Beyond that lurked the vexing conundrum of the accused herself. The pensioner contacted local law enforcement who then quickly arrested Puente. 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. 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. Their first series of holes dislodged only soft dirt and a vague sense of futility. My oldest grandson is 15 and wanted to do this attraction. She was tough. The candy proves popular with youngsters, whose sporadic laughter pierces the rooms hum. Though born in Redlands, Puente, who speaks passable Spanish, claimed Mexico as her birthplace, a ruse she perpetuated by alternately using the surnames of her last two ex-husbands, Roberto Puente and Pedro Montalvo. She wound up serving four months in jail and shortly afterward fled Riverside County, flouting the terms of her probation. She declines to disclose the fathers name, when and where they were born and died or the circumstances of their deaths.). Puente had stayed poised a day earlier when Cabrera showed up with a fellow homicide detective and a federal probation agent. The advanced state of decay, meanwhile, suggested the person had died long before Montoyas presumed disappearance in August. She had a terrible adolescence after being . After learning about the murders inside Dorothea Puentes house, read about the serial killer known as the Angel of Death. Working in my yard.. I leave through a different door and make my way out of the prison, stepping into the cool afternoon air. Once free of the throng, Cabrera stopped and watched the pair until they entered the hotel. Her past crimes belied her pose of pure benevolence, yet she had submitted to the house and yard searches without protest. In the 1980s, Puente ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California, and . A few days later I drive to Chowchilla for my final visit with her. 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. And then theres the contradiction: beneath this house there are all these bodies. When they came to me, they were so sick, they werent expected to live.. After Puente was released from her first spell in prison for three counts. During her trial, the persecution said. After the notorious female serial killer Dorothea Puente died in prison at the age of 82, the filmmaker Nick Coles stumbled upon her obituary. She this Dorothea Puente, was an elderly lady (think a widow at that) that housed boarders, a care home, or is it care house? Its about a mile from my building to here, she says. 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. An Asian woman in her mid-thirties, with sharp cheekbones framed by long glossy black hair, wears standard-issue prisoner garb: white T-shirt with long navy blue sleeves, dungarees and blue sneakers. If you lived in Sacramento in the late 80s, you recognize her name. Montoya struggled with mental health issues and had been homeless for years. 13, as designated by the plastic placard atop its faux-wood surface. Puente was convicted in. I dont know what to tell you, she said. It was a human leg bone, he recalls. Stone, Michael H., M.D. In 1993, facing nine counts of murder after prosecutors linked her to two other deaths, she stood trial without testifying. I wondered how the last two decades had changed her, how she had endured. There are so many sad stories in here. I have read books and hundreds of news articles and file after file of court records related to her crimes. George Deukmejian and Bishop Francis Quinn decorated her home at 1426 F Street But setting aside such fleeting charity-event encounters, her stories hew closer to fable than fact. A state psychologist who evaluated Puente before her release from prison in 1985 diagnosed her as schizophrenic. Sometimes she includes small handmade gifts: Christmas ornaments constructed from cardboard and yarn, a greeting card stitched with fine thread. Here are 5 things you may not know about Dorothea Puente: 1. I dont give a shit what anyone else thinks., Did you like what you read here? 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. 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. Published: 17:09 EST, 21 January 2019 | Updated: 17:42 EST, 21 January 2019, Dorothea Puente was arrested in 1988 after the dismembered bodies of seven residents were found in the garden of her home in Sacramento, California. Puente has told me during previous meetings that her case still attracts worldwide attention, and that she recently spurned interview requests from a British newspaper and an Australian TV station. The silence here feels powerful enough to swallow space. She has sent more than 15 letters and postcards in the months since I first wrote to her. I wondered if she maintained her innocence or felt bowed by remorse. In November 1985, Dorothea Puente hired a handyman named Ismael Florez to install some wood paneling in her home. The unreliable narrator breaks the hush. Betty Palmer, 78. 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. She sits erect, legs crossed at the ankles and tucked beneath her chair. Inmates enter one at a time at irregular intervals through a gray metal door along the rear wall. Cops hauling away body bags. With Jeff Rechner, Joelle Uzyel, Mikel Welch. A year later her mother died in a motorcycle accident. [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]. Trial began in October 1992 and ended a year later. [17] The result was Cooking with a Serial Killer (2004),[18] which included a lengthy interview, almost fifty recipes, and various pieces of prison art sent to Bugbee by the convicted murderer. (A charity she declines to name sends her $15 a month, her sole source of money.) During a brief in-flight interview with reporter Mike Boyd, she said, I have not killed anyone. Her body shapeless under a long-sleeve T-shirt and dungarees, she has pulled back her snowy plume of hair with a pink scrunchie. The conversation soon veers toward why I want to interview her, and before I finish explaining, she interrupts. Im not that kind of person. I prod for more, to no avail. The total included a