He escorted her out of the propertys wrought-iron front gate, a moment captured in a photo lying on the conference table. 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. But every time youd go to see her, Ballenger says, her cancer had moved from her brain to her breast to her liver. A local Spanish-language newspaper that referred to Puente as la doctora (Courtesy of John Cabrera), The unlicensed venture thrived from the start. 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. Investigators soon found the decomposing body of an elderly man inside. Cabrera, lead detective on the Puente case, stands with the shovel that she lent to law officers to dig in her backyard on Nov. 11, 1988. (AP Photo/Walt Zeboski). The Montoya file landed on Cabreras desk within a day. 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. By 1982, Puente was sent to prison for her thefts. She wants me to buy dozens of food and beauty care items for her from a prison-approved vendor that will mail the goods to her. At the time of her 1988 arrest on murder charges, photos of Puente with Jerry Brown, former California Gov. Dorothea Puente had several children with McFaul but didnt raise them. The jokes on me. He says he's often inundated with requests from crazed fans and fellow murder enthusiasts who ask to buy his grandmother's ashes. Dorothea Puente at the Central California Womens Facility, February 21, 2009 (Courtesy of Central California Womens Facility). She pled guilty to two counts of forgery, serving four months in jail and three years' probation. (A charity she declines to name sends her $15 a month, her sole source of money.) James Gallop, 62, (continued left to right) Dorothy Miller, 64. 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. She had a terrible adolescence after being . Maybe I would have been better off. In any case, after more than 20 years behind bars, and despite the withering of her features, she retains a physical vitality and a fondness for cosmetic excess. Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray on January 9, 1929. At the time, she was serving two life sentences and a concurrent 15-year-to-life sentence. I didnt drug anyone. She was tried for killing seven people by drugging them with Dalmane and alcohol. Some lauded the tireless advocate whose charitable work benefited the Hispanic community. Our visit winds down. Owen Brewer/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesDorothea Puente awaiting arraignment in Sacramento, California on November 17, 1988. 'We had a real connection,' Harder told VICE.
Who was Dorothea Puente and what happened to her? | The Sun Given Montoyas history as a transient, his disappearance would have escaped notice without the persistence of Judy Moise. In a low, almost plaintive voice, she replies, Puente. When they came to me, they were so sick, they werent expected to live.. Puente was found guilty of the murders of 64-year-old Dorothy Miller, 55-year-old Benjamin Fink, and 78-year-old Leona Carpenter. 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. 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. Its like she was watching a movie she wasnt particularly interested in., Jury deliberations commenced in July 1993 and soon stalled. After sixteen months, the couple separated, with Gray citing domestic abuse. Cabrera scrambled out of the hole, pulse rate and thoughts quickening. I dont want to be a burden on anyone.. After the notorious female serial killer Dorothea Puente died in prison at the age of 82, the filmmaker Nick Coles stumbled upon her obituary. I dont give a shit what anyone else thinks., Did you like what you read here?
15 Facts You Didn't Know About Dorothea Puente, The World - TheRichest For her and the others, one factor in particular undercut Puentes claim of innocence. Puente told police that the woman was very depressed because her husband was terminally ill. These were peoplethe Salvation Army wouldnt take them.
Schlimmste Mitbewohnerin aller Zeiten: Jeder, den Dorothea Puente She was a respected figure to the Mexican community, says Donald Dorfman, a longtime Sacramento criminal attorney who handled some of Puentes legal affairs before her 1988 arrest. She sent one child to live with relatives while another was put up for adoption. 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. She parried, unwavering in her account of Montoyas departure, her voice calm as the detective pressed her. [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. She responds with a burst of words, scanning the room as she talks. The Victorian on F Street.
Who was Dorothea Puente and what happened to her? | The US Sun Others wave and smile. Puente had already been convicted and executed in the media, and the attorneys understood the long odds of winning in court. 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. Her goodwill earned her the honorific title la doctora and flattering write-ups in local Spanish publications.
