Joy the last person to have seen her alive. (Photo by Jeremy Sykes). 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. 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. Today she repeats a tale she first spun for me three months ago, showing remarkable fidelity to the specifics of the earlier version. I didnt need to kill anyone. A couple who braved the stigma of the house's curse purchased the home, fully aware of the history. Or about the white-haired woman who turned the yard into a mass grave. 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. At the same time, they agreed she had an evil side brought on by the stress of caring for her down-and-out tenants. Peter Vlautin addressed the jurors in confidential tones, contrasting with O'Mara's shouting: We are here today to determine one thing: What is the value of Dorothea Puente's life? 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 . The silence here feels powerful enough to swallow space. 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. After their deaths she continued to draw their social security cheques. Then, she asked if it would be ok if she went to buy a coffee. Heres this grandmotherly figure in this beautiful, restored Victorian house with all these azaleas and other flowers, OMara says. [1] Sua contagem total chegou a nove assassinatos confirmados e seis no . She also established herself as a respected member in Sacramento's Hispanic community, funding charities, scholarships, and radio programs. 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. Procedural wrangling moved the trial to Monterey, after a judge ruled that the intense media coverage of Puente in the Sacramento region would preclude her from receiving a fair trial here. Intense news coverage led to Puentes trial moving to Monterey. Puente was found guilty of the murders of 64-year-old Dorothy Miller, 55-year-old Benjamin Fink, and 78-year-old Leona Carpenter. Satisfied, the authorities ruled Monroes death a suicide and moved on. (Courtesy of John Cabrera). 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. She pled guilty to two counts of forgery, serving four months in jail and three years' probation. A lot of women shouldnt be here., She counts herself among them, even while conceding few people believe in her innocence. Their first series of holes dislodged only soft dirt and a vague sense of futility. I dont know what to tell you, she said. 'The contents might be what you'd never expected. The truth about this notorious woman serial killer's spree finally emerged in October of 1954 after her fifth husband Samuel Doss died in a hospital in Oklahoma. [citation needed], The defense called several witnesses, who showed Puente had a generous and caring side to her. To my surprise, an envelope stamped with the words Central California Womens Facility State Prison arrived a few weeks later. Federal law shields inmate medical records from the public, leaving open the question of whether she has had three surgeries since entering prison. She was incarcerated at Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla, California. He escorted her out of the propertys wrought-iron front gate, a moment captured in a photo lying on the conference table. In her telling, after showering and dressing, she prays, recites the rosary and reads a few pages of the Bible, favoring Proverbs and Romans. Puente's alleged grandson, William Harder (pictured), insists his grandmother wasn't all bad. 13, as designated by the plastic placard atop its faux-wood surface. [6], Gray and Johansson divorced in 1966, although she continued to use Johansson's name for some time following their separation. See that one? she asks, nodding toward a gaunt, gray-haired woman with stooped posture. 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. The founder of MurderAuction - an auction house for serial killer memorabilia - Harder's macabre obsessions have also seen him befriend the likes of Charles Manson and Richard Ramirez. ', Puente died in 2011 aged 82 in her prison cell at the Central California Facility, in Chowchilla. But looks can be ext . She gasped at sight of the remains, hands bracketing her cheeks. For her and the others, one factor in particular undercut Puentes claim of innocence. Puente cashed in the Social Security checks of the elderly and disabled boarders living in her house. 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. Investigators opened the box and found the badly decomposed and unidentifiable body of an elderly man inside. She holed up in the Royal Viking Motel for the next three days, seldom leaving her room. The discovery prompted Cabrera to summon Puente to the backyard. Then you will understand why these people believe Dorothea's life is worth saving. They dont have all the facts, she tells me one morning, dismissing those who judge her a murderer. She was released just three years later, although a state psychologist diagnosed her as a schizophrenic with no remorse or regret who should be closely monitored.. He sits in his downtown office, shock of silver hair combed straight back from his high forehead, untucked short-sleeved shirt spilling over his jeans. The noise inside the prisons visitors hall amplifies on Valentines Day. Frequent quarrels and separations marred the marriage, with much of the discord brought on by Dorotheas appetites for drinking, gambling and other men. She never intended to show, I realize. 