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Designers Joelle and Mikel visit the current owners to replace the home's negative energy with a new makeover. Federal law shields inmate medical records from the public, leaving open the question of whether she has had three surgeries since entering prison. Clymo responded by evoking Dorothea the child and caregiver. The Boarding House Killer: Directed by Steve Allen. As most serial killers, Dorothea had a rough childhood. I have listened to the lingering grief and anger of a man whose mother died mysteriously while in her care. In 1952, Gray married merchant seaman Axel Bren Johansson in San Francisco. The Victorian on F Street. I dont feel like confessing my sins to anyone, she says sharply. Here are 5 things you may not know about Dorothea Puente: 1. Puente cashed in the Social Security checks of the elderly and disabled boarders living in her house. The 9/ . Throughout the trial, Dorothea Puente was portrayed as either a sweet grandma-like type or a manipulative criminal who preyed on the weak. In her telling, after showering and dressing, she prays, recites the rosary and reads a few pages of the Bible, favoring Proverbs and Romans. He says he's often inundated with requests from crazed fans and fellow murder enthusiasts who ask to buy his grandmother's ashes. But in the 1980s, their residence was a boarding house owned by Dorothea Puente, who killed her elderly and disabled tenants to steal their Social Security checks. 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! Our visit winds down. McFaul split from his young wife in 1948. That is the question. He was going with another movie star, she says. She lost her first boarding house after getting caught signing her own name to tenants benefit checks. I could give her my answer now, but there are a few more questions to ask. Ill be waiting for her.. Instead, Puente found a husband. Her eyes would fill with tears, but she would never admit it, he says. 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 Judy Moise, an outreach counselor with Volunteers of America, became suspicious when Montoya vanished. He speculates that running a boardinghouse began for her as a humane endeavor rooted in a desire to undo painful childhood memories. 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. 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. and other board games that the prison makes available to visitors. Ive given up hope of getting out, she says. "They immediately died," says Warren's grandson, Warren W. Bogle, who today serves as President and Vineyard Director. I watch as she pushes away the empty plastic container of fried chicken strips and french fries that she finished eating earlier. The silence here feels powerful enough to swallow space. After their deaths, Puente collected . Dorothea Helen Gray, ms conocida como Dorothea Puente, naci el 9 de enero de 1929 en Redlands (California, Estados Unidos), en el seno de una familia trabajadora. Cops hauling away body bags. The discovery prompted Cabrera to summon Puente to the backyard. Their dismembered bodies were then placed in holes in the garden she'd paid ex-convicts to dig. It doesnt fit., At least three peopledefense attorneys Kevin Clymo and Peter Vlautin and their clientharbored scarce empathy for the prosecutor. One was missing its hands, head and feet. It had about $2,500, $3,000 in it. Cabrera shakes his head. 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. The advanced state of decay, meanwhile, suggested the person had died long before Montoyas presumed disappearance in August. The pensioner contacted local law enforcement who then quickly arrested Puente. 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. I know her only through the words of others. She was notoriously known as the "Death House Land Lady" after committing nine murders. Betty Palmer, 78. 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. In the landladys presence, he corroborated her story about Montoya. Time has deepened the creases between her potato-like nose and dumpling cheeks, and her blanched skin has slackened at the neck. I dont know what to tell you, she said. In effect, every cell has a waiting list.) Puentes next two marriages would be short-lived. 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. In 1961, Johansson had Gray briefly committed to DeWitt State Hospital after a binge of drinking, lying, criminal behavior, and suicide attempts. 'Never judge a book by its cover,' said retired police officer John Cabrera in 2018, the lead investigator on the case. When the police arrived, Puente told them that Monroe had been depressed due to her husbands terminal illness. On her way back, she insisted to reporters that she hadnt killed anyone, claiming: I used to be a very good person at one time.. It was too humiliating, too shameful for her to admit responsibility for these crimes. Puente was found guilty of the murders of 64-year-old Dorothy Miller, 55-year-old Benjamin Fink, and 78-year-old Leona Carpenter. The infamous home Dorothea Puente lived in is along F Street in Sacramento. Acres of almond trees and farmland border the prison, a vast archipelago of dun-colored, low-slung buildings moored inside electrified fences topped with razor coil. 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. Shes not hurting there in prison, he says. Despite the guilty verdict of her . Retired social worker Mildred Ballenger first met Puente in the late 1970s. She had seven. Barring an unexpected transfer to another prison or a medical emergency, she will die inside this compound. Puente told police that the woman was very depressed because her husband was terminally ill. The three men carried shovels as they fanned out across the backyard of the two-story Victorian at 1426 F Street. 