This 'sweet little granny' was actually a psychotic serial killer The comments below have not been moderated. She does not smile, laugh or joke much in my presence, but nor does she betray malevolence. Once, when I asked if she ever hears from her surviving siblings or two daughters, she shook her head. It was a human leg bone, he recalls. I want to know what stopped her from killing herself. 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. How did I know where they were? Absolving herself, Puente fingers McCauley and another former tenant as the possible murder suspects. The impending anniversary, if tracked only by media types and those who sell serial-killer novelties online, had stirred my curiosity. Puente took in so-called shadow people people who were marginally homeless without close family or friends. Some of the bodies were mummified in cloth, bed sheets and duct tape. But a bit of digging in the backyarda tenant had reported seeing large holes excavated and filled behind the houseunearthed a human leg bone and a decomposed foot. Retired social worker Mildred Ballenger first met Puente in the late 1970s. 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. Dorothea Puente's reign of terror began in 1982 when her friend, Ruth Monroe, was found dead in a boarding house Puente was running at that time. 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. His head cocked to the side, he looks back at her, preparing to usher her past the crowd that looms outside the frame. 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. Puente and McCauley had caught a cab from the Clarion Hotel to a West Sacramento bar. We both fell into the orchestra pit and I broke my leg. The other dancer? Beneath the rooms ashen lighting stand neat rows of small round tables, some 50 in all. Their first series of holes dislodged only soft dirt and a vague sense of futility. Alcoholics dont stay in one place for long. We next met days before Thanksgiving, when the recent election of Barack Obama had boosted her hopes for the countrys future, and again in mid-December. FacebookDorothea Puente right before she fled Sacramento. She folds the towel several times into a tight square before clasping her hands together on her lap like a child attending Mass. Throughout the trial, Dorothea Puente was portrayed as either a sweet grandma-like type or a manipulative criminal who preyed on the weak. & Brucato, Gary, Ph.D., The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books), pp. 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. 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. A few days later I drive to Chowchilla for my final visit with her. [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]. The lone drug present in all of them was Dalmane, a sedative for which Puente had obtained more than three dozen prescriptions of 30 pills each between October 1985 and November 1988, according to court records. Its about a mile from my building to here, she says. Puente struck out on her own when she was 16. See that one? she asks, nodding toward a gaunt, gray-haired woman with stooped posture. Then, she asked if it would be ok if she went to buy a coffee. The prosecutor, John O'Mara, was the homicide supervisor in the Sacramento County District Attorney's office. It wasn't until the first body was found in her backyard that authorities realized Dorothea was not the sweet old woman she first appeared to be. 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). I dont know that she ever did anything good without a bad motive.. By 1948, McFaul asked for a divorce and Puente drifted south to California.
Watch 'The House is Innocent': Female Serial Killer Dorothea Puente's I wondered whether, when thinking back to 1988, she saw her past as her own or that of a different Dorothea Puente, one who, over time, had faded into something of a stranger. I ask why shes here. The checks I cashed, yes. In a cryptic aside, she added, I used to be a very good person at one time., The public heard little from Puente for more than 20 years after that clip aired. Look at Job, John, Paul, Moses. Do not sell or share my personal information. I know her only through the words of others. . But there were seven dead bodies in your yard. A state psychologist who evaluated Puente before her release from prison in 1985 diagnosed her as schizophrenic. 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. 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.
The Bone Garden: The Chilling True Story of a Female Serial Killer In 1993, facing nine counts of murder after prosecutors linked her to two other deaths, she stood trial without testifying. Me and Nancy, she says, shaking her head. Dorothea Puente, born Dorothea Helen Gray was born on January 9, 1929 in San Bernardino County, California. She took it all Death is the only appropriate penalty. We spent 2 hours in here looking and reading most of the items. In addition to the usual fare sold in the halls chow line, there are heart-shaped boxes of chocolates for $7. Ill be waiting for her.. She asked Florez to build a 6-by-3-by-2-foot box to store "books and other items". An officer dispatched to the house that morning interviewed Puente and one of her tenants, John Sharp.
Inside Dorothea Puente's Tragic Childhood - Grunge Shes not hurting there in prison, he says. Marathon Man 63m 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. [6], Gray and Johansson divorced in 1966, although she continued to use Johansson's name for some time following their separation. She moves toward the front of the room, where a guard seated behind a metal desk tells her my table number. As we talk on Valentines Day, I broach her long-ago brushes with the law, only to find myself stymied again. But volatility seemed to follow Puente wherever she went and the new couple argued frequently about Puentes drinking and gambling. [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. What he did know was that her public image as a shepherd of the dispossessed veiled the past of an ex-con who preyed on the weak. Intense news coverage led to Puentes trial moving to Monterey. "KRON Newscenter 4 11/13/88 Part 1 of 2", Last edited on 18 February 2023, at 18:08, List of serial killers in the United States, List of serial killers by number of victims, "Death House Landlady Got Drugs From Doctor, Prosecutors Contend", "Dorothea Puente dies at 82; boarding house operator who killed tenants", "Guide to the California Superior Court (Sacramento County) case files for The People v. Dorothea Montalvo Puente (criminal case #18056) CNTY0004", "Dorothea Puente and the Boarding House of Death", "Watch Worst Roommate Ever | Netflix Official Site", "In Print: Dorothea Puente's killer cookbook", "Sacramento serial killer's former home renovated, ready for visits", "Tours, documentary focus on Sacramento house of murderer Dorothea Puente", "No Cause Determined in Deaths of Boarders", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dorothea_Puente&oldid=1140147573.