She was the sixth of seven children born to Trudy Mae Gates and Jesse James Gray, whose "lungs were damaged from a gas attack" while fighting in World War I. Her father died of tuberculosis when Dorothea was 8; her mother, an alcoholic who alternated between abusing and deserting her children, lost custody of them in 1938. The inmates know who she is, the official says. Her statement hangs between us. 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. If you lived anywhere else, theres still a good chance you recognize it, or at least the rough outline of her crimes. Puente had Chief dig in the basement and cart soil and rubbish away in a wheelbarrow. They were men and women who had skidded toward lifes edges. 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. Her lawyers argued that she might be a thief, but not a murderer. 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. The only time they were in good health was when they stayed at my home. The higher volume results from the presence of more children, most of whom exhibit the happy symptoms of a sugar buzz. In his sessions with her, Vicary had inched up to the subject of guilt, knowing that she would withdraw if he asked directly whether she had killed people. Dorothea Puente awaiting arraignment in Sacramento, California on November 17, 1988. 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. She would later kill them by poisoning or strangling them. The boarding house made infamous by Dorothea Puentes murders. 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. I dont know what to tell you, she said. She also mentions undergoing major cancer surgery in 1961 to remove her reproductive organs and part of her intestines and stomach. A stream of people tour Dorothea Puente's former home on Sept. 15, 2013. 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. I dont feel like confessing my sins to anyone, she says sharply. After what was then the longest deliberation in a murder case in state history24 daysthe jury convicted her of three killings. 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. Ringed by four chairs, each serves as the setting of a reunion between a prisoner and those she knows from the outside. A year later her mother died in a motorcycle accident. Unbeknownst to Puente, the pensioner recognized her as the woman he saw on television news reports. She received a life sentence without possibility of parole, and as before the trial, she granted few interviews in its wake, observing a self-imposed gag order. Dorothea Helen Puente (nascido Gray; 9 de janeiro de 1929 - 27 de maro de 2011) foi uma assassina em srie americana.Na dcada de 1980, Puente mandava numa hospedaria em Sacramento, Califrnia, e assassinou vrios idosos e pensionistas com deficincia mental antes de descontar seus cheques de seguridade social. The couple moved to Sacramento a short time later and lived in the city off and on for the next decade. She moves toward the front of the room, where a guard seated behind a metal desk tells her my table number. Clymo concluded his closing argument by showing a picture commonly used in psychology that can be viewed in different ways and saying "Keep in mind things are not always as they seem." But their marriage was brief only three years and hinted at trouble beneath the surface. After the notorious female serial killer Dorothea Puente died in prison at the age of 82, the filmmaker Nick Coles stumbled upon her obituary. But as the police prepared to leave, Sharp slipped them a message. Puente had stayed poised a day earlier when Cabrera showed up with a fellow homicide detective and a federal probation agent. Farm Heroes Saga, the #4 Game on iTunes. In the landladys presence, he corroborated her story about Montoya. 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? SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KTXL) Throughout the 1980s, as many as nine deaths in Sacramento were investigated as being connected to Dorothea Puente. Thats just too much coincidence., Finally, on the 24th day of deliberations, the holdout juror acquiesced, voting guilty on two counts of first-degree murder and one second-degree count. Dismembering their corpses, she threw their remains into a mass grave in her garden, telling neighbors the foul smell emanating from the ground was sewage and dead rats, rather than dead residents. Investigators soon found the decomposing body of an elderly man inside. 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. At the same time, they agreed she had an evil side brought on by the stress of caring for her down-and-out tenants. In the end, Cabrera erred on the side of skepticism. Most of the lot has been paved over. She folds the towel several times into a tight square before clasping her hands together on her lap like a child attending Mass. Through her early teen years, young Dorothea found herself handed off to a series of relatives and foster homes, bouncing between Napa and Los Angeles, court records reveal. They wanted to question her about Bert Montoya, her onetime tenant who had been reported missing. She had a traumatic childhood after being raised by alcoholic parents. There, she quickly got back to her old tricks. Puente then married Pedro Angel Montalvo, but he left her only a week after they were wed. Puente passed away in 2011 from natural causes at the Central California Facility in Chowchilla, aged 82. 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. 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. The penalty phase of the prosecution was highlighted by her prior convictions introduced by O'Mara. 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.. I dont think anyone would pick this kind of life, she says, drying tears with a piece of coarse brown paper towel. The detective had yet to realize that, in the 59-year-old Puente, he had another serial killer on his hands. 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. She played the stoic in court, her face as frozen as her mug shot. "I was hooked when I saw that she had published a. I am waiting for Dorothea Puente. He returned to the house, grabbed a shovel and began to dig. 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. In Olympia, Washington, she tried to make a living as a prostitute. He was going with another movie star, she says. 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.. She has sent me more than 15 letters and postcards in the months since I first wrote to her. Anyway, so she had six boarders! During a brief in-flight interview with reporter Mike Boyd, she said, I have not killed anyone. 31 of the Royal Viking. For Puente, the distortions of her past have congealed into a personal reality that grows ever more fanciful. She lost her life in a motorcycle wreck the same year, orphaning Dorothea before she turned 10. Some might interpret that as a kind of confession, I finally say. In the 70s, while running her first boardinghouse at 21st and F streets, Puente cultivated a strong rapport with social workers. 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. On subjects unrelated to her misdeeds, she will open up, weaving anecdotes that are sometimes embroidered, sometimes made from whole cloth. Despite maintaining her innocence until the day she died, Puente has been immortalized as one of America's most notorious female serial killers. Between 1982 and 1988, she killed nine people, all of whom were renting rooms at her boarding house. 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. 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. Sometimes she includes small handmade gifts: Christmas ornaments constructed from cardboard and yarn, a greeting card stitched with fine thread. These entities fall through the cracks, said Kathleen Lammers, executive director of the California Law Center on Longterm Care, about boarding houses like Puentes. And, she says, They like my tamales.. A few wander over to a colorful mural of Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Tigger and Piglet, who prance beneath a banner reading Family Is Love, Love Is Family. None of the kids acts bothered that mom or grandma or big sister is doing time. (Courtesy of The Sacramento Bee/Genaro Molina). We both fell into the orchestra pit and I broke my leg. The other dancer? Working in my yard. I dont know that she ever did anything good without a bad motive.. Authorities unearth a corpse buried in the lawn of 59-year-old Dorothea Puente's home in Sacramento, California.Puente operated a residential home for elderly people, and an investigation led to . 3 min read. Social workers in the 1970s looked upon Dorothea Puente and her boarding house with admiration. I think she truly wanted to rehabilitate [her tenants] as she could not the people in her own family, Vicary says. She steams the tamales in plastic bags placed in a pan of water warmed with two electric immersion coils. They know what shes done., Puente conveys a pride in her renown that, now and then, gives way to embarrassment, or perhaps weariness. But on the way to the storage facility, Puente abruptly asked Florez to pull over near a riverbank and just push the box into the water.
