WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.760 I want you to picture a specific kind of house. 00:00:02.359 --> 00:00:05.480 It's Sacramento, California in the mid -1980s. 00:00:05.559 --> 00:00:07.820 You're walking down F Street, and it's, you know, 00:00:07.839 --> 00:00:09.939 it's a mix of gritty and kind of genteel, but 00:00:09.939 --> 00:00:13.560 this one house, number 1426, it really stands 00:00:13.560 --> 00:00:16.059 out. Oh, it does. It's a classic Victorian. Right. 00:00:16.120 --> 00:00:18.219 It has that slightly imposing, look -high porch, 00:00:18.420 --> 00:00:21.199 all that decorative trim, and a really well -tended 00:00:21.199 --> 00:00:24.859 garden. And there... Tending that garden is a 00:00:24.859 --> 00:00:26.620 woman who looks like she stepped right out of 00:00:26.620 --> 00:00:29.539 a casting call for America's sweetest grandmother. 00:00:29.820 --> 00:00:31.899 It's the perfect archetype, isn't it? The vintage 00:00:31.899 --> 00:00:35.020 clothing, the natural gray hair. Yeah. The large 00:00:35.020 --> 00:00:37.659 glasses that make her look a little bit owl -like, 00:00:37.700 --> 00:00:39.840 a little vulnerable. She looks like the kind 00:00:39.840 --> 00:00:42.259 of person who has, you know, hard candies in 00:00:42.259 --> 00:00:44.159 her purse and probably knit sweaters for her 00:00:44.159 --> 00:00:46.500 cat. Oh, absolutely. That's the vibe. That woman 00:00:46.500 --> 00:00:49.439 was Dorothea Puente. And to her neighbors, to 00:00:49.439 --> 00:00:51.960 the community, she was a saint. She was the woman 00:00:51.960 --> 00:00:54.380 who took in the people nobody else wanted, the 00:00:54.380 --> 00:00:57.740 elderly, the homeless, the shadow people of the 00:00:57.740 --> 00:01:00.899 welfare system. She gave them a room, hot meals, 00:01:01.119 --> 00:01:04.459 a place to belong. But, and this is the huge 00:01:04.459 --> 00:01:06.359 gaping contradiction we're talking about today. 00:01:06.480 --> 00:01:09.019 It was massive. Yeah. While she was playing the 00:01:09.019 --> 00:01:11.959 benevolent matriarch upstairs, she was literally 00:01:11.959 --> 00:01:15.450 burying those same tenants. in the flower beds 00:01:15.450 --> 00:01:18.069 downstairs the death house landlady that's the 00:01:18.069 --> 00:01:20.530 moniker that stuck but i think calling her just 00:01:20.530 --> 00:01:24.569 a landlady almost it diminishes the complexity 00:01:24.569 --> 00:01:27.370 of what she actually was it does she was a chameleon 00:01:27.370 --> 00:01:30.170 a chameleon who killed and that's what we're 00:01:30.170 --> 00:01:32.730 unpacking in this deep dive we've got a mountain 00:01:32.730 --> 00:01:34.909 of source material here we've got the original 00:01:34.909 --> 00:01:38.010 court transcripts from the 90s biographical records 00:01:38.010 --> 00:01:40.650 of her early life The police files. The police 00:01:40.650 --> 00:01:42.849 files are fascinating. And even analysis of her 00:01:42.849 --> 00:01:44.709 cookbook. Yes, she wrote a cookbook. We will 00:01:44.709 --> 00:01:46.390 get to that. The cookbook is a psychological 00:01:46.390 --> 00:01:50.140 study all by itself. But our mission here, it 00:01:50.140 --> 00:01:52.879 isn't just to recount the, you know, the gory 00:01:52.879 --> 00:01:54.700 details. We want to understand the mechanism 00:01:54.700 --> 00:01:58.060 of the deception. Exactly. How? How does an elderly 00:01:58.060 --> 00:02:01.159 woman murder nine people, bury seven of them 00:02:01.159 --> 00:02:03.420 in her own yard in a dense residential neighborhood 00:02:03.420 --> 00:02:06.000 and keep cashing their checks for years without 00:02:06.000 --> 00:02:08.400 anyone noticing? It really seems impossible. 00:02:08.520 --> 00:02:10.159 You'd think the smell alone would give it away 00:02:10.159 --> 00:02:12.680 or, you know, the fact that people are just vanishing. 00:02:12.680 --> 00:02:15.259 But she exploited something very specific, didn't 00:02:15.259 --> 00:02:17.689 she? She did. She exploded what we call the trust 00:02:17.689 --> 00:02:20.849 bias. We are socially conditioned to see elderly 00:02:20.849 --> 00:02:25.719 women as harmless, as nurturing our brains. They 00:02:25.719 --> 00:02:28.120 just struggled to process the image of a grandmother 00:02:28.120 --> 00:02:30.800 wielding a shovel to bury a body. She knew that. 00:02:30.860 --> 00:02:32.759 She knew that. And she weaponized it. She weaponized 00:02:32.759 --> 00:02:35.300 her age, her gender, everything about her appearance. 00:02:35.379 --> 00:02:38.039 And she weaponized the system. Yeah. I was looking 00:02:38.039 --> 00:02:40.000 at the breakdown of her tenants. These were people 00:02:40.000 --> 00:02:43.020 on the absolute margins. But before we get to 00:02:43.020 --> 00:02:44.639 the bodies in the garden, we have to look at 00:02:44.639 --> 00:02:48.060 how Dorothea Puente was even created. Because 00:02:48.060 --> 00:02:50.180 she wasn't born a sweet old lady. No, not at 00:02:50.180 --> 00:02:52.919 all. She was born Dorothea Helen Gray in 1929 00:02:52.919 --> 00:02:55.979 down in Redlands, California. And looking at 00:02:55.979 --> 00:02:59.000 these biographical notes, her start in life was, 00:02:59.020 --> 00:03:02.439 well, it was a complete nightmare. It's a textbook 00:03:02.439 --> 00:03:05.900 case of severe early childhood trauma. We often 00:03:05.900 --> 00:03:08.439 look for that seed of the serial killer. And 00:03:08.439 --> 00:03:10.879 in her case, the soil it was planted in was incredibly 00:03:10.879 --> 00:03:14.580 toxic. Both parents were severe alcoholics. Right. 00:03:14.639 --> 00:03:18.199 Her father, Jesse James Gray, was reportedly 00:03:18.199 --> 00:03:22.900 a man of. Extreme volatility. Volatility is putting 00:03:22.900 --> 00:03:25.819 it so lightly. The records show he would repeatedly 00:03:25.819 --> 00:03:27.759 threaten suicide right in front of the children. 00:03:27.919 --> 00:03:30.060 He'd hold a gun to his head and make them watch. 00:03:30.360 --> 00:03:33.740 Can you imagine being six or seven years old 00:03:33.740 --> 00:03:36.319 and that is your Tuesday night? It's unimaginable. 00:03:36.460 --> 00:03:38.979 It instills this profound sense of instability. 00:03:39.460 --> 00:03:42.099 The child learns that their reality can just 00:03:42.099 --> 00:03:45.479 be shattered at any second. And then the abandonment 00:03:45.479 --> 00:03:48.520 starts. Her father died of tuberculosis in 1937. 00:03:48.800 --> 00:03:51.699 She was only eight. And then her mother, Trudy 00:03:51.699 --> 00:03:53.979 May, she lost custody of the children the very 00:03:53.979 --> 00:03:55.780 next year. Right, because of her drinking and 00:03:55.780 --> 00:03:57.659 her lifestyle. She was a sex worker at the time. 00:03:57.740 --> 00:04:00.340 And then by the end of 1938, her mother's dead 00:04:00.340 --> 00:04:02.800 too, a motorcycle accident. So before she even 00:04:02.800 --> 00:04:05.039 hits puberty, she's an orphan. She's watched 00:04:05.039 --> 00:04:07.759 her father almost kill himself, then die. She's 00:04:07.759 --> 00:04:10.080 lost her mother to the state and then to death. 