Dorothea Puente, also known as the Death House Landlady, was a little-old-lady serial killer who preyed on the elderly and drug-addicted men and women of Sacramento, CA in the 1980s. A manhunt ensued for the 59-year-old woman, and she was eventually foundfour days later at a California motel. Like us on Facebook atwww.facebook.com/TheSunUSand follow us from our main Twitter account at@TheSunUS, 2020 THE SUN, US, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED | TERMS OF USE | PRIVACY | YOUR AD CHOICES | SITEMAP, Dorothea Puente's 1993 trial was heavily covered by the media. Everson Gillmouth, 77. There, the former prostitute turned back to a life of crime. In 1948, she was convicted of forgery and sent to prison for four months, before working as a prostitute for years and then being arrested for running a brothel in 1960. This story has been shared 122,375 times. The prosecution stated that Puente used sleeping pills to drug her tenants, suffocated them, and then hired convicts to bury them in the yard. 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. Puente struck out on her own when she was 16. MURDERER Dorothea Puente was charged and convicted of various killings where she victimized the elderly. However, it would be three more years before authorities could identify the body as one of the tenants in Dorothea Puentes house. It was Montoya's disappearance that led to Puente's downfall. ", Between 1985 and 1988, Puente is believed to have murdered at least seven people who lived at her boarding house. Puente ran a boarding house on F Street in downtown Sacramento in the 1980s and was convicted of drugging, killing and burying her tenants in the backyard. It wasn't the first tip authorities had gotten about Puente, either. Her time in prison was spent visiting the prison chapel, reading John Grisham books, and watching TV. "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? Gray-haired landlady, Dorothea Puente, made headlines as one of the most shocking serial killers in Sacramento history. [citation needed], Granting a change of venue motion filed by Puente's lawyers, Kevin Clymo and Peter Vlautin III, a judge transferred the trial to Monterey County. He and Puente struck up a pen pal relationship while she was in prison and he fell in love. Puente and her siblings were subsequently sent to an orphanage, where she was sexually abused. Witnesses, including her long-lost daughter, testified how Puente had helped them in their youth and guided them to successful careers. She was the sixth of seven children but didn't grow up in a stable family environment. She spent her teen years bouncing between foster homes and orphanages, and was allegedly sexually abused at one point, according to a 2011 . Miller was an Army veteran and Puente used Miller's veteran identification card to get medical treatment. During this period, parole agents visited Puente at least fifteen times; though she had been ordered to keep away from the elderly and refrain from handling government checks, no violations were ever noted. Next, Dorothea Puente went to San Francisco, where she married her second husband, Axel Bren Johansson, in 1952. Some social workers and doctors, aware of the problem, steered their clients and patients away from Dorothea, but officially absolutely nothing was done.". But in fact, it's believed that Puente murdered Gillmouth in late November or early December 1985. In the 1980s, Puente ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California, killing nine of her elderly and mentally disabled boarders. Dorothea Puente, infamously known as the "Death House Lady," was responsible for the deaths of nine elderly and mentally disabled individuals, plus an additional unconfirmed six people (via Crime Museum).From April 1982 through November 1988, Puente ran a boarding house where she stole from her tenants to the tune of $5,000/month (via Murderpedia), before she would kill them with drug overdoses. The following year, she died in a motorcycle accident. 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. The jury was deadlocked eleven to one for conviction on all counts, and the lone holdout finally agreed to a conviction of two first-degree murder counts, including special circumstances, and one second-degree murder count. When Dorothea Puente was 17 years old, she married 22-year-old GI Fred McFaul, and they moved to Gardnerville, Nevada. An officer visited the home and spoke with Puente as well as a tenant while in Puente's presence. Puente, who took in people who were older, disabled, or otherwise ailing, would steal their Social Security and benefits checks and poison them by lacing their food with prescription medicine, according to The Los Angeles Times. They agreed to let her go. I dont think anyone would pick this kind of life. For five days, Dorothea Puente was on the lam. Puente was sentenced to five years for "drugging elderly people and stealing their benefit checks" on August 19, 1982. But after installing a concrete slab in the boarding house basement and one over the foundation of the garage, "Chief" disappeared. Hed been referred to Dorothea Puentes house because of her sterling reputation welcoming people like him. For a while, social workers looked past what they considered to be Puente's "eccentricity" and admired her for dealing with "tough cases." & Brucato, Gary, Ph.D., The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books), pp. According to Sactown Magazine, the jury deliberated for 24 days, "the longest deliberation in a murder case in state history," and convicted Puente on three out of the nine killings in August 1993. She denied everything.. Ruth Munroe, 61. She changed her public image to that of a respectable older matron by putting on vintage clothing, wearing large granny glasses, and letting her hair turn gray. There, Puente was described as having an unstable personality, and she was prescribed an antipsychotic for the first time. Once there, Puente drugged him. Genaro Molina/Sacramento Bee/MCT/Getty Images. Dorothea Puente (birth name Dorothea Gray) was born in 1929 in Redlands, California. The pensioner contacted local law enforcement who then quickly arrested Puente. 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. I can't eat this any more! But looks can be extremely deceiving and, in this case, the innocuous landlady was actually a terrifying serial killer who committed at least nine murders inside her boarding house in Sacramento,Californiathroughout the 1980s. Puente took in so-called shadow people people who were marginally homeless without close family or friends. 