Ep. 5 - Dorothea Puente Murder House

A house is an inanimate object. People can fill a home with either positive energy or negative energy. But the house is still just a house. When a murder happens inside a house, the house is innocent. And that statement, The House is Innocent, is posted outside of 1426 F Street in Sacramento, California. This is the Dorothea Puente Murder House, a private home that was once a boarding house run by Puente who made the downtrodden of her community her victims, all while at the same time appearing to be a pillar of the community. She had a handful of victims that she buried in her backyard.

Women don't tend to be serial killers, so when a female killer is found to have multiple victims, it gets more than the average amount of attention. The list is a fairly short one and female serial killers seem to be different from their male counterparts. Their crimes are usually not about hunting prey as is the case for many male serial killers. And many of these female killers prefer a hands off approach that is simple, choosing poison or drug overdosing as their method for killing. Belle Gunness was probably the most prolific female serial killer and poison was her weapon of choice. Dorothea Puente went down the same route using a lethal mix of prescription drugs to end the lives of her victims.

Dorothea Puente was born as Dorothea Helen Gray on Jan. 9, 1929, in Redlands, Calif. The world she entered was a chaotic one that would shape her and perhaps even make her susceptible to evil desires. Her parents were Jesse James Gray and Trudie Gray and Dorothea had six siblings. There was never enough money or food and she grew up in squalid conditions that only worsened when her alcoholic father died from tuberculosis when Dorothea was eight. She was left to the care of her mother who was also an alcoholic that regularly beat and abandoned her children. The state took away custody in 1938 and later that year, Puente's mother died in a motorcycle wreck. Dorothea was only ten and was bounced through relatives' homes and finally ended up in the foster system. She ran away to Olympia, Washington when she was sixteen.

Mental illness began to be an issue around this time. As a child, Dorothea and her siblings had endured her father repeatedly talking about killing himself and several times held a gun to his head in front of his children. While at an orphanage, she was sexually abused. While in Olympia, Puente tried her hand at sex work and met Fred McFaul. McFaul was a 22-year-old soldier who had fought in the Pacific during World War II. The two were married in 1945, but the marriage only lasted three years. The couple moved to Gardnerville, Nevada and they had two children, one of which was sent to live with relatives and the other was put up for adoption. Puente moved to Southern California after the divorce in 1948. 

Her first arrest would come in San Bernardino when she wrote a check under a false name. Puente was sentenced to a four month jail term and then probation, which she skipped out on by fleeing north. She ended up in San Francisco and met Axel Bren Johansson, whom she married in 1952. Puente took up a life of drinking and gambling and did some work at a brothel masquerading as a bookkeeping service. While there, she was busted by an undercover cop when she offered to perform a sex act on him and served 90 days in jail. Johansson had Puente committed after that and she was placed on antipsychotics. The couple stayed married until 1966 despite Puente's working in the house of ill-repute, perhaps because she always claimed she was just visiting a friend there. In 1968, Dorothea would get her now infamous last name with her third marriage to a man named Roberto Puente. She was sixteen years older then him. She must have liked that name because she held onto it even though the marriage was over sixteen months later. Her fourth and final marriage was in 1976 to a man named Pedro Angel Montalvo. That union was over in a week. If nothing else, Dorothea was racking up several names to use as aliases. Her life of crime was going to get more intricate.

Before that final marriage, in 1969, Dorothea opened her first boardinghouse at 21st and F Streets in Sacramento and ran an unauthorized recovery program from there. She got involved in the political landscape of California and claimed to have met three California governors: Pat Brown, Jerry Brown and Ronald Reagan. She donated to campaigns to curry favor and also to charitable organizations to build her credibility in the community as a kind-hearted woman. The fact that her boardinghouse took in really tough cases also helped her image. But that image would fracture in 1978 when she was busted for signing her tenants' benefit checks with their names and then signing the checks over to herself. She got five years probation and was told she couldn't open another boardinghouse. She would have to find another avenue for revenue.