00:04:10.360 --> 00:04:13.319 It's just loss after loss after loss. And then 00:04:13.319 --> 00:04:15.360 she enters the system. She and her siblings are 00:04:15.360 --> 00:04:17.740 sent to an orphanage. And we have to be really 00:04:17.740 --> 00:04:19.620 clear about the orphanage system of the late 00:04:19.620 --> 00:04:22.279 1930s and early 40s. This wasn't some therapeutic 00:04:22.279 --> 00:04:24.899 environment. No, it was warehousing. It was warehousing, 00:04:25.000 --> 00:04:27.779 exactly. And the reports we have indicate that 00:04:27.779 --> 00:04:29.939 she was sexually abused while she was in care. 00:04:30.430 --> 00:04:32.149 This is where I really want to pause on the psychology 00:04:32.149 --> 00:04:35.509 of it. Because we see this pattern so often in 00:04:35.509 --> 00:04:38.810 the cases we look at. The abuse, the total lack 00:04:38.810 --> 00:04:41.490 of control, the abandonment. How does that translate 00:04:41.490 --> 00:04:44.370 into the person she became? Because she didn't 00:04:44.370 --> 00:04:48.350 just become violent. She became a liar. A really, 00:04:48.350 --> 00:04:50.620 really good one. It's all about control. When 00:04:50.620 --> 00:04:52.899 your actual reality is that unbearable, when 00:04:52.899 --> 00:04:55.040 it's filled with abuse and poverty and terror, 00:04:55.279 --> 00:04:57.639 you learn to construct a new reality. It's a 00:04:57.639 --> 00:05:00.459 survival mechanism. It's sometimes called mythomania 00:05:00.459 --> 00:05:03.259 or pathological lying. Right. If you can lie 00:05:03.259 --> 00:05:05.279 convincingly enough, you can be someone else. 00:05:05.379 --> 00:05:07.300 You can be someone who matters. You can be someone 00:05:07.300 --> 00:05:10.339 who's safe. For Dorothea, lying wasn't really 00:05:10.339 --> 00:05:13.439 a vice. It was a shield. It was armor. And she 00:05:13.439 --> 00:05:16.459 started using that shield very early. She got 00:05:16.459 --> 00:05:19.889 married at 16. 16. Right at the end of World 00:05:19.889 --> 00:05:23.550 War II to a soldier named Fred McFall. But she 00:05:23.550 --> 00:05:25.870 couldn't play house for very long. They had two 00:05:25.870 --> 00:05:28.129 daughters, but she didn't raise them. She sent 00:05:28.129 --> 00:05:30.490 one to live with relatives in Sacramento and 00:05:30.490 --> 00:05:32.470 put the other one up for adoption. And that's 00:05:32.470 --> 00:05:34.910 a really critical data point, isn't it? It shows 00:05:34.910 --> 00:05:38.209 this profound detachment from the maternal instinct 00:05:38.209 --> 00:05:41.750 that she would later pantomime so well. Oh, that's 00:05:41.750 --> 00:05:43.649 a good word for it, pantomime. She abandoned 00:05:43.649 --> 00:05:46.509 her own children, yet decades later, she would 00:05:46.509 --> 00:05:49.569 demand to be called mama by her tenants. It's 00:05:49.569 --> 00:05:51.329 a performance of motherhood, but it's completely 00:05:51.329 --> 00:05:54.060 devoid of the actual responsibility. And the 00:05:54.060 --> 00:05:56.339 criminal record starts around here, too. 1948, 00:05:56.699 --> 00:05:59.860 she's arrested in Riverside, forgery, buying 00:05:59.860 --> 00:06:03.019 women's accessories with bad checks. It's petty 00:06:03.019 --> 00:06:05.680 crime, but it sets the pattern. It does. I want 00:06:05.680 --> 00:06:07.399 something. I don't have the money, so I will 00:06:07.399 --> 00:06:10.199 use a piece of paper, a lie, to get it. But the 00:06:10.199 --> 00:06:14.139 lies get so much bigger. In 1952, she marries 00:06:14.139 --> 00:06:16.920 Axel Brand Johansson. He's a merchant seaman. 00:06:17.420 --> 00:06:20.000 But she doesn't tell him, hi, I'm Dorothea Gray, 00:06:20.180 --> 00:06:22.600 a high school dropout from Redlands with a forgery 00:06:22.600 --> 00:06:26.399 conviction. No. Not even close. She invents this 00:06:26.399 --> 00:06:29.720 completely wild persona. She calls herself Taya 00:06:29.720 --> 00:06:33.620 Singuala Nayarda. Taya Singuala Nayarda. I had 00:06:33.620 --> 00:06:36.079 to practice that one. Me too. It's so theatrical. 00:06:36.420 --> 00:06:38.259 And she claimed to be a Muslim woman of Egyptian 00:06:38.259 --> 00:06:40.899 and Israeli descent. Now, you have to think about 00:06:40.899 --> 00:06:44.160 this. This is 1952. A white woman from Southern 00:06:44.160 --> 00:06:46.560 California convincing people she is an Egyptian 00:06:46.560 --> 00:06:49.579 Israeli Muslim named Taya. That takes a level 00:06:49.579 --> 00:06:52.220 of confidence that it just borders on delusion. 00:06:52.220 --> 00:06:54.300 How did she possibly pull that off? Well, people 00:06:54.300 --> 00:06:56.279 were less traveled then. There was no Internet 00:06:56.279 --> 00:06:59.079 to fact check her, no Google. And she clearly 00:06:59.079 --> 00:07:01.680 played on the exoticism of it all. If she acted 00:07:01.680 --> 00:07:03.759 mysterious and foreign, people bought it. It 00:07:03.759 --> 00:07:05.839 made her special. It made her special. And it 00:07:05.839 --> 00:07:07.819 separated her from the trauma of being Dorothea 00:07:07.819 --> 00:07:09.980 Gray. But she wasn't just telling stories. I 00:07:09.980 --> 00:07:12.439 mean, she was bleeding Johansson dry. He'd be 00:07:12.439 --> 00:07:15.579 away at sea for months. And she was at home gambling 00:07:15.579 --> 00:07:18.439 his money away, inviting other men over. She 00:07:18.439 --> 00:07:21.480 viewed people as resources. She always did. Johansson 00:07:21.480 --> 00:07:23.699 was a paycheck. When the money ran out or he 00:07:23.699 --> 00:07:25.699 just became inconvenient, the mask would slip. 00:07:25.860 --> 00:07:29.259 And it slipped in a big way in 1960. She was 00:07:29.259 --> 00:07:31.319 arrested for running a bookkeeping firm that 00:07:31.319 --> 00:07:33.740 was actually a front for a braille. A bookkeeping 00:07:33.740 --> 00:07:36.420 brothel. She really was an entrepreneur of vice, 00:07:36.519 --> 00:07:39.139 wasn't she? She was. And that arrest led to her 00:07:39.139 --> 00:07:43.439 first major institutionalization. In 1961, Johansson 00:07:43.439 --> 00:07:45.720 finally had enough. He'd caught her and he had 00:07:45.720 --> 00:07:48.680 her committed to DeWitt State Hospital. The doctors 00:07:48.680 --> 00:07:51.120 there observed her for weeks. They saw the drinking, 00:07:51.259 --> 00:07:53.519 the wild mood swings, the constant fabrication. 