[1] Sua contagem total chegou a nove assassinatos confirmados e seis no . By 1982, Puente was sent to prison for her thefts. McFaul left her in late 1948.[5][6]. I dont know that she ever did anything good without a bad motive.. When she was eight her father died of tuberculosis. She declines to disclose the fathers name, when and where they were born and died or the circumstances of their deaths.). 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 told police that the woman was very depressed because her husband was terminally ill. Under the law, Puente received life without the possibility of parole. Vera Faye Martin, 64. She gasped at sight of the remains, hands bracketing her cheeks. Subscribe to Sactown Magazine . After the notorious female serial killer Dorothea Puente died in prison at the age of 82, the filmmaker Nick Coles stumbled upon her obituary. The 1991 film Evil Spirits, starring Karen Black and Arte Johnson, is loosely based on the Puente murders. A contrary perception derived from Puentes strong ties to Hispanic residents living in downtown and midtown. Hard living had stolen much of Dorotheas youthful beauty by the time she landed her third husband in 1968 and settled in Sacramento. I have also done this: Late at night, when it is said her deeds turned darkest, I have pondered the vastness of human nature as I stood outside the tiny yard where she buried her victims. She then asked Florez to transport the filled, sealed box to a storage depot. Season 1 Episode 2 - Videos 1:11 Preview Dorothea Puente Runs From Police Now Playing Preview Granddaughter of Dorothea Puente Victim Talks About Her Disappearance Dorothea Puente after her arrest in Los Angeles, en route back to Sacramento. Dorothea Puente. She answers with a look of mild reproach that pulls taut her soft fist of a face. But the jury had a difficult time believe the matronly grandmother was capable of carrying out such menacing crimes. 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. Within two weeks, Munroe fell ill, her body so weak she struggled to stand. She was incarcerated at Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla, California. Prosecutors charged Puente with killing nine people. The couple, Barbara Holmes and Tom Williams, renovated the . Investigators soon found the decomposing body of an elderly man inside. Puente's total count reached nine murders; she was convicted of three and the jury hung on the other six. In the landladys presence, he corroborated her story about Montoya. 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. [6], Gray and Johansson divorced in 1966, although she continued to use Johansson's name for some time following their separation. Again and again, it is not her. After a number of legal hurdles, Puente's trial eventually went ahead four years later. They separated in 1969, and not long after, Dorothea, who had briefly run an unauthorized rehab program for alcoholics, opened a boardinghouse at 21st and F streets. She was the sixth of seven children but didnt grow up in a stable family environment. Puente passed away in 2011 from natural causes at the Central California Facility in Chowchilla, aged 82. I dont feel like confessing my sins to anyone, she says sharply. [7] On August 18, 1982, Puente was convicted of three theft charges and sentenced to five years in prison; there, she began corresponding with Everson Gillmouth, a 77-year-old retiree from Oregon. "Someone. A T-shirt designed to cash in on Puente mania (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives). The grandmother would then sneak into the rooms of her incapacitated prey and smother them to death with a pillow. Sir, she said, I have not killed anybody. She explained that she had buried excess trash in the backyard holes that a tenant mentioned to police, and covered some of them with concrete to stunt weed growth. "Which is gross," Hayden said. 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. Get Sactown's top stories in your inbox by signing up for our weekly newsletter. Forensic testing had failed to determine a definitive cause of death in any of the victims. How many other boardinghouses have one person die? In her note, written on plain lined paper in a grade-schoolers swirling cursive, she invited me to visit. Despite being convicted of murder in 1993 and sent to prison, Puente denied killing the victims until the day she died . With a smile, I ask whether she and the actor shared a romantic attraction. A woman known as Dorothea Puente runs a boarding house for those less fortunate, but her seeming benevolence belies motives that are much darker. Her cancer story, on the other hand, sounds consistent with her peculiar, decades-long charade of claiming to suffer from the disease in a ploy to gain sympathy. She'd later return to smother her incapacitated prey. John Cabrera sits at a long wooden conference table inside Sacramento Police headquarters on Freeport Boulevard. No one else would want that name., Prison protocol bans inmates from talking to each other in the hall apart from brief exchanges. Trial began in October 1992 and ended a year later. 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. Then there was the riddle of Puente. 22 ratings3 reviews. Puente sah aus wie die Gromutter aus der Nachbarschaft, aber in Wirklichkeit war sie eine kaltbltige Mrderin. Clausen checked on her in April 1982 and saw his pallid, suddenly enfeebled mother, who rarely drank alcohol, sipping crme de menthe. The three law officers had stopped by the house to try to learn the whereabouts of Alvaro Bert Montoya, who had gone missing three months earlier. Following her year-long trial which ended in 1993, Dorothea was convicted on three counts of murder and was. Puente watched the images flicker across the TV screen in her Los Angeles motel room. She met and married Fred McFaul in 1945. Police found seven bodies. Newspapers dubbed Puente the "Death House Landlady". She established her reputation as a caregiver, providing young women with a sanctuary from poverty and abuse without charge. 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. 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. 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. 