The serial killer shuffles into the room with a chickens hitched gait. Satisfied, the authorities ruled Monroes death a suicide and moved on. The jokes on me. The Victorian on F Street. The family suspected Puente of poisoning her. I dont want to be a burden on anyone.. The home belonged to seemingly sweet Dorothea Puente, who was arrested in 1988 and later convicted as a serial murderer. In 16 years at the facility, she has accrued only two rules violations, the last occurring in 2004. Six more corpses would follow, but Puente was still on the run. Her lawyers argued that she might be a thief, but not a murderer. Dorothea Puente - Dorothea Helen Puente (January 9, 1929 - March 27, 2011) was an American convicted serial killer. Clymo concluded his closing argument by showing a picture commonly used in psychology that can be viewed in different ways and saying "Keep in mind things are not always as they seem." She did not strike me as a person who had a major mental illness. She declines to disclose the fathers name, when and where they were born and died or the circumstances of their deaths.). They were men and women who had skidded toward lifes edges. 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. She was ultimately convicted in three of the. 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. Puente had welcomed him into her home that February. That same year, the Victorian bungalow Puente used to commit her crimes was sold to a Sacramento couple at a public auction for $215,000. Gray assumed the identity of "Sharon Johansson", hiding her delinquent behavior by portraying herself as a devout Christian woman. The couple moved to Sacramento a short time later and lived in the city off and on for the next decade. Puente took in so-called shadow people people who were marginally homeless without close family or friends. Both have died, and police cleared them early in the investigation. [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. Puente struck out on her own when she was 16. Under the law, Puente received life without the possibility of parole. 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. The subject of personal health preoccupies Puente as much as the next octogenarian. Puente was charged with a total of nine murders: Puente's boyfriend, Everson Gillmouth, 77; and eight tenants who lived at the boarding house: Ruth Munroe, 61; Leona Carpenter, 78; Alvaro "Bert/Alberto" Gonzales Montoya, 51; Dorothy Miller, 64; Benjamin Fink, 55; James Gallop, 62; Vera Faye Martin, 64; and Betty Palmer, 78. Between 1982 and 1988, the elderly and disabled people living in Dorothea Puentes house had no idea that was she was poisoning and strangling some of her guests before burying them on her property and cashing their Social Security checks. But every time youd go to see her, Ballenger says, her cancer had moved from her brain to her breast to her liver. When police arrived at 1426 F Street in Sacramento, they noticed some disturbed soil in a vegetable patch, but not thinking Puente to be a suspect they allowed the grandmother to flee the scene, In her absence, the officers dug-up the entire garden (left) where they discovered seven bodies. 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. According to an interview in the documentary, The House is Innocent, and the couple believed that changing the . But no one noticed. I stare at the brick and wrought-iron front gate through which Dorothea Puente walked for the last time on Nov. 12, 1988. [citation needed], The defense called several witnesses, who showed Puente had a generous and caring side to her. I just dont believe that strongly in coincidence. Puente had already been convicted and executed in the media, and the attorneys understood the long odds of winning in court. He neither explained his motive for capitulating nor discussed why he agreed to convict her of only three killings. Clymo responded by evoking Dorothea the child and caregiver. She would flee the city that morning. Thats between me and my God., Until 2006, Puente rotated through assorted prison jobs, cleaning cells, giving haircuts, toiling on a landscaping crew. [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. The hospitalization occurred a year after Sacramento police busted Dorothea in a raid on a residential house of ill fame on Fulton Avenue that had fronted as a bookkeeping service, according to court records. His eyes popped wide. [citation needed], On November 11, 1988, police inquired after the disappearance of tenant Alvaro "Bert" Montoya, a developmentally disabled man with schizophrenia, who had been reported missing by his social worker. La historia de Dorothea Puente: la dulce abuela que mataba jubilados y los enterraba en el jardn La anciana era duea de una casa para adultos mayores. As the search expanded, cabin fever seized Puente. 'Never judge a book by its cover,' said retired police officer John Cabrera in 2018, the lead investigator on the case. Dorothea - Dorothea (also spelled Dorothe, Dorotea or other variants) is a female given name from Greek (Drotha) meaning "God's Gift". I inquire how she juggled the demands of professional golf with her Rockettes career while flying between San Francisco and New York every week. James Gallop, 62. Julio Santana dropped to his left knee and propped his right elbow on his . Still, prison has changed Puente in one profound aspect, reforming her into an obedient citizen. In the 1970s, she opened her first boarding house in Sacramento. As the story goes, while shopping at a department store called The Emporium in San Francisco in 1948, a 19-year-old Puente felt a tap on her shoulder. Puente died in prison at Chowchilla on March 27, 2011, from natural causes; she was 82. 