00:07:54.019 --> 00:07:56.250 And what did they diagnose her with? A pathological 00:07:56.250 --> 00:07:59.110 liar with an unstable personality? They nailed 00:07:59.110 --> 00:08:01.709 it in 1961. It's written right there in the file. 00:08:01.910 --> 00:08:04.990 But the tragedy is that this diagnosis, this 00:08:04.990 --> 00:08:07.629 label, it didn't follow her in a way that protected 00:08:07.629 --> 00:08:10.750 the public. She got out. She divorced Johansson 00:08:10.750 --> 00:08:13.170 in 66, but kept his name for a little while, 00:08:13.329 --> 00:08:16.639 calling herself Sharon Johansson. And she starts 00:08:16.639 --> 00:08:18.740 a new persona. A new one. She started pretending 00:08:18.740 --> 00:08:21.139 to be a devout Christian nurse. Notice the shift. 00:08:21.379 --> 00:08:24.339 She goes from the exotic, mysterious Taya to 00:08:24.339 --> 00:08:27.459 the pious, caring Sharon. She is A -B testing 00:08:27.459 --> 00:08:29.779 personas to see which one gets her what she wants. 00:08:29.959 --> 00:08:32.100 That's a great way to put it. And the nurse persona 00:08:32.100 --> 00:08:34.379 is so powerful, it commands immediate trust. 00:08:34.779 --> 00:08:38.600 Then in 1968, she marries Roberto Jose Puente. 00:08:38.860 --> 00:08:41.620 He was much younger, right? Yeah, 19 years younger. 00:08:41.759 --> 00:08:45.070 The marriage was, uh... predictably volatile 00:08:45.070 --> 00:08:48.409 and only lasted 16 months. But she got something 00:08:48.409 --> 00:08:50.649 very, very valuable out of it. His last name. 00:08:50.710 --> 00:08:53.970 His last name. She became Dorothea Puente. And 00:08:53.970 --> 00:08:55.929 even though they divorced, she kept that name 00:08:55.929 --> 00:08:57.750 for the rest of her life. It sounded established. 00:08:58.009 --> 00:09:00.590 It sounded respectable. And this brings us to 00:09:00.590 --> 00:09:04.309 the Sacramento era, the 1970s and 80s. She secures 00:09:04.309 --> 00:09:07.870 this large two -story Victorian house at 1426 00:09:07.870 --> 00:09:11.190 F Street. And this is where she begins to construct 00:09:11.190 --> 00:09:13.899 the saint persona in earnest. It wasn't just 00:09:13.899 --> 00:09:15.299 about the clothes, though the clothes were a 00:09:15.299 --> 00:09:17.799 huge part of it. The transformation was total. 00:09:18.059 --> 00:09:21.080 It was a conscious decision. She stopped dyeing 00:09:21.080 --> 00:09:24.039 her hair, letting it go completely gray. She 00:09:24.039 --> 00:09:26.419 started wearing these loose vintage dresses that 00:09:26.419 --> 00:09:29.639 hid her figure. She bought those enormous thick 00:09:29.639 --> 00:09:32.139 -rimmed glasses. She was actively aging herself 00:09:32.139 --> 00:09:34.740 up. Yes. She wanted to look frail. She wanted 00:09:34.740 --> 00:09:37.620 to look like a relic of a kinder, gentler time. 00:09:37.960 --> 00:09:39.399 But she didn't just sit on the porch looking 00:09:39.399 --> 00:09:42.460 the part. She hustled. She embedded herself in 00:09:42.460 --> 00:09:45.080 the local political and social scene. She was 00:09:45.080 --> 00:09:47.460 a donor, or at least she pretended to be. Right. 00:09:47.559 --> 00:09:50.840 She gave money to charities. She sponsored scholarships. 00:09:51.200 --> 00:09:53.740 She even had politicians over for dinners at 00:09:53.740 --> 00:09:56.059 the house. She became this fixture in the Hispanic 00:09:56.059 --> 00:09:58.820 community, despite not being Hispanic herself. 00:09:59.059 --> 00:10:01.720 And she did it by filling this massive void in 00:10:01.720 --> 00:10:03.980 the social safety net. And this is the part that's 00:10:03.980 --> 00:10:07.460 really uncomfortable to admit. In a twisted way. 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:10.559 She was useful. She was. Sacramento, like a lot 00:10:10.559 --> 00:10:12.519 of cities in the 80s, had a crisis of care for 00:10:12.519 --> 00:10:14.899 the indigent. You had the deinstitutionalization 00:10:14.899 --> 00:10:17.139 of mental health patients happening, which basically 00:10:17.139 --> 00:10:19.340 pushed thousands of people out of hospitals and 00:10:19.340 --> 00:10:21.960 onto the streets. And social workers were just 00:10:21.960 --> 00:10:25.080 drowning in caseloads. Drowning. And here comes 00:10:25.080 --> 00:10:27.320 Dorothea Puente. She says, send them to me. I'll 00:10:27.320 --> 00:10:29.960 take them. Exactly. She marketed herself as the 00:10:29.960 --> 00:10:33.259 solution. I take the hard cases. I take the alcoholics. 00:10:33.259 --> 00:10:35.059 I take the schizophrenics who won't take their 00:10:35.059 --> 00:10:37.940 meds. And if you are a social worker with 50 00:10:37.940 --> 00:10:40.600 cases and absolutely nowhere to put a difficult 00:10:40.600 --> 00:10:43.600 client, Dorothea Puente looks like a miracle. 00:10:43.840 --> 00:10:46.240 You don't want to look too closely at the miracle. 00:10:46.279 --> 00:10:48.919 You don't because you need it to be true. But 00:10:48.919 --> 00:10:51.539 there were cracks. There were cracks in the miracle 00:10:51.539 --> 00:10:54.289 long before the bodies were found. The system 00:10:54.289 --> 00:10:57.470 knew she was a crook. In 1978, she was actually 00:10:57.470 --> 00:11:01.850 convicted of illegally cashing 34 state and federal 00:11:01.850 --> 00:11:04.529 checks that belonged to her tenants. 34 checks. 00:11:04.750 --> 00:11:06.809 This wasn't a one -time clerical error. This 00:11:06.809 --> 00:11:09.690 was systematic fraud. She was sentenced to five 00:11:09.690 --> 00:11:11.730 years probation and ordered to pay restitution. 00:11:12.350 --> 00:11:15.370 But it didn't stop her. The same persona was 00:11:15.370 --> 00:11:18.269 just a cover for a predator. And then the violence 00:11:18.269 --> 00:11:21.200 starts to creep in. In 1982 she was charged with 00:11:21.200 --> 00:11:23.759 drugging people. She picked up a 74 -year -old 00:11:23.759 --> 00:11:26.549 man, Malcolm McKenzie, in a bar. She took him 00:11:26.549 --> 00:11:29.309 home, drugged him, and stole his coin collection. 00:11:29.590 --> 00:11:32.470 The drugging is the key escalation. She's moving 00:11:32.470 --> 00:11:36.009 from simple forgery to physical assault. She's 00:11:36.009 --> 00:11:38.629 rendering her victims helpless so she can rob 00:11:38.629 --> 00:11:41.350 them. It's a whole other level. And then we have 00:11:41.350 --> 00:11:44.210 the death of Ruth Monroe in 1982. This is the 00:11:44.210 --> 00:11:46.330 one that really signals the shift to murder. 00:11:46.529 --> 00:11:48.570 And Ruth Monroe wasn't a random stranger from 00:11:48.570 --> 00:11:51.149 a bar. She was a friend, a business partner even. 00:11:51.500 --> 00:11:54.480 She was 61 years old. She moved in with Plente, 00:11:54.519 --> 00:11:56.139 thinking she was going to be living with her 00:11:56.139 --> 00:11:59.460 pal. Two weeks later, she's dead. Massive overdose 00:11:59.460 --> 00:12:02.080 of codeine and acetaminophen. Now, Ruth had been 00:12:02.080 --> 00:12:03.740 healthy. There was no reason for her to just 00:12:03.740 --> 00:12:06.620 drop dead. But suddenly she was. Quindy told 00:12:06.620 --> 00:12:08.480 the police Ruth was depressed. She spun this 00:12:08.480 --> 00:12:10.840 whole story about Ruth's husband being terminally 00:12:10.840 --> 00:12:13.320 ill, saying Ruth just couldn't handle it. And 00:12:13.320 --> 00:12:15.620 they bought it. The coroner couldn't definitively 00:12:15.620 --> 00:12:18.559 prove homicide at the time, so it was left as 00:12:18.559 --> 00:12:22.049 undetermined. But looking back with everything 00:12:22.049 --> 00:12:25.389 we know now, it's so clear Ruth Monroe was likely 00:12:25.389 --> 00:12:27.830 the test run. Puente actually went to prison 00:12:27.830 --> 00:12:30.250 after the McKenzie incident and some other thefts. 