RedHanded - Episode 284 - Dorothea Puente: The Boarding House of Death

Episode Date: February 9, 2023

Dorothea Puente may have looked every bit the placid old lady she played. In reality, she was in her early fifties, and was using her self-made status as a ‘pillar of the community’ to divert attention away from what was buried and rotting in her garden.  Whether her victims had a few hundred thousand dollars, a nice pick-up truck, or even just a meagre social security cheque – they all risked the wrath of the ‘Death House Landlady’. GET YOUR NORTH AMERICAN TOUR TICKETS: https://redhandedpodcast.com/ Become a patron: Patreon Order a copy of the book here (US & Canada): Order on Wellesley Books Order on Amazon.com Order a copy of the book here (UK, Ireland, Europe, NZ, Aus): Order on Amazon.co.uk Order on Foyles Follow us on social media: Instagram Twitter Visit our website: Website Sources available on redhandedpodcast.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Her first act as leader, asking donors for a million bucks for her salary. That's excessive. She's a big carbon tax supporter. Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here. She even increased taxes carbon tax supporter. Oh yeah, check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here.

She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made.

A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app

or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to another episode of your favourite True Crime Podcast right-handed. Hello! It's me and her together. Is it us? I mean, you wouldn't know.

Who have you been looking for? I don't know. Whatever. Who do I even think I am? Doesn't matter. But what are you guys thinking? How are you feeling? Are you feeling positive because you've gone and bought some red-handed tour tickets?

Ooh. I hope so. If you have, gold star all round. If you haven't, well, I'm sad. Go to your room and think about what you've done. We are almost there, guys. So nearly there. New York and LA, we still need you. Everywhere else is basically gone. So keep pushing, keep on pushing through because it makes us look good. Keep on trucking and buying tickets and please do that. And we

cannot wait to see you all in the US very, very soon. That's that. Go to redhanderpodcast.com, get your tickets there, don't get them anywhere else because that would be silly. With that being said, anything else, Hannah? No, I mean, we're sorry that people are reselling them, but there's nothing we can do about it. Yeah, we have seen people reselling for quite a lot of money. Yeah, like obscene. Don't buy them. Don't buy them.

If you want to resell because you genuinely can't come anymore, just like, it'd be nice of you to just resell it for face value. Just don't be a dick about it, basically. So, yeah, get your tickets to a show that is reasonably priced by us and we will see you there. Exactly. Now, today, we need to get on with it because it's a case that has been much requested. Yeah, we've kind of Easter egged her on a shorthand.

We have indeed. And it is finally time, Time for the lady herself. When a social worker tells a police officer to bring a shovel with them to a welfare check, you know that things aren't looking good. If the police are then greeted at the door by a sweet, smiling little old lady, you know it's going to get confusing. Especially when the police officer starts digging in the old lady's garden, only to hit on a human bone. Surrounded by something that looks a lot like beef jerky. But that is exactly what happened when Detective John Cabrera paid a visit to Dorothea Puente,

the supposedly kind and supposedly old lady who lived at 1426 f street sacramento california it's quite lazy street naming f street i just see the whole alphabet in sacramento country's too big that's how you know your country's too big when um you're just naming streets f street come on guys the thing was, when John did find this, he didn't know yet, but there was plenty more to be unearthed in this garden on F Street. Because this is, of course, the story of the death house landlady, Dorothy Appuente. I can't not say it like that. I can't not say it. Dorothy Appuente.

Dorothy Appuente. Next up on News 24-7 True Crime, Dorothy Appointe. I'm Nancy Grace. And I'm going to be screaming at you for the next hour. Imagine if you were Nancy Grace. I think my life would be quite different. Nah, I haven't got that level of energy. California has long been the place to go for people who want to hustle. From the 19th century gold rush to dreams of big screen stardom and tech domination. However, for as much as California is synonymous with making it,

it's also by default the home of many who don't. And like a lot of big American cities, Sacramento has quite a large homeless population. Since the Reagan administration began hacking away at social benefits in the early 80s, America's homeless population in general has been steadily increasing. And nowhere is that more true than in California. By 1988, the homeless population in the state capital, Sacramento, was at epidemic levels, with shelters unable to keep up with the demand for bed spaces. This left many homeless people with no option but to sleep rough or check into unregistered and unlicensed boarding homes. I have not been to Sacramento, but I will say the most shocking homelessness I have ever seen is in downtown LA. Yeah, I would say the most

shocking I've seen is in San Francisco. It's a lot. It's a lot to take in. So one of these homeless people was Alvaro José Rafael González Montoya, known to his friends, a bit more succinctly, as Bert. I prefer that. Thanks, Bert. So Bert was born in Costa Rica. Pura vida! In 1968. Honestly, you so rarely meet Costa Ricans. Yeah, I was going to say, people are born in Costa Rica?

Yeah, most of them don't leave, that's the thing. Whenever I meet a Costa Rican out, I'm like, oh my God, sit down and talk to me. You never meet them, you never meet them. Well, Bert was one of them. And at some point during his adolescence, Bert was diagnosed with schizophrenia, resulting in long stints of electroshock therapy, which damaged his cognitive abilities and speech. It wasn't clear exactly how Bert had made it from Costa Rica to Sacramento,

or why he had almost no contact with his family. When he was in his early 50s, he met a social worker named Judy Moyes, who remembers Bert as a large, jovial Hispanic man with a big bushy beard. At the time, he was homeless and transient, wandering the streets of Sacramento. Bert had been placed by the state into Detox, a rehabilitation centre and boarding house for addicts. But Bert wasn't an addict, so he found life at Detox difficult and was prone to wandering off for long periods of time. At the time, Judy worked for the homeless organisation Volunteers of America, and realising that Bert's needs just

were nowhere near being met, she took it upon herself to find a better place for him to live. Video footage of Judy's earliest conversations with Bert are now available on YouTube, thanks to the Centre for Sacramento History. It's pretty clear in these videos that Bert was kind and vulnerable and in desperate need of improved living conditions. And it was while she was looking for a better place for Bert that Judy was introduced to Dorothea Puente. Dorothea was well known in her community as a wealthy old lady who donated to local organisations and charities. She also ran a weekly food bank and boarding house from her home at 1426 F Street in Sacramento.

