True Crime All The Time - Dorothea Puente "The Death House Landlady"

Episode Date: June 12, 2017

In the 1980s, Dorothea Puente ran a boarding house for tenants many of whom were elderly or mentally disabled. On the outside it appeared that Puente was providing a much needed service to individuals that may have had no where else to turn. But in reality, she was murdering these individuals so that she could profit from their benefit checks long after they were dead. Join Mike and Gibby as they wade through the twists and turns of this fascinating case of Puente who become known as the "Death House Landlady". Puente may have appeared as loving grandmother to many but her lust for money ran extremely deep. Visit our website truecrimeallthetime.com for contact and merchandise information. You can help support the show by going to patreon.com/truecrimeallthetime     An Emash Digital Production See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

and welcome to episode 31 of the True Crime All the Time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson. Gibby, how are you today? Hey, Mike, I'm doing well, man. How about you? I am great, man. I'm fired up. We're getting ready to go to CrimeCon.

Actually, by the time this episode airs, we'll be on our way back from CrimeCon. Yeah, CC-2017. I can't wait to meet a bunch of fans. I can't wait to meet a bunch of other great, cool podcasters. It's going to be fun. Yeah, you're pretty approachable. So me? Yeah.

Yeah, I like to think I am. Yeah. You're that guy. We'll see how it goes. You know, maybe we'll have some stories we can tell on one of our future upcoming episodes. I'm sure I'll do something that will be story worthy. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah.

Odds are ever in my favor. What are you like, hunger games? Yeah. All right, so let's start with some Patreon shoutouts, and we've got a whole bunch today, Gibbs. We just got a flood of Patreon supporters, and we love it. So we've got Megan Joyce, Julie Ashmead, Cameron Hofstetter, Joe Farrar, Joan Prentice, Catherine Lux, Malena Slater, Paula Rutkowski, Lash Vixen that I know we've mentioned a couple times, but she keeps upgrading her Patreon.

So now she's at the highest level. So I have to get her a super contributor shout out. Absolutely. And the same goes for Michelle Watson. She upgraded too. So she's at the highest level. So, you know, big props to them. We got Karen Lindsay, Belke-Garito,

Lori Johnson, and Scott Erder. So big thanks to everyone. Absolutely. new supporters the people that have stuck with us we say it all the time but you know we love you we love the support and on top of that we love all the interaction on facebook and twitter and instagram and it just keeps growing and growing our true crime all the time facebook group is growing like wildfire man that thing is crazy right now i can't i can't believe how many uh new people are are being asked to to join and there's a lot of great conversations going on in there.

Always some type of discussion going on. I mean, no matter what time of day, night, there's always a discussion going on. Well, there is because if you think about it, I mean,

we, you know, we've got listeners from Australia and New Zealand, basically every country you can think of. So at some time of day or night, there is somebody out there talking about something. We're number one in Iceland. people in Iceland love us.

It's right. Make sure you check out our web page, Truecrime All Time.com. That's where you will find all of our social media information, as long as our merchandise information. While you're there, I don't say it a lot, I always forget. But if you're doing Amazon shopping, make sure you click through our Amazon banner.

It's a great way to support the show. They give us a little bit of money for directing you to Amazon. even though you're going to go there anyway, they give us a little kickback. So that's a great way to support the show. It doesn't cost you a thing. Your price is still going to be the same. So I always forget to say that.

Make sure you check out true crime all the time unsolved. We've got a great episode this week about the Waltham or Waltham. I keep saying it wrong, Gibbs. It's Waltham. It's Waltham, Triple Murders. And on its own, this would be a fascinating case. But what really makes it so much more interesting is who the suspects are.

And I don't want to give anything away, but they're very well known from another famous incident. And that's all I'll say about it. Stop right there. You got to check it out. Gibby came up with this one. It's a really good one. All right, Gibbs. You ready to get into tonight's case?

I am. I'm excited. We're talking about Dorothea Puente. Pointe. Pointe. Not the easiest word or name to say Dorothea. Dorothea Pointe. Not Dorothy. It's Dorothea.

Yeah. A little different. That's why you're going to say it all night, not me. Yeah. And to say that she's an unlikely serial killer Gibbs, that would be understatement. We're talking about a grandma. type that decides to kill. We've never done anything like this.

And she would earn the nickname of the Death House Landlady. So Dorothea murdered somewhere between 7 to 15 victims in California. We're talking the 1980s here. But it was the way that she chose her victims and killed them. that's what really stands out to me Gibbs so she was running a boarding house and she chose to murder you know the elderly the mentally disabled

that that is what makes some of her crimes that much more heinous and it was all for money all she wanted was their social security checks Dorothea Puente chose her victims carefully she chose people to live there who didn't have a lot of contact with their families or didn't have any family at all,

and they were isolated. And so most of them had no one that was looking for them just because the coroner cannot determine the cause of death doesn't mean we can't classify a death as a homicide. And obviously since these people were buried, many of them were bound, wrapped, you know, it was pretty obvious they didn't dig holes and jump in themselves.

There was a reason they were in these graves and someone else had to be involved. So just a little teaser there to set it up. Little? About what's going to be coming. So we're talking about a woman in her late 50s, almost 60 years old, committing these crimes. So as we go through that, we just, we've got to keep sight of that fact because it's very strange. Seems like she prayed on the week and the timet.

Well, she did. There's no doubt. but she almost had to, right? She was not going to be able to overpower a 20-year-old man. You're right. I guess that's where we get back to how she chose her victims very carefully. So like we do, Gibbs, let's talk about Dorothea's early life. She was born Dorothea Gray, January 9th, 1929 in Redlands, California, California.

her mom was named Trudy, her dad was named Jesse James Gray. Jesse James. And some of his actions kind of went well with this name that he had. It was said that both of her parents were drunks. And they spent what little money they had on booze. And when I say little money, I mean little money because her dad was a cotton picker didn't earn very much money from an early age she was abused by her parents both of them physically and because they had no money and we're wasting it on you know alcohol she had to scrounge

for her food so we're talking hard scrabble here and i want to paint this picture because i think it definitely plays into her life as she goes along It plays into her psyche. Yeah, because when you come from nothing, right, there's a couple of things you can do. You can work hard. You can get educated. You can get a good job and say, I'm going to make it that way. Or you can turn to a life of crime and say, I'm going to make it that way.

