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. Well regarded for taking in substance abusers and the homeless, she had earned respect in political circles for her charity work. Under the law, Puente received life without the possibility of parole. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. Puente had welcomed him into her home that February. "Someone. 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. As the minutes pass, I prepare to join the long list of people she has duped. 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 parried, unwavering in her account of Montoyas departure, her voice calm as the detective pressed her. George Deukmejian (second from left) in this undated photo. A human leg and a badly discomposed foot were dug up separately in another part of the yard. But the jury had a difficult time believe the matronly grandmother was capable of carrying out such menacing crimes. But in truth, I approach this task without optimism, anticipating that our meeting will stick to the pattern of previous visits. By 1948, McFaul asked for a divorce and Puente drifted south to California. Given Montoyas history as a transient, his disappearance would have escaped notice without the persistence of Judy Moise. 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. 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. [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. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. In the landladys presence, he corroborated her story about Montoya. Puente's heinous crimes were eventually discovered in 1988, when Alberto Montoya, a mentally disabled and schizophrenic tenant, was reported missing by a social worker. One girl was placed in the care of relatives, the other put up for adoption. Alcoholics dont stay in one place for long. Coverage spanned from the national networks and Time, Newsweek and The New York Times to the National Enquirer, National Examiner and news outlets from as far away as England and France. . 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. People viewed Puente as a sweet grandmother committed to giving back to society: she housed the old and homeless, attended political events, and donated money to charitable causes. Orphaned, Puente and her siblings splintered off in different directions, bouncing between foster care and relatives homes. Police soon figured out why, uncovering the remains of six more bodies. Dorothea Puente at the Central California Womens Facility, February 21, 2009 (Courtesy of Central California Womens Facility). Dorothea Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray in Redlands, California, on January 9, 1929. She was just pure evil, Ballenger says. In June 2020, the house was featured in a ten-minute documentary with 60 Second Docs about the purchase and renovation of the house by the current owners. The house at 1426 F St., where police found seven of Puentes tenants buried in the yard, as it looks today. Dorothea Puente had several children with McFaul but didnt raise them. 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. 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. Judy Moise, an outreach counselor with Volunteers of America, became suspicious when Montoya vanished. (A charity she declines to name sends her $15 a month, her sole source of money.) Her goodwill earned her the honorific title la doctora and flattering write-ups in local Spanish publications. It had about $2,500, $3,000 in it. Cabrera shakes his head. So when I wrote to Puente last summer, nearly 20 years after the discovery of her victims, I had little expectation she would respond, let alone agree to talk. I am not here to take part in a reunion; I have never so much as glimpsed the woman I am waiting to meet. Get Sactown's top stories in your inbox by signing up for our weekly newsletter. 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. A stream of people tour Dorothea Puente's former home on Sept. 15, 2013. Again and again, it is not her. While there, doctors diagnosed her as a pathological liar with an unstable personality. (Obituaries for Ingemar Johansson, who died earlier this year, list his sole surviving brother as Rolf.). Dorothea Puente - Dorothea Helen Puente (January 9, 1929 - March 27, 2011) was an American convicted serial killer. At the time, the basement floor was covered with a concrete slab. Someone reached across the table at one point and almost got into a fistfight with him, says Hewlett, who now lives in Oregon. Driven by routine, Puente rises by 4:30 a.m. most days, long before her seven cellmates. I am led to believe if there is any reason for us to be living here on this Earth, it is to somehow enhance one another's humanity, to love, to touch each other with kindness, to know that you have made just one person breathe easier because you have lived. After I cleared the prisons background check, we arranged a date in mid-October; an early riser, she told me she preferred to meet in the morning. His head cocked to the side, he looks back at her, preparing to usher her past the crowd that looms outside the frame. I dont give a shit what anyone else thinks., Did you like what you read here? Drugs Puente used to knock . ), Puente relates that, as a Rockette, she met John Kennedy, then a U.S. senator, and his wife, Jackie, and befriended actress Rita Hayworth. 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. She told me Dorothea had given it to her to help calm her down, says the 55-year-old Clausen, who runs a furniture upholstery shop in South Land Park. So you knew she was a liar.. Isabel Vincent. An extensive five-day search for the elderly fugitive ended when a stranger she'd befriended in Los Angeles recognized her face from the news and turned her into police. They dont have all the facts, she tells me one morning, dismissing those who judge her a murderer. Satisfied, the authorities ruled Monroes death a suicide and moved on. Explaining away the corpses in her yard, she says, Not one person who worked for me saw me doing anything wrong. The theory, while perhaps logical to anyone unfamiliar with Puente before her name hit the headlines, brought disparate reactions from those who already knew her. Her lawyers argued that she might be a thief, but not a murderer. 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. Theyve never talked to me. On another occasion, she casts her circumstance in a biblical light. She resembles a wizened owl. For Puente, the distortions of her past have congealed into a personal reality that grows ever more fanciful. 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. The 1991 film Evil Spirits, starring Karen Black and Arte Johnson, is loosely based on the Puente murders. After her mother passing Dorothea and her 18 siblings . According to Dailymail, seven years after the death of Puente, a man named William Harder had claimed to be her grandson. There are so many sad stories in here. 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. 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. At the age of 64, Puente - who was born Dorothea Helen Gray - was tried in 1993 for the murders of nine people after police found seven bodies buried in the garden of her home and two more. Some of them began to disappear. 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. Some touch her shoulder. The 59-year-old looked like an ordinary grandmother when she was arrested after a five day hunt across California. The two talked through the afternoon, with Willgues both attracted to and wary of the well-dressed stranger who sipped screwdrivers. The higher volume results from the presence of more children, most of whom exhibit the happy symptoms of a sugar buzz. Seven bodies were eventually found buried on the property.[10]. After noticing disturbed soil on the property, they uncovered the body of tenant Leona Carpenter, 78. She answers without pause. (One woman later discovered checks and jewelry missing from her home; her case played a part in Puentes 1982 arrest on theft charges.) She sent one child to live with relatives while another was put up for adoption. Puente was supposed to stick around to serve out her probation, but in a sign of things to come she skipped town instead. Her bedroom was on the second floor. She does not once voice sadness over the deaths of her boarders, as if fearful that merely referring to them would imply her guilt.

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