She was a pillar of the local community and known by all for her patience and her generosity. Judy, sensing a golden ticket for Bert's wellbeing, went over to see Dorothea at 1426 F Street. And it seemed like everything was just too good to be true. Dorothea, to give you all a visual picture in your heads, if you've never seen a picture of her on the internet, she is a five foot four lady. She wore large rimmed spectacles and had white permed hair and looked every part of the sweet old lady that everyone had described. She looks like the Dormio grandma. Yes yes and kind of a bit like you know when Dormio did it like as puppet. Yes. She kind of looks like the Dormio grandma as a puppet. Yeah totally that's what I mean. Yeah yeah yeah. Puppet grandma. That's what you

need to know. Puppet Dormio grandma. Slash a little bit Mrs. Doubtfire. Yes. So with that image in everybody's head, let's continue. So when Judy, the social worker, arrived at the house, this little old lady was even bottle feeding a litter of kittens. Wow. So it's just like birds are singing, the sun is shining. Tank is clean. Everything is good, good times at 1426 F Street. And the frail old lady even gave a tour of the boarding house

she was running on the ground floor of her house to Judy. And things just got better and better. For the cost of their small social security check, each resident was given their own room, fitted out with a comfy bed, a TV and an armchair. On top of this, their rent even covered three hot meals a day. Dorothea could even help Bert with the initial admin of getting onto a social security scheme so that he'd be able to pay for his room. Sounds pretty good. With a seemingly perfect new living arrangement set up, Judy

wasted no time in getting Bert moved from the detox clinic into Dorothea's boarding house. Within a few weeks, Bert had settled in. He was getting three good meals every day and loved to spend his free time relaxing in his comfy new armchair. He could even speak to Dorothea in his native Spanish, so he felt totally at home. After a few months, Dorothea started to mention to Judy that Bert might like to visit Dorothea's brother in Mexico. The offer seemed thoughtful. The language and climate would be more similar to Bert's native Costa Rica. But Judy politely declined.

They had only just found a stable place for Bert in the system. He was on regular social security payments and had settled down well in his new home. So any upheaval seemed unnecessary and not in Bert's best interest, not to mention crossing international borders, which we're not really sure he can do. And Dorothea seemed to take all of this feedback on board and she didn't bring up the trip to Mexico again. So with Bert settled, Judy felt more confident in leaving him to it and began checking up on him just over the phone, rather than visiting him in person. And this carried on for a while, until one day, Dorothea told Judy that despite her wishes,

Bert had taken the trip to Mexico after all. She insisted that they'd just gone down for a party and that he would be back in a week. So Judy phoned back the following Friday, but Bert still wasn't back. Dorothea again told her that there was nothing to worry about and that he'd be back soon. Sensing something fishy, Judy gave Dorothea an ultimatum. Either she heard from Bert first thing Monday morning or she was calling the police. Yes, Judy.

I have so much time for Judy. Yeah, big fan. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On The Media. To listen, subscribe to On The Media wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding and this time if all goes to plan

we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. So when she came into the office on Monday, Judy did get a phone call, but it wasn't from Bert or even from Dorothea. It was from a man she didn't recognise, who told her that Bert had come home and then left again. According to the mystery man, Bert had been picked up by his family and he'd just gone back to Costa Rica. Now, if Bert's trip to Mexico smelt fishy,

the sudden emergence of his family and random return to Costa Rica absolutely stank. Like the popular Costa Rican dish, ceviche. And Judy, never one to give up. Oh, don't eat smelly ceviche. That's bad. That sounds bad for you. It all smells,

doesn't it? Nah. Fresh fish shouldn't smell of fish. That's true. That's true. Also, I love ceviche. I'm sorry. I love ceviche. And if you get given ceviche that smells like fish,'t don't eat that because that's bad that's bad fish i went for very good mexican last night actually um in stoke newington yeah well that is um shocking because typically mexican food in this country is uh no bueno oh it was it was so people who weren't there are actually mexican oh's nice. And it's like down a little, it's on Stoke Newington Road, down some steps. And they only do tacos and then this like melty cheese thing.

Like, it was very lovely. Wow, there you go. Corochos. Oh, there you go. On Stoke Newington Road. Yeah, highly recommend. It's very small, but it feels very Mexican. Oh, that's nice.