And I think what we're going to see is she kind of chose the second one, right? It was always a hustle. It was always how do I get something? thing because I'm not going to I'm not going to scrounge for my food forever. So like we said, hard childhood. And it was also a tragic childhood. You know, her father died of tuberculosis when she was very young, seven, eight years old, somewhere around there.

Her mother died a year after her father in a motorcycle accident. So Dorothea gets sent to an orphanage. And it was said Gibbs that later on in life, she would lie about her childhood. And one of the lies that she told was to say that she was one of umpteen children. You know, she came from this huge family

and that they were all born and raised in Mexico. Well, you know, if you go through the life that she had it up to this point and you're at an orphanage, I think you probably start inventing stories, you know, to compete with other kids. and, you know, to entertain yourself. So, you know, I'm not surprised that she's turned to some form of imagination,

storytelling that she thinks is reality. No, I think that's part of it. There's no doubt. Another part of it is, now this, she gets diagnosed, but not until later on. But the diagnosis is that she suffers from chronic undifferentiated schizophrenia. This is a condition that sometimes produces delusions. And later on, this would be backed up by some of her neighbors. I mean, they would say that she would tell these fanciful tales,

some about her starring in movies as being like the villain, this evil woman in like real films. People knew she wasn't in the film. They had seen the film. But in her head she was, huh? I guess that was part of this issue that she had. And she would even go on later to say that she was like a holistic doctor and that she could heal people with not Western medicine, what we're used to. So again, it just all plays into, you know, it's like fantasy. Her whole life, it seemed to be some type of fantasy to escape the reality.

going back to what you said, because I think she did grow up very hard. She had a rough childhood, but the path that she picks that we're going to see gravitates towards the dark side. So we fast forward to 1945 and Dorothy is 16 years old and she gets married to a soldier, Fred McFall. And Fred has just returned from the Pacific Theater in World War II. So Dorothy and Fred get married. But it's not very long into this marriage that Fred starts to figure out something's not right. One of the things that he learns is that she is a pathological liar.

At 16. Oh, yeah. She's 16 years old. Yeah. I just want to clarify that again. But like you said, this has probably started much earlier, probably started in the orphanage telling stories. And, you know, living this type of fantasy life, embellishing your background to make everybody think you were a little bit better than where you came from, I guess, Gibbs. Does that sound right?

Sure. I think people do that today in normal life. But she had very expensive tastes. And this is something that's going to follow her long. You know, she like to wear silk stockings and, you know, expensive dresses. You know, I know somebody else that likes silk stockings and dresses. They're going to be at CrimeCon this week. They're sitting across from me. Oh, man.

Hey, I don't tell everybody that. So just to give you an example of some of the, one story that she was claimed to have told is that she actually lived through the baton death march in World War II. Now, keep in mind, she would have been 13 years old. and she also lived through the bombing of Hiroshima. Oh, of course. A lot of survivors there.

So I'm not sure what she was even doing over there at 13 years old. But anybody that knows their history and knows the Batan death march and the movie, the bridge over the river Kwai and all that good stuff. And again, a lot of our younger listeners Gibbs are going to be like, what in the hell are you talking about? Check it out. Learn your history, folks. That's right.

You got to know it. There's no way she was over there. Nope. But it didn't stop there. I mean, she would tell people that she was the sister of the ambassador to Sweden. Seems kind of random. Yeah, well, people, Sweden. We like her Swedes, though.

We do like her Swedes. And then she also told people that she was a very close friend of Rita Hayward. Now, you got to know, Gives. Rita Hayworth was a huge star back in the day. Yes, she was. And I guess that's what gets me about. These are not stories that some of us might tell that just kind of make ourselves seem a little better. These are stories that are pretty easily verifiable.

She really swung for the stars on this one. That's what I'm saying. I mean, she didn't just tell the little white lies. She just went full bore. Now, she would have two daughters with Fred McFall. So before she was 18, she had two daughters. And yes, and she wouldn't raise either one of these daughters. One would end up being raised by Fred's mother, and the other one was given up for adoption

and was raised by strangers or, you know, people outside of the family. She becomes pregnant again in 1948, but this time she suffers a miscarriage. Now, I kind of hinted about the fact that, you know, she liked to dress, you know, flirty and sexy. And there was some stuff in the research Gibbs that talked about that she possibly could have been prostituting herself during some of these years to make money. Got to do what you got to do. I think this is one of the reasons why in late 48, Fred leaves her. because I think he knows that she's been messing around on him either way, whether it's through some type of prostitution or through just having affairs or whatever it is,

but he leaves her. So she's alone. She's got no money. And this is when she resorts to starting to forge checks. And this is going to start to lead her down a really bad path. Now she's caught for this and she goes to jail for this check forgery, but she doesn't spend a lot of time in jail. And as soon as she's released, she ends up getting pregnant again to a man that she doesn't know. And she gives that baby girl up for adoption as well. So again, kind of painting the picture of Dorothea's life up to this point.

It's been pretty rocky. Sure hasn't been a cherry road. No. In 52, she marries a guy from Sweden. Maybe because she was the sister of the ambassador to Sweden. Yeah. She meets this guy. That might be why.

No, she's really not. But she does meet a Swede. Guy's name is Axel Johansson. Axel. It's a kick-ass name. Yeah. Now, this guy was kind of rough and tumble. Axel was.

And I guess you have to be to have a name like Axel. I would think. You got to be ready to fight. Yeah. At a moment's notice. And apparently they did. They fought all the time. But they spent 14 years together.

