On her way back, she insisted to reporters that she hadnt killed anyone, claiming: I used to be a very good person at one time.. Puente was convicted of three of the murders, although the jury could not agree on the other six. On the other hand, when these people, as could be expected, would act upat that point, she snapped and decided to kill them.. William Vicary spoke with Puente for the first time about two months after her arrest. But eventually, police searching for a missing tenant spotted a patch of disturbed dirt near the boarding house and uncovered the first of several bodies. Thats just too much coincidence., Finally, on the 24th day of deliberations, the holdout juror acquiesced, voting guilty on two counts of first-degree murder and one second-degree count. Time has deepened the creases between her potato-like nose and dumpling cheeks, and her blanched skin has slackened at the neck. In fact, Puente was a serial killer who committed at least nine murders inside her boarding house in Sacramento, California throughout the 1980s. A pair of Christmas ornaments made by Puente in prison. [6], Gray was arrested in 1960 for owning and operating a bookkeeping firm as a front for a brothel in Sacramento;[5] she was found guilty and was sentenced to ninety days in the Sacramento County Jail. Puente told them that they were welcome to do so, and even provided an extra shovel. Shes not hurting there in prison, he says. According to Dailymail, seven years after the death of Puente, a man named William Harder had claimed to be her grandson. I wonder what she wants when death does come. But she has shown too much interest in my visits for me to believe her. Her shoulders shake as she laughs, her open mouth exposing a white flash of dentures. [10] According to investigators, most of her victims had been drugged until they overdosed; Puente then wrapped them in bed-sheets and plastic lining before dragging them to open pits in the backyard for burial. I was on stage when the girl next to me broke her heel and bumped into me. The noise inside the prisons visitors hall amplifies on Valentines Day. The home belonged to seemingly sweet Dorothea Puente, who was arrested in 1988 and later convicted as a serial murderer. Who Were Dorothea Puente's Victims? How and When Did Dorothea Puente Die? Dorothea Helen Gray met the world on Jan. 9, 1929, in Redlands, Calif., the sixth of seven children born to Jesse James Gray and Trudie Gray. Between 1982 and 1988, the elderly and disabled people living in Dorothea Puentes house had no idea that was she was poisoning and strangling some of her guests before burying them on her property and cashing their Social Security checks. A year earlier, he had probed the case of Morris Solomon, a Sacramento handyman who would be convicted of murdering six women across the city. During discussions that typically lasted two to three hours, she proved by turns defiant and self-pitying, disavowing she killed anyone while reserving words of sorrow for herself. dorothea puente grandson - Las Palmas [citation needed], A few weeks later, the police returned after Malcolm McKenzie, a 74-year-old pensioner (one of four elderly people Puente was accused of drugging), accused Puente of drugging and stealing from him. Others spoke of a calculating criminal who feigned altruism to mask her avariceand a homicidal bent. Vera Martin, 64. In April 2020, the house and current owners were showcased in the Quibi series Murder House Flip. In June 2020, the house was featured in a ten-minute documentary with 60 Second Docs about the purchase and renovation of the house by the current owners. The 9/ . People were always coming and going. I dont want to be a burden on anyone.. Grandson of killer granny Dorothea Puente, who laced cakes with sleeping pills and then smothered them at her California boarding house, reveals how he shared a 'real connection' with her and . In theory, the blend of narcotics detected in the victims could have proven lethal, or weakened them to the point of defenselessness against suffocation with a pillow or blanketa nearly untraceable cause of death. Dorothea Helen Puente (nascido Gray; 9 de janeiro de 1929 - 27 de maro de 2011) foi uma assassina em srie americana.Na dcada de 1980, Puente mandava numa hospedaria em Sacramento, Califrnia, e assassinou vrios idosos e pensionistas com deficincia mental antes de descontar seus cheques de seguridade social. Saga of a lethal landlady: serial killer Dorothea dead at 82 I was struck by how pleasant and socially intact and intelligent she was, says Vicary, who works in Los Angeles. Witnesses, including her long-lost daughter, testified how Puente had helped them in their youth and guided them to successful careers. McFaul split from his young wife in 1948. They share a gray cinderblock room furnished with eight metal lockers, four slender bunk beds, two sinks, a toilet and a shower. In her note, written on plain lined paper in a grade-schoolers swirling cursive, she invited me to visit. However, it would be three more years before authorities could identify the body as one of the tenants in Dorothea Puentes house. A local Spanish-language newspaper that referred to Puente as la doctora (Courtesy of John Cabrera), The unlicensed venture thrived from the start. I could see the joint., A vial of flurazepam found in Puentes home (Courtesy of The Sacramento Archives). It was a human leg bone, he recalls. Her escape intensified interest in a lurid tale that for a time made Sacramento the center of the media universe. She would flee the city that morning. The case rested on the shifting sands of circumstantial evidence. Familiar in name, she remained an enigma. Dismembering their corpses, she threw their remains into a mass grave in her garden, telling neighbors the foul smell emanating from the ground was sewage and dead