World's Most Evil Killers - Season 2, Episode 8 - Dorothea Puente - Full Episode | Forensic Files

-On November the 11th, 1988, police searching for missing 51-year-old Bert Montoya
paid a visit to the boarding house where he'd been living in Sacramento, California.
Rumors of suspicious activity in the garden led detectives to begin digging up the area.
-I'm sitting in this hole, and I'm hanging on to what looks like a human femur bone.
-Over the next 3 days, seven bodies would be discovered under the ground at 1426 F Street.
The landlady and number-one suspect was a 59-year-old woman named Dorothea Puente.
-When you look at this person, you don't automatically assume or even think that this is a serial killer.
She looks like everybody's grandma. -Puente had been stealing from the tenants who trusted her.
The easiest way to keep them quiet was to murder them. -She was a survivalist, killing these people
when necessary to survive, period. They had to go. -Dorothea Puente had been unmasked
as one of the world's most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ It is one of the most infamous homes in the USA,
1426 F Street in downtown Sacramento, California became the makeshift burial site of seven people.
Their landlady and murderer was 59-year-old Dorothea Puente. Eventually charged with nine murders in 1988,
she had poisoned her tenants in order to steal from them. Puente died in 2011 at the age of 82, but the house lives on.
Now under the ownership of Tom Williams and Barbara Holmes, it's become a macabre monument to her.
-It was built in 1895, and it's gone through a lot of iterations, lot of people have been in and out of it.
It can't be torn down. It's considered a historic house in Sacramento, and they would not let anybody tear it down, so here it sits.
-Detective John Cabrera helped bring Puente to justice when he uncovered human remains in the yard of 1426 F Street
in November, 1988. -As far as the interior of this house, it's still the same. The floors in which the victims walked on,
the floor in the sleeping bedroom is where the victims lied. It's still the original floors in here, everything.
-The Victorian house has become a tourist attraction, and Tom and Barbara have embraced the gruesome history of it.
-We love it. We have no problem whatsoever with any of it. So this is just our house, and we made it home,
and we're pretty happy with it. You still get people walking by asking, you know,
how could we be crazy enough to buy this house and stuff, but, between the two of us,
we've made it into a home, don't you think? -Yeah, and, you know, we tried to make it more comfortable
and tried to defuse the whole mystique around it, and, yeah, we're doing our best.
-She was a hardened criminal in the body of a little old lady, yeah. She was a hard, hard person.
-Pure evil. -Despite the renovations, John still remembers the home as the boarding house
where nine people lost their lives. -This is what I would call the death room. This is where Dorothea would bring her victims
after giving them the drug and alcohol combination, and then bringing them in here and leaving them on the floor
until she could prepare them at a later time. And when I pulled the carpet back,
the odor was so overwhelming, it was unbelievable, but I knew and recognized that smell,
and it was the smell of putrefied body fluid that had seeped through the wooden floor from her victims
who had laid there for anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks probably. -The day after finding the first body,
Saturday, November the 12th, 1988, John vividly recalls the moment he realized the little old lady living at 1426 F Street
was not what she seemed. -I looked up at one point onto that balcony, and Dorothea was standing there looking right
straight down at me, knowing that probably within minutes, I was going to uncover that second body,
and sidetracked me from digging in order to walk her over to the motel, and it's there she made her escape.
-Puente would remain a wanted fugitive for 5 days, but her story begins over 85 years ago.
She was born Dorothea Gray in San Bernardino County, California on January the 9th, 1929.
-She was one of several children. She lost both of her parents quite early on. She spent time in an orphanage.
She was kind of passed from pillar to post quite a lot, so she didn't form those stable,
secure attachments with her caregivers that many of us do, and I think that went on to shape the person
that she became. -Dorothea, you know, lived a very difficult early childhood. She was deprived in substantial ways.
She didn't have loving parents. She had to scavenge for food. -By the mid 1960s,
Dorothea had been married three times and taken on the name of her third husband, Puente.
She had already served time in prison for forging checks and had found a new way to earn money.
-She starts to get involved in sex work, selling her body to basically put clothes on her back and feed herself.