So from 52, all the way up to 66, she was married to this axle. But the marriage was very turbulent. I mean, it said they had violent brawes. What's a violent brawl? When it doesn't want to go on? It keeps going on clipped. That's a gibbism right there But one thing Gibbs that I think comes out of this marriage

Is as though she is probably not tough enough already From her hard upbringing This 14 year marriage Just makes her even tougher I don't know if tough is the right word resilient Hardens her And it basically to the point where she's going to do whatever she has to do to survive.

In 1960, she's arrested a number of times once for being in a brothel. I think, you know, that she either was working at or had something to do, owned or managed or something. She tried to tell the cops that she got in there, didn't know what it was, kind of walked in there by mistake, visiting a friend. Gator. I mean, you don't go to a brothel to visit. visit a friend, but... Gator? Gator.

You never seen the movie? The good guys? When he's, his pimp days, he was Gator. Is that the good guys? The other guys. The other guys. Yeah, the good guys is a good movie too. Oh.

Yeah, the other guy. Gator. It's always a good road when you bring up a movie. And then you're not even sure what the name of the movie is. I just remember bits and pieces. Your whole life is nothing but bits and pieces. Yeah. I throw you off track all the time.

So she gets 90 days in the Sacramento County Jail for that. once she's released, she gets arrested again for vagrancy. She gets another 90 days in jail. She just wants a little soft bed, a clean sheets, and a free meal every night. But after this, she settles down for a little bit, and she actually starts to work as a nurse's aide caring for disabled and elderly people in their homes. Now, we kind of foreshadowed what she's going to do, end up doing, and it involves disabled and elderly people. And it's not going to be too long after this Gibbs that she starts to manage some boarding houses.

And we already know from the clip that kind of set this whole thing up that these murders that we're getting ready to talk about, they involve her and her people. boarding house and they also involve disabled and elderly people. So right now she's working as a nurse's aide caring for these people. And I think she's getting the inspiration for what's to come. But we have a little bit before we get there. Because like we said, her marriage to Axel ends in 1966. 14 years, they were married. Yeah, long time.

but right away she marries again. And this time she marries a man named Roberto Puente. And this is how we end up with the name Dorothea Puente. We all knew we'd get there eventually. So Roberto is much, much younger Gibbs than Dorothea at this point. She rub the cradle. Yeah. And also, they get married in Mexico City.

So I don't know how she gets down to Mexico City or how she finds Roberto. But this marriage lasts a very short time, two years. Some would say that's a very long time. By today's standards, it can be viewed that way. But she's not done. She gets married at least one more time. Well, you got to, you know. So we talked about Puente getting married one more time.

and she does for the fourth time in 1976 to a man named Pedro Montalvo. And it was said Gibbs that he was a violent alcoholic. So she's not doing a great job of picking, I don't think. Doesn't sound like. Sounds like she likes people just like her daddy. Well, and that could be, or maybe people with issues that she thinks she can fix. I don't know what it is, but. These marriages don't go very well.

And this one only lasts a few months. And it's from this point forward that she starts to spend a lot of time in the local bars. She was specifically looking for older men who were at an age where they were receiving benefits. And the reason why she did this is because she wanted to, get their checks, their benefit checks, and she would steal those, forge their signature, and steal their money. But she's eventually caught on this as well, and she's charged with 34 counts of treasury fraud. So she gets convicted of this as well, and she actually spends a number of years in prison, and it's when she gets out, she begins renting an apartment at 1426 F Street in Sacramento.

and this is the apartment where she's going to start this boarding house, Gibbs, that is really the central figure in this whole case. This is when stuff starts to go down. It really is, because she would commit her first murder in 1982, a year after renting this apartment. And the story is that there's a 61-year-old woman named Ruth Monroe. and she moves into the 1426 F Street with Puente bringing all everything she owns and $6,000 in cash. But very shortly after she moves in, she dies of an overdose.

And it was said that it was a combination of Tylenol and codeine. Well, that's just a standard pill today, man. Prescription. Yeah, but this was said to have been a massive. amount. Now the coroner would rule it as a suicide because basically they didn't have enough evidence but we know now that it was Dorothea Puente poisoning Ruth Monroe to take her money. But just a month after this happened Gibbs, Puente is arrested and she's charged with drugging four elderly people and stealing their

valuables. So you've got a 74-year-old man named Malcolm McKenzie that said Puente drugged him. And literally, as he sat in a chair and watched, she looted his house. But he couldn't move because of the drugs. He was in a stupor. It's just he couldn't speak. He couldn't move. But later on, he was able to say, this is what this woman did. So she did this to him and three other people. So she gets five years for this. But she only serves three.

Of course. Right. It's a theme that you and I talk about a lot. Does a little bit of time for all these things. They just keep piling up. Now, three years is nothing to sneeze at. I'm not saying that. It is.

But it just seems like it's one thing after another. and it's either probation or a reduced sentence that people are let out early, and then they go on to do something even worse. And that's what's going to happen in this case. Now, as part of her release, and this is very important, she was ordered to have no contact with the elderly, and she was not to handle government checks of any kind. How that worked out for it. It didn't work out well because that's her whole thing.

That's, that's her. That's her scam. Yep. But while she was in prison Gibbs, she had already been corresponding with this man named Everson Gilmouth. He was 77 years old. And I believe he was, you know, one of these people, whether he was lonely or didn't have a lot of family, he'd like to write to people in prison as pen pals. Good old pen pal days. But Everson makes a couple of mistakes. Number one, he picks Dorothea Puente to correspond with. Biggest mistake. And number two, he makes the mistake in one of his letters of mentioning that he lives off of a sizable pension.

That's a huge mistake. That's probably even a bigger mistake. And you can just imagine Puente in jail, right? Writing these letters, where eyes are getting. wide mouth watering mouth watering the wheels are turning because she's thinking gold mine she gets out on parole and who's there to pick her up but everson gilmouth now she's not supposed to have any contact with the elderly now she's 56 years old at this point so what i'm not sure of Gibbs is what they're considering elderly.