So yeah, overwhelm them with bookings. Anyway. Judy never wanted to give up on a person in need, drove over to 1426 F Street to speak to Dorothea and her residents herself. Dorothea stuck to her guns and repeated the same story that Judy had been told over the phone, but had gone to Mexico with her brother, then he'd come back and then he'd been picked up by his family and taken back to Costa Rica. One of the residents in the boarding house, on the other hand, told a pretty different

story. This guy's called John Sharp, and he's an older man, and he said that this was all a pack of lies. Even more worryingly, he told Judy that there was something very wrong at the boarding house. And when Judy pushed him for an explanation, John Sharp simply said, she's been digging a lot of holes. Oh no. I think it's like, sometimes this case can feel a bit comical to people because she looks so ridiculous. And we're going to go on to find out like how ridiculous a person she is. But like, I think you can't overemphasize the vulnerability of her victims most of them are

elderly most of them are transient most of them would be homeless if they left her house so it's like do you stay in this house where you feel like something is going awry and your life might be in danger and it very realistically is because of everything we're about to find out or do you go and live on the streets again and i think that that is such an impossible decision to make. Yeah, again, she is dealing with incredibly vulnerable people. And as we'll find out, massively misrepresenting herself. Now, obviously, with what John Sharp told Judy, it wouldn't take Benoit Blanc to work out that things didn't sound good for Bert.

Who's Benoit Blanc? He is the lead detective played by Daniel Craig in Knives Out and Glass Onion. The Knives Out story. The like everyone's emergency Christmas film to watch with their parents. Yes. Like it literally, I was in the car with my brother and my sister. Yeah. And I was like, oh, I saw the first night. We went to that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen the first night out. So maybe we can watch that tonight. And my sister was like, oh no, we already watched it last night. And me and my brother were like, oh, I saw the first Knives. We went to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen the first Knives out, so maybe we can watch that tonight. And my sister was like, oh, no, we already watched it last night. And me and my brother were like, you dick. No, that is outrageous. That was like the saviour of saviours this Christmas. Everyone was like, oh, why don't we just stare at the wall?

Or we could watch Knives out. And I was like, I can't believe you got in there before us. It was honestly, it was like, oh, thank God this film is out. And it's three hours long. Maybe an unpopular opinion. I didn't think it was very good. No, my family. Glass Onion, I didn't think it was very good.

I really enjoyed the first one, but I haven't watched it because my sister got there first. But no, I received negative reviews from the Maguire household. There's better things to watch. Actually, the Christmas saviour for us was Kaleidoscope on Netflix, which is like seven episodes or something, and would highly recommend. Okay. It's pretty good. It's pretty good. It's kind of like an Ocean's Eleven heist-esque thing.

Yeah, it's pretty good. Anyway, back to this. So Judy, playing the role of Benoit Blanc, but not with a terrible Southern American accent, immediately went to the Sacramento police. And Bert's disappearance was treated as a missing persons case and handed over to lead investigator John Cabrera. Because Bert had a history of wandering around Sacramento, Cabrera decided that the best thing he could do was to go over to 1426 F Street and take a statement from Dorothea. When he and another officer arrived, they were greeted by the same sweet old lady that had first met Judy.

Again, she insisted that Bert had come home from Mexico and then been picked up by his family that weekend. Cabrera, who had no reason to distrust Dorothea, took her word for it. And when resident after resident backed up her story, Cabrera's mind was almost made up. That is, until he met the second hero of this case, coming back to elderly resident John Sharp. At first, in front of everybody else, John said the same thing. But as Cabrera got up to leave, John, in a very like movie plot twist kind of way, very Jonestown, slipped him a note. And this note read, she wants me to lie to you. So obviously something was going on. Cabrera quietly took John down to

the station where he could safely reveal all. John told Cabrera that Bert had not gone to Mexico, and that he certainly never came home. In fact, John hadn't seen or heard from the gentle giant in over two months. With alarm bells ringing in his ears, Cabrera did a little digging into Dorothea's background, and later her back garden, and what he found was alarming, to say the least. Dorothea Puente was far from the meek old lady she was pretending to be. She had one hell of a backstory. I thought that I knew this case. I did not know any of this. Because she was born in 1929 in Redlands, California. She was born Dorothea Grey to her mother, Trudy, and her father, James.

Now, accounts of Dorothea's early life vary, but it's pretty clear that things weren't great. Both of her parents were alcoholics, and according to some accounts, her mother took on sex work to make ends meet. Her father, James, regularly threatened to commit suicide in front of Dorothea and her siblings, before he eventually died of TB in 1937. A year later, Trudy lost custody of her children and a few months after that, she was killed in a motorbike accident. So at the age of just 10, Dorothea was placed in an orphanage. Now again, we don't know much about her time at this orphanage because it's happening in like the 40s. But later in life, Dorothea would report being a victim of sexual abuse during her stay there. By 1945, at the age of 16, she left the orphanage

and married a soldier who'd returned from fighting in World War II. They had two children, one in 1946 and another in 48, but they didn't keep either of them. Dorothea sent the first one to live with her extended family and the other baby was immediately put up for adoption. Two years later, Dorothea suffered a miscarriage and her husband ultimately left her in 1948 after just three years of marriage. In the same year, she had the first of her many run-ins with the law. When Dorothea was caught using a forged cheque, she served four months in jail.

Do you know something I recently learned? And I cannot believe I've never understood this before. Carte blanche. Blank cheque. Like, I just, it's one of those things that I understand in context. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Welcome to another episode of What Else Don't I Know? Yes.

Featuring Hannah Maguire. I know! And it was when I was doing the World War I research for Rasputin that it, like, finally dawned on me. It's nice to have those moments sometimes. Oh, to give you carte blanche. Idiot! What else don't I know? It's terrifying!

I don't know. We will continue to find out over the years. I have no doubt. Oh, God. But I love that for you. I have no doubt. Oh, God. But I love that for you. I have those moments. It's fun. It's fun when you have a little like penny drop moment.