So she's living this quite kind of feral existence. Now, here's an individual for whom violence and abuse
was just normal for her if we look back at her childhood experiences. They're certainly not normal and warm and loving.
They are quite brutal and quite cold, so this is the only thing that she knows. It's those basic emotions and those basic instincts.
-And then, after becoming a prostitute, she discovered this occupation of being a caregiver,
which requires minimal qualifications, and, all of a sudden, a world was opened up to her.
-In 1981, Puente began renting an apartment at 1426 F Street in downtown Sacramento.
She took on the role of caretaker for the other tenants in the Victorian boarding house.
Soon after, Puente met 61-year-old Ruth Monroe. Ruth's son, Bill Clausen remembers his mother fondly.
-She was great. I mean, she was my mom. I'm going to say she was great. But she was.
She brought up five kids after my father passed away, and I thought she did a good job.
We met Dorothea through a gentleman that my mom met while she was working, and he kept asking her out,
and she finally went out with him, and then they started seeing each other, and he introduced her to Dorothea.
During their friendship, Dorothea decided she wanted to open a restaurant, and my mom wasn't working anymore,
and my mom had a little bit of money, so she ended up opening the little café at the Round Corner Bar.
-Ruth ended up marrying Harold, the man who'd introduced her to Puente. But soon, he was diagnosed with cancer
and living full-time in a hospital. Ruth didn't want to live alone, and Puente had an idea.
She could live with her at 1426 F Street. It turned out to be a fatal decision. -We moved her in there on Easter Sunday, 1982,
and she died April 26th, 2 weeks later. I saw my mom every day from the time I moved her in there.
I stopped by there on my way home from work, and the last 3 days of her life, she seemed like she was getting sick,
and when I went there, I'd noticed that she had a drink in her hand, and my mom didn't drink.
So I asked her, I said, "What's that?" And she said it was a drink that Dorothea fixed to calm her nerves.
I said fine, and I didn't think anything of it because I knew they were friends, and, okay, fine.
-But Ruth deteriorated so badly over the next few days that the next time Bill went to visit her,
she was almost catatonic. -Mom was laying there. I sat next to her and touched her and told her,
I said, "Dorothea is taking care of you. You'll be fine." And she had a tear coming out of her eye, and that was it.
She didn't say anything. She just laid there. The next time morning, I got a call from my brother
telling me that mom was dead. Went over there, she had already been taken away by the coroner's wagon,
and Dorothea had said that she committed suicide. -The news stunned Bill. -Totally out of character.
She had everything to live for. She had grandchildren. She was happy. It's not easy, not easy.
You still have the pain in your heart. -By August 1982, Dorothea was back in trouble with the authorities.
She had been abusing her position as caretaker for her fellow tenants. -Dorothea had pled guilty to fraud.
She was forging signature on the back of Social Security checks of her victims and then cashing them.
She received a prison sentence and was sent to the women's prison down in Chowchilla.
Well, in 1985, she was paroled, and when she paroled, she came back to Sacramento,
and she came back to 1426 F Street. -The caretaker was back in business. The next time police arrived on Dorothea Puente's doorstep,
they would be armed with shovels, searching for a missing man, and what they would unearth in the yard of 1426 F Street
would shock the world. In September 1985, 56-year-old Dorothea Puente was out of prison
after serving 3 years for fraud and back living at 1426 F Street, the boarding house where she acted as landlady
for her ne'er-do-well tenants. Despite being on parole, Puente continued to exploit the other residents
by collecting their Social Security checks and keeping most of the money for herself.
-She knows that vulnerable people aren't really looked after, that the people are forgotten about,
that people don't care about them, and she goes, and she targets them. So she's a predator who's not just picking up
on individual vulnerabilities, but she's picking up on social ones, as well. -For 3 years, Puente went undetected.
Tenants at the Sacramento boarding house came and went until November, 1988, when a local social worker, Judy Moise,
filed a missing-persons report after losing touch with a 51-year-old called Bert Montoya.
Bert suffered from mental disabilities and was a diagnosed schizophrenic. His last known address was 1426 F Street.
