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). Some praised the soft-hearted landlady who cooked big meals for her low-income tenants, handed out vegetables from her garden to neighbors and adopted stray cats. Finally, four days after she skipped town, authorities traced her to a tumbledown motel in Los Angeles. They prized her willingness to accept alcoholics, drug addicts and other difficult clients into her home, a sprawling, three-story Victorian that could sleep more than two dozen tenants. Didnt know that at the time., The detective walked about halfway to the Clarion with Puente and her boarder, John McCauley. Dorothea Puente looked like a sweet grandmother but looks can be deceiving. After their deaths she continued to draw their social security cheques. Puente's heinous crimes were eventually discovered in 1988, when Alberto Montoya, a mentally disabled and schizophrenic tenant, was reported missing by a social worker. Dorothea - Dorothea (also spelled Dorothe, Dorotea or other variants) is a female given name from Greek (Drotha) meaning "God's Gift". ), 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. The Victorian on F Street. The Boarding House Killer: Directed by Steve Allen. Again and again, it is not her. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group, '2023 will be our year of victory! Now she watched from her second-story porch as the trio began to dig. The inmates know who she is, the official says. It doesnt fit., At least three peopledefense attorneys Kevin Clymo and Peter Vlautin and their clientharbored scarce empathy for the prosecutor. Puentes next two marriages would be short-lived. Puente and McCauley had caught a cab from the Clarion Hotel to a West Sacramento bar. Im certain they were just dying of natural causes, and she started burying them so she could keep the checks coming. However Harder insists that's where he draws the line. Theyve never talked to me. On another occasion, she casts her circumstance in a biblical light. Going to church every day. The pensioner contacted local law enforcement who then quickly arrested Puente. Between 1982 and 1989, Puente would take in the vulnerable and homeless people. Her father died of tuberculosis in 1937; her mother, who worked as a sex worker, lost custody of her children in 1938 and died in a motorcycle accident by the end of the year. The seven tenants who had lived at 1426 F Street died with a variety of drugs in their bodies: anticonvulsants, antidepressants, antipsychotics, painkillers, tranquilizers. She also established herself as a respected member in Sacramento's Hispanic community, funding charities, scholarships, and radio programs. She asked Florez to build a 6-by-3-by-2-foot box to store "books and other items". However, in 1978, she was convicted of illegally cashing state and federal assistance checks that belonged to her tenants. Dorothea Puente, ne Dorothea Helen Gray, was born on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California. Cabrera, lead detective on the Puente case, stands with the shovel that she lent to law officers to dig in her backyard on Nov. 11, 1988. My oldest grandson is 15 and wanted to do this attraction. And, she says, They like my tamales.. No one else would want that name., Prison protocol bans inmates from talking to each other in the hall apart from brief exchanges. The serial killer shuffles into the room with a chickens hitched gait. Infamous serial murderer . 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. As most serial killers, Dorothea had a rough childhood. 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. Some might interpret that as a kind of confession, I finally say. Puente had welcomed him into her home that February. Prosecutors said that Puente was one of the most cold and calculating female killers the country had ever seen.. 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. They appealed to authorities to reexamine their mothers death, a probe that ended with investigators upholding the suicide ruling. 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. (Puente tells me she also had twin daughters who as young adults committed suicide one week apart. In her note, written on plain lined paper in a grade-schoolers swirling cursive, she invited me to visit. Vera Martin, 64. I just dont believe that strongly in coincidence. I get pushed in a wheelchair. She speaks in clipped sentences, her voice, so rarely shared with journalists, scratchy but strong. But the passage of months and years since the victims had died reduced the toxicology results to educated guesswork. [6], In 1978, Gray was charged and convicted of illegally cashing thirty-four state and federal checks that belonged to her tenants. 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. James Gallop, 62, (continued left to right) Dorothy Miller, 64. The grandmother would then sneak into the rooms of her incapacitated prey and smother them to death with a pillow. 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. But the jury had a difficult time believe the matronly grandmother was capable of carrying out such menacing crimes. 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. People were always coming and going. [citation needed], O'Mara called over 130 witnesses; he argued to the jury that Puente had used sleeping pills to put her tenants to sleep, then suffocated them, and hired convicts to dig the holes in her yard. John Cabrera and Terry Brown, homicide detectives with the Sacramento Police Department, and Jim Wilson, a federal probation agent, had arrived at the house late on the morning of Nov. 11, 1988. (She garnished her war story with accounts of surviving the 1942 Bataan Death March, a lie she repeated to The Sacramento Bee in a 1982 article on the march; in truth, she was 13 years old and living in California at the time.) We lapse into a short silence, and in that span, the incredible feats of a younger Dorothea diminish in the distance. Hard living had stolen much of Dorotheas youthful beauty by the time she landed her third husband in 1968 and settled in Sacramento. Retired social worker Mildred Ballenger first met Puente in the late 1970s. Dorothea Puente after her arrest in Los Angeles, en route back to Sacramento. She came on a little hard, what with her questions about his Social Security benefits and abrupt suggestion that they consider living together. [citation needed]. Dorothea Puente's House Has Been Bought. 