My favorite one is still my Greek friend being like, oh, we have a saying in Greek that's like, oh, if you get a free horse, you don't look at its teeth. And I was like, oh, we say that in English too. Never understood it. That's so too. I never understood it. That's so funny. That's so funny. Anyway, let's move on from my eternal embarrassment

of not understanding fucking anything. Anyway, she does four months in jail for forging a check. After her release, Dorothea moved to San Francisco where she reinvented herself, posing as a Muslim woman of Egyptian-Israeli descent. And she took on a fake name, Taya Singoala Neyada, probably something like that. And while she was adopting this persona, she married a merchant seaman called Axel Johansson. Do you think, is it just me or did people in the pasto times, because this is like in the 50s, right?

People in the pasto times led way more interesting lives than we do or is it just some of them because they could because there's no paper trail or computers to track them everywhere yeah i mean i think the ones we come across is like we're not doing episodes about gladys from baltimore you know so i think it's like in the pasto times if you were so inclined to lead a mental life you could do it more easily than you could now. Yeah, you could do it for longer, for sure. So she marries this merchant seaman called Axel Johansson in 1952. With this less than solid foundation, their marriage continued

with about as much lying and deceit as you would expect from Dorothea Puente. Yeah, I wouldn't say it's a solid foundation when you have started off your marriage by pretending to be an entirely different person. Dorothea made the most of Johansson's time away at sea and she invited various men over for sexy times. And she also routinely gambled away his merchant sailor earnings. Again, bad, bad wife, bad wife business. Bad wife, bad life. Eventually, Dorothea, a.k., aka Taya, was arrested in 1960 for

owning and operating a brothel in Sacramento after she was caught offering to perform oral sex on an undercover police officer. She spent another 90 days in jail for that one. I wonder if she looked like the Domio Muppet grandma at that point. Well, no, presumably she looked like a mysterious Arab lady. Oh, quite. And after that 90-day stint, Dorothea was promptly committed to a mental hospital after a spate of lying to law enforcement drinking criminal behavior and attempts to take her own life she was released but only after being diagnosed as a pathological liar with an unstable personality oh that great so they're

like we don't know what's going on. We're sticking in this mental hospital. Oh, okay. You are completely unstable. Off you go. Yeah. Like, what treatment happened? Goodbye, have babies. What happened?

But through all this, Dorothea managed to stay married to Johansson and they remained together for another five years until eventually they divorced in 1966. Following her divorce from Johansson, Dorothea established another fresh new persona. Egyptian Teo was gone. Now she was going for salt of the earth.

She pivoted from being this exotic Egyptian woman to being a kindly and godly woman who provided care for her local community, particularly for young women who suffered abuse or neglect. Two years later, the kindly new Dorothea entered her third marriage with a man named Roberto Puente. Their relationship was turbulent from start to finish, and after a rocky on-off five years,

the pair eventually divorced in 1973. Dorothea filed for a restraining order, but decided to keep his name. At this point, 46-year-old Dorothea Puente decided to commit to the bit and go all out to establish herself as a pillar of the community. And the best way to do that,

the best way to be seen as a harmless pillar of the community is to go full granny, which is exactly what she did. Go full Mrs Doubtfire. Go full Mrs Doubtfire, absolutely. And she absolutely doubles down on her alter ego. So this woman, who was previously seen as a bit of a hot mess, stopped dyeing her hair, purchased a whole new wardrobe

and donned a pair of large granny-style spectacles. And it wasn't all for show. Dorothea would don her long skirts and cardies, pick up a bag of medical equipment and head off into the neighbourhood, providing aid to the vulnerable. She gave help to alcoholics, the homeless, the elderly, seemingly all for free.

Alongside this, she started making donations to local charities and politicians who pledged to help the community. Dorothea even started a weekly Taco Tuesday where she would make enough food to feed the whole neighbourhood. Maybe that's why she kept the surname Puente. I mean, maybe. It would make a lot of sense. I'd go to Puente's Tacos over Grey's Tacos.

Oh, yeah. And their smelly ceviche. After this went on for a few years, Dorothea took the next logical step and decided to open up an independent local business. But she just couldn't do it alone. Dorothea didn't have the money or the wherewithal to run a business by herself. So she enlisted the help of a fellow do-gooder, Ruth Monroe. Dorothea met Monroe at a local bar and they quickly became bestie friendies. Soon enough, Ruth's kids were calling calling Dorothy a grandma even though she was

barely 50 and it seemed only natural that they should start a little cafe together. I think anybody you meet who is like my dream is to start a cafe has never worked in hospitality not even once in their life. I'm like do you understand how hard that is? Like I feel like it's this romantic I just want to start a little, like, cantina, and it'll have, like, a cocktail bar, and I'm like, you've never worked in a bar, have you? No. I couldn't think of anything worse to have to do than deal with food and the general public. Right, exactly.

Anyway, Dorothea doesn't know that. Or maybe she does and doesn't care. Ruth had financial backing, and Dorothea had a dream. So it soon became a reality. But very quickly, as most restaurants slash cafe bars do, it turned into a nightmare for Ruth Monroe. Especially when you start one with Dorothea. So for starters, the cafe was an absolute money pit and Ruth was hemorrhaging cash just to keep it afloat. Then amid this financial shitstorm Ruth's long-term partner was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

It was quickly decided that he would move into a hospice and that Ruth should move in with Dorothea to save money and make sure that she had the support she needed. Once Ruth moved in with Dorothea however she deteriorated rather quickly. Within weeks, Ruth was almost bedridden and was barely eating, only consuming glasses of creme de menthe, which makes me feel so unwell. It is vile. Such old lady fodder as well. It is such old lady fodder, but that's why Dorothy is really fucking committing she is the game she's just like i'm gonna buy myself some little cardigans long skirts these

big glasses and lots of bottles of creptoman what do old ladies drink that's it martini rosso and creptoman i just love the idea of her in a uh in a little like convenience store watching oh that's what the little lady justying everything that this little old lady is buying. And why is Ruth drinking it, especially if she's ill? Well, apparently, her carer, Dorothea, insisted that the creme de menthe would calm her nerves. So with Ruth in bed and almost out of money, the cafe, of course, went bankrupt.

