Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - She's a Serial Killer - The Dorothea Puente Story

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

In the 1980s, Dorothea Puente operated a boarding house in Sacramento, California, where she presented herself as a kind, grandmotherly figure who cared for "shadow people"—the elderly, alcoholics, and the mentally disabled who had no one else to look after them. In reality, she was a cold and calculating serial killer who drugged her vulnerable tenants with sedatives, strangled or suffocated them, and then buried their bodies in her backyard to continue cashing their Social Security checks.

So this old woman is about to kill a lot of people. Now, the woman's name is Dorothea, and Dorothea is 53 when all this starts, and she's living in California. Here's the thing about Dorothea. She really loves money, and she seems to be willing to do all kinds of illegal things to get it. Like she forges people's checks, she recruits girls for prostitution, so basically she becomes a pimp. And because all that, she's been in jail more than once.

But now she's out. But of course, she's not going to give up her life of committing crimes. No, no, no. She is determined to make as much money as possible. So one night, in 1982, she goes out to a local bar. And there, she meets this older guy, and they hit it off, and they have a couple of drinks. And after some time, they decide to leave and go back to his apartment. Once they're there, they keep drinking.

But when the guy isn't looking, Dorothea slips a heavy seat. sedative into his drink and he drinks it and soon he's knocked out. And that is when Dorothea steals a bunch of his things. She steals his money, his jewelry, everything she can take. Then she leaves. Later, the guy wakes up and he realizes that he's been robbed and he reports her to the police. And so bam, Dorothea gets arrested and she gets convicted and she sentenced to five years in prison. Three years later, in 1985, she gets out on parole. And now she could clean up her act and stop committing all these crimes, but that's not what she's going to do.

Because again, she's determined to make as much money as possible. In fact, she's going to go even bigger this time. So she comes up with this insane idea. She's going to open a boarding house. This would be a place for like homeless people or alcoholics or people struggling with mental disabilities, vulnerable people with very little support. So she'll open this boarding house

and these people will come and live with her. And she'll give them a room and meals and basic care and then she's gonna scam them. So she gets to work on this idea. She rents this big house in Sacramento with several floors and she starts taking vulnerable people in as tenants. Now normally a boarding house like hers

should be licensed, usually run by, like trained nurses or certified caregivers. But Dorothea, she ain't got time for all that certification nonsense. Instead, she just lies to everyone and tells them that she's a registered nurse. And she lies to the tenants of her boarding house. She even lies to the social workers who come by to check on the condition of things. And she comes across as like a very nice older woman. So people believe her.

And because everyone believes her, Dorothea keeps bringing in more and more new tenants. until her house is full of people. And here is where she starts scamming them. Because a lot of these tenants, they receive Social Security checks from the government, for one reason or another. Either they're elderly or they're mentally disabled or what have you. And because Dorothea is now their caretaker, those checks are signed over to her as payment for housing and food and stuff.

And she's supposed to spend the Social Security checks on these people. So she starts thinking, well, If I kill some of these tenants, their checks will still come, but I won't have to spend the money on them because they'll be dead. And the sad reality is, she knows that a lot of these tenants are homeless or mentally unwell, so if they suddenly go missing, no one's going to notice. So she targets her first victim in this scheme. This guy, Everson. Everson is an older man who lives with Dorothea because he's actually her boyfriend. Now, Everson typically receives around $700 a month from Social Security and pension benefits.

And Dorothea knows this, and she wants all that money to herself. So she goes and poisons him, and he, unfortunately, dies. Then, Dorothea places his body in a wooden box, and she dumps it in a local river. After that, she starts taking all his money. She writes checks from his account. she forges documents to sell his truck and his trailer, and she, of course, redirects his Social Security benefits to herself. So now she consistently has his $700 checks coming to her every month.

Now, eventually, a fisherman finds Everson's body in that river. But it's so badly decomposed that police can't determine the exact cause of death, which means they can't charge anyone with any crimes, which means Dorothea just got away with killing someone. So she continues scheming her tenants and looking for the next person that she's going to murder. And the next year in 1986, she finds that person. This woman, Betty. So Betty moves into Dorothea's boarding house and she's got some mental health issues going on.

So she receives multiple benefits checks each month, benefits checks that Dorothea now wants. So about a year after she moves in, Dorothea drugs her and ends up poisoning her. Then she manipulates people around her to help her bury Betty's body in her front yard. And these people obviously don't know that they're helping bury a human body. They just think that they're helping Dorothea, this sweet old woman, dig to bury trash or check sewer lines or whatever lie she tells them. So from here, she keeps the scheme going. She'll target a tenant who gets steady benefits checks, then she'll poison them, then she'll manipulate someone into digging a grave in the yard, then she'll bury the body.

And she does this over and over and over again. And several months go by. And by this point, she's killed an estimated eight people, all while collecting benefits from most of them. And of course, this is bringing in a lot of money for her. I mean, in total, she's made around $100,000 from all this. And what does she do with all this money? Well, she spends it. She goes shopping and she buys herself nice clothes and she gets herself a bit of plastic surgery.

She's always going out to bars and buying drinks for people like, drinks are on me! But she also gives to charities a lot and funds scholarships and donates to local politicians. Because she's trying to maintain this image of this sweet, charitable, old woman. And as ridiculous as this sounds, it actually works, because no one suspects her of anything. So it seems like she can just keep killing people and collecting their checks for as long as she wants. This is your fix. I'm your host, Stasi Schroeder. Welcome to Tell Me Lies, the official podcast. What's the most unhinged thing of season three? Stephen, because he's so evil. I do think he is misunderstood.

You see everyone based consequences. It's intoxicating. The writers just know how to trick. Yeah, there's always a twist in this show. Tell Me Lies, the official podcast, January 6th, and stream the new season of Tell Me Lies, January 13 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus. Until.

Two years pass, and it's now 1988. And a local social worker, she's been hearing a lot of good things lately about Dorothea's boarding home. So she recommends it to this guy, Bert. Bert, he's homeless and he also struggles with mental illness. So this social worker recommends Bert to Dorothea, and Dorothea welcomes him in.

And just like the others before him, his social security checks are immediately signed over to her. And I guess Bert is making a lot of money from these checks because he only lives there for around two weeks before Dorothea decides it's already time. to take him out. So she goes and she poisons him and he, unfortunately, dies. Then, just like the others, she buries him in the yard. However, this time she runs into a problem. Because that social worker who recommended him, she calls to check on him. So Dorothea has to come up with a story,

and she's like, uh, Bert, uh, he went to Mexico with my brother. But social worker, she isn't buying it. Bird isn't the type to suddenly disappear on everyone and travel all the way to another country, not without telling anyone. So ultimately, she calls police, and police start investigating. But then, social worker informs them about something she noticed lately. She says that almost every time she drives past Dorothea's boarding house, she sees fresh piles of dirt in the yard, like some serious digging had been going on. And that she's suspicious that Bert might be buried there.

in the yard. And so police, they go to Dorothea's boarding house with shovels and they start digging around and soon enough they uncover seven bodies buried in her yard. And so, bam, they arrest Dorothea. Here's her mugshot. And so ultimately, Dorothea goes to trial and she's found guilty of murdering three of her tenants and she gets sentenced to life in prison.