Years later, her granddaughter visits the spot. If she had been held accountable for murdering my mother, Clausen says, then maybe there wouldnt have been any other victims.. 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. 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. 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. In 1993, after several days of deliberations and a deadlocked jury (due in part to her grandmotherly disposition), Dorothea Puente was ultimately convicted of three murders and received back-to-back life sentences. Gawkers gather outside 1426 F St. (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives), Domestic bliss and her maternal instinct failed to take root. Setting his feet, he grabbed hold of the object and, with a violent jerk, loosed it from the earths grip. Despite lacking formal dance training, she says, I went out there and they hired me. An undercover cop posing as a trucker arrested her after she offered to perform fellatio on him; she served 90 days in county lockup. Drugs Puente used to knock . has sold out to audiences at the California Stage, Wilkerson Theatre, UC Davis, and in January 2023 at Saramento Theatre Company. Aug. 27, 1993 12 AM PT. Puente was charged for seven murders, but her trial wouldn't begin for another four years. [citation needed], Granting a change of venue motion filed by Puente's lawyers, Kevin Clymo and Peter Vlautin III, a judge transferred the trial to Monterey County. Benjamin Fink, 55. She responds with a burst of words, scanning the room as she talks. As reported by Dailymail, seven year after Puente's death, a man named William Harder had claimed to be his grandson. 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. 3 min read. Thats when the gray door clanks open once more. As the minutes pass, I prepare to join the long list of people she has duped. Murdaugh is heckled as he leaves court, Ken Bruce finishes his 30-year tenure as host of BBC Radio 2, Ukrainian soldier takes out five tanks with Javelin missiles, Family of a 10-month-old baby filmed vaping open up, Missing hiker buried under snow forces arm out to wave to helicopter, Hershey's Canada releases HER for SHE bars featuring a trans activist, Moment teenager crashes into back of lorry after 100mph police race, This Guy Collects Artwork From Serial Killers - VICE. The jokes on me. Dorothea Montalvo Puente (hereinafter "Petitioner") petitions for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C 2254 challenging her 1993 conviction following a trial by jury. Puente was acquitted in the poisoning death of his mother, Ruth Munroe, and Clausen, who testified at trial, regards the convicted killers every living day as a denigration of his mothers memory. Look at Job, John, Paul, Moses. The Monstrous Crimes Of The Dorothea Puente, The Death House Landlady. Despite being convicted of murder in 1993 and sent to prison, Puente denied killing the victims until the day she died . The serial killer shuffles into the room with a chickens hitched gait. He says he's often inundated with requests from crazed fans and fellow murder enthusiasts who ask to buy his grandmother's ashes. Ill be waiting for her.. 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. If you lived in Sacramento in the late 80s, you recognize her name. 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. Puente died in prison at Chowchilla on March 27, 2011, from natural causes; she was 82. I dont feel like confessing my sins to anyone, she says sharply. In November 1985, Dorothea Puente hired a handyman named Ismael Florez to install some wood paneling in her home. Today she repeats a tale she first spun for me three months ago, showing remarkable fidelity to the specifics of the earlier version. I wonder what its like to be known as a murderer. They first spoke with Dorothea Puente, who ran the clean, cozy home as a boardinghouse for low-income tenants. I am led to believe if there is any reason for us to be living here on this Earth, it is to somehow enhance one another's humanity, to love, to touch each other with kindness, to know that you have made just one person breathe easier because you have lived. 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. He escorted her out of the propertys wrought-iron front gate, a moment captured in a photo lying on the conference table. Eventually, the "Death House Landlady" would then drug her tenants to the point of rendering them incapacitated. Then working as an in-home caregiver, Puente displayed an odd obsession with her own health, lamenting to clients and caseworkers alike that she suffered from cancer. Well regarded for taking in substance abusers and the homeless, she had earned respect in political circles for her charity work. 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. Puente sah aus wie die Gromutter aus der Nachbarschaft, aber in Wirklichkeit war sie eine kaltbltige Mrderin. Dorothea - Dorothea (also spelled Dorothe, Dorotea or other variants) is a female given name from Greek (Drotha) meaning "God's Gift". Even probation officers who stopped by accepted Puentes explanation that the people living at her house were guests or friends not boarders. No, Dorothea Puente is no longer alive as of 2022 as she died on March 27th, 2011. Then learn about Aileen Wuornos, historys most terrifying female serial killer. Once, when I asked if she ever hears from her surviving siblings or two daughters, she shook her head. 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. Dorothea Helen Puente (ne Gray; January 9, 1929 March 27, 2011) was an American convicted serial killer. 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. 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. 