00:12:30.409 --> 00:12:33.470 She was sentenced to five years, but she only 00:12:33.470 --> 00:12:35.570 served three. Three years. She was released in 00:12:35.570 --> 00:12:38.809 1985. And this is the moment where you just want 00:12:38.809 --> 00:12:40.909 to yell at the history books, because if they 00:12:40.909 --> 00:12:42.789 had kept her in or if they had monitored her 00:12:42.789 --> 00:12:45.409 properly upon release, the next chapter just 00:12:45.409 --> 00:12:47.519 wouldn't have happened. The parole board released 00:12:47.519 --> 00:12:49.879 her, but they gave her one specific condition. 00:12:50.539 --> 00:12:52.519 She was barred from running a boarding house 00:12:52.519 --> 00:12:55.200 or caring for the elderly. And who was checking? 00:12:55.320 --> 00:12:57.980 Exactly. Who was checking? She went right back 00:12:57.980 --> 00:13:00.740 to 1426 F Street, and she went right back to 00:13:00.740 --> 00:13:02.980 business. Let's talk about that business model, 00:13:03.080 --> 00:13:05.679 because the House of Horrors wasn't just a slaughterhouse. 00:13:05.779 --> 00:13:09.240 It was a factory. A factory for turning human 00:13:09.240 --> 00:13:12.759 beings into cash. The mechanism was the representative 00:13:12.759 --> 00:13:15.700 pay system. Now, for listeners who don't know, 00:13:15.820 --> 00:13:18.379 if a Social Security recipient is deemed unable 00:13:18.379 --> 00:13:21.179 to manage their own money, maybe due to addiction, 00:13:21.419 --> 00:13:24.039 mental illness or cognitive decline, the Social 00:13:24.039 --> 00:13:26.740 Security Administration assigns a representative 00:13:26.740 --> 00:13:29.559 payee. And that person receives the checks and 00:13:29.559 --> 00:13:31.809 pays the bills for them. Right. And Puente made 00:13:31.809 --> 00:13:34.269 damn sure she was that payee. She controlled 00:13:34.269 --> 00:13:36.610 the mailbox. She controlled the signature. And 00:13:36.610 --> 00:13:39.029 once she established total control over the finances, 00:13:39.429 --> 00:13:42.570 the person attached to that check became extraneous. 00:13:42.830 --> 00:13:45.350 In fact, the person was a liability. They hate 00:13:45.350 --> 00:13:47.529 food. They took up space. They could complain 00:13:47.529 --> 00:13:50.169 or wander off. A dead tenant, however. A dead 00:13:50.169 --> 00:13:52.690 tenant costs nothing. And as long as the Social 00:13:52.690 --> 00:13:54.629 Security Administration thinks they are alive. 00:13:55.240 --> 00:13:57.039 The check keeps coming in the mail every month. 00:13:57.179 --> 00:14:00.879 It's so chillingly rational from a purely economic 00:14:00.879 --> 00:14:03.740 standpoint. Kill the expense, keep the revenue. 00:14:03.860 --> 00:14:06.440 And the way she did it, she wasn't using a knife 00:14:06.440 --> 00:14:09.129 or a gun. She was using her care. She used what 00:14:09.129 --> 00:14:11.690 she had. She had access to prescription drugs. 00:14:12.049 --> 00:14:14.590 Many of her tenants were already heavily medicated, 00:14:14.750 --> 00:14:17.190 so she would hoard their pills or she'd get new 00:14:17.190 --> 00:14:19.750 prescriptions from different doctors. The toxicology 00:14:19.750 --> 00:14:22.409 reports later showed this really consistent pattern 00:14:22.409 --> 00:14:25.950 of flurazepam. Delmaine. Delmaine. It's a very 00:14:25.950 --> 00:14:28.629 strong sedative hypnotic for insomnia. In the 00:14:28.629 --> 00:14:31.409 80s, it was commonly prescribed. But in high 00:14:31.409 --> 00:14:33.429 doses, especially when it's mixed with alcohol, 00:14:33.590 --> 00:14:36.309 which she allowed and even provided, it suppresses 00:14:36.309 --> 00:14:38.809 the respiratory system. Just go to sleep. Never 00:14:38.809 --> 00:14:41.230 wake up. Let's walk through the victims because 00:14:41.230 --> 00:14:44.169 they aren't just names on a court docket. Everson 00:14:44.169 --> 00:14:46.789 Gilmuth. This story is particularly heartbreaking 00:14:46.789 --> 00:14:49.190 because he really thought he was in a romance. 00:14:49.570 --> 00:14:52.590 Everson Gilmuth was 77 years old. He lived up 00:14:52.590 --> 00:14:55.309 in Oregon. He and Puente had become pen pals 00:14:55.309 --> 00:14:57.029 while she was in prison. Can you believe that? 00:14:57.129 --> 00:14:59.730 She was working him even from her cell. Wow. 00:14:59.889 --> 00:15:03.370 So when she got out in 1985, he drove down to 00:15:03.370 --> 00:15:05.649 Sacramento in his little red Ford pickup truck 00:15:05.649 --> 00:15:08.659 to marry her. He brought his life savings with 00:15:08.659 --> 00:15:12.500 him. He moves in. And by November 1985, he's 00:15:12.500 --> 00:15:15.559 gone. But he doesn't just disappear into the 00:15:15.559 --> 00:15:17.720 yard. This is the coffin box incident. This is 00:15:17.720 --> 00:15:20.559 one of the most brazen acts in the entire timeline. 00:15:20.679 --> 00:15:23.100 For some reason, maybe she couldn't dig a grave 00:15:23.100 --> 00:15:25.340 deep enough for a man of his size quickly, or 00:15:25.340 --> 00:15:26.860 maybe she just didn't want him in the yard yet. 00:15:27.320 --> 00:15:31.159 So she hired a handyman, a guy named Ismael Carrasco 00:15:31.159 --> 00:15:34.169 Flores. And she told him she needed a storage 00:15:34.169 --> 00:15:37.289 box built. A storage box? I have the dimensions 00:15:37.289 --> 00:15:41.909 here. Six feet long, 30 inches wide, 30 inches 00:15:41.909 --> 00:15:44.129 deep. I mean, come on. If someone asks you to 00:15:44.129 --> 00:15:46.389 build a box that is the exact dimensions of a 00:15:46.389 --> 00:15:48.629 human body, I'm sorry, I am asking some questions. 00:15:48.909 --> 00:15:51.169 She told him it was for books and things. Ismail 00:15:51.169 --> 00:15:53.470 built it. Then she asked him to help her move 00:15:53.470 --> 00:15:55.669 it and dump it. It was nailed shut. It weighed 00:15:55.669 --> 00:15:57.950 over 300 pounds. And she tells him it's just 00:15:57.950 --> 00:16:00.789 junk. Just junk she needed to get rid of. They 00:16:00.789 --> 00:16:03.110 loaded this junk into Gilmout's own truck, which 00:16:03.110 --> 00:16:05.549 he was now driving, and they drove north to Sutter 00:16:05.549 --> 00:16:09.090 County. Can you just imagine that car ride? You're 00:16:09.090 --> 00:16:11.610 the handyman. You're driving with this sweet 00:16:11.610 --> 00:16:14.309 old lady. There is a box in the back that smells 00:16:14.309 --> 00:16:16.590 like mothballs and decay, and she's just chatting 00:16:16.590 --> 00:16:18.470 away like it's a trip to the grocery store. They 00:16:18.470 --> 00:16:21.090 dumped it on a riverbank. A fisherman found it 00:16:21.090 --> 00:16:24.629 on New Year's Day, 1986. When the police opened 00:16:24.629 --> 00:16:26.909 it, the body was wrapped in plastic and bed sheets, 00:16:27.129 --> 00:16:29.950 and it was packed with mothballs and toilet deodorizer 00:16:29.950 --> 00:16:33.070 blocks to mask the scent of decomposition. But 00:16:33.070 --> 00:16:35.309 he wasn't identified. No, because he was from 00:16:35.309 --> 00:16:37.990 Oregon and had no local ties to Sacramento. Nobody 00:16:37.990 --> 00:16:40.840 identified him. He was a John Doe for three years. 