How Dorothea Puente Turned Her Boarding Home right into a Home of Horrors

Dorothea Puente, maybe Sacramento’s most infamous assassin, was so seemingly non-threatening that authorities let her out of their sights time and time once more — even after digging up seven our bodies in her yard in 1988.

Puente, a grandmother who ran an area boarding home, would finally die in jail in 2011 after she was convicted of three of the 9 murders she was suspected of committing in the course of the Nineteen Eighties. However for years, the “white-haired landlady who handed out selfmade tamales and fussed over her rose beds and vegetable backyard,” because the Sactown Journal as soon as described her, had been hiding a darkish secret behind her good deeds.

Because the case has garnered renewed consideration on social media just lately, PEOPLE is wanting again on the Nineteen Eighties murders and the way they have been lastly solved. Right here’s what occurred.

A Refuge Turned Right into a Home of Horrors

All through the Nineteen Eighties, Puente opened her dwelling as a boarding dwelling to individuals with psychological well being and substance abuse points, based on Sactown. A number of social employees within the space would advocate potential tenants to her, and he or she gained an excellent fame locally, based on the journal.

However, as KCRA reported in a real crime episode final yr about Puente’s murders, the then-59-year-old had an evil secret. Puente murdered a number of of her tenants through the years and picked up their social safety checks, based on native KGPE. The outlet studies that Puente would even proceed to put in writing letters to her tenants’ members of the family for months following their deaths to be able to cowl her tracks and lead the households to consider nothing was fallacious.

How Puente Was Caught

In February of 1988, Puente took Alvaro “Bert” Montoya into her care after social employee Judy Moise beneficial him, based on Sactown. However when the 52-year-old man who was experiencing homelessness stopped exhibiting as much as conferences with Moise, she grew involved — after which suspicious after Puente gave inconsistent solutions about the place Montoya had gone. Moise’s concern led to investigators sweeping Puente’s dwelling for clues, ultimately digging up the our bodies of Montoya and 6 different individuals within the yard.

Regardless of the our bodies, police nonetheless didn’t initially suspect Puente and didn’t arrest her, based on Sactown. The subsequent day, Puente fled to Los Angeles, lastly sparking the police’s suspicion and a four-day manhunt that despatched authorities looking for Puente all the best way all the way down to Mexico.

Puente was ultimately taken into custody after an aged man at a Los Angeles bar struck up a dialog together with her and shortly acknowledged her from the information. She confronted trial for the murders in 1993, and based on Sactown, she was discovered responsible of three murders after 24 days of jury deliberation.

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Puente’s Native Legacy

Puente died from pure causes in 2011, however not earlier than she lastly broke her silence, agreeing to 6 jailhouse interviews with Sactown shortly earlier than her loss of life. “I’m not responsible,” she contended to the journal, which described her as extraordinarily routine-oriented and reported she claimed to be devoutly spiritual.

And what Puente missed most in regards to the exterior world after a long time in jail? “Going to church every single day. Cooking what I would like. Working in my yard,” she mentioned.

Puente’s property has turn out to be considerably of a macabre vacationer attraction in Sacramento, now owned by Barbara Holmes and Tom Williams, who bought the house in 2010 at public sale, based on The Sacramento Bee. Williams has since leaned into the home’s historical past, dressing up a Puente-like model on the entrance porch and framing pictures on the wall that doc Puente’s historical past there. Williams instructed the newspaper that folks cease by a number of instances a day to catch a glimpse of the place a few of Sacramento’s most infamous crimes passed off.

“She really was an evil … legal within the physique of a bit of outdated girl,” Williams instructed the newspaper. “An terrible, horrible individual.”