-I got a copy of the report, and what I started doing then was running a background check
on the missing person who was Bert Montoya and trying to get a little bit of background on him
and also running a check on the caretaker who was in charge of this particular individual,
and Bert was a disabled adult, and the caretaker, Dorothea Puente, was apparently in charge of him living here.
-On November the 11th, 1988, John Cabrera, his partner, Terry Brown, and Puente's parole officer, Jim Wilson,
decided to pay a visit to 1426 F Street to search for some clues into the disappearance of Bert Montoya.
-Prior to leaving on that day, we were starting to leave, and Judy Moise turned to me and said,
"You guys better take some shovels." And I went, "Well, what for?" And she said, "Because I've driven by in the past,
and I've seen mounds of dirt out there, and it kind of looked like a burial ground."
-Armed with shovels, John, Terry, and Jim arrived at Puente's boarding house. -Well, we come to the front door,
knock on the door, the three of us, and she answered. And she's dressed very nicely.
She looked at me and said, "I was expecting you guys." You know, it kind of caught me off guard.
And I said, "Okay." Well, I said, "You know why we're here. We're here to see, you know,
about Bert, what happened to him." And she said, "Yeah." And I asked if we could come in.
-John's first task was to find out more about the mysterious house. -What is this place, 1426 F Street?
What is it here that you're running? What is this place? What are you doing here?
And, at that time, she looked at me. She looked at her parole officer, and she just said, you know,
"Jim, I'm in violation of my parole." -Puente had been ordered not to run a boarding house
after her release from prison in 1985. She'd got away with it for 3 years due to her seemingly charming persona.
-Dorothea Puente played this role. She crafted this incredibly skilled performance
as a harmless little old lady, so she would often take her teeth out. She would tell people she was 10 or 15 years older
than she actually was. She wanted to present herself as innocent and kindly when she was anything but.
-While Jim and Terry chatted with Puente in the kitchen, John began his search of 1426 F Street.
It appeared that Bert Montoya had simply vanished into thin air. -After I completely looked through the rooms,
didn't find anything, I came back, and, bearing in mind what Judy had talked about
as far as the mounds of dirt, I asked Dorothea, I said, "Look, I'm going to be able to tell the social worker that we looked,
and we didn't find anything." And she was somewhat agreeable with that, "Okay, you know, that's good."
And then I said, "I have one more question for you. Can I dig in your yard?" And she says, "Why don't we do this?"
You guys go back to the office. I know you have a lot better work to do than to be over here,
and then I'll make a phone call. I'll call some people, they'll come over here, and they'll do the digging for you,
and then you can come back. I thanked her, and I said, you know, "We're here. We have the shovels.
We'll just go ahead and dig around. If there's anything we put out of place, we'll do our best to get it back,
you know, the way it was." And so she says, "Okay." And that's when we went outside to dig around.
-The three men only had two shovels, so John borrowed on from Puente. -So we had three shovels.
Three of us were digging, and then one of the holes is what we started finding something similar to cloth,
and it just seemed out of place in the ground. And then I dig a little bit further,
and I was down to about 3 feet, and that's when I thought I struck a tree root. So I took the shovel, and I started banging on it,
and I started trying to dislodge this root or sever it so I could continue to dig down, and I couldn't do it.
It just wouldn't break, so I got down in the hole, and, with both of my hands and bracing my feet,
I just kept pulling on this what I thought to be a root. And I pulled on it and pulled on it, and, finally,
it dislodged itself. And I'm sitting in this hole, and I'm hanging onto what looks like a human femur bone.
And, at that time, "Get out of the hole," and I realized something's up. We've just come across human remains.
-The three men were completely stunned, as was Puente. -She looked down into the hole,
and she could see the bone, and she grabs her mouth, and she's, "Oh, is that what I think it is?"
"Yeah. What can you tell me about this?" She says, "I don't know, but there's been other people that's been living here.
I was in prison," and there was a lot more people living here before her. -John halted the dig.
A full forensic search of the yard would have to begin the next day. -At that time, I decided I was going to take Dorothea
back down to the Hall of Justice, and I was going to now question her in full. I questioned her about what I found,
and I questioned her about where Bert was. I'd even told her as part of my technique in my interview,
I said, "I bet, if I dig anymore, I'm going to find more bodies," and she just looked right at me and said,
"Well, if you do, I didn't put them there." -As news spread of the discovery of human remains,
the press were in attendance at 1426 F Street the very next day, Saturday, November the 12th, 1988.
