She filed a missing person report with police on Nov. 7. 'The contents might be what you'd never expected. Orphaned, Puente and her siblings splintered off in different directions, bouncing between foster care and relatives homes. Dorothea Puente Home - Part 1: Directed by Star Price. She sits erect, legs crossed at the ankles and tucked beneath her chair. 3 min read. READ: Serial Killer Puente's Former Home Becomes Classroom For Law. [9], Puente continued to accept elderly boarders and was popular with local social workers because she accepted referrals of the "tough cases", including drug addicts and abusive tenants. Puente's alleged grandson, William Harder (pictured), insists his grandmother wasn't all bad. 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Despite maintaining her innocence until the day she died, Puente has been immortalized as one of America's most notorious female serial killers. And then theres the contradiction: beneath this house there are all these bodies. [6], In 1968, Gray married Roberto Jose Puente. Instead, after buying the coffee, she fled immediately to Los Angeles, where she befriended an elderly male pensioner whom she had met in a bar. He claims to have had a regular relationship with her, The Founder of MurderAuction, a website that sells serial killer memorabilia, Harder says he sees his grandmother as human, despite her crimes (pictured: Harder with cult leader Charles Manson). In 2004, she released a cookbook titled Cooking with a . After noticing disturbed soil on the property, they uncovered the body of tenant Leona Carpenter, 78. Puente was convicted of three of the murders, although the jury could not agree on the other six. 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. As far as theyre concerned, Im dead.. She was the sixth of seven children, all of whom struggled in a less-than-stable family environment, with little income and love to speak of in the Gray house. The hospitalization occurred a year after Sacramento police busted Dorothea in a raid on a residential house of ill fame on Fulton Avenue that had fronted as a bookkeeping service, according to court records. No, Dorothea Puente is no longer alive as of 2022 as she died on March 27th, 2011. 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. Another tenant, John Sharp, backed her up. Puente arrived at the Central California Womens Facility following her conviction in 1993, and her appeals expired early last year. Some touch her shoulder. The higher volume results from the presence of more children, most of whom exhibit the happy symptoms of a sugar buzz. That same year, the Victorian bungalow Puente used to commit her crimes was sold to a Sacramento couple at a public auction for $215,000. This page was last edited on 18 February 2023, at 18:08. 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. Unlike many who passed through Puentes boarding house, however, someone had their eye on Montoya. Others wave and smile. A local Spanish-language newspaper that referred to Puente as la doctora (Courtesy of John Cabrera), The unlicensed venture thrived from the start. Do not sell or share my personal information. [4], Gray's first marriage at age sixteen, in 1945, was to a soldier named Fred McFaul, who had just returned from the Pacific theater of World War II. Con su simpata lograba escapar de la. That didnt seem right, but Dorothea had conned our whole family into thinking she was a nurse.. Me and Nancy, she says, shaking her head. Despite being convicted of murder in 1993 and sent to prison, Puente. They know what shes done., Puente conveys a pride in her renown that, now and then, gives way to embarrassment, or perhaps weariness. Owen Brewer/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesDorothea Puente awaiting arraignment in Sacramento, California on November 17, 1988. I think she truly wanted to rehabilitate [her tenants] as she could not the people in her own family, Vicary says. Over the next few years, she adapted by working as an in-home caregiver, affecting a matronly mien with her modest dress, oversized glasses and tremulous voice. The comments below have not been moderated. Puente had a reputation for taking in people considered tough cases recovering alcoholics, drug addicts, the mentally ill, and the elderly. 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.. When she was eight her father died of tuberculosis. Judy Moise, an outreach counselor with Volunteers of America, became suspicious when Montoya vanished. After Florez finished the job, Puente had one more request: to build her a six-foot-long box so she could fill it with books and a few other assorted items before the pair of them would bring the box to a storage facility. In effect, every cell has a waiting list.) A well-researched play by Mark Loewenstern entitled "Dorothea Puente Tells All!" Within two weeks, Munroe fell ill, her body so weak she struggled to stand. Her shoulders shake as she laughs, her open mouth exposing a white flash of dentures. Beyond that lurked the vexing conundrum of the accused herself. [6], In April 1982, 53-year-old Ruth Munroe began living with Puente in her upstairs apartment, but soon died from an overdose of codeine and acetaminophen. [citation needed], In November 1985, Puente hired a man named Ismael Florez to install some wood paneling in her apartment. Dorothea Puente's House Has Been Bought. Sacramento Co. By Remy Millisky / March 14, 2022 11:13 am EDT. The advanced state of decay, meanwhile, suggested the person had died long before Montoyas presumed disappearance in August. An outreach counselor with Volunteers of America, she had visited Puente before placing him in her care. 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. My oldest grandson is 15 and wanted to do this attraction. Someone reached across the table at one point and almost got into a fistfight with him, says Hewlett, who now lives in Oregon. 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. The detective had yet to realize that, in the 59-year-old Puente, he had another serial killer on his hands. Vera Martin, 64. Puentes neighbors and acquaintances murmured disbelief that the white-haired landlady who handed out homemade tamales and fussed over her rose beds and vegetable garden could be a mass murderer. SPECIAL TO THE TIMES. However, it would be three more years before authorities could identify the body as one of the tenants in Dorothea Puentes house. One-time hitman Julio Santana (right) stopped counting after he reached 492 kills. Benjamin Fink, 55. EXCLUSIVE: 'I killed JonBent Ramsey! 