Every Town - Sacramento, CA - Death House Landlady - Dorothea Puente

Episode Date: September 12, 2021

To her neighbors, Dorothea Puente seemed almost saint-like. She opened her home to shelter society’s outcasts: the homeless, the mentally-ill, alcoholics, drug addicts, and even frail, sickly old people. She was known to provide meals and medical care for her marginalized tenants, gave out backyard vegetables to her neighbors, and adopted stray cats. How could her neighbors not admire the kind woman who also contributed money for political campaigns and charitable endeavors? But Dorothia’s Sacramento, California community was rocked in 1988 when it was discovered that on the grounds of her property was a mass grave of elderly tenants she murdered. At the age of 60, Dorothea gained notoriety as the “Death House Landlady.”💥 Watch This Episode On Youtube Here: https://www.youtube.com/scarymysteries💥 Exclusive Content Here: https://www.patreon.com/scarymysteries 💥 More Creepy Podcasts From Us: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1235579💥 Contact Us [e-mail]  Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you love true crime, grab your favorite mug and pour yourself a dose of creepy true crime every single morning with a morning cup of murder. This short daily show is the perfect podcast to incorporate into your morning routine because in less than 15 minutes, you'll hear about a true crime that took place on a day's date in history. Each day's dark history lesson will kickstart your morning with intriguing tales of murder, abduction, serial killers, cults, and everything in between.

With over 20 million downloads, Morning Cup of Murder has something for every true crime lover. One listener describes the show as a small package with a powerful punch of crime. Another writes that the show is an absolute delight in the morning. Support yourself a piping hot cup of murder every single morning with Morning Cup of Murder. Find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every town has a dark side. Today we head to Sacramento, California, where we learn about Dorothea Puente, also known as the Death House Landlady, who was responsible for the murders of several elderly people. To her neighbors, Dorothea Puente, seemed almost saint-like.

She opened her home to shelter society's outcast, the homeless, mentally ill, the alcoholics, drug addicts, and even frail, sickly, elderly people. She was known to provide meals and medical care for her marginalized tenants, gave out backyard vegetables to her neighbors, and adopted stray cats. How could her neighbors not admire the kind of woman who also contributed money for political campaigns and charitable endeavors? But Dorothea's Sacramento-California community was rocked in 1988 when it was discovered that on the grounds of her property

was a mass grave of elderly tenants she had murdered. At the age of 60, Dorothea gained notoriety as the Death House landlady. Hi, I'm Andrew Fitzgerald, and welcome to this week's episode of Everytown. Criminal Justice historian Peter Vronsky is reported that nearly one and 16 serial killers apprehended in America since 1820 was female.

Adding to that statistic was Dorothea Puente, who died in jail an octogenarian, serving time for the crime she had committed in the 1980s. This is the story of the Death House landlady, an incredible tale which, like a pendulum, can evoke a spectrum of emotions, everything from anger to sympathy. Earlier in her life, Dorothea had done at least four stints in jail for various offenses. But in August of 1993, she faced her most serious conviction, guilty of three murders. Dorothea was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, despite pleading innocent before the court. She was incarcerated for two decades and died behind bars at the age of 82. The life of Sacramento's most notorious female murderer truly ended miserably,

just like how her life had started. Dorothea, Helen Gray, was the sixth of the seven children of Jesse James Gray and Trudy Mays Yates. She was born on January 9, 1929, in Redland, San Bernardino County in California, and she was soon plunged into life's dark realities. Born to a dysfunctional family, and having endured a deeply painful childhood, her family lived in poverty, with both parents working as cotton pickers. Perhaps in order to make both ends meet, Trudy also engaged in prostitution. The young Dorothea grew up devoid both of material comforts and parental nurturing.

James and Trudy drowned themselves in alcohol, creating a nightmarish environment for their daughter. Her father attempted to commit suicide in front of her while her alcoholic mother abused her children. At the age of eight, Dorothea lost her father due to tuberculosis. A year later, her mother abandoned her and her siblings, only to die in a motorcycle accident in 1938 when Dorothea was just nine years old. One can easily grasp the long-lasting effects of such trauma on a child. Sadly, the turmoil didn't end there. Dorothya was sent to an orphanage where she was sexually abused until relatives from Fresno, California took her in.