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. They appealed to authorities to reexamine their mothers death, a probe that ended with investigators upholding the suicide ruling. 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. Amanda Sedlak-Hevener. She gave birth to a daughter in 1946 followed by a second less than a year later, but public documents suggest she inherited her mothers aversion to childrearing. In the 1980s, Puente ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California, and . I had such a sick feeling, he says. Those cases were lies, she says, voice flat. . cold and calculating female killers the country had ever seen., serial killer known as the Angel of Death, Aileen Wuornos, historys most terrifying female serial killer. Puente sah aus wie die Gromutter aus der Nachbarschaft, aber in Wirklichkeit war sie eine kaltbltige Mrderin. See that one? she asks, nodding toward a gaunt, gray-haired woman with stooped posture. For a moment the prisons visitors hall feels bereft of other people and sounds. The two then separated, with McCauley returning downtown and Puente taking another cab to Stockton, where she hopped a bus to Los Angeles. Im not that kind of person. I prod for more, to no avail. Puente struck out on her own when she was 16. Their relationship developed quickly, and the couple was soon making wedding plans. Authorities alleged that, by poisoning her boarders, she wanted to collect their benefits checks without risk of them notifying social workers or police. 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. My oldest grandson is 15 and wanted to do this attraction. Instead, Puente opened up her second boarding house. The authorities left the cause of death as undetermined, since there was such an excessive amount of both these drugs, and she was bedridden at the time. In the end, Cabrera erred on the side of skepticism. These people were human beings, they had a right to live-they did not have a lot of possessions-no houses-no cars-only their social security checks and their lives. There, the former prostitute turned back to a life of crime. Some play Scrabble, Sorry! She established her reputation as a caregiver, providing young women with a sanctuary from poverty and abuse without charge. She will send me the list in a few daysthe bill will total $114.70but I already know I wont oblige. Dorothea - Dorothea (also spelled Dorothe, Dorotea or other variants) is a female given name from Greek (Drotha) meaning "God's Gift". Look at Job, John, Paul, Moses. 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. Anyway, so she had six boarders! Following her year-long trial which ended in 1993, Dorothea was convicted on three counts of murder and was. O'Mara's closing argument focused on Puente's acts of murder: Does anyone become responsible for their conduct in this world? Dorothea Puente Home - Part 1: Directed by Star Price. Speaking softly, she asked, Am I under arrest? When the detective told her no, she explained that the police presence and the growing mob of onlookers had her on edge. [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. The conversation soon veers toward why I want to interview her, and before I finish explaining, she interrupts. Puente took in so-called shadow people people who were marginally homeless without close family or friends. 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. The boarding house made infamous by Dorothea Puentes murders. 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. An officer dispatched to the house that morning interviewed Puente and one of her tenants, John Sharp. Working in my yard.. Maybe I would have been better off. She has sent me more than 15 letters and postcards in the months since I first wrote to her. Despite maintaining her innocence until the day she died, Puente has been immortalized as one of America's most notorious female serial killers. The next day, under suspicion but not yet under arrest, Puente, then 59 and ostensibly the essence of grandmotherly virtue, fled the city. Investigators soon found the decomposing body of an elderly man inside. 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. Grandson of Dorothea Puente, shared a 'real connection' with her - Daily Newshttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGIQ4XcqArGYqiw70QoKcvw?sub_confirmation=1Grand. He returned to the house, grabbed a shovel and began to dig. I dont give a shit what anyone else thinks., Did you like what you read here? Puente and her siblings were subsequently sent to an orphanage, where she was sexually abused. 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. Heres this grandmotherly figure in this beautiful, restored Victorian house with all these azaleas and other flowers, OMara says. The detective had yet to realize that, in the 59-year-old Puente, he had another serial killer on his hands. William Vicary spoke with Puente for the first time about two months after her arrest. In April 2020, the house and current owners were showcased in the Quibi series Murder House Flip. She answers without pause. 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. 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. 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. 