An extensive five-day search for the elderly fugitive ended when a stranger she'd befriended in Los Angeles recognized her face from the news and turned her into police. Puente had stayed poised a day earlier when Cabrera showed up with a fellow homicide detective and a federal probation agent. (Obituaries for Ingemar Johansson, who died earlier this year, list his sole surviving brother as Rolf.). 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. (Details of reports on such incidents are not public record.) Puente, meanwhile, was a model prisoner, often cooking for the other prisoners and guards her tamales, in particular, were much loved. Next, Dorothea Puente went to San Francisco, where she married her second husband, Axel Bren Johansson, in 1952. Sometimes she includes small handmade gifts. Another tenant, John Sharp, backed her up. 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 . However, it would be three more years before authorities could identify the body as one of the tenants in Dorothea Puentes house. Speaking softly, she asked, Am I under arrest? When the detective told her no, she explained that the police presence and the growing mob of onlookers had her on edge. The psychiatrist diagnosed Puente as suffering from antisocial personality disorder, a condition marked by deceit and manipulation of others without remorse. Frequent quarrels and separations marred the marriage, with much of the discord brought on by Dorotheas appetites for drinking, gambling and other men. The three men carried shovels as they fanned out across the backyard of the two-story Victorian at 1426 F Street. Shes dying of cancer. 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. Her demeanor is, for the most part, politely docile, and I begin to perceive how so many could consider her trustworthy. 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. After spending part of Valentines Day with Miss Dorothea, as other inmates call her, I returned later in February and stopped by for a final chat in April. She turns to look at me. 22 ratings3 reviews. But, behind the scenes, Puente had embarked on a path that would lead her to murder. The next spring, with her husband hospitalized by terminal cancer, the 61-year-old Munroe moved in with Puente to save money. As police exhumed corpse after corpse, TV crews jammed F Street while gawkers scaled trees to peer into the yard. Con su simpata lograba escapar de la. Arrested for the scam in 1978, court records show, she received five years federal probation, the terms of which proscribed her from operating a boardinghouse. Heres this grandmotherly figure in this beautiful, restored Victorian house with all these azaleas and other flowers, OMara says. 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. 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. How did I know where they were? Absolving herself, Puente fingers McCauley and another former tenant as the possible murder suspects. However, Dorothea's outward demeanor was a smokescreen, concealing [] (One woman later discovered checks and jewelry missing from her home; her case played a part in Puentes 1982 arrest on theft charges.) Puente had welcomed him into her home that February. Puente cashed in the Social Security checks of the elderly and disabled boarders living in her house. Most of the lot has been paved over. A year later her mother died in a motorcycle accident. One girl was placed in the care of relatives, the other put up for adoption. Dorothea followed up the drugging by carrying out the . Most disregarded the warning in the face of a paucity of housing options for alcoholics, drug addicts and the mentally ill, and even after her release from prison in 1985, social workers and homeless advocates, ignoring or unaware that she was an ex-con running a boardinghouse without a license, sent their clients to her. She sits erect, legs crossed at the ankles and tucked beneath her chair. Puente took in so-called shadow people people who were marginally homeless without close family or friends. Somehow a neighbor got suspicious, when the police officers investigated the house, the back yard, at least five bodies were buried in her back yard! She filed a missing person report with police on Nov. 7. George Deukmejian (second from left) in this undated photo. 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. She moves toward the front of the room, where a guard seated behind a metal desk tells her my table number. William Vicary spoke with Puente for the first time about two months after her arrest. Dorothea Puente, ne Dorothea Helen Gray, was born on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California. On her fourth day as a fugitive, she dropped by a dive bar near the motel, introducing herself as Donna Johansson to a retired carpenter named Charles Willgues. Drab and worn, the space, about the size of a single-car garage, has scuffed concrete flooring, dull fluorescent lighting and two windows; one faces a grassy prison courtyard, the other an interior hallway. During discussions that typically lasted two to three hours, she proved by turns defiant and self-pitying, disavowing she killed anyone while reserving words of sorrow for herself. I watch as she pushes away the empty plastic container of fried chicken strips and french fries that she finished eating earlier. Gillmouth's body remained unidentified for three years. See that one? she asks, nodding toward a gaunt, gray-haired woman with stooped posture. (Courtesy of The Sacramento Bee/Genaro Molina). He remains convinced of her innocence, arguing that her crimes were limited to filching the benefits checks of her tenants. 