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. Chief later dismantled a garage in the backyard and installed a fresh concrete slab there as well. During this time, according to Radford University, Puente was arrested for vagrancy, which was the charge often levied against sex workers. The union lasted just two years. [17] The result was Cooking with a Serial Killer (2004),[18] which included a lengthy interview, almost fifty recipes, and various pieces of prison art sent to Bugbee by the convicted murderer. She created a fake persona, calling herself "Teya Singoalla Neyaarda", a Muslim woman of Egyptian and Israeli descent. At one moment, he was said to be in Utah, while at another, she claimed that he went back to Mexico, despite the fact that he was from Costa Rica, writes LARB. 'She Was Just Pure Evil': How Dorothea Puente, 'The Death House Landlady,' Got Caught. The police returned and searched the house, finding nothing, so they asked permission to dig up the garden so they could tell the social worker theyve done all they can. Investigators opened the box and found the badly decomposed and unidentifiable body of an elderly man inside. Sactown Magazine reports that Puente "granted few interviews [after the trial], observing a self-imposed gag order," and she maintained her innocence to her death, claiming that all the residents had died of natural causes. She never flinched. Another tenant, John Sharp, backed her up. Puente and her family moved to Los Angeles in the 1930s to be closer to a veterans' hospital, but her father's condition continued to deteriorate. Together, they moved back to Sacramento. letter to change from full time to prn; bstrong charity rating; Application. Those who stayed at the boarding house signed their checks directly over to her, while Puente claimed that she was doing this to protect the residents. 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. Puente had become interested in him after learning he received disability checks, The Los Angeles Times reported. According to Serial Killer Timelines by Chris McNab, after her first marriage ended, Puente became involved in criminal activity. Gillmouth's body remained unidentified for three years. The social workers knew that Puente had a tendency to exaggerate, but they didn't realize that she was also pretending to be a doctor. Prosecutors said that Puente was one of the most cold and calculating female killers the country had ever seen.. Another of the victims was Everson Gillmouth, a 77-year-old retiree, who had developed a pen pal relationship with Puente when she was in prison. Some reports say that McFaul died of a heart attack, while others state that he left Puente, possibly after she had a miscarriage. Judy Moise, an outreach counselor with Volunteers of America, became suspicious when Montoya vanished. In Female Serial Killers, Vronsky writes how Puente's patients often ended up in the hospital, and Puente's name kept coming up to the same doctor who treated the patients. Get an all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! Gray assumed the identity of "Sharon Johansson", hiding her delinquent behavior by portraying herself as a devout Christian woman. Although Puente was eventually charged with the murder of nine individuals, it's likely that there were more victims. Due to there being no evidence to link her to the body, she was allowed to leave but managed to flee all the way to Los Angeles, where she was found five days later when a man in a bar recognized her from TV. Dorothea Puente was charged with the murders of the seven individuals whose bodies were found in her backyard, as well as the murders of Ruth Monroe and Everson Gillmouth, whose bodyremained unidentified until police connected itto Puente. She took in vulnerable elderly tenants, many of whom struggled with addiction or mental illness, and targeted those "without strong social networks. By 1948, McFaul asked for a divorce and Puente drifted south to California. Gillmouth lived in Oregon, and when Puente was released after serving three of her five years, he drove out to pick her up at her halfway house in Fresno. The Untold Truth Of Dorothea Puente, The Death House Landlady, drugging elderly people and stealing their benefit checks, remained unidentified until police connected it. The docuseries chronicled Dorothea Puente's time as a California landlord who drugged and murdered her tenants. 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. In 1961, Johansson had Gray briefly committed to DeWitt State Hospital after a binge of drinking, lying, criminal behavior, and suicide attempts. After leaving Roberto, Puente married Pedro Angel Montalvo, but the marriage only lasted a week. She asked Florez to build a 6-by-3-by-2-foot box to store "books and other items". [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. She was given five years' probation and ordered to pay $4,000 in restitution. Upon apprehension, she was charged with a total of nine murders. It wasnt until 1988 that suspicions first arose about Puente, after one of her tenants, 52-year old Alvaro Montoya, went missing. This is the untold truth of Dorothea Puente, the Death House Landlady. Investigators soon found the decomposing body of an elderly man inside. With her chiffon dresses, thick-rimmed glasses, grey hair and litter of kittens, Dorothea Puente looked like a sweet old lady even insisting to some, Call me Grandma.. However, according to the Los Angeles Times, there are conflicting reports about Puente's early life, with some accounts claiming that she was one out of 18 children. [6], Following her divorce, Gray focused on running a boarding house located at 21st and F streets in Sacramento. That is the question. Amanda Sedlak-Hevener. Monroe had just moved in with Puente when she died of an overdose but a coroner couldn't determine if it was homicide or suicide,The Los Angeles Times reported in 1993. She was eventually let go, although the next day investigators converged on the home to continue searching the backyard. In 1967, she attempted to serve him with a divorce petition[inconsistent], but Puente fled to Mexico; the divorce wouldn't be finalized until 1973. 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