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. A state psychologist who evaluated Puente before her release from prison in 1985 diagnosed her as schizophrenic. Drugs Puente used to knock . 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. I was struck by how pleasant and socially intact and intelligent she was, says Vicary, who works in Los Angeles. But God always puts obstacles in peoples way. Inside Dorothea Puente's Tragic Childhood. She has sent more than 15 letters and postcards in the months since I first wrote to her. She was the sixth of seven children born to Trudy Mae Gates and Jesse James Gray, whose "lungs were damaged from a gas attack" while fighting in World War I. I rise as she approaches and shake a hand that feels skeletal and small. On the other hand, when these people, as could be expected, would act upat that point, she snapped and decided to kill them.. Someone reached across the table at one point and almost got into a fistfight with him, says Hewlett, who now lives in Oregon. Nonetheless, with decades to mull what she might say about her case, she sounds as unpersuasive now as during her plane ride from Los Angeles. Her shoulders shake as she laughs, her open mouth exposing a white flash of dentures. Bodies were found buried in what is now the yard at left. After Puente was released from her first spell in prison for three counts. At the time, she was serving two life sentences and a concurrent 15-year-to-life sentence. The infamous home Dorothea Puente lived in is along F Street in Sacramento. Well regarded for taking in substance abusers and the homeless, she had earned respect in political circles for her charity work. (Photo by Jeremy Sykes). He returned to the house, grabbed a shovel and began to dig. But as the police prepared to leave, Sharp slipped them a message. Mental health experts testified of Puente's abusive upbringing and how it motivated her to help the less fortunate. Suspect left her residence for a walk but never returned.. Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray on January 9, 1929. I made them change their clothes every day, take a bath every day and eat three meals a day When they came to me, they were so sick, they werent expected to live.. Jodi Picoult mentions Puente's crimes and cookbook in her novel House Rules. But before the cop left, Sharp managed to slip him a hand-written note that read, Shes making me lie for her. He later divulged unsettling details about life at the house. I am waiting for one of the countrys most infamous female serial killers, an inmate whose notoriety leaves her without peer among women murderers in California history. The noise inside the prisons visitors hall amplifies on Valentines Day. The wanted bulletin for, I think she truly wanted to rehabilitate [her tenants] as she could not the people in her own family, psychiatrist William Vicary says. However, Dorothea's outward demeanor was a smokescreen, concealing [] Designers Joelle and Mikel visit the current owners to replace the home's negative energy with a new makeover. . [4], Gray's first marriage at age sixteen, in 1945, was to a soldier named Fred McFaul, who had just returned from the Pacific theater of World War II. It is a stifling backdrop in which to live out the years. She'd later return to smother her incapacitated prey. No, Dorothea Puente is no longer alive as of 2022 as she died on March 27th, 2011. The two then separated, with McCauley returning downtown and Puente taking another cab to Stockton, where she hopped a bus to Los Angeles. 'The contents might be what you'd never expected. All three revolve around murder, a fact she notes without irony or self-consciousness. (To the question of which verse most resonates with her, she shrugs and replies, All of em.) She then quietly gathers the clothing of her slumbering roomies to wash later in the morning, when prisoners are allowed out of their cells. I didnt drug anyone. Puente and her siblings were subsequently sent to an orphanage, where she was sexually abused. But you gotta do something so you dont go crazy.. When she was eight her father died of tuberculosis. However, it would be three more years before authorities could identify the body as one of the tenants in Dorothea Puentes house. Would you want that to happen to your children? 22 ratings3 reviews. Her statement hangs between us. Her father died of tuberculosis when Dorothea was 8; her mother, an alcoholic who alternated between abusing and deserting her children, lost custody of them in 1938. Given Montoyas history as a transient, his disappearance would have escaped notice without the persistence of Judy Moise. She played the stoic in court, her face as frozen as her mug shot. 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. 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. 4. Despite maintaining her innocence until the day she died, Puente has been immortalized as one of America's most notorious female serial killers. 