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.. 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. Look at Job, John, Paul, Moses. She came on a little hard, what with her questions about his Social Security benefits and abrupt suggestion that they consider living together. Gawkers gather outside 1426 F St. (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives), Domestic bliss and her maternal instinct failed to take root. In the spring of 1948, Gray was arrested for purchasing women's accessories using forged checks in Riverside. Puentes next two marriages would be short-lived. Dorothea Puente war eine feste Gre in ihrer Gemeinde - sie kmmerte sich um ihre Nachbarn, spendete hufig fr wohlttige Zwecke und nahm diejenigen auf, die die Gesellschaft beiseite geschoben hatte. [6], Following her divorce, Gray focused on running a boarding house located at 21st and F streets in Sacramento. The detective had yet to realize that, in the 59-year-old Puente, he had another serial killer on his hands. He says he's often inundated with requests from crazed fans and fellow murder enthusiasts who ask to buy his grandmother's ashes. Yet for all the local, national and international coverage of the bizarre case in ensuing years, the public heard virtually nothing from its main character. He stares at the photo and points at her purse. 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). But while digging a second hole, Wilson heard a muted thud as his blade struck something hard three feet down. As we continue talking, the topic switches to her life before prison, and I ask what she misses most about Sacramento. The union lasted just two years. That is mitigating. Today the 59-year-old Cabrera works cold cases for the department as a retired sergeant. Chief later dismantled a garage in the backyard and installed a fresh concrete slab there as well. In the narrative of her life that unfurled at her murder trial and in news reports and books about the case, she grew up poor, deprived in equal measure of material comforts and parental nurturing. She is a California native, born in Redlands, Calif. 2. On a later visit, she brags that she won $10,000 on a 1950s game show on NBC called Feather Your Nest; another time, that she played a few tournaments on the fledgling LPGA tour in the 50s. He speculates that running a boardinghouse began for her as a humane endeavor rooted in a desire to undo painful childhood memories. So we knew wed have an uphill battle in convincing the jurors that all of those were accidental deaths.. When attempts to extract it with a shovel failed, Cabrera climbed into the hole. Dorothea Puente awaiting arraignment in Sacramento, California on November 17, 1988. One decomposed leg was found on one side of the garden, and a foot was found on the other (Pictured: Investigators compile miscellaneous body parts found in the ground, 1988). With Bill Courage, John Cabrera, Bill Clausen, Judy Moises. "Someone. [6], In 1968, Gray married Roberto Jose Puente. Puente watched the images flicker across the TV screen in her Los Angeles motel room. Federal probation officers visited her numerous times in the next two years without suspecting she ran a business, lulled by her kindly facade and clean home as much as by her lies that those staying at the house were friends or guests. Dorothea Puente, ne Dorothea Helen Gray, was born on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California. The visit was my first of six with Puente, who turned 80 in January. A stream of people tour Dorothea Puente's former home on Sept. 15, 2013. Puente passed away in 2011 at the Central California Women's Facility at age 82 from natural causes. I rise as she approaches and shake a hand that feels skeletal and small. 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. The four women and three men, ages 52 to 79, had boarded at the two-story, powder-blue Victorian. Get Sactown's top stories in your inbox by signing up for our weekly newsletter. 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. In addition to the usual fare sold in the halls chow line, there are heart-shaped boxes of chocolates for $7. I wondered if she maintained her innocence or felt bowed by remorse. The psychiatrist diagnosed Puente as suffering from antisocial personality disorder, a condition marked by deceit and manipulation of others without remorse. All three revolve around murder, a fact she notes without irony or self-consciousness. Once free of the throng, Cabrera stopped and watched the pair until they entered the hotel. 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. 