00:16:41.139 --> 00:16:43.539 And during those three years, Puente is writing 00:16:43.539 --> 00:16:46.700 forged letters to his sister. I'm happy. I'm 00:16:46.700 --> 00:16:49.000 traveling. We're having a wonderful time. She's 00:16:49.000 --> 00:16:51.139 keeping him alive on paper just to keep the money 00:16:51.139 --> 00:16:53.799 flowing. It creates a buffer. If the family thinks 00:16:53.799 --> 00:16:56.019 he's happy and on the road, they don't call the 00:16:56.019 --> 00:16:58.740 police. But Gilmuth was the outlier because he 00:16:58.740 --> 00:17:02.659 was moved. The rest, the rest stayed home. Between 00:17:02.659 --> 00:17:07.160 1986 and 1988, the yard at 1426 F Street became 00:17:07.160 --> 00:17:09.500 a graveyard. She was burying them right under 00:17:09.500 --> 00:17:12.160 the windows of the other tenants. The brazenness 00:17:12.160 --> 00:17:14.220 of the yard burials is just hard to comprehend. 00:17:14.559 --> 00:17:16.599 We're talking about a residential lot in the 00:17:16.599 --> 00:17:18.299 middle of the city. Houses are coaxed together. 00:17:18.440 --> 00:17:22.079 People have windows. Betty Mae Palmer, 78 years 00:17:22.079 --> 00:17:25.079 old. She was found in a shallow hole in the front 00:17:25.079 --> 00:17:27.660 yard. But get this, they found her without her 00:17:27.660 --> 00:17:31.200 head, her hands, and her lower legs. Dismemberment. 00:17:31.220 --> 00:17:33.660 It suggests Puente was struggling with the physical 00:17:33.660 --> 00:17:36.960 reality of disposal. A full body is heavy and 00:17:36.960 --> 00:17:39.859 hard to fit into a small hole. By removing the 00:17:39.859 --> 00:17:42.140 extremities, you make the package smaller and 00:17:42.140 --> 00:17:44.960 easier to handle. It's gruesome, practical, and 00:17:44.960 --> 00:17:48.059 just horrifying. It really is. Then there was 00:17:48.059 --> 00:17:51.099 Leona Carpenter, also 78. She was discharged 00:17:51.099 --> 00:17:52.960 from a hospital right into Puente's boarding 00:17:52.960 --> 00:17:55.799 house. She was sick, vulnerable. She died of 00:17:55.799 --> 00:17:57.240 an overdose and went straight into the ground. 00:17:57.400 --> 00:18:00.750 And James Gallop, 62. This one gets to me. He 00:18:00.750 --> 00:18:02.490 had survived a heart attack and had a brain tumor 00:18:02.490 --> 00:18:04.849 operation. He was terrified the tumor had come 00:18:04.849 --> 00:18:07.390 back. And Puente told him, oh, I spoke to the 00:18:07.390 --> 00:18:09.609 doctor. The tumor is benign. You're fine. She 00:18:09.609 --> 00:18:11.789 gave him hope. She gave him false hope so he 00:18:11.789 --> 00:18:13.849 wouldn't go back to the hospital where doctors 00:18:13.849 --> 00:18:16.130 might notice he was being systematically drugged. 00:18:16.730 --> 00:18:19.529 Then she killed him and buried him. And then, 00:18:19.569 --> 00:18:21.950 this is the detail that feels like it's straight 00:18:21.950 --> 00:18:24.369 out of a horror movie. She had a gazebo built 00:18:24.369 --> 00:18:27.869 over the spot. A gazebo? A place to sit and drink 00:18:27.869 --> 00:18:30.539 tea. directly on top of James Gallop's body. 00:18:30.660 --> 00:18:33.019 It serves a dual purpose. It's an amenity for 00:18:33.019 --> 00:18:35.539 the house, adding to that charming boarding house 00:18:35.539 --> 00:18:38.460 aesthetic. But more importantly, it caps the 00:18:38.460 --> 00:18:41.420 grave. You can't accidentally dig up a body if 00:18:41.420 --> 00:18:43.480 there's a concrete slab and a wooden structure 00:18:43.480 --> 00:18:45.819 built over it. Unbelievable. There was Vera Faye 00:18:45.819 --> 00:18:49.839 Martin, 61, buried under a metal tool shed. Dorsey 00:18:49.839 --> 00:18:53.000 Miller, 65, an Army veteran. She vanished just 00:18:53.000 --> 00:18:56.460 weeks after arriving. Puente hired a carpet cleaner 00:18:56.460 --> 00:18:59.359 to scrub a foul -smelling slime out of Miller's 00:18:59.359 --> 00:19:01.039 room. That was almost certainly decomposition 00:19:01.039 --> 00:19:03.519 fluid. It seems she kept the bodies in the rooms 00:19:03.519 --> 00:19:05.720 for days sometimes, likely until she could figure 00:19:05.720 --> 00:19:07.720 out the logistics of the burial at night. And 00:19:07.720 --> 00:19:11.160 Benjamin Fink, 55. He was kind of the town drunk 00:19:11.160 --> 00:19:13.420 character in her narrative. He was struggling 00:19:13.420 --> 00:19:16.500 with severe alcoholism. And just before he disappeared, 00:19:16.740 --> 00:19:19.299 Puente went out and bought 12 bags of cement. 00:19:19.559 --> 00:19:22.140 Fink was found wrapped in a bedspread, secured 00:19:22.140 --> 00:19:24.599 with duct tape. She had poured a concrete slab 00:19:24.599 --> 00:19:26.980 right over him in the side yard, and she told 00:19:26.980 --> 00:19:29.319 the other tenants she was just fixing up the 00:19:29.319 --> 00:19:31.980 property. But how is she digging all these holes? 00:19:32.140 --> 00:19:34.440 I mean, she's an old woman with a bad back. She 00:19:34.440 --> 00:19:36.920 used the tenants. She was a master delegator. 00:19:37.119 --> 00:19:39.259 She'd ask one of her tenants to dig a hole for 00:19:39.259 --> 00:19:42.019 a new fruit tree or a trench for plumbing. Then 00:19:42.019 --> 00:19:44.180 she'd send them away on an errand, dump the body 00:19:44.180 --> 00:19:47.039 in and fill it in partially. Or she'd hire day 00:19:47.039 --> 00:19:49.480 laborers for the heavy lifting, then finish the 00:19:49.480 --> 00:19:52.700 job herself under cover of darkness. The neighbors 00:19:52.700 --> 00:19:54.720 must have smelled something. You cannot have 00:19:54.720 --> 00:19:57.180 seven bodies decomposing in shallow graves without 00:19:57.180 --> 00:19:59.720 a scent. Oh, they did. Neighbors complained constantly 00:19:59.720 --> 00:20:02.700 about a sweet, sickly smell, like rotting fruit 00:20:02.700 --> 00:20:05.539 or backed -up sewage. But Puente had an answer 00:20:05.539 --> 00:20:07.960 for everything. It's the old sewer lines. The 00:20:07.960 --> 00:20:11.000 city really needs to fix them. Or her favorite. 00:20:11.400 --> 00:20:13.839 The fertilizer. Oh, that's just the fish emulsion 00:20:13.839 --> 00:20:16.019 fertilizer I use for my prize -winning roses. 