Deputy coroner Laura Santos was in charge of the excavation. -I think there's a mode you go into
when you're an investigator that you just know you have a job to focus on, and you just focus on that,
and there were a lot of distractions because there were reporters from all over the world,
and there were crowds of people lining the streets, and people would shout at me and tell me things like,
"Turn towards the camera when you're digging." And, you know, I just had to ignore it and shut it all out
because I just felt I had a job to do, and I knew it was a really important job in that a lot of what happened in the future
was going to hinge on what I did as far as whether she was prosecuted or not. -Despite having a body unearthed in her yard,
59-year-old Dorothea Puente had not been charged with any offense. There was no reason to suspect she may be responsible.
As John Cabrera continued his dig, Puente called him into the house. -And she says, "Am I under arrest?"
And I just thought, "How odd? What was it that gave her the impression that she was under arrest?"
Immediately, I said, "No." And I said, "Why do you ask?" And she said, "Well, all of this is making me nervous."
And she goes, "I would like to get a cup of coffee, and I'd like to go over to where my nephew
is around the corner at the hotel." And I said, "Okay. Get what you need, and then I'll walk you over there."
She comes walking out, has a little red coat, has her purse, walked down the stairs, walk out.
But what I told her was that I would escort her because there were a lot of people starting to gather,
and I thought, "I don't want anyone walking up to her or bothering her, so I used that ruse to walk her down to the corner.
-A photographer captured the moment John escorted Puente out of the house. No one yet knew it,
but Dorothea Puente would never return to 1426 F Street. -I watched her go all the way down
and then go up into the hotel, and that was the last I saw of her at that time. So I run back, and I continue digging again.
Short time later, I hit something, and I'm fiddling around with my shovel. I'm trying to get it up, figuring, "What's down here?"
And I keep trying to bring it up and bring it up, and I do, and in my shovel is a human leg.
So, immediately, I stop. I yell to my commander, "We have another one." And he runs over, and the first thing he asks is,
"Where's Dorothea?" -It was a good question. Where was Dorothea Puente? A second body had been found buried in her yard,
and she was nowhere to be seen. She wasn't at the hotel having a coffee. It had all been a ruse so that she could make an escape.
Dorothea Puente was on the run. On Saturday, November the 12th, 1988, a police forensic team
were digging up the yard of a boarding house in Sacramento, California. They had just unearthed a second body.
Dorothea Puente, the 59-year-old landlady of 1426 F Street had left the house and headed to a nearby hotel to have a coffee,
but detectives were now very keen to speak with her. -I said I took her and watched her go to the coffee shop.
She's supposedly over there at the hotel. So then another detective came and found out,
by speaking with the person at the counter in there, that, in fact, Dorothea had come into the hotel,
walked through the lobby, went to a pay phone, picked up the pay phone and apparently called a taxi cab
because a cab arrived and took off. -Puente had absconded, and detectives had no idea where she was headed.
-And so, at that time, we called in the FBI and, you know, enlisted the help of other resources and outside agencies
in trying to locate her because that is what was key right now is to try to find her as fast as we could.
-Back at 1426 F Street, one of the many people who had gathered to watch the dig
had given some important information to deputy coroner Laura Santos. -He told the story that he had dug holes in this yard
for Dorothea, and she had paid him cash, and she just told him she was burying trash,
so he came in and pointed out where he had dug holes. -Over the next 3 days, the excavation of the yard continued.
-Just as we kept digging, we kept finding bodies and more bodies, and it just seemed endless.
Whatever we took down, whatever we moved, wherever we were digging, we'd find a body.