It had to have been written in the parole, but I never saw it. Like what age? But 77 year old Everson Gilmouth, I'm assuming, qualifies. Yeah, I think that would have been in a qualifying age range. Yeah, that's my thought. So he picks her up, takes her back to 1426F Street, where she had lived before she went to prison. Now, Gilmouth did have a sister. I kind of said maybe he didn't have much family, but I know at least he had a sister because he had mentioned to his sister that he was going to

marry Dorothea. And he makes this huge mistake because he puts Dorothea as a signer on his checking account. Oh, that's like hitting a lotto, man. She just hits a lotto. So Gibbs, I definitely want to talk about some psychological evaluations that occurred while Dorothea was in prison because she was diagnosed as a schizophrenic. And we mentioned that up front that that would happen later in life. But what the psychologist says is that this is a woman that is disturbed and does not appear to have remorse or regret for what she has done. This is what he's writing. She is to be considered dangerous, and her living environment and or employment should be closely monitored.

So I thought this was important to state because none of this is going to happen. Right. She's basically let out, not closely monitored, but here's a psychologist basically sounding the alarm bells saying, somebody needs to be watching this woman because she's a danger to society. Wow, man. I mean, they're trying to preempt it and here she comes.

Free Willie. Do what she wants. Did you just say free willy? Free will. Hey, this is not that kind of show, man. Oh, all right. So we know she's back at 1426F Street and without a license

and in total violation, of her probation, she opens a boarding house. And it was said that she had enough space for as many as eight tenants at 1426 F Street. And the strange thing about this Gibbs, and it's going to come up again, but she does have a probation officer. And she has people that are visiting her home. And they do this numerous times over the next. couple of years, and somehow they don't realize that she's running a business. They don't realize

that she has these tenants that are elderly, that are receiving government checks. All of these things that she's doing are violations of her probation. And nobody catches her doing this stuff. So in November of 1985, Puente hires a handyman. And she wants to put up some paneling in her house. And the handyman does this job for her. And she pays him and he's happy with the job. And as the job is ending, she asked him for a favor. And he's happy to do it because he got paid well.

She treated him well. And the favor is that she asked him to build him. her a box. And she tells him she's going to store books in it and some other items. And she lays out the dimensions. It's got to be six foot long, three foot wide and two foot deep. Now, gives those dimensions are a little strange. I would say. But he builds the box. He comes back the next day to the house and the box has been filled. It's in an upstairs bedroom. and Dorothea has nailed it shut. And this is when she asked him for just one last favor.

She needs him to help her transport this box. And he does. He gets a neighbor to help him load the box because it's so heavy. He's kind of wondering, what is in this box? It's very heavy. He has to get a neighbor. They load it in his pickup truck. And Dorothea decides she wants to take a ride to go to this storage depot with him.

But as they're going, she changes her mind. And she has him pull over on the side of the road near this riverbank. And together, they get the box and they dump it in the river. Now, he's questioning her why she's doing this. But she's saying, you know what? It turned out that it was just a bunch of junk that I wanted to get rid of. And so they let, they throw it in the river and they let it sink. Now, flash forward to New Year's Day, 1986.

Two fishermen find the box. Smells like death is what they said. That'd be pretty bad, man. They call the police. The police come out. They pry open the box. Inside, they find what's left of Everson Gilmouth. Can't be much.

No, at that point, it wouldn't be. But it was said that he was dressed in his underwear, wrapped in a bed sheet, and completely bound with black, electrical tape. But as you alluded to, this body is pretty well decomposed. The only thing that they really could find was a wristwatch and it was still attached to the bone. So the police don't even know who this guy is. He's John Doe. They can't figure out who he is and he would remain unidentified for three years. But we have to talk about what Dorothea does.

because she continues to collect his pension. She even goes as far as writing letters to his family. Wow. Explaining that, you know, he's not feeling well. And the reason why he hasn't been able to contact him is because of this poor health he's in. So I don't know what Dorothea Puente's IQ was, Gibbs. I never could find it. But she had to have some smarts.

or street smarts or whatever you want to call it. Wits. Wits about her to put some of these plans in action. I don't think she was an unintelligent person. I don't think she could have got away with some of this stuff the way she did. So would you say cutting? Yeah, I think that's probably it. She's very cunning in these actions that she's taking to get this money.

out of people. So she's got the boarding house. We know that. And pretty soon, there are social workers like coming to her looking to place some of their clients in her boarding house. Now, she never tells all these people that she's got five felony convictions for drugging and robbing the elderly. And no homework was ever done on her because they would have been able to find that. She just paints that Cherry Road. You're big with the Cherry Road tonight, aren't Cherry Road? Later on, after everything is said and done, one of the social workers would come out and say that she put 19 elderly people

in Puente's care between 1987 and 1988. That's a lot of people in a short amount of time. That's a boatload, man. But it was said the reason that she did that is, because the system that Dorothea had set up was the best system out there. So that also says something about back then the state of, you know, where to put some of these people. There just wasn't many great options. And Dorothea Puente was filling this need of elderly, of housing and taken care of some of these elderly individuals.

And some of these individuals, like we said, they had mental disabilities as well. So her business looked legitimate. She had some folks that actually needed care, is what I'm thinking. Well, she did. And I think to a degree she did take care of them for some period of time. For her own benefit towards the end. Yeah. I mean, everything was setting up for her to do what she was going to do later on.

but in the beginning she was she was giving them a place to stay she was feeding them taking care of them but for a short period of time as we're going to find out because we talked about her space it was set for eight people to have eight tenants so the question is Gibbs how could 19 people be placed in that short amount of time and there's only one answer to that it's that some of these people weren't there very long. Now, it was said that she ran a very tight ship when it came to the boarding house. She charged $350 a month. And what you got for that was a private room, two hot meals a day.

Breakfast was at 6.30 a.m. and dinner was at 3.30. That's pretty early for a dinner. Well, it's both of those early for me. I'm not even up by 6.30. but apparently she was a pretty good cook I mean she would make pancakes bacon eggs for breakfast but the other thing that was said is that if the residents missed the time

if they weren't down there by 630 or they weren't there at 3.30 there was no other option you went to bed hungry yes you didn't get fed they were not allowed to enter the kitchen at hours other than those that were listed.

