The initial jolt of uncovering a dead body on Nov. 11 ebbed as Cabrera weighed three factors. As reported by Dailymail, seven year after Puente's death, a man named William Harder had claimed to be his grandson. 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. Between 1982 and 1988, she killed nine people, all of whom were renting rooms at her boarding house. Round-framed glasses too large for her face magnify a pair of pale blue eyes. A year earlier, he had probed the case of Morris Solomon, a Sacramento handyman who would be convicted of murdering six women across the city. Several were referred there by social workers who viewed the home as a last-resort refuge for their ailing or most erratic clients. She asked Florez to build a 6-by-3-by-2-foot box to store "books and other items". Hed been referred to Dorothea Puentes house because of her sterling reputation welcoming people like him. "You have heard of the despair which was the foundation of her life, the anger and resentmentIf anyone in the jury room tells you it was not that bad, ask them would you want that to happen to yourself? Many of them found dead and buried in the boarding house's yard. They had a turbulent marriage; Gray took advantage of Johansson's frequent trips to sea by inviting men to their home and gambling away his money. Puente sah aus wie die Gromutter aus der Nachbarschaft, aber in Wirklichkeit war sie eine kaltbltige Mrderin. Puente had Chief dig in the basement and cart soil and rubbish away in a wheelbarrow. Im not that kind of person. I prod for more, to no avail. The two talked through the afternoon, with Willgues both attracted to and wary of the well-dressed stranger who sipped screwdrivers. But no one noticed. Shes not hurting there in prison, he says. 4. 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. Puente had a reputation for taking in people considered tough cases recovering alcoholics, drug addicts, the mentally ill, and the elderly. Some of the bodies were mummified in cloth, bed sheets and duct tape. The subject of personal health preoccupies Puente as much as the next octogenarian. Puente cashed in the Social Security checks of the elderly and disabled boarders living in her house. But Puente has lodged in his psyche as the rarest predator he confronted: in age, gender and disposition, she inhabits an extremely narrow strata of serial killers. She'd later return to smother her incapacitated prey. Dorothea Montalvo Puente (hereinafter "Petitioner") petitions for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C 2254 challenging her 1993 conviction following a trial by jury. Dorothea Puente, born Dorothea Helen Gray was born on January 9, 1929 in San Bernardino County, California. 13, as designated by the plastic placard atop its faux-wood surface. But police tracked her down in Los Angeles after a man in a bar recognized her from TV. 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. When attempts to extract it with a shovel failed, Cabrera climbed into the hole. 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. I dont want to be a burden on anyone.. I wonder if the tenants know about the homes notorious history. The police bulletin sent out after Puentes escape (Courtesy of John Cabrera), Throughout our meetings, Puente furtively points out inmates and comments on their crimes. She moves toward the front of the room, where a guard seated behind a metal desk tells her my table number. If Im thinking about getting away, you think Im going to ask permission?, Police escort Puente after apprehending her in L.A.; Cabrera walks behind her. Her body shapeless under a long-sleeve T-shirt and dungarees, she has pulled back her snowy plume of hair with a pink scrunchie. Johansson divorced Dorothea in 1966. I am waiting for Dorothea Puente. Gray would continue to use the surname Puente for more than twenty years. has sold out to audiences at the California Stage, Wilkerson Theatre, UC Davis, and in January 2023 at Saramento Theatre Company. She did not strike me as a person who had a major mental illness. In her telling, after showering and dressing, she prays, recites the rosary and reads a few pages of the Bible, favoring Proverbs and Romans. 