dorothea puente grandson24 Apr dorothea puente grandson
John OMara, the prosecutor, called over 130 witnesses to the stand. Puente then married Pedro Angel Montalvo, but he left her only a week after they were wed. Her narrow lips, pinched and lined at the corners, curl slightly upward. This is the disturbing story of Dorothea Puente, the Death House Landlady.. Julio Santana dropped to his left knee and propped his right elbow on his . Genaro Molina/Sacramento Bee/MCT/Getty Images. Alcoholics dont stay in one place for long. To vary her diet, Puente sometimes cooks in her room, making tamales with tortillas, canned chili, cheese and other ingredients bought in the prisons canteen or mail-ordered through a food-delivery service. The boarding house at 1426 F Street in Sacramento was included in the 2013 home tour held by the Sacramento Old City Association. Puente's heinous crimes were eventually discovered in 1988, when Alberto Montoya, a mentally disabled and schizophrenic tenant, was reported missing by a social worker. John Cabrera sits at a long wooden conference table inside Sacramento Police headquarters on Freeport Boulevard. She gasped at sight of the remains, hands bracketing her cheeks. Within two weeks, Munroe fell ill, her body so weak she struggled to stand. She was the sixth of seven children but didnt grow up in a stable family environment. As the search expanded, cabin fever seized Puente. However Harder insists that's where he draws the line. Thats when the gray door clanks open once more. Puente claims she spent time in the 70s with California governors Pat Brown, Jerry Brown and Ronald Reagan. He stares at the photo and points at her purse. Many of them found dead and buried in the boarding house's yard. [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. Coverage spanned from the national networks and Time, Newsweek and The New York Times to the National Enquirer, National Examiner and news outlets from as far away as England and France. Murdaugh is heckled as he leaves court, Ken Bruce finishes his 30-year tenure as host of BBC Radio 2, Ukrainian soldier takes out five tanks with Javelin missiles, Family of a 10-month-old baby filmed vaping open up, Missing hiker buried under snow forces arm out to wave to helicopter, Hershey's Canada releases HER for SHE bars featuring a trans activist, Moment teenager crashes into back of lorry after 100mph police race, This Guy Collects Artwork From Serial Killers - VICE. (A charity she declines to name sends her $15 a month, her sole source of money.) [6], Gray and Johansson divorced in 1966, although she continued to use Johansson's name for some time following their separation. [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. ), Thanks to her ties to Reagan, Puente tells me, she met Vice President Spiro Agnew and U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston, and in the mid-70s, she ate dinner with longtime Republican booster Clint Eastwood when he visited town. By 1952, she had wed Johansson, whom she met in San Francisco. I wait for her to speak. The unreliable narrator breaks the hush. She donated to Hispanic arts and education programs while providing cheap medical care to her boarders and other patients, falsely claiming she had worked as a nurse in World War II. Old bones sometimes turned up in downtown and midtown yards, vestiges of the early 20th century, when families unable to afford a cemetery plot interred loved ones on their property. On her fourth day as a fugitive, she dropped by a dive bar near the motel, introducing herself as Donna Johansson to a retired carpenter named Charles Willgues. For her and the others, one factor in particular undercut Puentes claim of innocence. I wondered how the last two decades had changed her, how she had endured. Tempers spiked as the impasse stretched to its third week. After what was then the longest deliberation in a murder case in state history24 daysthe jury convicted her of three killings. As we continue talking, the topic switches to her life before prison, and I ask what she misses most about Sacramento. Im not that kind of person. I prod for more, to no avail. Court files indicate Johansson had his wife committed to a psychiatric ward in 1961, and doctors placed her on antipsychotics. She did not strike me as a person who had a major mental illness. She'd later return to smother her incapacitated prey. Dorothea Puente, born Dorothea Helen Gray was born on January 9, 1929 in San Bernardino County, California. During the 1992 proceeding, investigators revealed that Puente - who was then 63 - had been killing the tenants for money, making $4,000 a month from cashing their social security checks. In 1998, Puente began corresponding with Shane Bugbee. Acres of almond trees and farmland border the prison, a vast archipelago of dun-colored, low-slung buildings moored inside electrified fences topped with razor coil. . [citation needed], O'Mara called over 130 witnesses; he argued to the jury that Puente had used sleeping pills to put her tenants to sleep, then suffocated them, and hired convicts to dig the holes in her yard. Next, Dorothea Puente went to San Francisco, where she married her second husband, Axel Bren Johansson, in 1952. She got in serious trouble for the first time in her life after bouncing a check in San Bernadino and spent four months in jail. (One woman later discovered checks and jewelry missing from her home; her case played a part in Puentes 1982 arrest on theft charges.) They had two daughters between 1946 and 1948; Gray sent one child to live with relatives in Sacramento, and placed the other for adoption. I am waiting for Dorothea Puente. In the landladys presence, he corroborated her story about Montoya. If she had been held accountable for murdering my mother, Clausen says, then maybe there wouldnt have been any other victims.. The Boarding House Killer: Directed by Steve Allen. Sir, she said, I have not killed anybody. She explained that she had buried excess trash in the backyard holes that a tenant mentioned to police, and covered some of them with concrete to stunt weed growth. FacebookDorothea Puente right before she fled Sacramento. Her escape brought coast-to-coast ridicule of Police Chief John Kearns and his department while authorities chased dead-end leads from Las Vegas to Mexico. She created a fake persona, calling herself "Teya Singoalla Neyaarda", a Muslim woman of Egyptian and Israeli descent. Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray on January 9, 1929. She holed up in the Royal Viking Motel for the next three days, seldom leaving her room. [6], In April 1982, 53-year-old Ruth Munroe began living with Puente in her upstairs apartment, but soon died from an overdose of codeine and acetaminophen. (Details of reports on such incidents are not public record.) 'We had a real connection,' Harder told VICE. She also established herself as a respected member in Sacramento's Hispanic community, funding charities, scholarships, and radio programs. People were always coming and going. [citation needed], Granting a change of venue motion filed by Puente's lawyers, Kevin Clymo and Peter Vlautin III, a judge transferred the trial to Monterey County. In her absence, investigators dug up the whole yard and discovered the body of 78-year-old Leona Carpenter. I stare at the brick and wrought-iron front gate through which Dorothea Puente walked for the last time on Nov. 12, 1988. I realize today will be our last conversation when Puente sits down at my table and makes a request. Aug. 27, 1993 12 AM PT. Dorothea Puente war eine feste Gre in ihrer Gemeinde - sie kmmerte sich um ihre Nachbarn, spendete hufig fr wohlttige Zwecke und nahm diejenigen auf, die die Gesellschaft beiseite geschoben hatte. Puente told them that they were welcome to do so, and even provided an extra shovel. Betty Palmer, 78. O'Mara's closing argument focused on Puente's acts of murder: Does anyone become responsible for their conduct in this world? Dorothea often took in the elderly and homeless and placed them as her tenants. Ringed by four chairs, each serves as the setting of a reunion between a prisoner and those she knows from the outside. It is a flame of humanity that has burned inside Dorothea since she was young That is reason to give Dorothea Puente life without the possibility of parole. She filed a missing person report with police on Nov. 7. (Puente tells me she also had twin daughters who as young adults committed suicide one week apart. The guards will come by and go, What you got cooking today? , She marks much of the day reading mind-candy fictionshes a fan of John Grisham and Dan Brownand watching TV; her favorite prime-time shows include CSI, Criminal Minds and Cold Case. (Photo by Jeremy Sykes). She wound up serving four months in jail and shortly afterward fled Riverside County, flouting the terms of her probation. 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. I had such a sick feeling, he says. She sits erect, legs crossed at the ankles and tucked beneath her chair. Shed give advice to all these young Mexican women who came to her when they were trying to get divorced., Puente poses next to California Gov. They belong to a litany of famous names she drops during our meetings. George Deukmejian (second from left) in this undated photo. Shes been in for 12 years. Judy Moise, an outreach counselor with Volunteers of America, became suspicious when Montoya vanished. Back in Sacramento, police were digging up five more bodies, including Bert Montoyas. The Victorian on F Street. With age and health concerns relieving her of work duty, she considers her self-assigned morning chores, attending chapel and other diversions a means of survival. Dorothea Puente ran a boarding house for down and outs. Some touch her shoulder. The visit was my first of six with Puente, who turned 80 in January. Yet for all the local, national and international coverage of the bizarre case in ensuing years, the public heard virtually nothing from its main character. My question about the incident draws an explanation akin to the one Puente gave a county judge nearly a half century earlier: I was there visiting a friend when the cops came. She refuses to elaborate. More than 130 witnesses were called to the stand by the prosecution, and eventually the devilish landlady was convicted for three of the murderers and ordered to serve back-to-back life sentences. Frequent quarrels and separations marred the marriage, with much of the discord brought on by Dorotheas appetites for drinking, gambling and other men. The union lasted just two years. When she was eight her father died of tuberculosis. 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. As police exhumed corpse after corpse, TV crews jammed F Street while gawkers scaled trees to peer into the yard. Its the same thing. When they finished without noticing anything suspicious, Cabrera asked if they could dig in her yard. Ruth was not just Puente's friend but was also her business partner and had moved in with her just three weeks before the murder. Me and Nancy, Puente says, shaking her head, we never got along. (A similar epitaph could apply to her marriage to her fourth husband, Pedro Montalvo, who left her in 1976, the same year they exchanged vows in Reno. George Deukmejian and Bishop Francis Quinn decorated her home at 1426 F Street But setting aside such fleeting charity-event encounters, her stories hew closer to fable than fact. Puente arrived at the Central California Womens Facility following her conviction in 1993, and her appeals expired early last year. She was found guilty in three cases and one juror held out on the other four. A prison official describes her as very low-key, very quiet. If discreet, however, Puente, who stands 5-foot-3, bears an outsized notoriety. I watch as she pushes away the empty plastic container of fried chicken strips and french fries that she finished eating earlier. The next day, under suspicion but not yet under arrest, Puente, then 59 and ostensibly the essence of grandmotherly virtue, fled the city. Satisfied, the authorities ruled Monroes death a suicide and moved on. Arrested for the scam in 1978, court records show, she received five years federal probation, the terms of which proscribed her from operating a boardinghouse. The advanced state of decay, meanwhile, suggested the person had died long before Montoyas presumed disappearance in August. The infamous home Dorothea Puente lived in is along F Street in Sacramento. Now 80, she speaks out in a series of rare interviews on her crimes, her "relationships" with the Kennedys and the Reagans and whyin the endthe person she really wanted to kill was herself Martin Kuz