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. Working in my yard. Puente's alleged grandson, William Harder (pictured), insists his grandmother wasn't all bad. He was good to me. (Johansson did not respond to interview requests.). The psychologist morphed into a prophet with the discovery of seven bodies in Puentes backyard in November 1988. She purchased the refills through a pair of doctors who, presumably oblivious to her past drugging of clients, trusted her stories that she simply wanted to help boarders sleep. Police found seven bodies. A few days later I drive to Chowchilla for my final visit with her. Puente got the second-degree charge for Carpenter's death, as. Six months after her release, she left Riverside. La historia de Dorothea Puente: la dulce abuela que mataba jubilados y los enterraba en el jardn La anciana era duea de una casa para adultos mayores. She was the sixth of seven children but didn't grow up in a stable family environment. How many other boardinghouses have one person die? Next, Dorothea Puente went to San Francisco, where she married her second husband, Axel Bren Johansson, in 1952. Ringed by four chairs, each serves as the setting of a reunion between a prisoner and those she knows from the outside. By 1952, she had wed Johansson, whom she met in San Francisco. On New Years Day, a fisherman spotted the box, noticed that it looked suspiciously like a coffin, and informed the police. I have listened to the lingering grief and anger of a man whose mother died mysteriously while in her care. But the passage of months and years since the victims had died reduced the toxicology results to educated guesswork. I ask why the cops targeted her. 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. If you lived in Sacramento in the late 80s, you recognize her name. It had about $2,500, $3,000 in it. Cabrera shakes his head. ), 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. Dorothea Puente's former boarding house is at 1426 F Street in Sacramento, California, between 14th and 15th streets. Designers Joelle and Mikel visit the current owners to replace the home's negative energy with a new makeover. Hard living had stolen much of Dorotheas youthful beauty by the time she landed her third husband in 1968 and settled in Sacramento. 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. Puentes neighbors and acquaintances murmured disbelief that the white-haired landlady who handed out homemade tamales and fussed over her rose beds and vegetable garden could be a mass murderer. But, behind the scenes, Puente had embarked on a path that would lead her to murder. I just did, she says. Johansson divorced Dorothea in 1966. Florez agreed, and Puente assisted him. The advanced state of decay, meanwhile, suggested the person had died long before Montoyas presumed disappearance in August. At the same time, they agreed she had an evil side brought on by the stress of caring for her down-and-out tenants. With Jeff Rechner, Joelle Uzyel, Mikel Welch. . In effect, every cell has a waiting list.) John Cabrera sits at a long wooden conference table inside Sacramento Police headquarters on Freeport Boulevard. [6], Gray and Johansson divorced in 1966, although she continued to use Johansson's name for some time following their separation. So you knew she was a liar.. Dorothea Puente died in prison of natural causes on March 27, 2011, at age 82. Most of the luminaries are connected to her years in Sacramento, where she moved in the mid-50s with her second husband, Axel Johansson, who now lives in Orangevale. 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. Removed from her violent crimes, it actually makes perfect sense to use Puente's image on a cookbook, as she has the perfect visage of a kind old lady who probably knows a secret recipe or two that her tenants all would . (Clymo died in 2006.) (Obituaries for Ingemar Johansson, who died earlier this year, list his sole surviving brother as Rolf.). Her passivity subdues suspicion. She answers with a look of mild reproach that pulls taut her soft fist of a face. She also mentions undergoing major cancer surgery in 1961 to remove her reproductive organs and part of her intestines and stomach. 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. The boarding house made infamous by Dorothea Puentes murders. The noise inside the prisons visitors hall amplifies on Valentines Day. Puente drugged three women with tranquilizers to steal checks, money and valuables from their homes in the early 80s, as recounted in court records. 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. Shes got everything she needs, her life is taken care of. Dorothea often took in the elderly and homeless and placed them as her tenants. Prison persuades some inmates to repent, their perspective evolving with time as they forsake their younger selves. 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. Prosecutor John OMara, then as now head of the Sacramento District Attorneys homicide unit, recognized the difficulty of cultivating compassion for victims he dubbed the shadow people. He had the added burden of building his case with witnesses of the same ilk: alcoholics, the homeless, once and future convicts. 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. Since Ive been in here, she says, its like all of that never happened.. Dorothea Puente after her arrest in Los Angeles, en route back to Sacramento. Now she watched from her second-story porch as the trio began to dig. 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. Thats when the gray door clanks open once more. See how its bulging? 