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. Puente then married Pedro Angel Montalvo, but he left her only a week after they were wed. [2], Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California, to Trudy Mae (ne Yates) and Jesse James Gray. (AP Photo/Walt Zeboski). Most of the lot has been paved over. It seems fitting that a published recipe collection by serial killer Dorothea Puente, aka the "Death House Landlady," includes how-to's for whipping up . Puente cashed in the Social Security checks of the elderly and disabled boarders living in her house. But their marriage was brief only three years and hinted at trouble beneath the surface. Police and forensics experts swarmed Puentes property the next morning. In theory, the blend of narcotics detected in the victims could have proven lethal, or weakened them to the point of defenselessness against suffocation with a pillow or blanketa nearly untraceable cause of death. Cabreras superiors approved her request, deciding they held insufficient evidence to detain her. Social workers in the 1970s looked upon Dorothea Puente and her boarding house with admiration. In 1998, Puente began corresponding with Shane Bugbee. 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. Waking at 5:30 a.m., I drove 135 miles south to Chowchilla, slowed by low-hanging fog as opaque as her reasons for ending years of public silence. Dorothea Puente's former boarding house is at 1426 F Street in Sacramento, California, between 14th and 15th streets. In turn, I know that when she receives my letter telling her as much, shell cut off contact. 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.. The Montoya file landed on Cabreras desk within a day. In her note, written on plain lined paper in a grade-schoolers swirling cursive, she invited me to visit. At the same time, they agreed she had an evil side brought on by the stress of caring for her down-and-out tenants. Police soon figured out why, uncovering the remains of six more bodies. The psychiatrist diagnosed Puente as suffering from antisocial personality disorder, a condition marked by deceit and manipulation of others without remorse. She took it all Death is the only appropriate penalty. She came on a little hard, what with her questions about his Social Security benefits and abrupt suggestion that they consider living together. He was a good-hearted man, very kind, she says. Things happen for a reason., Nov. 12, 1988: Homicide detective John Cabrera (right) ushers Puente out of her home to a nearby hotel. 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. Betty Palmer, 78. Despite lacking formal dance training, she says, I went out there and they hired me. Satisfied, the authorities ruled Monroes death a suicide and moved on. [6], In 1978, Gray was charged and convicted of illegally cashing thirty-four state and federal checks that belonged to her tenants. Amanda Sedlak-Hevener. A well-researched play by Mark Loewenstern entitled "Dorothea Puente Tells All!" Some of them began to disappear. She had a terrible adolescence after being . 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. A prison official describes her as very low-key, very quiet. If discreet, however, Puente, who stands 5-foot-3, bears an outsized notoriety. 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. Now, as I sit at table No. Farm Heroes Saga, the #4 Game on iTunes. Mental health experts testified of Puente's abusive upbringing and how it motivated her to help the less fortunate. Its like she was watching a movie she wasnt particularly interested in., Jury deliberations commenced in July 1993 and soon stalled. 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. 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. That I can die peacefully in my sleep without being sick or being a cripple. Despite the guilty verdict of her . Intense news coverage led to Puentes trial moving to Monterey. Wood earlier sent Puente to prison for drugging and robbing the elderly. Their relationship developed quickly, and the couple was soon making wedding plans. Unlike many who passed through Puentes boarding house, however, someone had their eye on Montoya. In summer 1982, Clausen and his siblings spotted a story in the Bee about Puentes conviction on theft and forgery charges related to her drugging four elderly people. EXCLUSIVE: 'I killed JonBent Ramsey! Convicted pedophile Rose West's son breaks silenceto tell how his killer mother Isabel Oakeshott receives 'menacing' message from Matt Hancock, Insane moment river of rocks falls onto Malibu Canyon in CA, Mom who lost both sons to fentanyl blasts laughing Biden, Pavement where disabled woman gestured at cyclist before fatal crash, Pro-Ukrainian drone lands on Russian spy planes exposing location, 'Buster is next!' Four days later, Munroe died at Puentes home. (Puente tells me she also had twin daughters who as young adults committed suicide one week apart. Dorothea Puente, ne Dorothea Helen Gray, was born on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California. Clymo responded by evoking Dorothea the child and caregiver. If she had been held accountable for murdering my mother, Clausen says, then maybe there wouldnt have been any other victims.. Trapped by tan