And things spiralled even further. The day after the cafe closed, Ruth's eldest son, Bill, went over to find his mum in bed, sobbing and unable to speak. Dorothea told Bill that she was taking care of his mother, and with her vague medical background, Bill believed her. That evening, Bill held his sobbing mother in his arms and assured her that everything would be alright, because Dorothea would look after her. That evening, Bill held his sobbing mother in his arms and assured her that everything would be all right, because Dorothea would look after her.

The next day, Bill woke up to a phone call from his sister. Ruth had died during the night, and Dorothea wanted them to come and collect her things. However, from the moment the siblings got to the house, at 1426 F Street, everything was off. Ruth's body had already been sent away to the coroner and her death was being treated as a suicide. On top of all of this, Ruth's valuable belongings were missing and all of the money from the cafe's business account was gone. Dorothea swept all of this aside, saying that Ruth had sold a lot of her things and spent a lot of the money to finance the failing cafe.

When Bill and his sister did eventually speak to the coroner, things got even stranger. The autopsy showed that Ruth's body had toxic levels of codeine and acetaminophen. The only thing in her stomach was litres of the green, mint-smelling creme de menthe. It's quite high proof. Like like she must have been smashed. Oh, yuck.

Still, the coroner took Dorothea's word that Ruth had been suffering from a bout of severe depression and the cause of death was left as undetermined. Of course, Ruth's children were grief-stricken and just wouldn't believe that their mother would have given all of her worldly belongings away and then drunk herself to death. But as much as they smelt a rat, they had a hard time convincing the police that Dorothea was anything but the kind old lady

that they all knew and loved. But it wouldn't take long for Dorothea to strike again. In April 1982, just a few months after Ruth had died, Dorothea was arrested by Sacramento police. Now, her arrest had nothing to do with Ruth. It was concerning an elderly man called Malcolm McKenzie. The pair got chatting at a local bar, and Malcolm had asked Dorothea to come back to his place to keep the party going. However, almost as soon as they got back to his house, he was overcome with nausea and drowsiness.

Before he knew it, Malcolm had collapsed in his living room, unable to walk or talk, and he watched on as Dorothea calmly rummaged through his pockets and then his house, picking out any of his valuables. Dorothea then left Malcolm, laying on the floor, and when he regained consciousness, he immediately called the police. That seems like an error on her part. Because Dorothea was obviously arrested and found in possession of Malcolm's belongings.

And it turned out there were more people who'd had a similar run-in with the grabby granny. Investigators found three other elderly people who claimed that they had been drugged and robbed by Dorothea. With their statements and the evidence that she had indeed robbed Malcolm McKenzie, Dorothea was charged with five felonies. And on the 21st of July 1982, she was sentenced to five years in jail and banned from working as any kind of carer again. Problem solved, right? Well, not exactly. from working as any kind of carer again. Problem solved, right?

Well, not exactly. You might be hoping that prison changed Dorothea for the better. Perhaps she learned from her mistakes and went on to live a less Mrs Doubtfire life. Or at least that she was forced to take a break from manipulating the vulnerable for a few years. Unfortunately, not. While in prison, Dorothea signed up for a pen pal service designed to match older female prisoners with men on the outside.

Through this incredibly ill-thought-out scheme, Dorothea met an old widower in his 70s called Everson Gilmour. I'm just like, look, I'm not saying they shouldn't have systems where people in prison can form relationships with people on the outside, but maybe not one who conned people, especially elderly vulnerable people, and robbed from them. Maybe not her. She's also not a fucking old woman.

Dorothea and Everson spoke for almost the entire three years that she was in prison, and at the end of her sentence, Everson even collected Dorothea up in his red pickup truck and drove her back to her home in Sacramento. And once she was home, Everson moved in with Dorothea. Then they quickly started to talk about marriage plans. At the same time, Dorothea opened up the bottom half of her house as an unlicensed boarding house for the vulnerable in her community.

Again, the people of Sacramento just welcomed back Danny DeVito and Mrs Doubtfire with open arms. And then, one could say predictably, just a few short weeks later, Everson Gilmour disappeared. Dorothea told people that they'd just broken up, but you can probably guess that that's just not true. However, you're going to have to wait to find out exactly what happened to poor old Everson. Because now, you know everything that Detective Cabrera did that afternoon that he knocked on her door,

shovel in hand, looking for poor old Bert. With a statement from another resident saying that they hadn't seen Bert in two months and having uncovered a criminal record the length of the fucking Old Testament, Cabrera went back to 1426 F Street, this time with Dorothea's parole officer. And following the advice of Judy Moyes, the social worker that was helping Bert, they also went with the shovel.

Again, Dorothea gave the exact same story about Bert. He'd gone to Mexico, come back, and then been picked up by his family and gone back to Costa Rica. But this time Cabrera wasn't getting fooled by the little old lady routine. He and the parole officer questioned her on whether she was even allowed to run a boarding house, given that she'd been to prison and also been told that she wasn't allowed to act as a carer anymore. To which Dorothea simply replied, I am in violation of my parole.