They also weren't allowed to touch the phone and they weren't allowed to touch the mail. And that's going to be a big one. Sounds like some control. Well, it's control and it said that, I mean, she would berate anyone that tried to touch the incoming mail. Wow.

She wanted to protect those checks coming in, huh? Exactly. Because the mail is where all the government checks are going to be coming in through and she wants total control right gibbs so this is the part where we got to start talking about some mysterious disappearances and this is going to kind of all tie it together because like we said there's a lot of people coming to Puente's boarding house right she only has so much room so she has to make room for new people somehow so on august 19th of 86 Betty Palmer, she's 77 years old,

she never returns back to the boarding house from a doctor's appointment. So a few weeks after Betty goes missing, Dorothea is in possession of Betty's ID, but she's changed out the picture and put her own picture in there. And she uses this to go and collect Betty's benefits. So again, this is part of her own, her whole plan, right? She's getting rid of people to make room for new people.

The checks are coming to her house. And then the women, she's taking their IDs, inserting her own picture in, and then making sure that she's able to collect their benefits. So it's kind of a devious plan. It really is. In February of the next year, Leona Carpenter, is discharged from the hospital, and she's actually placed in Puente's care. She's 78 years old.

And two weeks after arriving at the boarding house, she goes missing. She's never heard from again. Now, one of the things you have to think about, Gibbs, is some of these elderly people, they don't have family. Being placed in this home by either social workers or, you know, other people, within the system because they don't have anybody else to take care of them. Yeah, so they can go to these homes and not have to worry about having to get back to somewhere else, right? Right, but also, I think what that means is there's nobody checking up on them in a lot of cases.

There is no spouse or maybe even daughter or son that's calling to say, hey, where is my mom? Well, if they were, nobody was allowed to touch the phone or touch the mail. Well, that's true. The next man to go missing is 62-year-old James Gallup. He was last seen in July of 1987, and he had had an operation to remove a brain tumor. After the operation, he was being seen by his doctor, and he tells his doctor that he's moving into a boarding house at 1426 F Street. Nobody ever sees him again. In October, 62-year-old Vera Martin, she moves into the boarding house.

She's never seen again. Dropping like flies, man. Well, if you're looking at this timeline, things are happening very quickly, right? I think from the time that Dorothea Puente decided this is what I'm going to do, she acted very quickly. Now, the next person I want to talk about is Bert Montoya. and Burt was mentally disabled. And I want to play this clip of a social worker that worked with Burt.

My job in the 80s was to locate people who were not getting services on the street and who were living homeless and mentally ill, unable to actually do it themselves. She said that she was in her 70s and that she had actually been an unneeded. nurse in the Battle of Baton during World War II. And I was very impressed with that. We came back and he had a very nice haircut. He was very clean and he had some very nice clothes. It was amazing, the transformation.

And we were just delighted that he was getting the kind of help that he really needed. So I think this is an important clip, Gibbs, because it touches on a lot of the things that we've been talking about. So number one, this is the actual woman that placed Bert with Dorothea Puente. And she goes back to the boarding house to check up on Bert. And he's actually doing really well. He can't take care of himself. Dorothea's taking care of him. She's helping him out.

She's making sure he's fed. and the social worker was very happy with the situation. Sure. I mean, it sounds like Dorothea was playing her cards, right? You know, made sure that it all looked good when back then,

I'm guessing they probably didn't have surprise visits, right? They probably were announced and, hey, we're going to come up and see the patients on this such and such a day. Yeah, I don't know what the schedule was, but the other thing that I found very interesting is that the woman's

said that Dorothea said she was in her 70s. And I think I might have hinted or alluded to this fact in the beginning. And it's one of the reasons why I refer to Dorothea as like an elderly grandma type because she portrayed herself to be much older than what she actually was. Right. Because at this point in time, she's in her mid to late 50s. But she's telling people that she's at least. least 15, 20 years older than what she is. And I think one of the reasons that she did that is because it made her more trusted. I think the older you are, the more trustworthy you appear

to most people. I would say that's true. If you've got a 70-year-old woman, grandmotherly type figure, I'll call it, you just naturally assume that that's a trustworthy person, wouldn't you? Yeah, I mean, it's grandma. Right. Grandma. You think of your own grandma and think who's more trusting than that? Nobody.

I got the sweetest little grandma ever, right? That's what I, and I think she was playing on that fact. The problem is, Bert disappears and he's never seen from again. Had to piss off Ernie. When Bert leaves, Ernie gets pissed. Yes, right. Now, the other tenants, they start asking Dorothea about Bert. She tells the other tenants that Burt's gone to Mexico to visit family.

So she has to come up with the story, right, for each one of these people. And it's probably not that hard to come up with something. Well, she's pretty good at come up with stories. Now, it was said Gibbs that prior to Burt Montoya's disappearance, Dorothea was already starting to arouse suspicion. But not with the police at this time. It was social services that was getting some complaints. that she was running an illegal boarding facility.

And they come out and they do an inspection. And it was said that the inspector was even aware that she had been previously convicted for elderly abuse, misusing benefits, all of these things that we've talked about. But somehow she's able to lie her way out of getting into any trouble. They don't shut her down. Well, she's good at fabricating. stories. Yes, I think she is. And again, this guy probably thinks this is a 70 year old woman. It seems

like she's taking care of these people. So Puente continues on. But then a social worker named Peggy Nickerson comes to visit. And she wants to check on some of the clients that she's placed in Puente's home. Now, this is not the same person that was on the clip. And Peggy starts to become very suspicious because a lot of the people that she had sent there, they're not there. She can't see them. And Dorothea tells her that they've moved away. But that has to be kind of hard to believe, Gibbs, because of these people are not able to take care of themselves. It's the whole reason why the social workers are placing them in the care of Puente. How are they just going to up and leave and move somewhere else.