It was just unbelievable. She put seven people in this small yard, and there wasn't even a witness to any of these burials,
not one. -The seventh and final body was found on Monday, the 14th of November. It was buried right in front of the house,
just feet from the sidewalk. -Well, she was kind of bundled up in almost like a scrunched up seated position,
but she was missing her head, hands, and feet. I went through every flowerpot and emptied them out to make sure
that we weren't missing anything, but those appendages were never found. -To this day, we've never recovered the head,
hands, or feet. Their whereabouts, it's anybody's guess. If the walls in this home could talk,
we would probably be horrified. -Three days after the discovery of the seventh body,
Thursday, the 17th of November, Dorothea Puente was finally found. She had been spotted by a man in a bar
almost 400 miles from Sacramento in Los Angeles. -He goes home, and, while he's watching TV,
he sees her on TV as being wanted on the news, so he calls LAPD, gives the information,
"I was just having drinks with this person." -The man told the police which hotel Puente was staying in,
and she was promptly arrested. John Cabrera immediately flew down to John Wayne Airport
in nearby Santa Ana. -We landed. LAPD pulled up out on the tarmac. We got out of the plane, and there she was.
They had her in cuffs. You know, we ceremoniously walked over, and they transferred her to me.
I asked her, you know, "Are you okay?" "Yeah. I'm okay." And then, out of nowhere, she just says,
"Mr. Cabrera, I'm sorry." -John had many questions to ask about the seven bodies
buried in Puente's yard, but there was still no proof that they had been murdered,
and the 59-year-old fugitive wasn't planning on a confession. -We got back here to Sacramento.
I took her down to the Hall of Justice. At that time, I asked her if she wanted to give me
any kind of a statement and she declined, and so we just booked her into Sacramento County Jail,
and that would be the last time that I'd ever speak with her. She would never speak to me again.
-With Puente safely locked away, the task of identifying the seven bodies had begun.
-Most of them didn't have teeth, or they had one or two teeth. In the case of the one body in the front yard,
she didn't have any hands, so we couldn't do fingerprints. So we started gathering information.
-Most of the tenants at 1426 F Street were either homeless or estranged from their families,
which made identifying them even more difficult. -In the beginning, there were people saying,
"Oh, you're never going to be able to do this." And so I was pretty happy that I was able to identify everybody,
and they all had some kind of disposition, you know, as far as most of them had some family members somewhere,
and so they are all buried. -Among the seven names was Bert Montoya, the man whose disappearance had initiated the dig on F Street.
-Bert would be the third body that I found. He was buried under a concrete basin in the backyard.
He was number three, and that puzzle was now solved. -Bert Montoya had wandered away.
He had some type of mental deficiency, and his parents had always taken care of him.
About 13 years before he died, he disappeared from their home in New Orleans, Louisiana,
and they had no idea what had happened to him, and it turned out that his 92-year-old
mother was still alive, and she had been searching for him her whole life, or, you know, even since he'd been missing,
and so they were really, really grateful to know, even though it was such a sad ending, they were very thankful
that they were able to have him come home. -As well as identifying the victims, Laura needed to find out the cause of their deaths.
Toxicology reports showed that each of the seven bodies had traces of the same prescription sleeping pill.
-We did find traces of Dalmane, the drug in the bodies, and that was another thing that I was able to determine
by gathering all these medical records on everyone, none of the victims had ever been prescribed Dalmane.
Only Dorothea Puente had been prescribed Dalmane. -This particular drug, when coupled with alcohol,
could be deadly. It just simply put you in a catatonic state and, with the alcohol, overwhelm the body and stop the heart.
-Poisoning is one of the ways we've seen female serial killers operate because it's a way that doesn't require
a lot of physical strength, and so you don't have to overcome your victim physically
because that's more difficult for a female, particularly, in this case, an elderly female,
to overcome the victim physically. -As detectives delved into Puente's past, they found even more evidence
that exposed her as a callous killer. -All in all, in the very end of the investigation,
she would be charged with nine murders, seven in the yard and which we would uncover,
and then they added Ruth Monroe. -Ruth's death had initially been ruled a suicide back
in April, 1982. The new revelation was a shock for her son, Bill Clausen. -That kind of just pulled my stomach,
and that's, like I said, that's when it brought everything back to where, "Okay, now we can go after her."
You know, because all this time, we know that mom didn't commit suicide, especially with the amounts of the drugs that were in her,
all the undissolved pills in her stomach. There's no way that she could have taken all of that
and lived long enough to take everything. -The ninth victim was a 77-year-old man from Oregon
called Everson Gillmouth. He had become pen pals with Puente during her 3 years in prison for fraud.