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. Grandson of killer granny Dorothea Puente, who laced cakes with sleeping pills and then smothered them at her California boarding house, reveals how he shared a 'real connection' with her and . I didnt drug anyone. In April of 1982, a 61-year-old woman named Ruth Monroe moved into Dorothea Puentes house. Betty Palmer, 78. She eventually met and married Pedro Angel Montalvo, though Montalvo abruptly left the relationship a week after their marriage. On the other hand, when these people, as could be expected, would act upat that point, she snapped and decided to kill them.. Their relationship developed quickly, and the couple was soon making wedding plans. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group, '2023 will be our year of victory! 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. Dalmane, which is a drug used for insomnia, was found in all seven of the exhumed bodies. Didnt know that at the time., The detective walked about halfway to the Clarion with Puente and her boarder, John McCauley. When the police arrived, Puente told them that Monroe had been depressed due to her husbands terminal illness. Puente occupies a lower bunk owing to her age and tenure at the prison, sleeping on the same kind of thin, lumpy mattress as other inmates. 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. Dorothea Puente was a convicted serial killer who ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California in the 1980s. She is to be considered dangerous, and her living environment and/or employment should be closely monitored. The following year, without a license and in violation of her federal probation, she opened a boardinghouse at 1426 F Street, with enough space for as many as eight tenants. (One woman later discovered checks and jewelry missing from her home; her case played a part in Puentes 1982 arrest on theft charges.) Driven by routine, Puente rises by 4:30 a.m. most days, long before her seven cellmates. At 39, she was 16 years older than Roberto Puente, a Mexican migr whose interest in his heavyset bride concerned money and American citizenship, as chronicled in Disturbed Ground, a 1994 book about the Puente murder case. (Courtesy of John Cabrera). She was tried for killing seven people by drugging them with Dalmane and alcohol. As the search expanded, cabin fever seized Puente. If you lived anywhere else, theres still a good chance you recognize it, or at least the rough outline of her crimes. Puente died in prison at Chowchilla on March 27, 2011, from natural causes; she was 82. For his labor and $800, Puente gave him the red Ford pickup, which she stated belonged to her boyfriend in Los Angeles, who no longer needed it. So we knew wed have an uphill battle in convincing the jurors that all of those were accidental deaths.. But every time youd go to see her, Ballenger says, her cancer had moved from her brain to her breast to her liver. 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. Dorothea Puente ran a boarding house for down and outs. To soothe her anxiety, she wanted to walk to the nearby Clarion Hotel with one of her boarders to meet her nephew for a cup of coffee. Once free of the throng, Cabrera stopped and watched the pair until they entered the hotel. Dorothea Helen Puente, rozen Grayov (9. ledna 1929 - 27. bezna 2011) byla americk sriov vraedkyn.V 80. letech 20. stolet provozovala penzion pro seniory v Sacramentu v Kalifornii, kde zabila nkolik starch i mentln postiench klient, aby zskala jejich finann prostedky.Na jejm kont je devt vrad; za ti byla odsouzena a porota trvala na . The infamous home Dorothea Puente lived in is along F Street in Sacramento. As reported by Dailymail, seven year after Puente's death, a man named William Harder had claimed to be his grandson. I dont give a shit what anyone else thinks., Did you like what you read here? 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. Police and forensics experts swarmed Puentes property the next morning. She sent one child to live with relatives while another was put up for adoption. After their deaths she continued to draw their social security cheques. 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. [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]. (AP Photo/Walt Zeboski). There, she quickly got back to her old tricks. And she didnt buy Puentes explanation that hed left on vacation. 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. Another tenant, John Sharp, backed her up. 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 Me and Nancy, she says, shaking her head. She watched from her porch, and before Cabrera put spade to soil, she requested a moment of his time. 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. Dorothea Puente right before she fled Sacramento. She collected tenants' monthly mail before they saw it and paid them stipends, pocketing the rest for "expenses". They had two daughters between 1946 and 1948; Gray sent one child to live with relatives in Sacramento, and placed the other for adoption. In the spring of 1948, Gray was arrested for purchasing women's accessories using forged checks in Riverside. 'Executing Puente would be like executing your grandmother', one juror is reported to have said in response to the death sentence looming over the defendant at the time. [2], Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California, to Trudy Mae (ne Yates) and Jesse James Gray. Some lauded the tireless advocate whose charitable work benefited the Hispanic community. I watch as she pushes away the empty plastic container of fried chicken strips and french fries that she finished eating earlier. She got in serious trouble for the first time in her life after bouncing a check in San Bernadino and spent four months in jail. (A charity she declines to name sends her $15 a month, her sole source of money.) In turn, I know that when she receives my letter telling her as much, shell cut off contact. Finding nothing, they asked permission to dig up the yard. Puente claims she spent time in the 70s with California governors Pat Brown, Jerry Brown and Ronald Reagan. Puente was found guilty of the murders of 64-year-old Dorothy Miller, 55-year-old Benjamin Fink, and 78-year-old Leona Carpenter. Mental health experts testified of Puente's abusive upbringing and how it motivated her to help the less fortunate. [6], In 1968, Gray married Roberto Jose Puente. I dont think anyone would pick this kind of life, she says, drying tears with a piece of coarse brown paper towel.
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