rats, rather than dead residents. As police exhumed corpse after corpse, TV crews jammed F Street while gawkers scaled trees to peer into the yard. She trails Cabrera, his police badge clipped to the front of a dark blue jacket and his jeans tucked into knee-high black boots that he had donned for the days dig. Soon afterward, Chief disappeared. Years later, her granddaughter visits the spot. She also mentions undergoing major cancer surgery in 1961 to remove her reproductive organs and part of her intestines and stomach. Is Worst Roommate Ever's Dorothea Puente still alive? - HITC Hed been referred to Dorothea Puentes house because of her sterling reputation welcoming people like him. When they came to me, they were so sick, they werent expected to live.. Grandson of Dorothea Puente, shared a 'real connection' with her - Daily Newshttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGIQ4XcqArGYqiw70QoKcvw?sub_confirmation=1Grand. The Untold Truth Of Dorothea Puente, The Death House Landlady - Grunge.com This is the disturbing story of Dorothea Puente, the Death House Landlady.. Cabreras superiors approved her request, deciding they held insufficient evidence to detain her. "Murder House Flip" Dorothea Puente Home - Part 1 (TV Episode 2020 Dorothea Puente, ne Dorothea Helen Gray, was born on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California. Unchanged are his lean, square-shouldered build and animated manner, his eyebrows spiking and hands windmilling as he recounts the investigation. Tempers spiked as the impasse stretched to its third week. The pensioner contacted local law enforcement who then quickly arrested Puente. Cops hauling away body bags. When we discuss her health or the books she reads, when she makes a rare inquiry about my job or background, the conversation tracks as normal, even mundane. She will send me the list in a few daysthe bill will total $114.70but I already know I wont oblige. A few wander over to a colorful mural of Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Tigger and Piglet, who prance beneath a banner reading Family Is Love, Love Is Family. None of the kids acts bothered that mom or grandma or big sister is doing time. What he did know was that her public image as a shepherd of the dispossessed veiled the past of an ex-con who preyed on the weak. She got life for being with a guy when he killed another guy, Puente says. Genaro Molina/Sacramento Bee/MCT/Getty ImagesThe boarding house made infamous by Dorothea Puentes murders. To give strength to other people. She lifts the paper towel to her eyes. Silver-haired, dressed in a long red coat and wearing large rounded glasses, the 59-year-old resembled just a regular grandmother - proving looks truly can be deceiving. But Puente has lodged in his psyche as the rarest predator he confronted: in age, gender and disposition, she inhabits an extremely narrow strata of serial killers. In her telling, after showering and dressing, she prays, recites the rosary and reads a few pages of the Bible, favoring Proverbs and Romans. Now, as I sit at table No. The 1991 film Evil Spirits, starring Karen Black and Arte Johnson, is loosely based on the Puente murders. Infamous serial murderer . In 1993, facing nine counts of murder after prosecutors linked her to two other deaths, she stood trial without testifying. After their deaths, Puente collected . I inquire how she juggled the demands of professional golf with her Rockettes career while flying between San Francisco and New York every week. Tests revealed high levels of unprescribed drugs in their systems, and in time, the physicians fingered her as the culprit. She had seven. Rene C. Byer Sacramento Bee file. She this Dorothea Puente, was an elderly lady (think a widow at that) that housed boarders, a care home, or is it care house? She came on a little hard, what with her questions about his Social Security benefits and abrupt suggestion that they consider living together. We break the ice. The inmates know who she is, the official says. Again and again, it is not her. Now she watched from her second-story porch as the trio began to dig. Im not that kind of person. I prod for more, to no avail. She was the sixth of seven children born to Trudy Mae Gates and Jesse James Gray, whose "lungs were damaged from a gas attack" while fighting in World War I. Who was Dorothea Puente and what happened to her? | The US Sun In the 1980s, she worked as a personal caretaker who drugged her clients and stole their valuables. A dark thought arrived. WITH her chiffon dresses, thick-rimmed glasses, grey hair and litter of kittens, Dorothea Puente looked like a sweet old lady - even insisting to some, "Call me Grandma". "Crime Stories" The Boarding House Killer (TV Episode 2007) - IMDb [8], Puente told Florez to stop while they were on Garden Highway in Sutter County and dump the box of "junk" on the riverbank at an unofficial household junk dumping site. Scant evidence exists to suggest she socialized with Reaganwhen he divorced Wyman, Puente was 20 years old and living in the Bay Areaany more than she danced with the Rockettes. As the minutes pass, I prepare to join the long list of people she has duped. He ferried Puente to police headquarters and grilled her for two hours. She was a respected figure to the Mexican community, says Donald Dorfman, a longtime Sacramento criminal attorney who handled some of Puentes legal affairs before her 1988 arrest. Federal probation officers visited her numerous times in the next two years without suspecting she ran a business, lulled by her kindly facade and clean home as much as by her lies that those staying at the house were friends or guests. A man identifying himself as a talent scout for the Radio City Rockettes, the famed New York City dance troupe, sized her up and, on the spot, invited her to fly east for an audition.