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. She also mentions undergoing major cancer surgery in 1961 to remove her reproductive organs and part of her intestines and stomach. The prosecutor, John O'Mara, was the homicide supervisor in the Sacramento County District Attorney's office. A contrary perception derived from Puentes strong ties to Hispanic residents living in downtown and midtown. A 22-year-old soldier who had returned to the U.S. from the Pacific after World War II, he married Dorothea in 1945, and they moved to Gardnerville, Nevada to start a family. They all know who I am, she says. In 1952, Gray married merchant seaman Axel Bren Johansson in San Francisco. Her evasive answersfirst claiming he had traveled to Mexico, then that he had returned and moved to Utahtripped Moises suspicion. Then learn about Aileen Wuornos, historys most terrifying female serial killer. Cooking what I want. Six months after her release, she left Riverside. Their relationship developed quickly, and the couple was soon making wedding plans. She inflated her age by 10 to 15 years to further disarm her elderly clients, whom she set about exploiting under the guise of ministering to them. 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. The candy proves popular with youngsters, whose sporadic laughter pierces the rooms hum. In the end, Cabrera erred on the side of skepticism. Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray on January 9, 1929. In November 1985, Dorothea Puente hired a handyman named Ismael Florez to install some wood paneling in her home. 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. Betty Palmer, 78. Cabrera scrambled out of the hole, pulse rate and thoughts quickening. The police dug up 78-year-old Leono Carpenter and then six more bodies. This page was last edited on 18 February 2023, at 18:08. Designers Joelle and Mikel visit the current owners to replace the home's negative energy with a new makeover. How Did Dorothea Puente Kill Her Victims? Time has deepened the creases between her potato-like nose and dumpling cheeks, and her blanched skin has slackened at the neck. Amanda Sedlak-Hevener. A few days later I drive to Chowchilla for my final visit with her. Con su simpata lograba escapar de la. 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. 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. Others spoke of a calculating criminal who feigned altruism to mask her avariceand a homicidal bent. 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. Montoya struggled with mental health issues and had been homeless for years. Most of the lot has been paved over. The four women and three men, ages 52 to 79, had boarded at the two-story, powder-blue Victorian. Only after unearthing seven corpses at 1426 F Street in November 1988 would prosecutors charge Puente with killing Munroe. Familiar in name, she remained an enigma. The three men carried shovels as they fanned out across the backyard of the two-story Victorian at 1426 F Street. It is a stifling backdrop in which to live out the years. In turn, I know that when she receives my letter telling her as much, shell cut off contact. Dorothea Puente after her arrest in Los Angeles, en route back to Sacramento. April 27, 2019 1:12pm. Everybodys heard of me. She sent one child to live with relatives while another was put up for adoption. A local Spanish-language newspaper that referred to Puente as la doctora (Courtesy of John Cabrera), The unlicensed venture thrived from the start. Others disparaged the closet alcoholic who on occasion punctuated roof-raising, cuss-filled tirades with a piece of furniture heaved down the stairs. He remains convinced of her innocence, arguing that her crimes were limited to filching the benefits checks of her tenants. She parried, unwavering in her account of Montoyas departure, her voice calm as the detective pressed her. Isabel Vincent. A pair of Christmas ornaments made by Puente in prison. The boarding house at 1426 F Street in Sacramento was included in the 2013 home tour held by the Sacramento Old City Association. & Brucato, Gary, Ph.D., The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books), pp. Explaining away the corpses in her yard, she says, Not one person who worked for me saw me doing anything wrong. For someone who insists she worried over the well-being of her tenants, Puente tells me that, after her arrest, she fretted about Sam. 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! In 1961, Johansson had Gray briefly committed to DeWitt State Hospital after a binge of drinking, lying, criminal behavior, and suicide attempts. The serial killer shuffles into the room with a chickens hitched gait. Dorothea Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray in Redlands, California, on January 9, 1929. She falls silent for a moment. She claims he has sent her Christmas cards in prison, and as she talks about that small act of kindness, her eyes mist over. She eventually met and married Pedro Angel Montalvo, though Montalvo abruptly left the relationship a week after their marriage. 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. (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.) The house at 1426 F St., where police found seven of Puentes tenants buried in the yard, as it looks today. 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. READ: Serial Killer Puente's Former Home Becomes Classroom For Law. 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. For the rest of her life, she maintained her innocence, insisting that all of her boarders had died of "natural causes". A year later her mother died in a motorcycle accident. Dorothea Puente right before she fled Sacramento. Ruth was not just Puente's friend but was also her business partner and had moved in with her just three weeks before the murder. Alcoholics dont stay in one place for long. Once free of the throng, Cabrera stopped and watched the pair until they entered the hotel. During a brief in-flight interview with reporter Mike Boyd, she said, I have not killed anyone. Thats between me and my God., Until 2006, Puente rotated through assorted prison jobs, cleaning cells, giving haircuts, toiling on a landscaping crew. He was going with another movie star, she says. Dick Schmidt/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty Images. George Deukmejian (second from left) in this undated photo. 