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. Their theory hardened into subjective truth when they discovered that, following the funeral, the nurse had drained thousands of dollars belonging to Munroe from a joint business bank account. 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. She settled her nerves not with coffee but a few vodkas with orange juice while he drank beer. Axel Johansson rates as Puentes favorite of her four ex-husbands, a presumably unwanted distinction. Genaro Molina/Sacramento Bee/MCT/Getty Images. [6], In April 1982, 53-year-old Ruth Munroe began living with Puente in her upstairs apartment, but soon died from an overdose of codeine and acetaminophen. But the passage of months and years since the victims had died reduced the toxicology results to educated guesswork. For years, the disappearances of these so-called shadow people who lived at the margins of society went unnoticed. Gray assumed the identity of "Sharon Johansson", hiding her delinquent behavior by portraying herself as a devout Christian woman. The serial killer shuffles into the room with a chickens hitched gait. Johansson divorced Dorothea in 1966. At the time, she was serving two life sentences and a concurrent 15-year-to-life sentence. Puentes vanishing ignited a manhunt that stretched to Mexico. More than 130 witnesses were called to the stand by the prosecution, and eventually the devilish landlady was convicted for three of the murderers and ordered to serve back-to-back life sentences. On her lap bounces a pony-tailed girl in a red-buttoned vest who giggles Mama! Two tables over, a stout, fortyish black woman with a toothy smile banters with her parents and younger brother, to judge from the physical semblance. Back in Sacramento, police were digging up five more bodies, including Bert Montoyas. 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. 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. Next, Dorothea Puente went to San Francisco, where she married her second husband, Axel Bren Johansson, in 1952. She was tough. I ask why shes here. Hayden spent months processing thousands of pieces of evidence related to the case, including a shovel used to dig up human remains. Puente passed away in 2011 from natural causes at the Central California Facility in Chowchilla, aged 82. An alarmed Ballenger urged fellow counselors to steer clear of Puente. The first episode centers around one of the worst of all: Dorothea Puente, a Sacramento, California woman who has been dubbed Sacramento's most notorious murderer. That didnt seem right, but Dorothea had conned our whole family into thinking she was a nurse.. With Bill Courage, John Cabrera, Bill Clausen, Judy Moises. 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. I am not here to take part in a reunion; I have never so much as glimpsed the woman I am waiting to meet. The psychologist morphed into a prophet with the discovery of seven bodies in Puentes backyard in November 1988. In a low, almost plaintive voice, she replies, Puente. Some were in an almost mummified state, wrapped tight with cloth, bed sheets and duct tape. 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). Among them were four of her five husbands, two children, her two sisters, her mother, a grandson and a mother-in-law. Driven by routine, Puente rises by 4:30 a.m. most days, long before her seven cellmates. Intense news coverage led to Puentes trial moving to Monterey. I was bewildered as to what in the world was going on with all these people in her yard.. All three revolve around murder, a fact she notes without irony or self-consciousness. The jokes on me. 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. 'We had a real connection,' Harder told VICE. While there, doctors diagnosed her as a pathological liar with an unstable personality. [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. I rise as she approaches and shake a hand that feels skeletal and small. [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. [19] It was then the subject of the 2015 documentary short The House Is Innocent and was again opened to tours for one day in conjunction with a local film festival's showing of the film.[20]. (One woman later discovered checks and jewelry missing from her home; her case played a part in Puentes 1982 arrest on theft charges.) 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. 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. Her lawyers argued that she might be a thief, but not a murderer. It occurs to me that if I were unaware of her past and talking with her outside of prison, she could come across as the little old lady next door. If you lived in Sacramento in the late 80s, you recognize her name. How many other boardinghouses have one person die? But their marriage was brief only three years and hinted at trouble beneath the surface. We break the ice. I think she truly wanted to rehabilitate [her tenants] as she could not the people in her own family, Vicary says. 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. Not yet considering the sweet lady to be a suspect, the officers obliged at the 59-year-old's request to go down the street to buy a cup of coffee - but she had no intention of returning. Kara Goldfarb is a writer living in New York City. Then, she asked if it would be ok if she went to buy a coffee. To reduce chest pain, she wears a nitroglycerin skin patch. For someone who insists she worried over the well-being of her tenants, Puente tells me that, after her arrest, she fretted about Sam. She professed her innocence until she died. After learning about the murders inside Dorothea Puentes house, read about the serial killer known as the Angel of Death. For the first time, her gaze squarely meets mine. Round-framed glasses too large for her face magnify a pair of pale blue eyes. But in truth, I approach this task without optimism, anticipating that our meeting will stick to the pattern of previous visits. The erstwhile prostitute had turned a new trick. If you lived anywhere else, theres still a good chance you recognize it, or at least the rough outline of her crimes. 