So shoot me. What's she going to do about it? And so they went on to search her house. Inside, Cabrera found hundreds of packets of prescription medication, some in Dorothea's name and some in the name of her residence. To be fair, this wasn't completely unusual. After all, she did look after the vulnerable, so it made sense that she might want to look after their medication.

Cabrera, on the back of some advice from Bert's social worker Judy, then asked if he could take a look at Dorothea's garden. He told Dorothea that if he could just have a quick dig around, then he could get Judy off both of their backs. So Cabrera got to digging in that little garden in the back of 1426 F Street and very quickly, things just didn't look right. Under the topsoil, the entire garden seemed to be filled with rubbish.

Everywhere he dug, he found clumps of damp cloth and handfuls of that stuff that looked like beef jerky. And then, as Cabrera dug a little deeper, he hit what felt like a hefty tree root about two feet under the surface. Cabrera hacked away to get through the blockage, but it just wouldn't budge. So eventually, he had no choice but to get down into the hole and try his best to yank it free. And when it did eventually release from the mud, Cambrera had a look at it and then reeled back in horror. The large bumpy object that he thought was a tree root had a ball joint

at the top of it. It was clearly a human femur. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down.

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The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Now, despite finding human remains buried in her garden, they still didn't have enough evidence to arrest Dorothea. After all, she's not been living in that house for about three years because she'd been in prison. But they had plenty to take her down to the station for a little chat. OK, now let's get back to this other thing here. OK, I've got a man missing.

Nothing seems, everything seems totally, nothing fits, Dorothea, that's what I'm trying to say. Nothing fits. Okay. And there's one of two things I can surmise. Okay. And that is, Mr. Montoya is dead. No, he's not.

Okay, I'm going to miss that. I'm just saying. I'm trying to surmise this, and then we'll try to clear this up. That he is dead. And that either he, either John McCauley or Melvin either killed him. Or that maybe he met foul play by your hands. That's my alternative. I don't know.

But my other alternative is that the fact that somewhere in that backyard, Dorothy, that he's lying, maybe along with other people. No. Okay. And I'm also going to tell you that we had this same information a year ago. A year ago? A year ago. Yes. A year ago. A year ago? Yes, a year ago. So what I'm telling you is not new to me. Mundy, can I hire a contractor to go in and tear everything down and dig it up to prove to you that

there's nobody there? If any digging has to be done, we're going to do the digging. Oh, okay. Okay? And I know that you're past, that you've been in some trouble with... Right, right. Okay? And I know I remember when you were arrested and you were in the B... I admitted to that to get the trial over with. Okay, but you still were convicted of it and sentenced to it. Right. Okay.

The similarities are there. The only thing that's different now is the fact, rather than take something and let it go, you get rid of them, and nothing's ever found. Now, here's a man from Costa Rica or Timbuktu that really nobody cares about. In fact, just like Mr. Kelly said, he says, Hey, when you're nobody, you're nobody.

Nobody cares. So you disappear. You're a transient, or you're a bum, or you're nobody, you're nobody. Nobody cares. So you disappear, you're a transient or you're a bum or you're an alcoholic. A lot of people think nobody ever cares. I cared for him. My body was closed. I treated him very, very good. Oh my God, she's so annoying. She's so annoying. But apart from being incredibly annoyed at listening to her voice in that, you can also hear from that interview that Detective Cabrera was pointing the finger firmly at Dorothea Puente.

He believed that Dorothea was responsible for the body in the garden and that she must have had help because he's looking at her like a little old lady. Cabrera even went as far as to implicate John McCauley, one of Dorothea's residents. The next day, the dig in Dorothea's garden continued, and the leg that they had found the day before was just the tip of the blood-soaked iceberg. Where the leg was found, they also discovered an entire human body, which was slowly exhumed piece by piece, all while Dorothea watched from the top floor balcony.

Why is she there? Yeah, I was wondering that. So once the body was out, it became clear that it wasn't Bert. It was actually a small female, who had clearly been buried several months before Bert had gone missing. However, one mystery had been solved. The leathery material that Cabrera had described as like beef jerky turned out to be the woman's skin.

At this point, Dorothea came down from watching the police tear up her garden and asked if she was free to walk over the road to a local hotel to get a coffee. And this is where Cabrera, who up until now I think has been doing a great job, not falling for Dorothea's shit, like pushing her hard in that interview, doing all that, but for some reason at this point he inexplicably and massively fucks up, because he replied, because she wasn't under arrest, Dorothea was free to go and get herself a coffee. He even walked her over to the hotel himself.

He then left Dorothea at the hotel and returned to the house to find that another body had been found under a freshly laid slab of concrete. The body again was not burnt, but it was enough to now decide they could arrest Dorothea and the other resident, John McCauley. McCauley was arrested at the house, and the police went back to the hotel where Dorothea had been left by Cabrera.

But of course, Dorothea Puente had vanished. I feel like he was maybe trying to do the like, don't fear me, I'm your buddy best pal. You can tell me anything. Totally. But I'm like, send one of the fucking beat cops with her to stand next to her. Even if he goes up pretending that he's doing a coffee round for everybody else.

What are you thinking? It's really shocking. I think, again, it's though that people look at her like a little old lady and... She's harmless. She's harmless. Where's she going to run? She can't run. So clearly, two bodies being found in the garden of a little old lady in Sacramento

was enough to make headline news. But the fact that that little old lady was now at large brought the story to a completely different level. Boiling point. The Sacramento chief of police gave a statement to the hundreds of news cameras outside Puente's house and apologised for letting her slip through the net. Overnight, a national manhunt began.