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 and her siblings were subsequently sent to an orphanage, where she was sexually abused. The authorities left the cause of death as undetermined, since there was such an excessive amount of both these drugs, and she was bedridden at the time. 3.23. [citation needed], In November 1985, Puente hired a man named Ismael Florez to install some wood paneling in her apartment. It had about $2,500, $3,000 in it. Cabrera shakes his head. According to Dailymail, seven years after the death of Puente, a man named William Harder had claimed to be her grandson. The inmates know who she is, the official says. Theres a waiting list of people who want to be in my room. (This is true in the broadest sense: The prisons population hovers around 4,000 from month to month, roughly double its capacity. Puente was acquitted in the poisoning death of his mother, Ruth Munroe, and Clausen, who testified at trial, regards the convicted killers every living day as a denigration of his mothers memory. (AP Photo/Walt Zeboski). Dorothea Puente fled to Los Angeles. Benjamin Fink, 55. They were met by Dorothea Puente, an elderly woman with big glasses, who repeated her story that Montoya was simply on vacation. Prosecutor John OMara, then as now head of the Sacramento District Attorneys homicide unit, recognized the difficulty of cultivating compassion for victims he dubbed the shadow people. He had the added burden of building his case with witnesses of the same ilk: alcoholics, the homeless, once and future convicts. In October 1988, discovering he no longer lived at the house, Moise began to hound Puente about his departure. The infamous home Dorothea Puente lived in is along F Street in Sacramento. 104-107. [6], In 1978, Gray was charged and convicted of illegally cashing thirty-four state and federal checks that belonged to her tenants. Familiar in name, she remained an enigma. Axel Johansson rates as Puentes favorite of her four ex-husbands, a presumably unwanted distinction. James Gallop, 62. "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. She had breached her federal probation by running a boardinghouse, yet admitted to the offense when asked. Discovery posts $217 MILLION loss in its streaming business after adding just 1.1M subscribers last quarter - despite HBO Max debuts like White Lotus and House of the Dragon, $113 BILLION on a war with no end in sight: DailyMail.com breaks down Joe Biden's enormous military package for Ukraine on the first anniversary of Vladimir Putin's brutal invasion, DAILY MAIL COMMENT:Make this Ukraine's last year of horror, 'Before the war, we saw Russians alive. I could see the joint., A vial of flurazepam found in Puentes home (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives). 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. She established her reputation as a caregiver, providing young women with a sanctuary from poverty and abuse without charge. The erstwhile prostitute had turned a new trick. Vera Faye Martin, 64. Shed give advice to all these young Mexican women who came to her when they were trying to get divorced., Puente poses next to California Gov. Her father died of tuberculosis when Puente was eight while her mother, an alcoholic, routinely abused her children and died in a motorcycle accident a year later. They were men and women who had skidded toward lifes edges. Dorothea Helen Puente (ne Gray; January 9, 1929 - March 27, 2011) was an American convicted serial killer.In the 1980s, she ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California, and murdered various elderly and mentally disabled boarders before cashing their Social Security checks. She married Roberto Puente in 1968, but the relationship dissolved sixteen months later. She was tried for killing seven people by drugging them with Dalmane and alcohol. An outreach counselor with Volunteers of America, she had visited Puente before placing him in her care. She never intended to show, I realize. 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. Some touch her shoulder. Her past crimes belied her pose of pure benevolence, yet she had submitted to the house and yard searches without protest. As most serial killers, Dorothea had a rough childhood. Puente claims she spent time in the 70s with California governors Pat Brown, Jerry Brown and Ronald Reagan. Mental health experts testified of Puente's abusive upbringing and how it motivated her to help the less fortunate. [citation needed], The defense called several witnesses, who showed Puente had a generous and caring side to her.
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