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. The unreliable narrator breaks the hush. 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. The candy proves popular with youngsters, whose sporadic laughter pierces the rooms hum. Through her early teen years, young Dorothea found herself handed off to a series of relatives and foster homes, bouncing between Napa and Los Angeles, court records reveal. Some touch her shoulder. For the first time, her gaze squarely meets mine. 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. Most of the lot has been paved over. That is a human quality that deserves to be preserved. Puente offered a place where they could hang on. On Nov. 11, 1988, acting on the concerns of a social worker looking for a client who had disappeared, homicide detectives dropped by the mans last known address: a boardinghouse for derelicts and the mentally ill that Puente operated at 1426 F Street, within a mile of the Hall of Justice and the Capitol. 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. I didnt need to kill anyone. A prison official describes her as very low-key, very quiet. If discreet, however, Puente, who stands 5-foot-3, bears an outsized notoriety. Unlike many who passed through Puentes boarding house, however, someone had their eye on Montoya. She balanced her dance career with a second job as a cook at a San Francisco seafood restaurant, she tells me, shuttling between coasts until her dance career came to a sudden end in 1957. Her statement hangs between us. The serial killer shuffles into the room with a chickens hitched gait. Puentes mechanical response echoes what she has told me during prior meetings, and what I will hear on subsequent visits. Given Dorothea Puente's image, this meant the controversial artist, Shane Bugbee, would collaborate with her on a cookbook. Others wave and smile. Her body shapeless under a long-sleeve T-shirt and dungarees, she has pulled back her snowy plume of hair with a pink scrunchie. 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. The press dubbed Dorothea Puente the 'Death House Landlady.' The name sharply contrasted with her perception in the community. The police dug up 78-year-old Leono Carpenter and then six more bodies. Silver-haired, dressed in a long red coat and wearing large rounded glasses, the 59-year-old resembled just a regular grandmother - proving looks truly can be deceiving. If she had been held accountable for murdering my mother, Clausen says, then maybe there wouldnt have been any other victims.. After a number of legal hurdles, Puente's trial eventually went ahead four years later. Infamous serial murderer . Authorities unearth a corpse buried in the lawn of 59-year-old Dorothea Puente's home in Sacramento, California.Puente operated a residential home for elderly people, and an investigation led to . Some lauded the tireless advocate whose charitable work benefited the Hispanic community. Prosecutors charged Puente with killing nine people. Dorothea Puente, a notorious, grandmotherly boarding house operator convicted in the 1990s of killing her tenants, has died in prison aged 82. 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. Again and again, it is not her. Puente's total count reached nine murders; she was convicted of three and the jury hung on the other six. She was the sixth of seven children but didnt grow up in a stable family environment. ', Puente died in 2011 aged 82 in her prison cell at the Central California Facility, in Chowchilla. In 1998, Puente began corresponding with Shane Bugbee. Con su simpata lograba escapar de la. My question about the incident draws an explanation akin to the one Puente gave a county judge nearly a half century earlier: I was there visiting a friend when the cops came. She refuses to elaborate. 22 ratings3 reviews. On her release from prison, she began killing her victims. Puente claims she spent time in the 70s with California governors Pat Brown, Jerry Brown and Ronald Reagan. At the time, she was serving two life sentences and a concurrent 15-year-to-life sentence. We lapse into a short silence, and in that span, the incredible feats of a younger Dorothea diminish in the distance. She was just pure evil, Ballenger says. She responds with a burst of words, scanning the room as she talks. 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. For her and the others, one factor in particular undercut Puentes claim of innocence. By 1948, McFaul asked for a divorce and Puente drifted south to California. The forensic psychiatrist, assigned to evaluate the alleged serial killer as her case proceeded toward trial, would spend 12 hours talking with her over the next four years. Beneath the rooms ashen lighting stand neat rows of small round tables, some 50 in all. However, it would be three more years before authorities could identify the body as one of the tenants in Dorothea Puentes house. Gillmouth's body remained unidentified for three years. Cooking what I want. I could give her my answer now, but there are a few more questions to ask. On the other hand, when these people, as could be expected, would act upat that point, she snapped and decided to kill them., The Puente trial dragged on for five months, with more than 150 witnesses, thousands of pieces of evidence and unrelenting media scrutiny.

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