And why were their checks still be coming to her? Well, yeah, I don't think they know that part yet. I don't think Peggy believed her, but she didn't have any evidence to really do anything about it. But what she did do is she stopped sending people to Dorothea's house, which is probably a good thing because she probably saved some lives. Now, we get up to November 7th. This is when another social worker, Judy, and this is the person.

and that we just heard on the clip. She's following up on Bert, Montoya, and she goes to the boarding house, and she's told the story about Bert having gone to Mexico to visit family. But I think Judy quickly realizes that there's no way that that could be true, right? She knew Bert. She knew what his limitations were. And she quickly goes to the police.

So the police take Judy's complaint. They go out to the boarding house to talk to Dorothea. And while they're at the house, there's an elderly man residing at the boarding house. He gives a note to one of the officers. And the note says that Dorothea Puente has told him to lie to the police. So their suspicions are through the police. roof at this point, right? Has to be.

Now, the other thing gives that the police notice while they're at the boarding house is they notice a bunch of soil in the garden that looks like it's been disturbed. So because of that, they come back four days later. They've got a warrant to search the house and to dig up the garden. So as they come back to dig in this garden Gibbs, it doesn't take them long to find a body. And at some point, Dorothea Puente walks out while they're digging. The detective tells her that they found a body. And it was said that she acted shocked and actually slapped the sides of her face and almost like,

oh my gosh, I can't, I can't believe you're telling me this kind of. And he actually has his hands up by his face right now trying to do it. I do. I'm trying to act it out in the voice and everything. So they know they're on to something. And they're digging. They're digging. and then they find a shoe with a piece of a foot still in it.

That's a bonus. That's a, well, at this point, they're thinking they need a lot more equipment, right? This is more than just a couple of men and some shovels. So they decide to come back the next day with a bunch of equipment to start excavating.

So they bring back to heavy machinery. They've got some forensic anthropologists. They've got the coroner's offices out there. So the first person that they dig up from the yard is the body that the first body that they found the day before, right? They didn't. Once they found the body, they kind of stopped. They found the body and then they found the shoe. So they completely exhumed this body. And it's a small female with gray hair. And it's really just a skeleton with hair at this point with gray hair. And it was said, Gibbs, that there's a whole crowd of people watching this happened. You know, kids had climbed up trees just so they could watch these bodies come out of the earth.

So as they're exhuming body after body, Gibbs, and you have to picture this site, Dorothea Puente walks out of the house again. She's watching them do this. And at one point, she turns to one of the detectives and she says, am I under arrest? And the detective says, no, you're not. So then she asked if she could go down and get some coffee a few blocks away. And the cop actually escorts her past all the reporters and the onlookers and all of that and lets her go down and get coffee.

Do you find that strange? I find it bizarre. I find it a little strange that they're un-earned. unearthing multiple bodies at this point and the person that owns the house where they're unearthing all these bodies, I can understand they don't have enough to arrest her. So maybe what else can they do? I don't know. Detain her?

You would think they'd have enough to do something. Maybe they thought she wasn't going to be able to get away because she's an old lady. Maybe. But in pretty quick order, I mean, they pull five bodies out. And it said this took about four hours. Well, somebody at this point realized that Dorothea Puente hadn't come back. And the reason she hadn't come back is because she was already hundreds of miles away. She got to hell out of Dodge.

She said, okay, idiots. Yeah, if you're not going to detain me and you know that there's a bunch of bodies buried on my property, I'm taking off. Yeah, I'm going to jump on my car and go. A woman was free to go. She was not under arrest. We had no right to do that. You have to understand that. He should have been followed.

He should have been tailed very closely. The prime suspect in a homicide case. And there isn't any excuses as far as I'm concerned. So I thought this clip was interesting Gibbs because it's two different jurisdictions. The first one is Sacramento saying, basically, what else could we do? The second one was, I think, the chief of Los Angeles saying, you should have done something. This is the prime suspect in a murder case or situation. Yeah.

Should have been watched around the clock. Yeah, because now we're going to have to clean up your mess. Right. So you can imagine this was all over the news. It was big news. And then the fact that she had escaped, if you want to call it that, that was, all, I mean, it was a time, Newsweek, the National Enquirer. So it had to be true.

That makes it true. It was said that it was even covered in other countries, England and France. I mean, that's how big this story was. So now, not only are they trying to exhum all these bodies, but now they got to start a manhunt to find Puente. And it was said that the manhunt went all the way down into Mexico. That's where they thought she had fled to. but four days later they finally track her down in a cd motel in L.A.

Never would have a C.D. hotel in L.A. I think the question is how many are there or were there at that time? Right. I would say quite a few. We have to talk about these victims, Gibbs, because it ends up being seven people that they exume from the garden. Bert Montoya, 51, we talked about him. Dorothy Miller, she was 64 years old. When they exhumed her body, her arms were duct taped to her chest.

So I'm not sure, but Dorothea must have duct taped her arms to her chest before she planted her, for lack of a better word. Benjamin Fink, he was 55 years old. He was found in nothing but his boxer shorts. Betty Palmer, 78. Now, this one's kind of gruesome because Betty Palmer was found underneath a statue that was just a few feet away from the sidewalk out in front of the house.

But when they found her Gibbs, she was missing the head, the hands, and the lower part of the legs. So she had been dismembered. So just basically a torso was there? Yeah, that's all they found was the torso. They didn't find the head, the hands, or the lower legs. Pretty gruesome. It is.

So then let's talk about Leona Carpenter. She was 78 years old, had been at the boarding house, and they found her body buried near the back fence of the property. And there was a story about this one, Gibbs, that the lead detective, while they were digging and while they were exhuming or excavating, I should say, he actually thought that there was a tree root that they had to try to get out. And it turned out to be this woman's leg bone.

And he was yanking on this tree root trying to get it out. And I just found this story like very, you know, macab. You had to use macab, didn't you? I did. And then they found James Gallup, 62 years old. And then the last person they found was Vera Faye Martin. She was 64. And when she was unearthed, it was said that her wristwatch was still ticking.

