Nicknamed the “owner of the House of Death”, Dorothea Puente is an American serial killer who raged in the 1980s. Closer returns to this appalling affair.
The name Dorothea Puente probably means nothing to you. However, this innocuous-looking old lady has nothing to envy to Jack the Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer Where John Wayne Gacy. Between 1982 and 1988, in her small house in Sacramento, California, Dorothea Puente took the lives of seven people between the ages of 51 and 78. But who was the one the press nicknamed the owner of the House of Death? How could she have acted with impunity for six long years? Closer returns to this forgotten affair.
On November 11, 1988, a social worker named Judy reported the disappearance of Alvaro “Bert” Montoya, a fifty-year-old schizophrenic for whom she was responsible. She explains that she lost contact with him several weeks before, when Bert was living in a guest house for the elderly and disabled in Sacramento, at 1426 F. St. Dorothea Puente, the owner of the establishment, claims that Bert would have packed his bags to join his family in Mexico, but this version does not convince Judy. Not only did he not get along with his family, but Bert did not have the psychological capacity to reach Mexico on his own…
“The beef jerky was human flesh”
For the Sacramento police, it’s misunderstanding. Dorothea Puente is an influential benefactress in California, known for opening her door and her heart to the less fortunate. Why would she lie about one of her little proteges? On site, the tenants of 1426 F. St. are rave about their hostess, whom they all call “Granny”. Well, almost all of them. Among them, a certain John Sharp takes advantage of a moment of inattention from Puente to pass on a mysterious note to one of the police officers: “She wants me to lie to you”. When questioned, the man explains that he has not seen Bert for more than two months.
On this testimony, the commissioner in charge of the investigation, John Cabrera, does extensive research on Dorothea Puente. It appears that a few years earlier, the owner of the guesthouse had been arrested after poisoning elderly people to pocket their health checks. An alarming discovery, which prompted the Sacramento police to search every corner of 1426 F. St. There is the cold shower. While digging in the small garden of the property, the commissioner discovered “chunks of beef jerky that looked like leather”. He then finds what he feared the most: a human bone: “I saw there was a ball at the end. It was a femur. A human femur, he portrays in the Netflix documentary series A lease in hell. I saw that it was attached to other parts of a body. I came out of the hole and I knew. I said ‘We found human remains’. The beef jerky was human flesh that had come off the bone.”
The “House of Death” hid seven victims
In all, seven bodies are found in the garden of the “House of Death” : Leona Carpenter, 78, Dorothy Miller, 64, Benjamin Fink, 55, James Gallop, 62, Vera Faye Martin, 64, Betty Palmer, 78, and Bert Montoya, dead several weeks ago. All are former tenants of the guest house. The investigation also reveals that before moving into 1426 F. St., Dorothea Puente had already acted out twice. In April 1982, she had gradually poisoned her roommate, Ruth Monroe, 61, with codeine and acetaminophen, to make it look like an overdose. In 1985, moreover, she attacked her own boyfriend, Everson Gillmouth, 77. Each time, she managed to pocket the health checks of her victims.
After fleeing to Los Angeles, Dorothea Puente is arrested and charged. In February 1993, she was sentenced to life imprisonment for three of the nine murders attributed to her. Incarcerated in Chowchilla, California, she died in prison on March 27, 2011 at the age of 82. She has always denied the crimes attributed to her.