But she didn't last long with them. Through her early teens, she hopped around from one relative to another and a foster homes between Napa and Los Angeles. Robbed of any sense of a normal childhood, she fabricated her background story, telling anyone that she was one of the 18 children born and raised in Mexico. From then on, the line that separated reality from fantasy began to blur for the young woman. After World War II, at 16 years old, Dorothea ventured on her own to Olympia Washington

and earned money working as a prostitute. A striking girl with soft blue eyes, flaxen hair and a beautiful smile, she instantly attracted 22-year-old Fred McFall, a U.S. soldier who had just returned home from the Pacific. They got married in 1945 and started a family in Gardnerville, Nevada, but it was the first of Dorothea's four unsuccessful marriages. In 1946, she gave birth to a daughter, and then another less than a year later. But Dorothea, who herself had been deprived of a mother's nurturing love, felt no maternal instinct for her children. So, she sent one of her daughters off to her relatives in Sacramento and put the other up for adoption.

She and Fred split up in 1948. This prompted Dorothea to move to San Bernardino where she committed her first crime, floating a check under her false name. She was caught and convicted, but paroled six months later, and briefly thereafter, she became pregnant after a one-night stand with a stranger. She then gave birth to another girl, but again placed the baby up for adoption. At the age of 23, she then gave marriage a second try, this time with a Swedish man named Axel Johansson, whom she had met in San Francisco.

There was a chaotic marriage, but it lasted 14 years, longer than her three other marriages combined. Their union was marred by frequent quarrels and separations caused by Dorothy. D'Eas proclivity for drinking, gambling, and getting physical with other men. In fact, D'Orthea was arrested in 1960 for offering to perform fallacious on an undercover cop, posing as a trucker in a brothel she ran on Fulton Avenue in Sacramento. As a consequence, she served 90 days in county lockup. Following her release, she hit the streets only to be picked up shortly after for vagrancy and given a 90-day jail sentence.

Her behavior led Axel to commit Dorothea to a psychiatric ward in 1961, where doctors placed her on antipsychotic medication. Their marriage ended in a divorce in 1966, initiated by Axel. Now on her own, Dorothea managed to survive by working as a nurse's aide in private homes caring for the disabled and elderly. She also found work managing boarding houses. In 1968, she married a Mexican immigrant 16 years her junior named Roberto Puente. It said that he wasn't exactly enamored with his new wife, but was more interested in her money

in American citizenship. The one-sided union was doomed from the start, with Roberto unwilling to remain faithful to Dorothea. Thus, they separated in 1969. At the time, Dorothea was running an unauthorized rehabilitation program for alcoholics, and decided to embark on her biggest project. She took over a three-story 16-bedroom care home at 2100 F Street in Sacramento, though she still failed to pursue a license. The venture thrived at the start, as Dorothea provided, what appeared to be the best compassionate care to the homeless and destitute. She gained the community's support by opening the home at Easter and Christmas to lavishly entertain not only her tenant in the neighborhood's impoverished people, but also the social workers who endorsement would ensure her success.

She generously donated money to charities and various politician campaigns, making her business appear legitimate, and gaining her access to the elite circles of Sacramento Society. Her sprawling home was adorned with framed photos of Dorothea standing side by side California's former governors, Jerry Brown and George Duke Magian, and Bishop Francis Quinn. Her strong rapport with the social workers who admired her willingness to take care of alcoholics, drug addicts, and mentally troubled people, fueled her business and provided steady revenue. Finally, financially secure, she tried to find happiness and love again, by marrying Pedro Montalvo in 1976. But Pedro often turned to her.

turned physically abusive when under the influence of alcohol, and the marriage ended after just a few months. She distracted herself by going to bars and scamming older men who were receiving government benefits. Dorothea's M.O. was simple. She seduced her victims, stole their security checks, and cashed them by forging their signatures. The plan worked well for a while, but eventually she was caught in charge with 34 counts of treasury fraud. She was then arrested for the scam and received five years federal probation, the terms of which forbid her from operating a boarding house. This obstacle didn't dampen the woman's efforts to make money, though. In 1981, she began leasing an upstairs room at 1426 F Street in downtown Sacramento and a house that had enough space

to accommodate many people. It was in this turn-of-the-century Victorian house that Dorothea's criminal acts escalated to a reprehensible level in the six-year period between 1982 and 88. Dorothea was initially a border at the house, but eventually she not only became a landlady, but also an in-home caregiver to her elderly tenants. For a few weeks, she shared the room with 61-year-old Ruth Monroe, who along with Dorothea was running the Round Corner Tavern in Sacramento's Midtown in late 1981. By the spring of 82, Ruth's husband was hospitalized due to terminal cancer, so she moved in with Dorothea to save money. Two weeks later, Ruth's son William visited her, and was horrified to find his mother, pallid and feeble, and sipping cremed de menth,