00:20:16.200 --> 00:20:18.259 Which is clever. Because fish emulsion smells 00:20:18.259 --> 00:20:21.339 terrible and organic. It masks the scent of death 00:20:21.339 --> 00:20:23.500 with the scent of gardening. She was always one 00:20:23.500 --> 00:20:27.200 step ahead. Until she got sloppy. Or rather, 00:20:27.339 --> 00:20:29.619 until she underestimated the persistence of one 00:20:29.619 --> 00:20:33.500 particular social worker. Enter Alvaro Burt Montoya. 00:20:33.920 --> 00:20:36.380 Burt was 51, but he functioned at a much younger 00:20:36.380 --> 00:20:38.920 level intellectually. He had schizophrenia and 00:20:38.920 --> 00:20:41.339 developmental disinclinities. He called Dorothea 00:20:41.339 --> 00:20:45.799 Mama. He was, in her eyes, the perfect victim 00:20:45.799 --> 00:20:49.279 -compliant, trusting, completely isolated. But 00:20:49.279 --> 00:20:52.500 he had Judy Moyes. Judy was a social worker with 00:20:52.500 --> 00:20:55.059 the Volunteers of America, and unlike some of 00:20:55.059 --> 00:20:56.740 the others who were maybe just looking to clear 00:20:56.740 --> 00:20:59.960 their caseload, Judy really, truly cared about 00:20:59.960 --> 00:21:02.400 Burt. And when Bert disappeared in August of 00:21:02.400 --> 00:21:05.339 1988, Puente gave her standard line, oh, he went 00:21:05.339 --> 00:21:07.920 to Mexico to visit his brother. But Judy knew 00:21:07.920 --> 00:21:10.299 Bert. She knew he didn't like to travel, he spoke 00:21:10.299 --> 00:21:12.299 very little Spanish, and he would never, ever 00:21:12.299 --> 00:21:14.299 leave without telling her. She didn't buy it 00:21:14.299 --> 00:21:16.559 for a second. So she kept pestering Puente. Let 00:21:16.559 --> 00:21:18.140 me talk to him. Give me a number. Where is he? 00:21:18.440 --> 00:21:20.819 Puente started to panic. The Mexico lie wasn't 00:21:20.819 --> 00:21:22.839 holding up, so she tried this wild, desperate 00:21:22.839 --> 00:21:25.359 gambit. She took one of her handymen and drove 00:21:25.359 --> 00:21:28.180 him out of town. She told him to call Judy Moyes 00:21:28.180 --> 00:21:30.160 and pretend to be Bert's brother -in -law, a 00:21:30.160 --> 00:21:32.559 guy named Michel Obregon. But the accent was 00:21:32.559 --> 00:21:34.920 wrong. Right, it just didn't sound authentic. 00:21:35.259 --> 00:21:37.200 The handyman didn't sound like the person he 00:21:37.200 --> 00:21:39.799 was supposed to be. Judy was immediately suspicious. 00:21:40.539 --> 00:21:44.099 Then Puente had a letter sent to Judy. supposedly 00:21:44.099 --> 00:21:47.240 from Bert, but the letter was typed. Bert couldn't 00:21:47.240 --> 00:21:50.119 type. And this is the detail that broke the case. 00:21:50.299 --> 00:21:52.480 The letter arrived wrapped in a paper towel. 00:21:52.640 --> 00:21:55.480 A paper towel. Why a paper towel? To avoid fingerprints. 00:21:55.940 --> 00:21:58.240 Puente was trying to be clever, but normal people 00:21:58.240 --> 00:22:00.940 don't mail letters wrapped in paper towels. It 00:22:00.940 --> 00:22:03.819 was such a bizarre, paranoid action that it confirmed 00:22:03.819 --> 00:22:06.400 to Judy that something deeply nefarious was happening. 00:22:06.640 --> 00:22:09.079 She called the police. She filed a missing persons 00:22:09.079 --> 00:22:11.700 report. And that brings us to November 11th, 00:22:11.700 --> 00:22:15.450 1988. Police detective John Cabrera and his team 00:22:15.450 --> 00:22:17.769 arrive at the house, and it's just a welfare 00:22:17.769 --> 00:22:19.890 check. They are not expecting to find a serial 00:22:19.890 --> 00:22:22.349 killer. They walk in, and Puente is the picture 00:22:22.349 --> 00:22:25.589 of calm. She lets them look around. But while 00:22:25.589 --> 00:22:28.329 they are there, a tenant named John Sharp, who 00:22:28.329 --> 00:22:31.049 was terrified of Puente, manages to slip a note 00:22:31.049 --> 00:22:33.470 to one of the officers. And the note says, she 00:22:33.470 --> 00:22:36.390 wants me to lie to you. That note changed everything. 00:22:36.529 --> 00:22:39.309 It went from a routine check to a real investigation. 00:22:40.419 --> 00:22:43.039 Detective Cabrera went out to the yard. He noticed 00:22:43.039 --> 00:22:45.299 the soil was disturbed in several places. It 00:22:45.299 --> 00:22:47.799 just looked uneven. He asked Puente if they could 00:22:47.799 --> 00:22:50.900 dig. And she said yes. Sure, go ahead, dig up 00:22:50.900 --> 00:22:53.220 my prize -winning roses. Why would she do that? 00:22:53.380 --> 00:22:55.559 Hubris. Or maybe she thought they wouldn't dig 00:22:55.559 --> 00:22:57.900 deep enough. Maybe she thought the fish emulsion 00:22:57.900 --> 00:23:01.019 story would hold. But Cabrera got a shovel. He 00:23:01.019 --> 00:23:03.119 started digging near an apricot tree. He didn't 00:23:03.119 --> 00:23:05.680 have to dig very deep, did he? No. About a foot 00:23:05.680 --> 00:23:08.079 down, he hit something hard. He broke through 00:23:08.079 --> 00:23:10.720 the dirt and found a shred of cloth. Then he 00:23:10.720 --> 00:23:13.359 uncovered a human leg bone. This is the climax. 00:23:13.779 --> 00:23:16.079 They have a bone. They have a body in the yard. 00:23:16.160 --> 00:23:18.759 The house is swarming with cops. Yeah. And what 00:23:18.759 --> 00:23:21.339 does Dorothea Puente do? This is the moment that 00:23:21.339 --> 00:23:23.599 studies in Trust Bias should focus on forever. 00:23:24.420 --> 00:23:26.579 Puente is standing there on the porch. She's 00:23:26.579 --> 00:23:28.880 watching them dig up her victims. And she turns 00:23:28.880 --> 00:23:32.400 to Detective Cabrera and says, Officer, I'm very 00:23:32.400 --> 00:23:34.759 upset. Would it be all right if I walked down 00:23:34.759 --> 00:23:36.740 to the Clarion Hotel to get a cup of coffee and 00:23:36.740 --> 00:23:40.480 calm my nerves? She asks to go for coffee. While 00:23:40.480 --> 00:23:43.140 there is a human leg bone sticking out of her 00:23:43.140 --> 00:23:46.480 apricot orchard. It's insane. And Detective Carrera 00:23:46.480 --> 00:23:49.240 looks at this 59 -year -old grandmotherly figure 00:23:49.240 --> 00:23:52.720 in her nice red coat looking all frail and shaken. 00:23:52.859 --> 00:23:56.420 And he says, okay. They let her walk away. Now, 00:23:56.440 --> 00:23:58.240 to be fair to the police, she wasn't technically 00:23:58.240 --> 00:24:00.359 under arrest yet. They hadn't identified the 00:24:00.359 --> 00:24:02.940 bone as human for certain in that split second 00:24:02.940 --> 00:24:05.819 or connected it directly to her. But the optics 00:24:05.819 --> 00:24:08.380 are just unbelievable. They saw a little old 00:24:08.380 --> 00:24:11.019 lady who needed a break, not a serial killer 00:24:11.019 --> 00:24:12.940 fleeing the scene of the crime. So she walks 00:24:12.940 --> 00:24:16.410 to the hotel. And she keeps walking. She walked 00:24:16.410 --> 00:24:18.509 right past the coffee shop, hailed a cab, went 00:24:18.509 --> 00:24:20.289 to the bus station, and bought a one -way ticket 00:24:20.289 --> 00:24:22.769 to Los Angeles. By the time the police realized, 00:24:23.009 --> 00:24:24.930 hey, she's been gone an awfully long time, she 00:24:24.930 --> 00:24:26.730 was halfway down the state. The manhunt begins. 