There we go. Keep your own time ticking. And unfortunately, she wasn't able to. No. Because she ran into Dorothea Puente. How does Dorothea have time to dig and bury all these bodies? no one sees it always makes me wonder well and we're gonna we're gonna have to talk about it a little bit because she killed all of these people in one of the rooms upstairs so i just don't understand

how this woman is able to do that get the bodies down the stairs out of the house dig these graves essentially and place these people in them i mean some of of these are grown men. Yeah, that's what I'm just trying to think, how she was able to pull this off. She must just been a little firecracker with muscles. Or she had some help. Or she had some help.

They would obviously do examinations on all seven of these bodies. And every one of them had very large concentrations of this drug called Dalmain. And police would later find a whole bunch of prescriptions. for this domain in Plente's personal effects. The other thing they uncovered during the investigation, and I think you and I kind of talked about this a little bit, is that she had cashed over 60 different benefit checks belonging to the victims after their deaths.

60. Wow. And we know that she was taking their money while they were at the boarding house. she was providing some services during that point. But then after she killed the people, she didn't have to provide the services anymore and she was able to collect all their money. What seems so outrageous to me is that it was said that parole agents visited her 15 different times

within the two years leading up to this point in time where she's arrested. I just don't understand how none of those people ever realized that she was violating her parole. She had all these elderly people living in a boarding house. That was a direct violation of her parole. Maybe she just had so much charisma that she could persuade them otherwise. Well, it was said that she was able to tell them stories that, you know, these are family, visiting, but I don't know, 15 different people, somebody should have been able to

figure out that something wasn't right. Even if she wasn't doing anything wrong to these people, just being around them was a, you know, should have violated her parole. All right, Gibson, we've got to talk a little bit about the trial. It was held in Monterey County. And it began October 1992. And this was a long trial. It lasted a year. The prosecutor, John O'Meara, he called over 130 different witnesses. Now, the prosecution had one main weakness, and that was that they had no eyewitnesses, right, to any of these murders.

And the other thing that they couldn't prove was how these people were killed. They couldn't determine cause of death because the bodies were too decomposed. The only one that they could figure out was that of Ruth Monroe. And now she was not exhumed. If you remember, Ruth was the very first person that Dorothea murdered. But the coroner ruled that one a suicide initially. But like we talked about, all they really knew about the seven was that the toxicology result showed that they all had this domain, this prescription. strength sleeping pill.

So this is what she used to knock them out. That helps me understand how she did the crime. I still can't figure out. How she got them or moved the bodies, transported them. Yeah. Now, it was said that Dalmane could be lethal if it was mixed with alcohol or other sedatives and that it was especially dangerous to elderly people. And I know in the, we didn't mention it, but I know in the case of Ruth Monroe,

Ruth was not a drinker. And there was a story that I believe it was her son came to visit her one time at the boarding house. And she had a drink. And she said that Dorothea had made the drink for her. So I believe the theory is that Dorothea mixed the down main with alcohol. and was making these people drink it, and that's what ultimately killed them. And in high, very high doses.

Sure. Poison. Yes. Yeah. Now, there was a doctor that testified at trial that Dorothea Puente had used Dorothy Miller's ID card to try to get a prescription of Dalmat, which she couldn't get.

The doctor wouldn't give it to her. But that goes back to us talking about, after she murdered these people, she was using their IDs to get benefits, to try to get things as well. They had a handwriting expert testify at trial that Dorothea Puente had signed the names

of the seven dead tenants on those 60 checks that we talked about. So he was able to say that that was her handwriting. That's good, strong evidence. Yeah, it's really strong evidence. She was making about $5,000 a month from forging these checks. Now, $5,000 a month, Gibbs, maybe a lot of money to Dorothea Puente. But no amount of money is worth killing these people.

And $5,000 a month, I mean, it just goes to her mindset for me. This is what I need to do to survive, to make money. and I have no problem killing these people to make that happen. She never wanted to go hungry ever again. Right. She was when she's a little girl. I think it goes back to her childhood. She was going to do whatever the hell she had to do

and hurt anybody she had to hurt in the process to make that happen. One of the interesting people that testified at trial was the handyman that we talked about that Dorothea hired to build the calls. often for Everson Gilmout. And he told the court and the jury

that he'd help dump the body in the river. Now, I don't know that he knew it was a body. It didn't matter because the statute of limitations on that crime had already passed.

So even if they wanted to, they couldn't have filed charges against him. But his testimony, you would think, had to have been pretty powerful to the jurors. So of the 130 different witnesses Gibbs, some of them were former tenants of Puente's boarding house.

So not everybody was killed, right? There were some people that came and went. And one of the people that did was a man by the name of Homer Myers. And he actually lived there for a couple of years. So I don't know how she selected who was going to die. and who wasn't. And maybe Homer didn't have the type of pension or the type of benefits that would have qualified him.

That's probably a bad word, but to be a murder victim in her eyes. Yeah, he wasn't in her market. That's the only thing I can think of. But the interesting thing about Homer's testimony was that he said that he had dug some holes. for Puente. And he testified that Puente said she was going to plant some apricot trees.

So he had dug some four-foot holes for these apricot trees. But he questioned her why she wanted them so deep, right? He thought that was way too deep to plant these trees. Well, it turns out that unknowingly, he dug some of the graves. So it kind of goes back to what we were saying. how did she accomplish all this the same way she did everything else she got people to do her bidding

yeah pretty freaky man I still don't again I still don't understand how she got the bodies down there from the top floor of the apartment just let them roll I still I still don't understand that and it was never answered I can never find the answer to that one

it's curious for me I you're stuck on that I'm stuck on it too and I think the listeners will be too I just don't have the answer. The defense was trying to portray that these people died of natural causes. And indeed, they had every illness you could name. So if you can't prove cause of death, can you prove murder? Their point of view was that they just simply died, and then she buried them and continued to collect their checks.