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.. I am not here to take part in a reunion; I have never so much as glimpsed the woman I am waiting to meet. James Gallop, 62, (continued left to right) Dorothy Miller, 64. 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). On her release from prison, she began killing her victims. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group, '2023 will be our year of victory! They know what shes done., Puente conveys a pride in her renown that, now and then, gives way to embarrassment, or perhaps weariness. Orphaned, Puente and her siblings splintered off in different directions, bouncing between foster care and relatives homes. He called over Cabrera and Brown, and after he scooped away more soil, they saw what resembled a tree root. The Bogle Family's winemaking story begins in 1968 when Warren V. Bogle wanted to try a new crop and planted potatoes on their farm just south of Clarksburg. 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. But the jury had a difficult time believe the matronly grandmother was capable of carrying out such menacing crimes. Released after three for good behavior, she returned to Sacramento, with her federal probation extended to 1990 due to the state conviction. She was the sixth of seven children, all of whom struggled in a less-than-stable family environment, with little income and love to speak of in the Gray house. Unchanged are his lean, square-shouldered build and animated manner, his eyebrows spiking and hands windmilling as he recounts the investigation. I wondered how the last two decades had changed her, how she had endured. She has sent more than 15 letters and postcards in the months since I first wrote to her. I watch the scenes unfold from table No. William Vicary spoke with Puente for the first time about two months after her arrest. 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. Eventually, the "Death House Landlady" would then drug her tenants to the point of rendering them incapacitated. Grandson of killer granny Dorothea Puente, who laced cakes with sleeping pills and then smothered them at her California boarding house, reveals how he shared a 'real connection' with her and. The Boarding House Killer: Directed by Steve Allen. Puente died of natural causes at the Central . In the spring of 1948, Gray was arrested for purchasing women's accessories using forged checks in Riverside. She answers without pause. 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. 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. But volatility seemed to follow Puente wherever she went and the new couple argued frequently about Puentes drinking and gambling. Marathon Man 63m But in truth, I approach this task without optimism, anticipating that our meeting will stick to the pattern of previous visits. 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. The psychiatrist diagnosed Puente as suffering from antisocial personality disorder, a condition marked by deceit and manipulation of others without remorse. In her note, written on plain lined paper in a grade-schoolers swirling cursive, she invited me to visit. Beyond that lurked the vexing conundrum of the accused herself. Police found seven bodies. I made them change their clothes every day, take a bath every day and eat three meals a day. Puentes vanishing ignited a manhunt that stretched to Mexico. 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. SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KTXL) Throughout the 1980s, as many as nine deaths in Sacramento were investigated as being connected to Dorothea Puente. Im here until I die.. She attends services held at the prisons chapel, but avoids joining inmate worship groups. She consented again, even lending a shovel to the men, who had brought only two. First off, I was getting the checks. Been here 27 years. Authorities alleged that, by poisoning her boarders, she wanted to collect their benefits checks without risk of them notifying social workers or police. 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. Within two weeks, Munroe fell ill, her body so weak she struggled to stand. Her memories, I come to understand, blend rote recitation of illusory events with blatant omission of her crimes. He pieced the puzzle together a couple of hours after they parted, and later that night, police converged on room No. No, Dorothea Puente is no longer alive as of 2022 as she died on March 27th, 2011. According to an interview in the documentary, The House is Innocent, and the couple believed that changing the . Jodi Picoult mentions Puente's crimes and cookbook in her novel House Rules. Her demeanor is, for the most part, politely docile, and I begin to perceive how so many could consider her trustworthy. Puente then married Pedro Angel Montalvo, but he left her only a week after they were wed. In 1998, Puente began corresponding with Shane Bugbee. As we continue talking, the topic switches to her life before prison, and I ask what she misses most about Sacramento. Its the same thing. She answers without pause. 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. As reported by Dailymail, seven year after Puente's death, a man named William Harder had claimed to be his grandson. Her shoulders shake as she laughs, her open mouth exposing a white flash of dentures. Puente claims she spent time in the 70s with California governors Pat Brown, Jerry Brown and Ronald Reagan. Several were swaddled in bed sheets that matched linens found in the house. Dorothea Puente awaiting arraignment in Sacramento, California on November 17, 1988. On the other hand, when these people, as could be expected, would act upat that point, she snapped and decided to kill them.. But while digging a second hole, Wilson heard a muted thud as his blade struck something hard three feet down. Dorothea Puente died in prison of natural causes on March 27, 2011, at age 82.
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