00:24:27.470 --> 00:24:29.890 Every news station in California is blasting 00:24:29.890 --> 00:24:33.289 her face. The Death House landlady. But she just 00:24:33.289 --> 00:24:35.829 can't help herself. She gets to L .A., checks 00:24:35.829 --> 00:24:38.829 into a seedy motel, and what does she do? She 00:24:38.829 --> 00:24:41.200 immediately heads to a bar. The pattern just 00:24:41.200 --> 00:24:43.220 repeats itself. She's at the Monte Carlo bar 00:24:43.220 --> 00:24:45.680 in L .A. She meets an elderly pensioner named 00:24:45.680 --> 00:24:48.640 Charles Wildis. She introduces herself as Donna 00:24:48.640 --> 00:24:52.220 Johansson. Within an hour, she's asking him about 00:24:52.220 --> 00:24:55.140 his pension checks. No. Yes. She's asking if 00:24:55.140 --> 00:24:57.720 he lives alone. She is literally scouting her 00:24:57.720 --> 00:24:59.980 next victim while the entire state of California 00:24:59.980 --> 00:25:02.079 is looking for her. Did Charles Wildis watch 00:25:02.079 --> 00:25:04.299 the news? He did. And he looked at this woman 00:25:04.299 --> 00:25:06.160 asking about his money. He looked at the red 00:25:06.160 --> 00:25:08.640 coat she was wearing and he realized this is 00:25:08.640 --> 00:25:11.819 the woman from TV. He excused himself, went to 00:25:11.819 --> 00:25:14.799 a payphone, and called the CBS station in L .A. 00:25:14.900 --> 00:25:18.720 He called CBS, not 911. He called the news. It's 00:25:18.720 --> 00:25:21.000 a very L .A. thing to do. But the news, to their 00:25:21.000 --> 00:25:24.160 credit, called the police. LAPD swarmed the motel. 00:25:24.160 --> 00:25:25.920 They knocked on her door. She didn't fight. She 00:25:25.920 --> 00:25:27.759 just came out and said, I suppose you want to 00:25:27.759 --> 00:25:29.819 talk to me. So she's brought back to Sacramento. 00:25:30.200 --> 00:25:34.200 And now begins the trial of the century. We have 00:25:34.200 --> 00:25:36.019 to spend some time here because the legal battle 00:25:36.019 --> 00:25:38.880 was absolutely fascinating. It was not a slam 00:25:38.880 --> 00:25:40.940 dunk. It really wasn't. The trial didn't even 00:25:40.940 --> 00:25:43.460 start until 1993. That's five years after the 00:25:43.460 --> 00:25:45.960 arrest. That's how long the legal wrangling took. 00:25:46.299 --> 00:25:49.259 The prosecution, led by John Amara, had to prove 00:25:49.259 --> 00:25:51.119 not just that the bodies were there, that was 00:25:51.119 --> 00:25:53.859 undeniable, but that she murdered them. Right, 00:25:53.880 --> 00:25:55.700 because finding a dead body in your yard, as 00:25:55.700 --> 00:25:57.759 bad as it looks, doesn't automatically mean murder. 00:25:57.880 --> 00:26:00.259 It can be natural causes, right? And that was 00:26:00.259 --> 00:26:02.420 exactly the brilliant strategy of her defense 00:26:02.420 --> 00:26:05.960 attorneys, Kevin Climo and Peter Vlotin. They 00:26:05.960 --> 00:26:08.180 looked at the evidence and said, OK, we can't 00:26:08.180 --> 00:26:11.420 deny she's a thief. She's a fraudster. She buried 00:26:11.420 --> 00:26:13.799 these people. Absolutely. She's a bad person, 00:26:13.880 --> 00:26:16.099 but she's not a murderer. That was their narrative. 00:26:16.259 --> 00:26:19.420 These were old, sick people. They were alcoholics. 00:26:19.420 --> 00:26:21.119 They were drug addicts. They died of natural 00:26:21.119 --> 00:26:23.640 causes or accidental overdoses because they were 00:26:23.640 --> 00:26:26.519 just unhealthy. And Dorothea, panicking that 00:26:26.519 --> 00:26:28.880 she would lose the income, buried them to keep 00:26:28.880 --> 00:26:31.319 the checks coming. So they argued she was guilty 00:26:31.319 --> 00:26:36.140 of improper disposal of a body and theft. But 00:26:36.140 --> 00:26:38.839 not homicide. And it was a deviously smart defense. 00:26:39.319 --> 00:26:42.039 Because the bodies were so decomposed, the medical 00:26:42.039 --> 00:26:44.180 examiner couldn't point to a stab wound or a 00:26:44.180 --> 00:26:46.420 bullet hole. There was no smoking gun, so to 00:26:46.420 --> 00:26:48.960 speak. It was all circumstantial. Exactly. It 00:26:48.960 --> 00:26:51.480 relied on the toxicology the domain found in 00:26:51.480 --> 00:26:54.160 the tissues. But the defense argued, well, these 00:26:54.160 --> 00:26:56.720 people were prescribed sleeping pills. Maybe 00:26:56.720 --> 00:26:58.619 they took too many by accident. Maybe they were 00:26:58.619 --> 00:27:01.119 hoarding them. But the prosecution had the handyman, 00:27:01.259 --> 00:27:03.880 Ismael Flores. He was their ace in the hole. 00:27:04.190 --> 00:27:07.009 They gave him full immunity. He testified about 00:27:07.009 --> 00:27:09.630 building the coffin box for Gilmeth. And that 00:27:09.630 --> 00:27:11.950 was the most damaging piece of evidence for that 00:27:11.950 --> 00:27:14.670 particular murder because it showed clear premeditation. 00:27:14.730 --> 00:27:17.210 You don't build a custom coffin for someone who 00:27:17.210 --> 00:27:19.009 died of a heart attack unless you are planning 00:27:19.009 --> 00:27:21.609 to hide the body. The trial went on for months. 00:27:21.710 --> 00:27:24.910 They called over 150 witnesses. The jury was 00:27:24.910 --> 00:27:27.210 sequestered. And when they finally came back 00:27:27.210 --> 00:27:30.079 with a verdict, it was a total mess. It was a 00:27:30.079 --> 00:27:32.980 partial deadlock, and this is crucial to understanding 00:27:32.980 --> 00:27:35.740 how effective that sweet old grandmother defense 00:27:35.740 --> 00:27:39.460 really was. The jury convicted her of three murders, 00:27:39.700 --> 00:27:43.220 Benjamin Fink, Leona Carpenter, and Dorothy Miller. 00:27:44.059 --> 00:27:46.420 These were the cases where the evidence of Delamain 00:27:46.420 --> 00:27:49.339 overdose and the circumstances were just the 00:27:49.339 --> 00:27:51.880 strongest. But they deadlocked on the other six, 00:27:52.039 --> 00:27:54.619 including Everson Gilmuth in the coffin box. 00:27:54.839 --> 00:27:57.440 They couldn't agree. Some jurors just could not 00:27:57.440 --> 00:27:59.519 get past reasonable doubt. They couldn't be 100 00:27:59.519 --> 00:28:01.799 % sure she killed them versus just finding them 00:28:01.799 --> 00:28:04.220 dead and panicking. It shows how difficult it 00:28:04.220 --> 00:28:06.500 is to convict on circumstantial evidence, especially 00:28:06.500 --> 00:28:08.440 when the defendant looks like Mrs. Doubtfire. 00:28:08.619 --> 00:28:10.500 So she's convicted of three counts of first -degree 00:28:10.500 --> 00:28:13.400 murder. Now comes the penalty phase. And the 00:28:13.400 --> 00:28:16.160 prosecutor, John Amara, he wants the gas chamber. 