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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. She inflated her age by 10 to 15 years to further disarm her elderly clients, whom she set about exploiting under the guise of ministering to them. Between 1982 and 1988, she killed nine people, all of whom were renting rooms at her boarding house. How many other boardinghouses have one person die? Puente passed away in 2011 at the Central California Women's Facility at age 82 from natural causes. Questions about her criminal record will elicit short answers trailed by awkward silence, during which she will stare at the table or the far wall, in the direction of Winnie and friends. The erstwhile prostitute had turned a new trick. 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. Be Careful of the Quiet Ones 45m When college student Maribel Ramos goes missing, detectives turn their focus to her roommate, K.C. On her release from prison, she began killing her victims. Puente got the second-degree charge for Carpenter's death, as. Shes not hurting there in prison, he says. 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. Gray assumed the identity of "Sharon Johansson", hiding her delinquent behavior by portraying herself as a devout Christian woman. She tells me they appreciate the advice she provides them, whether informal legal counsel on their cases or how to traverse the social services network after their release. Most of the lot has been paved over. Puente cashed in the Social Security checks of the elderly and disabled boarders living in her house. In the 70s, while running her first boardinghouse at 21st and F streets, Puente cultivated a strong rapport with social workers. Puente surrendered quietly. Julio Santana dropped to his left knee and propped his right elbow on his . 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. and other board games that the prison makes available to visitors. She'd later return to smother her incapacitated prey. She seems entirely harmless. Moise alerted police, who went to the boarding house. Cooking what I want. She tends to wear thick violet eye shadow and pink lipstick, both of a hue common to Toulouse-Lautrec paintings, and her body lotion of choice, Victorias Secret Love Spell, gives her the subtle bouquet of cherry blossoms. Her statement hangs between us. He escorted her out of the propertys wrought-iron front gate, a moment captured in a photo lying on the conference table. The Monstrous Crimes Of The Dorothea Puente, The Death House Landlady. Dorothea Puente - Dorothea Helen Puente (January 9, 1929 - March 27, 2011) was an American convicted serial killer. 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. Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray on January 9, 1929. She resembles a wizened owl. She has sent more than 15 letters and postcards in the months since I first wrote to her. But God always puts obstacles in peoples way. 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. During the initial investigation, Puente was not immediately a suspect, and she was allowed to leave the property, ostensibly to buy a cup of coffee at a nearby hotel. As reported by Dailymail, seven year after Puente's death, a man named William Harder had claimed to be his grandson. So after that, I was out in New York on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and then Id come back to California the rest of the week. Known at the time as Dorothea McFaul, the last name of her first husband, whom she had recently divorced, she performed on stage as Sharon Neyaarda. Alcoholics dont stay in one place for long. I dont know that she ever did anything good without a bad motive.. I am waiting for one of the countrys most infamous female serial killers, an inmate whose notoriety leaves her without peer among women murderers in California history. [6], In 1978, Gray was charged and convicted of illegally cashing thirty-four state and federal checks that belonged to her tenants. There, the former prostitute turned back to a life of crime. The impending anniversary, if tracked only by media types and those who sell serial-killer novelties online, had stirred my curiosity. She never intended to show, I realize. Drugs Puente used to knock . Beneath the rooms ashen lighting stand neat rows of small round tables, some 50 in all. Dorothea Helen Gray met the world on Jan. 9, 1929, in Redlands, Calif., the sixth of seven children born to Jesse James Gray and Trudie Gray. 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. The subject of personal health preoccupies Puente as much as the next octogenarian. 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. Exploiting her appearance of the sweet old lady, Puente would lure unsuspecting tenants to their grisly deaths by baking them cakes laced with sleeping pills. Dorothea Puente died in prison of natural causes on March 27, 2011, at age 82. 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. 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. Inside Dorothea Puente's Tragic Childhood. But before the cop left, Sharp managed to slip him a hand-written note that read, Shes making me lie for her. He later divulged unsettling details about life at the house. In a low, almost plaintive voice, she replies, Puente. But in truth, I approach this task without optimism, anticipating that our meeting will stick to the pattern of previous visits. [citation needed], On November 11, 1988, police inquired after the disappearance of tenant Alvaro "Bert" Montoya, a developmentally disabled man with schizophrenia, who had been reported missing by his social worker. Soon after, Monroe died from an overdose of codeine and acetaminophen. One of the bodies was missing its head, hands and feet, Body parts were also found scattered across the property. A year later her mother died in a motorcycle accident. Six more corpses would follow, but Puente was still on the run. 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