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. She was known as the "step house lady" after filing nine homicides. I wondered how the last two decades had changed her, how she had endured. After a number of legal hurdles, Puente's trial eventually went ahead four years later. She claims he has sent her Christmas cards in prison, and as she talks about that small act of kindness, her eyes mist over. For the rest of her life, she maintained her innocence, insisting that all of her boarders had died of "natural causes". As far as theyre concerned, Im dead.. Some might interpret that as a kind of confession, I finally say. She folds the towel several times into a tight square before clasping her hands together on her lap like a child attending Mass. She filed a missing person report with police on Nov. 7. Now 80, she speaks out in a series of rare interviews on her crimes, her "relationships" with the Kennedys and the Reagans and whyin the endthe person she really wanted to kill was herself Martin Kuz Cabreras superiors approved her request, deciding they held insufficient evidence to detain her. She is a California native, born in Redlands, Calif. 2. It doesnt fit., At least three peopledefense attorneys Kevin Clymo and Peter Vlautin and their clientharbored scarce empathy for the prosecutor. She answers with a look of mild reproach that pulls taut her soft fist of a face. I have talked to her attorneys, to the cop who unmasked her, to the prosecutor who tried her for murder, to jurors who found her guilty. I stare at the brick and wrought-iron front gate through which Dorothea Puente walked for the last time on Nov. 12, 1988. Dorothea Puente looked like a sweet grandmother but looks can be deceiving. & Brucato, Gary, Ph.D., The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books), pp. ), Puente relates that, as a Rockette, she met John Kennedy, then a U.S. senator, and his wife, Jackie, and befriended actress Rita Hayworth. 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. 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". It is a wistfulness that lays bare the depth of chaos that defined Puentes status quo long before they married in 1952. Authorities alleged that, by poisoning her boarders, she wanted to collect their benefits checks without risk of them notifying social workers or police. But in truth, I approach this task without optimism, anticipating that our meeting will stick to the pattern of previous visits. "I was hooked when I saw that she had published a. Puente took in so-called shadow people people who were marginally homeless without close family or friends. Another tenant, John Sharp, backed her up. A dark thought arrived. 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. The press dubbed Dorothea Puente the 'Death House Landlady.' The name sharply contrasted with her perception in the community. 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. I get pushed in a wheelchair. She speaks in clipped sentences, her voice, so rarely shared with journalists, scratchy but strong. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Dorothea Puente believed herself to be an able caretaker. 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. This woman is a disturbed woman who does not appear to have remorse or regret for what she has done, he wrote. She played the stoic in court, her face as frozen as her mug shot. Her bedroom was on the second floor. Several were referred there by social workers who viewed the home as a last-resort refuge for their ailing or most erratic clients. At the age of 64, Puente - who was born Dorothea Helen Gray - was tried in 1993 for the murders of nine people after police found seven bodies buried in the garden of her home and two more. Puente watched the images flicker across the TV screen in her Los Angeles motel room. Betty Palmer, 78. Play it now! I just dont believe that strongly in coincidence. Forensic testing had failed to determine a definitive cause of death in any of the victims. A pair of Christmas ornaments made by Puente in prison. Then there was the riddle of Puente. Puente passed away in 2011 at the Central California Women's Facility at age 82 from natural causes. Puente claims she spent time in the 70s with California governors Pat Brown, Jerry Brown and Ronald Reagan. Maybe I would have been better off. Dismembering their corpses, she threw their remains into a mass grave in her garden, telling neighbors the foul smell emanating from the ground was sewage and dead rats, rather than dead residents. These entities fall through the cracks, said Kathleen Lammers, executive director of the California Law Center on Longterm Care, about boarding houses like Puentes. A lot of people get old in here really quickly cause they just kind of stop doing anything., Ruth Munroe, believed by authorities to be Puentes first victim (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives). Joy the last person to have seen her alive. Many of them found dead and buried in the boarding house's yard. Both have died, and police cleared them early in the investigation. 'We had a real connection,' Harder told VICE. But volatility seemed to follow Puente wherever she went and the new couple argued frequently about Puentes drinking and gambling. George Deukmejian (second from left) in this undated photo. A person like her, he says, theres no forgetting.. Her evasive answersfirst claiming he had traveled to Mexico, then that he had returned and moved to Utahtripped Moises suspicion. 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. However, Dorothea's outward demeanor was a smokescreen, concealing [] She had a terrible adolescence after being . She came on a little hard, what with her questions about his Social Security benefits and abrupt suggestion that they consider living together. 