pieces of evidence related to the case, including a shovel used to dig up human remains. Puente then married Pedro Angel Montalvo, but he left her only a week after they were wed. He speculates that running a boardinghouse began for her as a humane endeavor rooted in a desire to undo painful childhood memories. But in reality, he contends, she is the nation's most prolific female serial murderer ever . Some might interpret that as a kind of confession, I finally say. 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. They had two daughters between 1946 and 1948; Gray sent one child to live with relatives in Sacramento, and placed the other for adoption. But she has shown too much interest in my visits for me to believe her. Dorothea Montalvo Puente might seem like "a grandmotherly figure," says prosecutor John O'Mara. So we knew wed have an uphill battle in convincing the jurors that all of those were accidental deaths.. Montoya struggled with mental health issues and had been homeless for years. I just dont believe that strongly in coincidence. 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. ', Puente died in 2011 aged 82 in her prison cell at the Central California Facility, in Chowchilla. During this period, parole agents visited Puente at least fifteen times; though she had been ordered to keep away from the elderly and refrain from handling government checks, no violations were ever noted. Familiar in name, she remained an enigma. Infamous serial murderer . 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. When they came to me, they were so sick, they werent expected to live.. She recalls the future president and his first wife, Jane Wyman, as her good friends. When I mention the Gippers second wife, she frowns. 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 told them that they were welcome to do so, and even provided an extra shovel. I dont know what to tell you, she said. The visitors hall at the Central California Womens Facility in Chowchilla brings to mind a church social as hosted for state convicts. She lost her first boarding house after getting caught signing her own name to tenants benefit checks. Genaro Molina/Sacramento Bee/MCT/Getty Images. In 1961, Johansson had Gray briefly committed to DeWitt State Hospital after a binge of drinking, lying, criminal behavior, and suicide attempts. 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. On her release from prison, she began killing her victims. Vlautin spoke gently about Puente's childhood touching on the traumatic aspects that shaped her life and urged the jurors to see the world through her eyes. The only time [the boarers] were in good health was when they stayed at my home, Puente insisted from prison. Scant evidence exists to suggest she socialized with Reaganwhen he divorced Wyman, Puente was 20 years old and living in the Bay Areaany more than she danced with the Rockettes. 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. 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). This was a money-making scheme, but I do not believe she was a murderess.. Police later accused Puente of lacing food or drinks she served her victims with a lethal mix of prescription drugs, poisoning them to collect their Social Security checks, a scheme that netted more than $5,000 a month. When the police arrived, Puente told them that Monroe had been depressed due to her husbands terminal illness. She tends to wear thick violet eye shadow and pink lipstick, both of a hue common to Toulouse-Lautrec paintings, and her body lotion of choice, Victorias Secret Love Spell, gives her the subtle bouquet of cherry blossoms. The two would continue to have a turbulent relationship, and Gray filed a restraining order in 1975. After spending part of Valentines Day with Miss Dorothea, as other inmates call her, I returned later in February and stopped by for a final chat in April. Wood earlier sent Puente to prison for drugging and robbing the elderly. 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. Con su simpata lograba escapar de la. Puente watched the images flicker across the TV screen in her Los Angeles motel room. ), 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. In addition to the usual fare sold in the halls chow line, there are heart-shaped boxes of chocolates for $7. [citation needed], On November 11, 1988, police inquired after the disappearance of tenant Alvaro "Bert" Montoya, a developmentally disabled man with schizophrenia, who had been reported missing by his social worker. The theory, while perhaps logical to anyone unfamiliar with Puente before her name hit the headlines, brought disparate reactions from those who already knew her. Behind them, a twentysomething blonde clutches the hands of a young man with a sun tattoo on his forearm. We break the ice. I made them change their clothes every day, take a bath every day and eat three meals a day. Tests revealed high levels of unprescribed drugs in their systems, and in time, the physicians fingered her as the culprit. (Puente tells me she also had twin daughters who as young adults committed suicide one week apart. I know her only through the words of others. Puentes next two marriages would be short-lived. He was good to me. (Johansson did not respond to interview requests.). Working in my yard.. But there were seven dead bodies in your yard. In effect, every cell has a waiting list.) Cops hauling away body bags. Thats between me and my God., Until 2006, Puente rotated through assorted prison jobs, cleaning cells, giving haircuts, toiling on a landscaping crew. On the other hand, when these people, as could be expected, would act upat that point, she snapped and decided to kill them.. The 59-year-old looked like an ordinary grandmother when she was arrested after a five day hunt across California. McFaul split from his young wife in 1948. I could see the joint., A vial of flurazepam found in Puentes home (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives). ), Puente relates that, as a Rockette, she met John Kennedy, then a U.S. senator, and his wife, Jackie, and befriended actress Rita Hayworth. Gray assumed the identity of "Sharon Johansson", hiding her delinquent behavior by portraying herself as a devout Christian woman.

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