-And then, when she paroled in 1985, he went and picked her up and drove her back here to the boarding house,
and this is where he would be staying. -Within months, Everson had seemingly disappeared
and severed all ties with his family. -Every time they would call, he was always out.
They never got to speak with him, and she always had a reason why. But, in actuality, he picked her up in late 1985.
He was laying in a homemade coffin along the Sacramento River in early 1986, and Everson would remain a John Doe
until this case in 1988 broke, and that's when his family contacted our office in saying,
"We're looking for our father." -Puente remained on remand for over 4 years. Her defense lawyers were worried
she wouldn't get a fair trial in Sacramento due to her notoriety. Eventually, it was agreed that the trial would be held
in Salinas in nearby Monterey County. -We got a court date, and what I wanted to do was get in there,
give my information, give my testimony and, for the sake of the families of these victims,
wanted to make sure that she would never walk on the public streets again, that she wasn't going to do that or harm anybody anymore.
-But the trial would not be as straightforward as investigators hoped. Puente's refusal to admit to the murders
meant they would somehow need to prove that the sweet little old lady in the dock was,
in fact, a heartless killer. After being on remand for over 4 years, the trial of Dorothea Puente finally began
at the Monterey County Courthouse on February the 9th, 1993. The 64-year-old admitted to burying the bodies
of seven of her tenants and continuing to claim their Social Security money, but maintained she was innocent of the nine counts of murder
against her. Bill Clausen testified during the trial. His 61-year-old mother, Ruth Monroe,
was one of the women that Puente was accused of killing in 1982. -When I walked to the jury box, or to where I needed to be,
she just had just a cold stare, just a cold stare, and, after I testified, I walked away.
She just kept staring straight ahead up by the judge. It angered me at the time.
When I walked back facing her, as I was walking back to go back and sit down, my thoughts were just to strangle her,
but I have more control than a lot of people, and I just walked past and went back and sat down
and listened to the rest. -During the 5-month trial, the jury heard from both sides.
Puente's defense team admitted that she was a thief but not a murderer, while the prosecution argued that the traces of Dalmane
proved that all the victims had been poisoned. On August the 26th, 1993, after deliberating for 24 days,
the jury found Dorothea Puente guilty of three murders, but were deadlocked on all the other charges.
-I think what disappointed me as an investigator, and I think it disappointed people
that were involved in the case, that, of all the nine charges of murder, seven of them were so similar
there was no doubt that the seven bodies that we found in this yard should have all been guilty.
However, only three of the seven in the yard would be charged against her. Four others would go 11 to one with one juror saying no.
He didn't believe that's what happened. -The juror's refusal to deliberate meant
that the judge, Michael Virga, had no choice but to declare a mistrial on the other six charges,
one of them being the murder of Ruth Monroe. -They were talking about doing a retrial because of that,
but then they decided not to because of the cost, which, I mean, I understand. It took a lot of money as it was,
and then the district attorney kept telling me, "Well, she's not going to get any more time.
She's already going to spend life in prison." So we just kind of, "Okay," we had to accept it.
-On December the 10th, 1993, Dorothea Puente was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.
She was immediately sent to the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla.
The 64-year-old landlady had killed her tenants for no other reason than to steal their money.
-She wanted their Social Security checks. She wanted that cash, so she just had to dispose of them to get to it,
so she saw her victims as obstacles. They were barriers that were getting in the way
of something that she wants, and she very cool and calm, and in a very calculated manner,
dispatched them so she could have their money. -Although no charges were brought against any others,
it has long been suspected that Puente must have had an accomplice. -The issue of her disposing of the bodies
creates one of the big mysteries of her case because Dorothea was not a large person.
Some of these people were fairly large. And even to move a 100-pound sack of potatoes
takes a fair amount of force. There's reason to believe that Dorothea actually enlisted
the help of some other tenants who would prefer to be her helper in the burial than her victim being buried.
-It was obvious to us, given the bodies, especially Bert, someone helped her carry these bodies down.
