In her telling, after showering and dressing, she prays, recites the rosary and reads a few pages of the Bible, favoring Proverbs and Romans. When the police arrived, Puente told them that Monroe had been depressed due to her husbands terminal illness. But to the end of her life, Dorothea Puente insisted that she was innocent and that she had been taking good care of the people under her charge. I could see the joint., A vial of flurazepam found in Puentes home (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives). Im here until I die.. Puente was convicted of three of the murders, although the jury could not agree on the other six. Sacramento Co. By Remy Millisky / March 14, 2022 11:13 am EDT. Its about a mile from my building to here, she says. 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? The police dug up 78-year-old Leono Carpenter and then six more bodies. World's Most Evil Killers - Season 2, Episode 8 - Dorothea Puente I think they needed somebody and I was the easiest one around., Yet the most illuminating aspect of talking with Puente in prison arises from her silence about the dead. McFaul split from his young wife in 1948. 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. She would later kill them by poisoning or strangling them. Puente had a reputation for taking in people considered tough cases recovering alcoholics, drug addicts, the mentally ill, and the elderly. Soon after, Monroe died from an overdose of codeine and acetaminophen. Some of them began to disappear. Six months after her release, she left Riverside. Julio Santana dropped to his left knee and propped his right elbow on his . I ask why the cops targeted her. 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. 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Dorothea Puente, born Dorothea Helen Gray was born on January 9, 1929 in San Bernardino County, California. But the jury had a difficult time believe the matronly grandmother was capable of carrying out such menacing crimes. Dorothea - Dorothea (also spelled Dorothe, Dorotea or other variants) is a female given name from Greek (Drotha) meaning "God's Gift". Puente took in so-called shadow people people who were marginally homeless without close family or friends. Her evasive answersfirst claiming he had traveled to Mexico, then that he had returned and moved to Utahtripped Moises suspicion. A human leg and a badly discomposed foot were dug up separately in another part of the yard. The jury deliberated over a month and eventually found Puente guilty of three murders. His eyes popped wide. Once free of the throng, Cabrera stopped and watched the pair until they entered the hotel. She played the stoic in court, her face as frozen as her mug shot. In 1998, Puente began corresponding with Shane Bugbee. How many other boardinghouses have one person die? I wonder what she wants when death does come. The psychologist morphed into a prophet with the discovery of seven bodies in Puentes backyard in November 1988. On the other hand, when these people, as could be expected, would act upat that point, she snapped and decided to kill them., The Puente trial dragged on for five months, with more than 150 witnesses, thousands of pieces of evidence and unrelenting media scrutiny. 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. Given Montoyas history as a transient, his disappearance would have escaped notice without the persistence of Judy Moise. For five days, Dorothea Puente was on the lam. Dorothea was convicted of three out of nine murder counts and sentenced to life in prison in August of 1993. 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. My question about the incident draws an explanation akin to the one Puente gave a county judge nearly a half century earlier: I was there visiting a friend when the cops came. She refuses to elaborate. 'The contents might be what you'd never expected. The seven tenants who had lived at 1426 F Street died with a variety of drugs in their bodies: anticonvulsants, antidepressants, antipsychotics, painkillers, tranquilizers. The wanted bulletin for, I think she truly wanted to rehabilitate [her tenants] as she could not the people in her own family, psychiatrist William Vicary says. The couple, Barbara Holmes and Tom Williams, renovated the . The infamous home Dorothea Puente lived in is along F Street in Sacramento. As the search expanded, cabin fever seized Puente. She also mentions undergoing major cancer surgery in 1961 to remove her reproductive organs and part of her intestines and stomach. After sixteen months, the couple separated, with Gray citing domestic abuse. But there were seven dead bodies in your yard. Inmates enter one at a time at irregular intervals through a gray metal door along the rear wall. But while digging a second hole, Wilson heard a muted thud as his blade struck something hard three feet down. Witnesses, including her long-lost daughter, testified how Puente had helped them in their youth and guided them to successful careers. She marks much of the day reading mind-candy fictionshes a fan of John Grisham and Dan Brownand watching TV; her favorite prime-time shows include CSI, Criminal Minds and Cold Case. Cooking with a Serial Killer Recipes from Dorothea Puente - Goodreads 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 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.. The visitors hall at the Central California Womens Facility in Chowchilla brings to mind a church social as hosted for state convicts. Charged with a total of nine murders, Puente was flown back to Sacramento. She was just pure evil, Ballenger says. The three men carried shovels as they fanned out across the backyard of the two-story Victorian at 1426 F Street. 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. He escorted her out of the propertys wrought-iron front gate, a moment captured in a photo lying on the conference table. I just did, she says. Puente's crimes were featured on the Netflix show . But their marriage was brief only three years and hinted at trouble beneath the surface. 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. I was bewildered as to what in the world was going on with all these people in her yard.. Her statement hangs between us. I watch the scenes unfold from table No. Police and forensics experts swarmed Puentes property the next morning. Shes not hurting there in prison, he says. Dorothea Puente, Sacramento's most notorious female serial killer The two would continue to have a turbulent relationship, and Gray filed a restraining order in 1975. [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]. Scant evidence exists to suggest she socialized with Reaganwhen he divorced Wyman, Puente was 20 years old and living in the Bay Areaany more than she danced with the Rockettes. The serial killer shuffles into the room with a chickens hitched gait. Time has deepened the creases between her potato-like nose and dumpling cheeks, and her blanched skin has slackened at the neck. Dorothea Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray in Redlands, California, on January 9, 1929. Intense news coverage led to Puentes trial moving to Monterey. She sits erect, legs crossed at the ankles and tucked beneath her chair. 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. Puente has told me during previous meetings that her case still attracts worldwide attention, and that she recently spurned interview requests from a British newspaper and an Australian TV station. 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. A state psychologist who evaluated Puente before her release from prison in 1985 diagnosed her as schizophrenic. 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. 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. On her way back, she insisted to reporters that she hadnt killed anyone, claiming: I used to be a very good person at one time.. Do not sell or share my personal information. As it happened, her shovel was used to dig the hole that yielded a human leg bone, a decomposed foot inside a dark dress shoe and what looked like pieces of tattered fabric that in fact were rotting flesh. I stroll up the paved outdoor path that runs between the check-in station and the visitors hall, a walkway flanked with manicured rose bushes of the sort Puente once might have planted and pruned. First off, I was getting the checks. It occurs to me that if I were unaware of her past and talking with her outside of prison, she could come across as the little old lady next door. Gawkers gather outside 1426 F St. (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives), Domestic bliss and her maternal instinct failed to take root. 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. Some of the bodies were mummified in cloth, bed sheets and duct tape. When she was eight her father died of tuberculosis. Setting his feet, he grabbed hold of the object and, with a violent jerk, loosed it from the earths grip. He remains convinced of her innocence, arguing that her crimes were limited to filching the benefits checks of her tenants. Old bones sometimes turned up in downtown and midtown yards, vestiges of the early 20th century, when families unable to afford a cemetery plot interred loved ones on their property. 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. A 22-year-old soldier who had returned to the U.S. from the Pacific after World War II, he married Dorothea in 1945, and they moved to Gardnerville, Nevada to start a family. Multiple murder suspect Dorothea Montalvo Puente, right, is brought back to Sacramento from the LA area in the early morning hours of November 17, 1988. The unreliable narrator breaks the hush. Judy Moise, an outreach counselor with Volunteers of America, became suspicious when Montoya vanished.