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 press dubbed Dorothea Puente the 'Death House Landlady.' The name sharply contrasted with her perception in the community. 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? After the notorious female serial killer Dorothea Puente died in prison at the age of 82, the filmmaker Nick Coles stumbled upon her obituary. Her shoulders shake as she laughs, her open mouth exposing a white flash of dentures. On subjects unrelated to her misdeeds, she will open up, weaving anecdotes that are sometimes embroidered, sometimes made from whole cloth. I wondered how the last two decades had changed her, how she had endured. 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. In 16 years at the facility, she has accrued only two rules violations, the last occurring in 2004. Thats between me and my God., Until 2006, Puente rotated through assorted prison jobs, cleaning cells, giving haircuts, toiling on a landscaping crew. When we later part, Puente disappears through the gray metal door at the back of the hall. [3] Her parents were both alcoholics and her father repeatedly threatened to commit suicide in front of his children. Vera Faye Martin, 64. One girl was placed in the care of relatives, the other put up for adoption. MONTEREY . 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.. Six months after her release, she left Riverside. 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. Cabreras superiors approved her request, deciding they held insufficient evidence to detain her. 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. Orphaned, Puente and her siblings splintered off in different directions, bouncing between foster care and relatives homes. 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. In 2015, the Ghost Adventures crew investigated the house, due to reports of hauntings by the victims and Puente herself. 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.. Twenty-one minutes laterhe remembers the time preciselyhe exhumed sufficient evidence: the remains of a second body buried about a foot deep in the earth. She was the sixth of seven children but didnt grow up in a stable family environment. The unreliable narrator breaks the hush. Court files indicate Johansson had his wife committed to a psychiatric ward in 1961, and doctors placed her on antipsychotics. ), Puente relates that, as a Rockette, she met John Kennedy, then a U.S. senator, and his wife, Jackie, and befriended actress Rita Hayworth. No one else would want that name., Prison protocol bans inmates from talking to each other in the hall apart from brief exchanges. In 2004, she released a cookbook titled Cooking with a . In 1998, Puente began corresponding with Shane Bugbee. She did not strike me as a person who had a major mental illness. Shane Bugbee. On a subsequent visit, her vanity recedes when a guard, apparently new to working the visitors hall, asks her name. [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. All three revolve around murder, a fact she notes without irony or self-consciousness. But she has shown too much interest in my visits for me to believe her. Tempers spiked as the impasse stretched to its third week. I have read books and hundreds of news articles and file after file of court records related to her crimes. Dorothea Puente was a convicted serial killer who ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California in the 1980s. She met and married Fred McFaul in 1945. FacebookDorothea Puente right before she fled Sacramento. Im certain they were just dying of natural causes, and she started burying them so she could keep the checks coming. I now see them as tokens of loneliness, trifles to mark the time. Her body shapeless under a long-sleeve T-shirt and dungarees, she has pulled back her snowy plume of hair with a pink scrunchie. As most serial killers, Dorothea had a rough childhood. I just did, she says. Inmates enter one at a time at irregular intervals through a gray metal door along the rear wall. Several were referred there by social workers who viewed the home as a last-resort refuge for their ailing or most erratic clients. Hes the brother of Ingemar Johansson, you know, she says, referring to the late heavyweight boxing champ. Dorothea Puente is an American serial killer. Dorothea Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray in Redlands, California, on January 9, 1929. Cabrera scrambled out of the hole, pulse rate and thoughts quickening. Her escape brought coast-to-coast ridicule of Police Chief John Kearns and his department while authorities chased dead-end leads from Las Vegas to Mexico. I inquire how she juggled the demands of professional golf with her Rockettes career while flying between San Francisco and New York every week. As the others begin to stir, she tidies up the space, a boardinghouse landlady to the last. For William Clausen, by contrast, the bodies buried in Puentes yard confirmed what he already considered fact: she killed for profit.