I have suspicions. I have my own opinion who I believe helped her, but that's just something
that I will always leave for the investigation. -During her time in prison, Puente remained in the limelight.
She released a book of recipes called "Cooking With A Serial Killer" in 2004. And in 2008, she agreed to meet with Sactown Magazine
journalist Martin Kuz in the prison visitor's hall. -I waited, and I waited, and I waited some more,
and as I sat there, I thought, "I've been duped. I've fallen for another Dorothea Puente ruse."
I scanned the room, wondering if perhaps I had missed her but knowing that I hadn't,
and that's when the door clanked open once more, and in walked Dorothea. -Martin was keen to speak to the 79-year-old
who hadn't been seen or heard for 15 years. -This was the first time I had ever interviewed a serial killer,
so I stood up to greet her. We shook hands. Her hand felt small, bony. She gave me a tight smile, and we began.
-Puente seemed happy to make small talk, but whenever Martin steered the conversation towards her crimes,
she gave him short shrift. -I said very explicitly to her that we were coming up
on the 20th anniversary of her arrest and that I was interested in talking to her about the case.
Before I got very far into that preamble, she interrupted me, and, for the first time, she looked me square in the eye
and said, "I'm not guilty." -She would never have admitted to her crimes because what purpose would that serve?
I mean, often, when we see cases of serial killers who are caught and sent to prison,
we think that's the end of the story, but it's not because they will continue to manipulate people behind bars.
They will continue to pull people's strings and get the things that they want. -After meeting with Puente six times,
Martin's visits suddenly stopped after the killer had asked him to buy her $115 worth of gifts.
-In our final conversation, I asked her, "How does it feel to be known as a murderer?"
And she looked me square in the eye and said, "I don't give a shit what anyone else thinks."
And that, to me, was as telling as any comment that she had made to me in the time that we had been talking.
This was someone who is, in effect, revealing that, no matter what people may think of her, she didn't care.
-On March the 27th, 2011, Dorothea Puente died in prison. She was 82 years old. She took all her secrets to the grave.
-When I heard she died, I mean, it made me feel good. I had, like, a relief. If she was still alive, and I saw her, I couldn't forgive her.
I should because it's the human thing to do, but, in my heart, no. I really wouldn't want to.
There's nothing I can do though. She's gone. Mom's gone. She's gone. So it's over.
-Dorothea Puente was a predator. She didn't look like one. She was a wolf in sheep's clothing,
but the way that she choose her victims, she would pick people who others didn't care about,
people who she could prey on. She's essentially a parasite who hooks onto people,
gets what she wants out of them and then coldly disposes of their bodies. So she really is an incredibly dangerous character.
-She was a very evil woman and a woman that, when she made her mind up what she was going to do,
she did it without hesitation, without remorse. She set out on a journey, and that journey ended
November 11, 1988 when we arrived at her doorstep. -When you look at 1426 F Street today,
it's difficult to imagine the horrors that took place inside. When tenants arrived here, they would have felt comfortable
meeting the sweet-looking landlady, but in Dorothea Puente's eyes, they were subhuman.
Her only reason for taking them in was to kill them, steal their money, and bury them in her yard.
Puente took any remorse she may have had for her victims to the grave. She will always be remembered
as one of the world's most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪

In 1988, Puente had drugged and killed her victims so she could continue to fraudulently claim their social security benefits.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

Brief Summary

Dorothea Puente murdered her tenants for money, burying seven bodies in her yard before being captured in 1988.

Key points

The Infamous Boarding House. 1426 F Street becomes notorious as the burial site of seven victims.
The Discovery of Bodies. Police uncover human remains in the yard of Dorothea Puente's boarding house.
Dorothea Puente's Escape. After the discovery of a second body, Puente makes a daring escape.
The Discovery of the Bodies. Seven bodies were found buried in Dorothea Puente's yard, shocking the community.
Puente's Arrest. Dorothea Puente was arrested in Los Angeles after being recognized from a news broadcast.
Trial and Sentencing. After a lengthy trial, Puente was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Pure evil.

Reflecting on Dorothea Puente's true nature.

3:56WatchJul 20, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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