though she typically never drank alcohol. The sick woman said Dorothea had given her the drink to calm her down. Four days after, Ruth died and her family was shocked by the coroner's report stating that Ruth committed suicide by overdosing on codeine and astaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. Apparently, the authorities believed Dorothea's story that Ruth killed herself due to her depression over her husband's failing health. However, Ruth's family suspected Dorothea poisoned her, and the suspicions were solidified. when they discovered that she had drained thousands of dollars belonging to Ruth from the two women's joint business bank account.

Ruth's family appealed to authorities to re-examine her death, but investigators upheld the suicide ruling, thinking that she could get away with her new scheme. Dorothea lowered more elderly people that she could exploit under the guise of caring for them. She drugged three women with tranquilizers to steal their checks, money, and valuable. 74-year-old pensioner Malcolm McKenzie fell prey to Dorothy's lore at the zebra club in Midtown where she slipped a heavy sedative into his drink.

She joined Malcolm in his apartment and pocketed his checks and cash. Before leaving, she slipped a diamond ring off his pinky. This time, Dorothea wasn't as lucky. On August 18th of 82, she was convicted of three children. charges of theft and was sentenced to five years in jail, but was released after three years on good behavior. She returned to Sacramento, with her federal probation extended to 1990 due to the state conviction. When she was released from prison, a new man in her life met her in his 1980 Red Ford Pickup. He was Everson Gilmouth, a 77-year-old retiree from Oregon,

whom Dorothea had struck up a written correspondence with while in jail. She wanted money and respectability, and Everson offered both. Their relationship quickly became intimate, and they were soon making wedding plans. Emerson opened a joint bank account for them, and soon after, Dorothea returned to the Victorian house on F Street and asked her former landlord if she could rent the whole house for $600 a month, They obliged, so finally in 1985, her dream of running her own boarding house had become a reality. Later that year, Dorothea hired local handyman Ismail Flores to do some work on the house.

For his labor, and an additional 800, Flores bought a red Ford pickup truck in good condition from Dorothea, who said her boyfriend from Los Angeles didn't need the vehicle any longer. Happily, the handyman obliged to do another job for, constructing a wooden box six feet long, three feet wide, and two feet deep. She said it was a storage box for books and other items, but the strange dimensions made Flores wonder. When he returned the next day, the box was already filled and nailed shut. Dorothea asked Flores a final favor to help her transport this box. to a storage depot. Using the red truck, they drove in the direction of the depot, but Dorothea asked Flores to stop

just off the garden highway in Sutter County. They then dumped the box by the riverbank, and Dorothea explained that the contents were mainly junk and should have been discarded anyway. But on January 1, 1987, two fishermen received a ghastly New Year's surprise when they saw the foul-smelling wooden box sitting about three feet from the riverbank. They immediately informed the police, who were horrified by what they found inside. A badly decomposed an unidentifiable body of an elderly man with nothing on but his underwear, wrapped in a white bed sheet, and bound with black electrical tape.

The investigators added the dead body as a John Doe to their list of open homicide cases. It took him three years to discover the identity, that of Everson Gilmouth, Dorothea's doomed jailhouse pen-pal. So how did life continue on for Dorothea after she eliminated the man who was instrumental in realizing her dream of owning a boarding house? The cunning woman continued to collect Everson's pension and wrote letters to his family telling them that his ill health prevented him from contacting and seeing them. Dorothea took in more tenants whose old age made them vulnerable to their landlady's devious scheme. She would collect their mail and pocket their money from Social Security benefits. During this period, parole agents visited Dorothea at least 15 times, ordering her to stay away from the elderly and refrain from handling government checks.

However, no violations were ever noted by the officers. Then more mysterious disappearances occurred one after another and were all connected to the woman. On August 19, 1986, her 77-year-old tenant, Betty Palmer, didn't return from a doctor's appointment. Dorothea was found in possession of Betty's identification card weeks later, having swapped out Betty's photo with her own so she could collect Betty's benefits. In February of 87, 78-year-old Leona Carpenter was placed in Dorothea's care after being discharged from the hospital. Leona vanished two weeks later and was never heard from again. Other tenants at the boarding house suffered the same fate. 62-year-old James Gallup, who had recently undergone an operation to remove a brain tumor, went missing in July of 87.