So that clip is a great synopsis of the defense. they're admitting to the fact that Dorothea buried the bodies but what they're saying is these people were elderly they had all kind of ailments which they did I'm sure they died of natural causes and she just buried the body she didn't kill them I mean it's a good defense it's I can't think of what else are they going to argue other than she didn't do it and this is what she did do

it was wrong, but it wasn't murder. Now, they did have their own witnesses. They had some people that came forward and testified about how her abusive upbringing, like we talked about, how it probably motivated her. But again, I don't see that swaying a jury, right? Because that's not saying she didn't do it. it's saying what you and I say a lot of times, which is this is probably what led up to causing her,

you know, maybe causing her to do it. Right. Or it being a factor, but that's not going to get you off of a murder charge. No. So like I said, Gibbs, this was a very long trial. It lasted a year.

And at the end of this, the jury gets the case. And it was said that they deliberated for 24 days. At that time, I don't know if it still is, but at that time, that was the longest deliberation in any murder case in California state history. That is a long time, 24 days. It's an extremely long time. Most trials don't last 24 days. So the trial lasted a year, and then they deliberated on the case for 24 days.

During the deliberation, it was said that the jury was deadlocked 11 to 1 for conditional. for conviction on all counts. So they have this one holdout that wouldn't budge. So they finally had to agree to a conviction of two first-degree murder counts with special circumstances and one second-degree murder count. So that's what they got Dorothea for. So the jury ends up finding Dorothea Puente guilty of murdering Dorothy Miller, Benjamin Fink, and Leona Carpenter.

Now, that's kind of hard to reconcile when they found seven bodies, but they were only able to convict her on three of them. Now, we don't know all the evidence. We weren't there. But it's tough for me to wrap my head around, I guess. Yeah, but I guess if the charger was three, charger was seven, at the end of the day, as long as she gets enough sentence time

that she never sees daylight, it's all matters. Yeah, you're right. But, and we said this before, what does that do for the families of the victims that she wasn't found guilty on? Because the judge, Michael Verga, he ultimately has to declare a mistrial on those counts because there were six other murder charges

that they just couldn't reach a verdict. verdict on. So they reached a verdict on three of the nine is basically how it worked out. And like I said, there was no explanation that I could find of why they found her guilty on the three, but they couldn't reach an agreement on the other charges. And it was said that they were all very similar. That's all it said. Very similar. On December 10th, 1993, the judge sentenced point A to prison for life without the possibility of parole. So back to your point, Gibbs. As far as her being held accountable,

it really doesn't matter. Three, six, nine. Right. She's going away for life. But I do think maybe it matters to the victim's families. Dorothea showed absolutely no emotion with the, when the verdict was read, but that she did turn to her lawyers and say,

I didn't kill anyone. And this isn't the first time that she had said this. She actually said this when they brought her back, you know, when she escaped to Los Angeles, they flew her back. And I want to play a clip because this is actually Dorothea. I have not killed anyone.

I told you that. I have not killed anyone. The checks I cashed, yes. So this is her walking off the plane. I probably should have played it back then, but I thought this was a cool place to play it because she's basically saying to her attorneys in a shocked manner,

I didn't kill anyone. So Dorothea was 64 years old when she was sent to the Central California Women's Facility. And it was said Gibbs that, this is the largest women's prison in the country, which doesn't surprise me. It's California. They have a, they probably have the biggest prison population, I would say, in the country. Because of the total population of the state. Yes. Okay. Not because California's bad. I just, yeah, I just saw your emails that started jumping up. No, just, just in relation to the

population of California. And I guess to end this one Gibbs, we talk about her death because, Dorothea dies March 27th, 2011, in that same prison. She was 82 years old at the time. And it said that she died from natural causes. Catch that last check. She cashed that last check. She didn't get shanked, though. Well.

I don't know if they do as much shanking in the women's prisons. I don't know. As they do in the... They might have a few women ex-cons. Do not tell them to email. email me, please, for the love of Pete. No, seriously, email him and let him know back in the day. Is there any shanking going on in the women's prison?

All right. Before we sign off, I have one more clip. And this is the original detective many years later touring the boarding house. This is the place where she administered the drugs. You know, this is the room. And so I, you know, I just think about that. This is what we would call the death room. This is where she brought her victims after she had induced drugs into alcohol. And she would place them here on the floor.

But the stairways, this is how she took her victims out right here. It's always been our opinion that somebody helped her. It's just that we don't know who helped her. But right here, where this new building is, right where I'm standing, is where I discovered the first set of bones. I wanted to come back when the house is redone, when it's happy. I love this house. It's happy. And I'm grateful that now the community, you know, can come in and see it.

And this veil of uncertainty, this veil of darkness has been lifted from this property. So they've redone the house and the veil has lifted. I don't know how you lift it because there is just some horrific things that happened at this house. But one of the things that he does mention is that they had this theory that she had. had to have had help. But they were never able to figure out who it was. Could it have been that she conned or was able to manipulate another border into helping her?

Maybe. I don't know. Clearly she was good at manipulating people. She was. But I found it interesting that they're basically, they've, they fixed up this house and people can tour it. Yeah, that's creepy to me, man. Which seems, you know, do you have to pay an admission?

I don't know what type of... You'd probably pay. I wouldn't. I would. I'd want to go through it. I wouldn't want to. I think most people listening would want to go through it. I'd go through my K bar, my hand.

All right. So that is the case of Dorothea Puente. Just a, man, I'll tell you. Watch out for grandma. Bad, bad grandma? Bad grandma. Very bad. All right.

That's it for another episode of True. crime all the time. So for Mike and Gibby, stay safe and keep your own time ticking. Hey, true crime all the timers. We want to get to know you better. So we're competing with other shows to get the most responses to a quick survey. It only takes a few minutes of your time and you can do it straight from your smartphone. Help us out and support the show by going to wondery.com slash survey and filling it out. That's Wondery, W-O-N-D-E-R-Y.com-slash survey. Thank you.