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. For five days, Dorothea Puente was on the lam. During my meetings with Puente, a number of prisoners softly greet herHi, Miss Dorothea; How are you, Miss D?as they walk past. 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. After her mother passing Dorothea and her 18 siblings . At the time, she was serving two life sentences and a concurrent 15-year-to-life sentence. Puente had stayed poised a day earlier when Cabrera showed up with a fellow homicide detective and a federal probation agent. Given Dorothea Puente's image, this meant the controversial artist, Shane Bugbee, would collaborate with her on a cookbook. Beyond that lurked the vexing conundrum of the accused herself. Finding nothing, they asked permission to dig up the yard. 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. Hes the brother of Ingemar Johansson, you know, she says, referring to the late heavyweight boxing champ. Pathologists testified that they hadnt been able to fix the cause of death for any of the corpses. Working in my yard.. 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. She had a traumatic childhood after being raised by alcoholic parents. 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. 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. If you lived anywhere else, theres still a good chance you recognize it, or at least the rough outline of her crimes. 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. Our visit winds down. Soon after, Monroe died from an overdose of codeine and acetaminophen. I was on stage when the girl next to me broke her heel and bumped into me. A local Spanish-language newspaper that referred to Puente as la doctora (Courtesy of John Cabrera), The unlicensed venture thrived from the start. Soon afterward, Chief disappeared. 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 penalty phase of the prosecution was highlighted by her prior convictions introduced by O'Mara. A person like her, the retired sergeant says, theres no forgetting. (Photo by Jeremy Sykes). Gray would continue to use the surname Puente for more than twenty years. 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 three men carried shovels as they fanned out across the backyard of the two-story Victorian at 1426 F Street. I stroll up the paved outdoor path that runs between the check-in station and the visitors hall, a walkway flanked with manicured rose bushes of the sort Puente once might have planted and pruned. This page was last edited on 18 February 2023, at 18:08. They belong to a litany of famous names she drops during our meetings. Puente's alleged grandson, William Harder (pictured), insists his grandmother wasn't all bad. Despite being convicted of murder in 1993 and sent to prison, Puente. Her statement hangs between us. They were met by Dorothea Puente, an elderly woman with big glasses, who repeated her story that Montoya was simply on vacation. 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. They know what shes done., Puente conveys a pride in her renown that, now and then, gives way to embarrassment, or perhaps weariness. FacebookDorothea Puente right before she fled Sacramento. 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. They were men and women who had skidded toward lifes edges. Things happen for a reason., Nov. 12, 1988: Homicide detective John Cabrera (right) ushers Puente out of her home to a nearby hotel. And then theres the contradiction: beneath this house there are all these bodies. She met and married Fred McFaul in 1945. A woman known as Dorothea Puente runs a boarding house for those less fortunate, but her seeming benevolence belies motives that are much darker. The police returned and searched the house. 'The contents might be what you'd never expected. 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. At the time, the basement floor was covered with a concrete slab. Shane Bugbee. On the other hand, when these people, as could be expected, would act upat that point, she snapped and decided to kill them.. 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. Montoya struggled with mental health issues and had been homeless for years. After the notorious female serial killer Dorothea Puente died in prison at the age of 82, the filmmaker Nick Coles stumbled upon her obituary. In her telling, after showering and dressing, she prays, recites the rosary and reads a few pages of the Bible, favoring Proverbs and Romans. Or about the white-haired woman who turned the yard into a mass grave. James Gallop, 62. Investigators opened the box and found the badly decomposed and unidentifiable body of an elderly man inside. 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! No one else would want that name., Prison protocol bans inmates from talking to each other in the hall apart from brief exchanges. Some of the bodies were mummified in cloth, bed sheets and duct tape. For a moment the prisons visitors hall feels bereft of other people and sounds. Dick Schmidt/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesDorothea Puente after her arrest in Los Angeles, en route back to Sacramento. 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. Puente told them that they were welcome to do so, and even provided an extra shovel. She wound up serving four months in jail and shortly afterward fled Riverside County, flouting the terms of her probation. Dorothea Puente's former boarding house is at 1426 F Street in Sacramento, California, between 14th and 15th streets. [citation needed], Suspicion was first aroused when neighbors noticed the odd activities of a homeless alcoholic known only as "Chief", whom Puente stated she had "adopted" and hired as her handyman. A few days later I drive to Chowchilla for my final visit with her. During their initial meeting, he encountered a woman of utter ordinariness, one far removed from the media caricature that depicted her as the embodiment of evil. 