00:28:16.299 --> 00:28:18.640 He wants the death penalty. And again, the jury 00:28:18.640 --> 00:28:21.000 deadlocked saved her. They debated for days and 00:28:21.000 --> 00:28:23.920 days. Ultimately, several jurors refused to sign 00:28:23.920 --> 00:28:26.119 a death warrant for an elderly woman. They just 00:28:26.119 --> 00:28:28.640 couldn't bring themselves to do it. The optics 00:28:28.640 --> 00:28:30.859 won again. So she was sentenced to life in prison 00:28:30.859 --> 00:28:33.339 without the possibility of parole. She goes to 00:28:33.339 --> 00:28:35.859 the Central California Women's Facility in Chochilla. 00:28:36.240 --> 00:28:38.519 She's in her 60s. You'd think she would just 00:28:38.519 --> 00:28:41.700 fade away into prison history. But Dorothea Puente 00:28:41.700 --> 00:28:45.220 had one more act. Of course she did. Her narcissism 00:28:45.220 --> 00:28:47.859 just wouldn't allow her to fade away. She maintained 00:28:47.859 --> 00:28:50.440 her innocence to anyone and everyone who would 00:28:50.440 --> 00:28:52.920 listen. She insisted she was a saint who was 00:28:52.920 --> 00:28:56.880 persecuted by the system. And then in 2004, she 00:28:56.880 --> 00:28:58.720 engaged in one of the most surreal publicity 00:28:58.720 --> 00:29:01.500 stunts in criminal history. She released a cookbook. 00:29:01.660 --> 00:29:04.400 A cookbook? Cooking with a Serial Killer. I have 00:29:04.400 --> 00:29:06.140 the title right here. It's actually called Cooking 00:29:06.140 --> 00:29:08.829 with a Serial Killer. Recipes from Dorothea Puente. 00:29:08.930 --> 00:29:11.289 She corresponded with this publisher named Shane 00:29:11.289 --> 00:29:13.970 Bugbee. She sent him her recipes from prison 00:29:13.970 --> 00:29:17.109 things like tamales, pork roast, burritos. She 00:29:17.109 --> 00:29:19.230 also sent him poems and drawings she'd made. 00:29:19.410 --> 00:29:22.230 Just imagine making a burrito from a recipe written 00:29:22.230 --> 00:29:25.369 by a woman who poisoned her houseguests. It is 00:29:25.369 --> 00:29:28.009 the height of dark irony. It's more than irony. 00:29:28.109 --> 00:29:31.049 It's pure pathology. She wanted to be remembered 00:29:31.049 --> 00:29:33.529 as a nurturer. Food was her tool. It was how 00:29:33.529 --> 00:29:35.809 she lured people in. It was how she drugged them. 00:29:35.910 --> 00:29:38.190 And in the end, it was how she wanted to be defined. 00:29:38.609 --> 00:29:41.849 I wasn't a killer. I was a cook. And the house. 00:29:42.569 --> 00:29:45.390 1426 F Street is still there. I looked it up 00:29:45.390 --> 00:29:47.029 on Google Maps. It's a nice looking place now. 00:29:47.190 --> 00:29:49.990 It is. It's a duplex. For a while, it was empty. 00:29:50.109 --> 00:29:52.029 Then a couple bought it, knowing the full history. 00:29:52.230 --> 00:29:54.009 And they actually leaned into it. They put up 00:29:54.009 --> 00:29:55.849 a sign that said, the public is invited to keep 00:29:55.849 --> 00:29:58.490 out. They even put a mannequin on the porch that 00:29:58.490 --> 00:30:02.000 looked like Dorothea. That is bold. It's become 00:30:02.000 --> 00:30:05.019 a piece of Sacramento dark folklore. People take 00:30:05.019 --> 00:30:08.000 tours. It's a physical monument to the crime. 00:30:08.400 --> 00:30:11.720 Dorothea Puente died in prison in 2011. She was 00:30:11.720 --> 00:30:14.359 82 years old. Which is, ironically, the same 00:30:14.359 --> 00:30:16.319 age or older than many of the people she killed. 00:30:16.539 --> 00:30:18.859 She got to live out the full lifespan that she 00:30:18.859 --> 00:30:21.119 stole from them. So we've gone from the orphanage 00:30:21.119 --> 00:30:23.660 to the Victorian house to the garden to the prison 00:30:23.660 --> 00:30:26.940 cell. When you step back and look at this entire 00:30:26.940 --> 00:30:30.380 unbelievable saga. What is the piece that really 00:30:30.380 --> 00:30:33.160 sticks with you? For me, it's the failure of 00:30:33.160 --> 00:30:36.420 the safety net. We like to think of serial killers 00:30:36.420 --> 00:30:39.380 as these evil geniuses who outsmart the police. 00:30:40.160 --> 00:30:43.059 Prenta wasn't a genius. She was sloppy. She left 00:30:43.059 --> 00:30:46.359 a paper trail a mile wide. The reason she succeeded 00:30:46.359 --> 00:30:48.160 for so long wasn't because she was brilliant. 00:30:48.319 --> 00:30:51.160 It was because her victims were invisible. Society 00:30:51.160 --> 00:30:54.019 just didn't look for them. Exactly. If she had 00:30:54.019 --> 00:30:56.980 been killing wealthy, young socialites with concerned 00:30:56.980 --> 00:30:59.079 families, she would have been caught in a week. 00:30:59.420 --> 00:31:01.740 But she was killing the people we walk past on 00:31:01.740 --> 00:31:04.559 the street without making eye contact. The system, 00:31:04.700 --> 00:31:06.880 the social workers, the police, even the neighbors, 00:31:07.099 --> 00:31:09.480 they were all too happy to have someone else 00:31:09.480 --> 00:31:11.619 deal with the problem people. She was providing 00:31:11.619 --> 00:31:13.920 a service. She was a disposal system for the 00:31:13.920 --> 00:31:15.980 unwanted. And that is a much harder, much more 00:31:15.980 --> 00:31:18.660 uncomfortable truth to face than just one bad 00:31:18.660 --> 00:31:21.579 woman did a terrible thing. It forces us to ask, 00:31:21.680 --> 00:31:25.380 are we complicit? By underfunding social services, 00:31:25.440 --> 00:31:28.480 by ignoring the mentally ill, by warehousing 00:31:28.480 --> 00:31:30.839 the elderly, did we create the perfect environment 00:31:30.839 --> 00:31:33.299 where a Dorothea Puente could thrive? I think 00:31:33.299 --> 00:31:36.059 the answer is, on some level, yes. Predators 00:31:36.059 --> 00:31:38.019 hunt where the prey is vulnerable. And we left 00:31:38.019 --> 00:31:40.380 the gate wide open. That is a heavy thought to 00:31:40.380 --> 00:31:43.339 end on. But it feels like the right one. Before 00:31:43.339 --> 00:31:46.619 we go, I want to leave you with a question. Dorothea 00:31:46.619 --> 00:31:49.559 Puente operated in plain sight for nearly a decade. 00:31:49.759 --> 00:31:52.210 She was a nice lady on the corner. So the next 00:31:52.210 --> 00:31:54.450 time you drive past a quiet boarding house where 00:31:54.450 --> 00:31:57.049 you see a care home sign in a window with drawn 00:31:57.049 --> 00:32:00.990 lace curtains, ask yourself, how much do we really 00:32:00.990 --> 00:32:03.829 know about who is watching The Watchers? And 00:32:03.829 --> 00:32:05.490 how many other invisible people are disappearing 00:32:05.490 --> 00:32:07.349 right now? And we're all just grateful that we 00:32:07.349 --> 00:32:09.009 don't have to ask where they went. Thank you 00:32:09.009 --> 00:32:11.769 for listening to The Deep Dive. Stay curious, 00:32:11.829 --> 00:32:14.670 stay critical, and maybe check in on your neighbors.