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. I had such a sick feeling, he says. I think they needed somebody and I was the easiest one around., Yet the most illuminating aspect of talking with Puente in prison arises from her silence about the dead. I have read books and hundreds of news articles and file after file of court records related to her crimes. In the spring of 1948, Gray was arrested for purchasing women's accessories using forged checks in Riverside. 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. I dont give a shit what anyone else thinks., Did you like what you read here? 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. Her rapid decline perplexed her loved ones until they read the coroners report: the death was labeled a suicide caused by an overdose of codeine and acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. 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. Everybodys heard of me. Sacramento landlady Dorothea Montalvo Puente was found guilty Thursday of murdering three of her tenants for their government benefit . But, behind the scenes, Puente had embarked on a path that would lead her to murder. 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. [citation needed], In November 1985, Puente hired a man named Ismael Florez to install some wood paneling in her apartment. [1] Sua contagem total chegou a nove assassinatos confirmados e seis no . I dont know what to tell you, she said. Instead, Puente found a husband. At the time of her 1988 arrest on murder charges, photos of Puente with Jerry Brown, former California Gov. Puente watched the images flicker across the TV screen in her Los Angeles motel room. She was notoriously known as the "Death House Land Lady" after committing nine murders. In the 1980s, Puente ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California, and . 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. Cooking what I want. Puente was found guilty of the murders of 64-year-old Dorothy Miller, 55-year-old Benjamin Fink, and 78-year-old Leona Carpenter. Puente watched the images flicker across the TV screen in her Los Angeles motel room. 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. Round-framed glasses too large for her face magnify a pair of pale blue eyes. I ask why the cops targeted her. Sacramento Co. By Remy Millisky / March 14, 2022 11:13 am EDT. 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. "They immediately died," says Warren's grandson, Warren W. Bogle, who today serves as President and Vineyard Director. 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. Soon afterward, Chief disappeared. Her demeanor is, for the most part, politely docile, and I begin to perceive how so many could consider her trustworthy. Unlike many who passed through Puentes boarding house, however, someone had their eye on Montoya. I wondered how the last two decades had changed her, how she had endured. The boarding house at 1426 F Street in Sacramento was included in the 2013 home tour held by the Sacramento Old City Association. James Gallop, 62. In theory, the blend of narcotics detected in the victims could have proven lethal, or weakened them to the point of defenselessness against suffocation with a pillow or blanketa nearly untraceable cause of death. But there were seven dead bodies in your yard. In 1961, Johansson had Gray briefly committed to DeWitt State Hospital after a binge of drinking, lying, criminal behavior, and suicide attempts. An outreach counselor with Volunteers of America, she had visited Puente before placing him in her care. As the trial neared, Vicary found her in an agitated, paranoid state. Not everybody running them is being nefarious, but nefarious activity can crop up.. Johansson divorced Dorothea in 1966. In April of 1982, a 61-year-old woman named Ruth Monroe moved into Dorothea Puentes house. Granddaughter of Dorothea Puente Victim Talks About Her Disappearance The granddaughter of one of Dorothea Puente's victims recalls finding out that Puente had run away from the police. She sent one child to live with relatives while another was put up for adoption. Investigators opened the box and found the badly decomposed and unidentifiable body of an elderly man inside. Puente continued to collect Gillmouth's pension and wrote letters to his family, explaining that the reason he had not contacted them was because he was ill. She continued to maintain a boarding house, taking in forty new tenants. It's been 20 years since Sacramento's most notorious murderer, Dorothea Puente, buried seven bodies in the garden of her F Street boardinghouse. An alarmed Ballenger urged fellow counselors to steer clear of Puente. Tests revealed high levels of unprescribed drugs in their systems, and in time, the physicians fingered her as the culprit. I wondered if she maintained her innocence or felt bowed by remorse. 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. I didnt need to kill anyone. Gray assumed the identity of "Sharon Johansson", hiding her delinquent behavior by portraying herself as a devout Christian woman. She turns to look at me. They made a date to go shopping the next day, but Willgues returned to his apartment shadowed by an inkling that he somehow knew her face. Or about the white-haired woman who turned the yard into a mass grave. She folds the towel several times into a tight square before clasping her hands together on her lap like a child attending Mass. 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. Puente told police that the woman was very depressed because her husband was terminally ill. Puente passed away in 2011 from natural causes at the Central California Facility in Chowchilla, aged 82. She filed a missing person report with police on Nov. 7. 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. This was a money-making scheme, but I do not believe she was a murderess.. FacebookDorothea Puente right before she fled Sacramento. I felt like someone had pulled my insides out..