man she had met after her release from prison in 1985 whose body turned up the following year in a wood box next to the Sacramento River; Ruth Munroe, her former business partner; and the seven boarders found in her yard, among them Montoya, whom police speculated may have been unwittingly recruited by Puente to carry wrapped-up bodies out of the house, then perhaps learned the truth and paid with his life. He returned to the house, grabbed a shovel and began to dig. Puente claims she spent time in the 70s with California governors Pat Brown, Jerry Brown and Ronald Reagan. Puente was supposed to stick around to serve out her probation, but in a sign of things to come she skipped town instead. Gawkers gather outside 1426 F St. (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives), Domestic bliss and her maternal instinct failed to take root. The prosecution stated that Puente used sleeping pills to drug her tenants, suffocated them, and then hired convicts to bury them in the yard. Instead, Puente found a husband. George Deukmejian (second from left) in this undated photo. She was just pure evil, Ballenger says. Shes been in for 12 years. High-profile cases dotted his career, including those of convicted mass murderer Morris Solomon and the Unabomber. Axel Johansson rates as Puentes favorite of her four ex-husbands, a presumably unwanted distinction. Arrested for the scam in 1978, court records show, she received five years federal probation, the terms of which proscribed her from operating a boardinghouse. I realize today will be our last conversation when Puente sits down at my table and makes a request. Prosecutors charged Puente with killing nine people. 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. Now, as I sit at table No. However, in 1978, she was convicted of illegally cashing state and federal assistance checks that belonged to her tenants. Shes making me lie for her.. 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. It wasnt until 1988 that suspicions first arose about Puente, after one of her tenants, 52-year old Alvaro Montoya, went missing. The Monstrous Crimes Of The Dorothea Puente, The Death House Landlady. When they returned to his apartment, he watched in a stupor as Puente helped herself to his checks and cash; before leaving, she slipped a diamond ring off his pinky. Others disparaged the closet alcoholic who on occasion punctuated roof-raising, cuss-filled tirades with a piece of furniture heaved down the stairs. In late 1981, his mother, Ruth Munroe, went into business with Puente, leasing and running the restaurant side of the Round Corner Tavern in midtown. Our visit winds down. 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. 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. She parried, unwavering in her account of Montoyas departure, her voice calm as the detective pressed her. The couple moved to Sacramento a short time later and lived in the city off and on for the next decade. If Im thinking about getting away, you think Im going to ask permission?, Police escort Puente after apprehending her in L.A.; Cabrera walks behind her. She also established herself as a respected member in Sacramento's Hispanic community, funding charities, scholarships, and radio programs. In a low, almost plaintive voice, she replies, Puente. Shed give advice to all these young Mexican women who came to her when they were trying to get divorced., Puente poses next to California Gov. Ive given up hope of getting out, she says. 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. No one else would want that name., Prison protocol bans inmates from talking to each other in the hall apart from brief exchanges. [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. Gillmouth's body remained unidentified for three years. Dorothea - Dorothea (also spelled Dorothe, Dorotea or other variants) is a female given name from Greek (Drotha) meaning "God's Gift". Dorothea Puente at the Central California Womens Facility, February 21, 2009 (Courtesy of Central California Womens Facility). Throughout the trial, Dorothea Puente was portrayed as either a sweet grandma-like type or a manipulative criminal who preyed on the weak. 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. Look at Job, John, Paul, Moses. In her telling, after showering and dressing, she prays, recites the rosary and reads a few pages of the Bible, favoring Proverbs and Romans. She resembles a wizened owl. After noticing disturbed soil on the property, they uncovered the body of tenant Leona Carpenter, 78. Puentes mechanical response echoes what she has told me during prior meetings, and what I will hear on subsequent visits. 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. Vera Martin, 64. Federal law shields inmate medical records from the public, leaving open the question of whether she has had three surgeries since entering prison. He neither explained his motive for capitulating nor discussed why he agreed to convict her of only three killings. The higher volume results from the presence of more children, most of whom exhibit the happy symptoms of a sugar buzz. The noise inside the prisons visitors hall amplifies on Valentines Day. An alarmed Ballenger urged fellow counselors to steer clear of Puente. How Did Dorothea Puente Kill Her Victims? Puente then married Pedro Angel Montalvo, but he left her only a week after they were wed. Then aged 63 (above), 103 witnesses were called to testify against her in the trial, Suspicion arose in 1988 when Alberto Montoya, a mentally disabled and schizophrenic tenant, was reported missing by a social worker, Puente's victims: (left to right)Everson Gillmouth, 77. They share a gray cinderblock room furnished with eight metal lockers, four slender bunk beds, two sinks, a toilet and a shower. At the time, she was serving two life sentences and a concurrent 15-year-to-life sentence. 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. I wonder what she wants when death does come. The jury deliberated over a month and eventually found Puente guilty of three murders. 