Grandma hunt. Dorothea's face was on every news channel in America and the FBI were helping in the search as well. But the job at 1426 F Street was far from done. Cabrera and the other detectives were still digging up Dorothea's garden, where they uncovered yet another body hidden under a large ceramic basin.

This one was definitely Bert. The large decomposing body weighed over 200 pounds and had been buried within the last month and the police hoped that now they'd found Bert there would be no more grim surprises in store but sadly they could not have been more wrong. The police carried on digging and found four more bodies in the garden bringing the total up to seven. Each body, including Bert's, had been wrapped in several layers of bedsheets and duct tape, and each was placed in the ground, in the fetal position, before being doused in a garden cleaning agent, presumably to try and hide the smell. With seven sets of remains now sitting on ice,

Cabrera and his team now had to try and put names to the body bags. With the help of a social worker, they collected a list of people who had received social security checks to Dorothea's address. They then crossed anyone off the list who was a current resident, who had already died, or who could be traced to another home. Eventually, they whittled it down to 13 names, and with this they were able to start identifying the bodies. The first was Benjamin Fink, who they identified through his fingerprints. The other residents told police that Fink had been drunk and acting out one day when Dorothy had took him upstairs to her room to, quote,

make him better, but the residents never saw him again. The second body was identified as Dorothy Miller, who had served as a nurse in the Second World War and had gone missing from a boarding house in Texas a year earlier. Her name was found on a fake ID in Dorothea's house, which Dorothea had been using to cash Dorothy's checks. The third body was the hardest to identify because it had no hands or legs or head. Investigators believed, probably rightly, that it had been mutilated to hide the person's identity. However, using radiology and evidence of a previous hip replacement, the body was identified as Betty Palmer.

And the body's later stages of decomposition made the team believe that she was probably the first of the bodies to be buried in that garden. The next one was the body of James Gallop, who was easier to pin down because he'd gone missing just weeks after recovering from brain surgery. Gallop lived at 1426 F Street and was never seen or heard from again after he told a friend that he was being pressured into signing over his social security check. Incisions found on his skull were clearly the result of surgery, so that proved beyond a doubt that the body was his. The final two bodies were identified to be those of Vera Martin and Leona Carpenter. Tragically, evidence of compacted dirt above Leona Carpenter's legs suggested to

investigators that she may have regained consciousness once under the ground and tried to kick her way out. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's horrible. Fuck's sake. Oh, okay. So with those six bodies identified, plus that of Bert, there were now seven victims and still no sign of Dorothea. The longer the so-called granny killer was on the run, the more the public were whipped up into a frenzy. There were hundreds of people, news crews and members of the public alike, camped out outside 1426 F Street. One of the neighbours even began selling novelty T-shirts of Dorothea holding a shovel in the style of Grant Wood's American Gothic.

Eventually, though, the widespread news coverage did start to bring in decent leads, both in the form of potential witnesses and potential victims. Having seen the news on TV, the family of Everson Gilmouth, if you remember that's, of course, Dorothea's prison beau, came forward saying that their father had gone missing shortly after moving into Dorothea's house. So, Detective Cabrera sent out a be on the lookout or BOLO to all local police forces, asking for any reports of unidentified bodies that had been found wrapped in blankets and duct tape. Quickly, he got a reply. A body had been found a few years earlier in Sutter County,

just up the road from Sacramento. It had been spotted next to a river by a local fisherman who noticed a large wooden crate slipping down towards the river. As he got closer, he noticed a human leg was sticking out. The body had been labelled a John Doe and sat on ice for two years until it was positively identified as Emerson Gilmour by Detective Cabrera. It was definitely him, but nobody could understand how he had made

it several miles up the road in a large homemade coffin. Still, Cabrera did not have to wait very long for answers. With the large wooden box now all over the news, a local handyman came forward, saying that he had built the crate. His name was Ishmael Flores, and not only had he built the crate, he told detectives that he was pretty certain that he'd helped Dorothea dump it too. He said that in 1986, Dorothea had asked him to make the enormous coffin-like box to put some books in so that she could take it to the dump. What? Take them to a library? Why are you building a coffin for books to go to the dump?

The death of education. So he built the box to Dorothea's specifications and then he went round to her house a few days later to help the little old lady move the big box into her new pickup truck. Oh, was it red? It might have been because it was, of course, previously the property of her husband-to-be, now dead, Emerson Gilmouth.

The box was nailed shut just in case those books escape. What books are these? The Necronomicon. She's like, listen, Ishmouth, I've got a bit of a problem. Bible's bound in human flesh. I've accidentally opened the Necronomicon and read aloud from it. I'm going to need a giant box. Stat.

And this giant box was so heavy that a neighbour had to help lift it into the pickup truck. You know someone made the joke. What have you got in here, Dorothea? A dead body? No, it's just the Necronomicon. Loads of copies of it. So once the very heavy box was on board,

Dorothea asked Ishmael to drive them all to a local dump. About halfway, she spotted a fly tipping area by the side of the road and she was like we've driven far enough let's just leave the big box of books right here next to this river. And so the discovery of Everson's body was more than enough to charge her with murder. But there were still two big problems. Firstly neither Cabrera nor anyone else on the force could explain how on earth a 5ft 4 Dorothea could have moved 200lb bird into the garden. And secondly, Dorothea was still nowhere to be found. Cabrera, as we said earlier, did initially try to implicate John McCauley as a co-conspirator for the crimes.