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. As the others begin to stir, she tidies up the space, a boardinghouse landlady to the last. "They immediately died," says Warren's grandson, Warren W. Bogle, who today serves as President and Vineyard Director. There, she quickly got back to her old tricks. In another twist to the case, Sacramento police escorted her back to the city on a plane chartered by KCRA for its news crew. They separated in 1969, and not long after, Dorothea, who had briefly run an unauthorized rehab program for alcoholics, opened a boardinghouse at 21st and F streets. [6], Gray was arrested in 1960 for owning and operating a bookkeeping firm as a front for a brothel in Sacramento;[5] she was found guilty and was sentenced to ninety days in the Sacramento County Jail. She was the sixth of seven children but didn't grow up in a stable family environment. [citation needed]. 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. Ringed by four chairs, each serves as the setting of a reunion between a prisoner and those she knows from the outside. Her body shapeless under a long-sleeve T-shirt and dungarees, she has pulled back her snowy plume of hair with a pink scrunchie. 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. Some of them began to disappear. 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 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. Cooking what I want. In the 70s, while running her first boardinghouse at 21st and F streets, Puente cultivated a strong rapport with social workers. Puente, meanwhile, was a model prisoner, often cooking for the other prisoners and guards her tamales, in particular, were much loved. Behind them, a twentysomething blonde clutches the hands of a young man with a sun tattoo on his forearm. Dorothea Puente awaiting arraignment in Sacramento, California on November 17, 1988. [8], Puente told Florez to stop while they were on Garden Highway in Sutter County and dump the box of "junk" on the riverbank at an unofficial household junk dumping site. Shes got everything she needs, her life is taken care of. That is a human quality that deserves to be preserved. (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives), Dorfman drew up Puentes will years agoI dont know if its any good anymore; shes probably given away stuff she doesnt [even] ownand still receives Christmas cards from her. The two would continue to have a turbulent relationship, and Gray filed a restraining order in 1975. Unbeknownst to Puente, the pensioner recognized her as the woman he saw on television news reports. A well-researched play by Mark Loewenstern entitled "Dorothea Puente Tells All!" 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. Jodi Picoult mentions Puente's crimes and cookbook in her novel House Rules. She was ultimately convicted in three of the. 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'. (Puente tells me she also had twin daughters who as young adults committed suicide one week apart. To give strength to other people. She lifts the paper towel to her eyes. 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. She was notoriously known as the "Death House Land Lady" after committing nine murders. [6], Gray and Johansson divorced in 1966, although she continued to use Johansson's name for some time following their separation. However, it would be three more years before authorities could identify the body as one of the tenants in Dorothea Puentes house. Betty Palmer, 78. Puente passed away in 2011 from natural causes at the Central California Facility in Chowchilla, aged 82. Puente died of natural causes at the Central . For William Clausen, by contrast, the bodies buried in Puentes yard confirmed what he already considered fact: she killed for profit. Thats between me and my God., Until 2006, Puente rotated through assorted prison jobs, cleaning cells, giving haircuts, toiling on a landscaping crew. Finally, four days after she skipped town, authorities traced her to a tumbledown motel in Los Angeles. A couple who braved the stigma of the house's curse purchased the home, fully aware of the history. 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. During a brief in-flight interview with reporter Mike Boyd, she said, I have not killed anyone. In the 1980s, Puente ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California, and . Its about a mile from my building to here, she says. She recalls the future president and his first wife, Jane Wyman, as her good friends. When I mention the Gippers second wife, she frowns. The detective had yet to realize that, in the 59-year-old Puente, he had another serial killer on his hands. 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. On New Years Day, a fisherman spotted the box, noticed that it looked suspiciously like a coffin, and informed the police. 'I saw her as a human - despite her crimes.'. I realize today will be our last conversation when Puente sits down at my table and makes a request. Does she have to be killed?" 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. Sir, she said, I have not killed anybody. She explained that she had buried excess trash in the backyard holes that a tenant mentioned to police, and covered some of them with concrete to stunt weed growth. The higher volume results from the presence of more children, most of whom exhibit the happy symptoms of a sugar buzz. The seven tenants who had lived at 1426 F Street died with a variety of drugs in their bodies: anticonvulsants, antidepressants, antipsychotics, painkillers, tranquilizers. At the same time, they agreed she had an evil side brought on by the stress of caring for her down-and-out tenants.
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