Three months later, 62-year-old Vera Martin moved into the house and was never seen again. In February of 1988, 52-year-old Alberto Montoya, who suffered from psychosis, was entrusted by social worker Judy Moyes to Dorothy's care. He was one of the many clients the social worker sent there, but when Judy and the other tenants in the boarding house noticed the scarcity of Alberto was present, who hadn't been seen since August of 1988. Dorothea told them he left from Mexico to visit his family. The social worker grew suspicious, so she went to police,

and reported Alberto missing on November 7, 1988. Judy's actions was the key that finally opened the door of horrors that exposed the evils of the Death House landlady. Unknown to Dorothea, her neighbors had noticed odd activities on her property, In particular, when she'd hired a homeless alcoholic man named Chief, who Dorothea claimed she brought in to be her handyman. The neighbors became more suspicious when she asked Chief to remove the soil and garbage on the property and dig in the basement.

Its floor was then covered with a concrete slab, while Chief also demolished the backyard garage and installed a fresh concrete slab there as well. After this, he disappeared. Neighbors also complained of the foul smell emanating from the boarding house. There was a sick smell in the air, and there were a lot of flies in the area, a resident in the area disclosed. Following Judy's report about missing Alberta, a cop interviewed Dorothea and her tenant, John Sharp, who corroborated his landlady's story that Alberto had gone home to Mexico. But before the authorities left, John gave the cop a note that said,

She's making me lie for her. He later divulged unsettling details about life inside the house. The day of Revelation came on November 11th when Sacramento PD homicide detectives, John Cabrera and Terry Brown, and federal probation agent Jim Wilson, went to the boarding house at 1426 F Street, carrying shovels with them. After speaking with Dorothea about Alberto,

they began digging in the backyard while she watched from the second-story porch. Minutes later, they struck something hard, three feet down, that resembled a tree root. But when it was loosened from the earth's grip, it turned out to be a human leg bone and decomposed foot. The following day, the police uncovered the remains of six more bodies. Some were in an almost mummified state, wrapped tight with cloth, bed sheets, and duct tape.

One had a missing head, hands, and feet. The bodies unearthed were those of Dorothea's tenants, four women and three men between 52 to 79 years old. The landlady wasn't initially considered a suspect, and she made a bold move by trying to escape to L.A., where she befriended an elderly pensioner at a bar. Dorothea's hope that her scheme would work with the old man was dashed when he recognized her from TV reports as a suspect in multiple murders. He notified authorities about the woman's whereabouts when she was arrested on November 17, 1988,

at the Royal Viking Hotel in downtown L.A. Police later accused Dorothea of murdering her victims in order to collect their Social Security checks, a scheme that netted her more than $5,000 a month Forensic testing wasn't able to determine a definitive cause of death in any of the victims. However, the seven tenants all die with a variety of drugs in their bodies, antidepressants, antipsychotics, painkillers, and tranquilizers. The lone drug present in all of their systems was the sedative Dalmain.

But the deathhouse lady, facing her judgment day, was now inevitable. On June 19, 1990, a judge ruled that Dorothea Puente would stand trial on nine counts of murder. After months of delay, the hearing commenced on February 9, 1993. A total of 153 witnesses were heard, and 3,500 pages of documents were presented as evidence during a long trial that dragged on until July 15th the following year. The jury deliberated for weeks, pressured by the knowledge. that the prosecution was seeking the death penalty. Finally, on August 2nd, the 12-member jury handed over their much-anticipated verdict. Dorothea was guilty of three murders, but the jury

couldn't agree on the other six murder charges. They were also deadlocked 7 to 5 for life, prompting the judge to declare a mistrial when the jury said further deliberations wouldn't change their minds. On December 11, 1993, Dorothea, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and was incarcerated at Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla, California. She died of natural causes on March 27, 2011 at age 82. In one rare interview, Dorothea said that she attended services at the prison chapel, but avoided joining intimate worship groups. I don't feel like confessing my sins to anyone. That's between me and God, she said sharply.

Until her last breath, Dorothea Puente maintained her innocence, saying without batting an eyelash, I'm not guilty. So that's it for this week's episode of every town. Tune in next week for another episode filled with scary, strange, and mysterious stories. And who knows, maybe your town will be next.