But other than living in the house and not being one of the dead people buried in the garden, they couldn't really find anything to pin on him with regards to the murders and he was ultimately let go. Luckily for the detective, it wouldn't be long until he could ask Dorothea himself. Eventually, a taxi driver came forward claiming that he had picked Dorothea up from the hotel where she'd gone to get coffee and taken her to a local bus station, where she'd hopped on a coach going south. And from there, Dorothea's luck started to run out. After five days of embarrassment for Detective Cabrera, he got a call saying that Dorothea had been spotted in LA. A man called Charles Wigless had rung up the LAPD, saying that he'd had a strange encounter with a woman who looked a lot like the lady on the news.

They'd met at a bar and she started asking him some very strange and very personal questions about his social security, his marital status and his finances. Apparently she told him that she was staying at the Royal Viking Hotel and invited him back to Room 31, an offer which Charles politely declined. Later, officers surrounded Room 31 of the Royal Viking Hotel. Royal Viking is a bit of an oxymoron, no? Anyway, they had no problems with the semantic of the hotel name, and they knocked on the door of Room 31.

And a little old lady with big spectacles and a large sweater opened the door with a placid smile. Mrs Doubtfire Danny DeVito killer granny. Her luck had run out. She was arrested on the spot and driven to LAX, where she was met by Detective Cabrera and the Sacramento Chief of Police. She was flown back to Sacramento to stand trial in a private jet, hired by a local TV station, which I'm sure she enjoyed. Eventually, Dorothea Puente was charged with nine murders,

seven for the bodies found in her garden, the eighth charge for Emerson Gilmouth, and the ninth charge for Ruth Monroe, whose death had now been reclassified as a homicide in the wake of the discoveries at 1426 F Street. The case went to trial in October 1992, and in court, Dorothea admitted to cashing the checks of the people found in her garden but denied having murdered them. The prosecution brought forward an enormous amount of circumstantial evidence that pointed the finger squarely

at Dorothea Puente. Firstly, she stood to gain financially from the deaths of the six people in her garden and also of course from the death of her business partner Ruth Monroe. They also pointed to the fact that all of the, from the death of her business partner, Ruth Monroe. They also pointed to the fact that all of the bodies contained trace amounts of Dalmine, a prescription sleeping pill given to combat insomnia, and not a drug normally given to the elderly. On top of this, they found a book called The Necronomicon. No, I'm just

kidding. 150 common drugs and their uses, along with hundreds of packets of prescription medication, some of which contained capsules that had been opened up and their contents removed. But the most damning piece of evidence was a room on the second floor, pointed out by John Sharp, the resident who had originally passed a note to Detective Cabrera. Sharp, who'd previously worked at a morgue, told Cabrera in his police interview

that that room upstairs had the smell of death. It was discovered that the room had been double-carpeted to cover an enormous stain from a decomposing body. The prosecution made the case that this had been where Dorothea stored her victims' bodies while she waited for the opportunity to bury them in the garden. But despite all this, the prosecution still struggled to convince the jury

and the case dragged on. The jury eventually became deadlocked at 11 to 1 in the favour of a conviction, with the final member of the jury unable to look past the good that Dorothy had done for so many in her community. Nothing's black and white, man. Like, that's a disappointing rhetoric. Finally, the holdout jury was convinced to put forward a verdict of two counts

of first-degree murder and one of second-degree murder. And although the prosecution were aiming for the death penalty, the jury was once again swayed by a series of character witnesses who argued that although she had killed nine people, she'd also helped hundreds in her community. It doesn't cancel it out. Like, that's not how it works. Forensic psychiatrist William Vickery

said that he believed Dorothea Puente had aimed to help everyone who came into her care and that her rough upbringing had given her a softness. What? Excuse me? Excuse you? And by this psychiatrist's estimation, some of those in Dorothea's care reminded her too much of her parents. So she was overcome with rage and had to kill them. Oh, and then cash their security checks.

Sure. And then bury them alive with the Necronomicon. If we're going to pretend that that theory holds any weight for a second, suspend your disbelief. What about Ruth? What about Everson? They weren't vagrants. They weren't vulnerable members of the community. They weren't homeless.

They also weren't really people that could have reminded her of her parents. Totally. And she killed them entirely for her own gain. There's no other argument. In the end, Dorothea was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. She never admitted fault and maintained until the end

that all nine of her victims died of natural causes. And Dorothea eventually did grow old. She died in prison in 2011 at the ripe old age of 82. Well, there you go. I think, you know, Dorothea Puente, like, I don't buy any of this, like, cancelling out bullshit. She did what so many of these killers do, which is to put on a ruse to be unsuspecting. We see this with, like, male killers. They'll get married, have children, a family, because, you know, nobody suspects the man who has a respectable lifestyle they

suspect the oddball who lives by himself and um you know doesn't have a partner with dorothea she knows if i go for full granny and i help everybody in the community i can just do what i want in plain sight and she got away with it for so long but you know apart from the whole going to the hotel for a cup of coffee business, I do rate Cabrera. Oh, me too. Big fan. Because, like, she was killing people who were incredibly vulnerable, who were transient, who were, you know, not particularly high up on society's list of top priority people. And, you know, him and Judy, good work to get a conviction in this case. Absolutely.

So there you go. That's the case of Dorothea Puente. The not-grandma case. Absolutely. So there you go. That's the case of Dorothea Buente. The not-grandma-grandma. Absolutely. So yeah, we hope you enjoyed that, guys. Go buy your tour tickets. We'll see you next time. Exactly.

We'll see you next time for something else maybe here, maybe somewhere else, maybe in your bedroom. But we will see you again, that's for sure. Goodbye.

Bye.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have

consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.