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. Not everybody running them is being nefarious, but nefarious activity can crop up.. It is late March and after midnight, the hour when shepossibly with the help of an unsuspecting Montoya or another accomplice, a mystery police never solvedburied bodies in the yard. I am waiting for Dorothea Puente. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group, '2023 will be our year of victory! SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KTXL) Throughout the 1980s, as many as nine deaths in Sacramento were investigated as being connected to Dorothea Puente. In 16 years at the facility, she has accrued only two rules violations, the last occurring in 2004. A couple who braved the stigma of the house's curse purchased the home, fully aware of the history. Genaro Molina/Sacramento Bee/MCT/Getty Images. In November 1992, the same month jury selection started, she rejected a plea deal that would spare her the death penalty if she pleaded guilty to all nine murders. As the trial neared, Vicary found her in an agitated, paranoid state. Police soon figured out why, uncovering the remains of six more bodies. This woman is a disturbed woman who does not appear to have remorse or regret for what she has done, he wrote. I wonder what its like to be known as a murderer. In another twist to the case, Sacramento police escorted her back to the city on a plane chartered by KCRA for its news crew. Dorothea Puente is an American serial killer. The guards will come by and go, What you got cooking today? , 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. She was found guilty in three cases and one juror held out on the other four. 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. 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. (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.) Her memories, I come to understand, blend rote recitation of illusory events with blatant omission of her crimes. I talk about the foggy drive to the prison, she recounts her trip to the visitors hall. When attempts to extract it with a shovel failed, Cabrera climbed into the hole. 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. I watch as she pushes away the empty plastic container of fried chicken strips and french fries that she finished eating earlier. In effect, every cell has a waiting list.) (Photo by Jeremy Sykes). The grandmother would then sneak into the rooms of her incapacitated prey and smother them to death with a pillow. Her passivity subdues suspicion. Some were in an almost mummified state, wrapped tight with cloth, bed sheets and duct tape. Behind them, a twentysomething blonde clutches the hands of a young man with a sun tattoo on his forearm. 'We had a real connection,' Harder told VICE. After sixteen months, the couple separated, with Gray citing domestic abuse. In October 1988, discovering he no longer lived at the house, Moise began to hound Puente about his departure. Officers rushed to the hotel to arrest Puente, but by then, she had bolted. As far as theyre concerned, Im dead.. Dorothea Montalvo Puente might seem like "a grandmotherly figure," says prosecutor John O'Mara. Between 1982 and 1988, she killed nine people, all of whom were renting rooms at her boarding house. 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. Designers Joelle and Mikel visit the current owners to replace the home's negative energy with a new makeover. 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. Questions about her criminal record will elicit short answers trailed by awkward silence, during which she will stare at the table or the far wall, in the direction of Winnie and friends. (One woman later discovered checks and jewelry missing from her home; her case played a part in Puentes 1982 arrest on theft charges.) A search of the home showed nothing amiss. 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. Her father died of tuberculosis when Puente was eight while her mother, an alcoholic, routinely abused her children and died in a motorcycle accident a year later. Old bones sometimes turned up in downtown and midtown yards, vestiges of the early 20th century, when families unable to afford a cemetery plot interred loved ones on their property. In the 1980s, she worked as a personal caretaker who drugged her clients and stole their valuables. The Victorian on F Street. He says he's often inundated with requests from crazed fans and fellow murder enthusiasts who ask to buy his grandmother's ashes. The jokes on me. Petitioner raises several claims and a request for a federal evidentiary hearing. An undercover cop posing as a trucker arrested her after she offered to perform fellatio on him; she served 90 days in county lockup. The case rested on the shifting sands of circumstantial evidence. Slight and demure, with her ivory-white hair and solicitous demeanor, the landlady resembled any other elderly woman with a kitchen full of pots and pans and a cat calendar hanging next to the stove. 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. Dorothea Puente Home - Part 1: Directed by Star Price. Trapped by tan cinderblock walls that climax in a Tsteepled ceiling, chatter and laughter create a kinetic mood amid the dense scent of microwaved pizza, burgers and fried chicken strips. Isabel Vincent. To give strength to other people. She lifts the paper towel to her eyes. He remains convinced of her innocence, arguing that her crimes were limited to filching the benefits checks of her tenants. At the same time, they agreed she had an evil side brought on by the stress of caring for her down-and-out tenants. [citation needed], The defense called several witnesses, who showed Puente had a generous and caring side to her. 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. Dick Schmidt/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesDorothea Puente after her arrest in Los Angeles, en route back to Sacramento. Social workers in the 1970s looked upon Dorothea Puente and her boarding house with admiration.
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