cinderblock walls that climax in a Tsteepled ceiling, chatter and laughter create a kinetic mood amid the dense scent of microwaved pizza, burgers and fried chicken strips. Those cases were lies, she says, voice flat. Montoya struggled with mental health issues and had been homeless for years. I ask why shes here. When they came to me, they were so sick, they werent expected to live.. She also mentions undergoing major cancer surgery in 1961 to remove her reproductive organs and part of her intestines and stomach. Beneath the rooms ashen lighting stand neat rows of small round tables, some 50 in all. Others disparaged the closet alcoholic who on occasion punctuated roof-raising, cuss-filled tirades with a piece of furniture heaved down the stairs. Dorothea Montalvo Puente might seem like "a grandmotherly figure," says prosecutor John O'Mara. Finding nothing, they asked permission to dig up the yard. 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 . Some of the remains were in a mummified state - bound in bed sheets, cloth and duct tape (above), Puente would lure her victims to their deaths by baking them cake laced with sleeping pills. Tom Williams and Barbara Holmes are the new landlords of the "haunted" house. They appealed to authorities to reexamine their mothers death, a probe that ended with investigators upholding the suicide ruling. No one else would want that name., Prison protocol bans inmates from talking to each other in the hall apart from brief exchanges. In the landladys presence, he corroborated her story about Montoya. (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives), Dorfman drew up Puentes will years agoI dont know if its any good anymore; shes probably given away stuff she doesnt [even] ownand still receives Christmas cards from her. I dont give a shit what anyone else thinks., Did you like what you read here? But the jury had a difficult time believe the matronly grandmother was capable of carrying out such menacing crimes. But volatility seemed to follow Puente wherever she went and the new couple argued frequently about Puentes drinking and gambling. While there, doctors diagnosed her as a pathological liar with an unstable personality. Their dismembered bodies were then placed in holes in the garden she'd paid ex-convicts to dig. See that one? she asks, nodding toward a gaunt, gray-haired woman with stooped posture. It is a flame of humanity that has burned inside Dorothea since she was young That is reason to give Dorothea Puente life without the possibility of parole. [6], Gray was arrested in 1960 for owning and operating a bookkeeping firm as a front for a brothel in Sacramento;[5] she was found guilty and was sentenced to ninety days in the Sacramento County Jail. In the 1980s, Puente ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California, and . Dorothea Puente was a California landlady who ran a boarding house in Sacramento during the 1980s. After their deaths, Puente collected . She parlayed its success by pumping money into political campaigns and charitable causes, contributions that bought her the appearance of legitimacy and access to elite circles. [citation needed], The defense called several witnesses, who showed Puente had a generous and caring side to her. After Puente was released from her first spell in prison for three counts. [citation needed]. She turns to look at me. Cops hauling away body bags. Puente told them that they were welcome to do so, and even provided an extra shovel. A man identifying himself as a talent scout for the Radio City Rockettes, the famed New York City dance troupe, sized her up and, on the spot, invited her to fly east for an audition. A woman known as Dorothea Puente runs a boarding house for those less fortunate, but her seeming benevolence belies motives that are much darker. After noticing disturbed soil on the property, they uncovered the body of tenant Leona Carpenter, 78. I talk about the foggy drive to the prison, she recounts her trip to the visitors hall. Grandson of Dorothea Puente, shared a 'real connection' with her - Daily Newshttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGIQ4XcqArGYqiw70QoKcvw?sub_confirmation=1Grand. In 1993, facing nine counts of murder after prosecutors linked her to two other deaths, she stood trial without testifying. So we knew wed have an uphill battle in convincing the jurors that all of those were accidental deaths.. Julio Santana dropped to his left knee and propped his right elbow on his . Dorothea Puente was arrested in 1988 after the dismembered bodies of seven residents were found in the garden of her home in Sacramento, California Being escorted to a police car after her. 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.