This new path found Dorothea working as a personal caretaker. She would drug her clients and then steal from them items like jewelry and cash. The curious thing about Dorothea at this time is that unlike most women approaching middle-age who lie about being younger than they are, she claimed to be a decade older. She wore larger than needed glasses and wore her hair and clothing like that of an elderly woman. She even softened and trembled her voice to appear more frail. Clients thought that this nice elderly woman was taking care of them while she was really doping them and stealing. And like before, she got caught once again. She had drugged a 74-year-old man at the Zebra Club and helped him home in his stupor. She laid him on the couch and he watched as she stole cash and checks from him and a diamond ring he wore on his pinky. He reported the incident and in 1982, she was sentenced by a Superior Court judge to five years in prison at the California Institution for Women in Corona. She served three of them.

Puente was now on probation until 1990. Before leaving the prison, a state psychologist diagnosed her as schizophrenic and wrote of her, "This woman is a disturbed woman who does not appear to have remorse or regret for what she has done. She is to be considered dangerous, and her living environment and/or employment should be closely monitored." If only that warning had been heeded. Dorothea opened up her second boardinghouse at 1426 F Street and now she would make sure that her victims couldn't serve as witnesses. Her murder streak was going to start, although she had more than likely killed before. Dorothea had been working as a part-time cook at a place called the Flame Club and she struck up a friendship with a woman named Ruth Munroe who was 53-years-old. Munroe had some money and the two women opened up a little cafe at the Round Corner Tavern together. Dorothea kept telling Munroe that she needed to put more money into the venture every few weeks. Monroe's husband had terminal cancer and she didn't want to live alone, so she moved in with Dorothea.  Soon, Munroe became ill and was almost too weak to stand. Her son shared on the "Call Me Grandma" episode of Netflix's series "Worst Roommate Ever" that he visited his mom one day and she was having a drink that Dorothea had made for her. The son asked why she was drinking since she was allergic to alcohol and she claimed she needed it to calm her nerves because the cafe was going out of business. TTwo days later, the family was told Munroe was dead. Puente claimed that Munroe had given her all her possessions. The coroner wrote that the death was from an undetermined overdose. There were several drugs in her system at toxic levels. Puente told police that Munroe had been depressed and suicidal because her husband was terminally ill. The police ruled it a suicide. 

The pale blue Victorian boardinghouse had enough room for eight tenants. Before taking on boarders, Dorothea hired a man named Ismael Florez to install some wood paneling. She was pleased with his work and asked him to built a 6-by-3-by-2-foot storage box. She then asked Florez if he could help her transport the box to a storage facility. In return, she told him she would give him the red Ford pickup that they were going to move it with. On the way to the facility, Puente told Florez to stop at a riverbank that people used as a junk dump. She claimed she didn't want the stuff in the box. A few months later, a fisherman reported the box and the police found the badly decomposing body of a male inside. It took three years to identify the man as 77-year-old Everson Gillmouth. This was a man who struck up a relationship with Puente while she was in jail and picked her up in that red Ford pickup when she was released.  While he was unidentified Puente continued to collect Gillmouth's pension and she told family members who inquired after him that he was to ill too talk. 

It is believed that forty people passed through the front doors of the boardinghouse. Judy Moise was a social worker working for Volunteers of America in 1988. One of her charges was 52-year-old Alvaro Gonzales Montoya, a man people called Bert, and he struggled with mental health issues. Dorothea's boardinghouse seemed like the perfect place for Bert, but when he went missing and Puente told Judy that he had gone on a trip, Judy got suspicious. Judy shares about Bert in the new Netflix series "Worst Roommate Ever" that Bert had been diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of sixteen. He had been institutionalized many times and given shock therapy. He eventually ended up on the streets and refused to take his medicine because it made him sick and didn't make the voices go away. She took him under her wing because her own son struggled in the same way. 

Judy called the police and reported Bert as a missing person. The police paid Puente a visit and she told them Bert was in Mexico on a trip. Another boarder named John Sharp backed up the story, but later passed the police a note claiming that Dorothea was making him lie for her. The police asked to search the house and also requested that they be allowed to do some digging in the backyard. Sharp had let them know that Dorothea had been digging a lot of holes back there. Dorothea was cooperative and even gave them a shovel. They found the bones of a body that first day and took her in for questioning and she claimed she knew nothing about it. She was released, but the next day police found more bodies. Before that, Dorothea excused herself so she could get some coffee from her nephew's place around the corner. She had actually gone on the run. The police proceeded to dig up seven bodies. Bert was one of those bodies.

Puente was apprehended in Los Angeles after being recognized at a bar. Diazepam and Dalmane were found in the toxicology reports of the victims. These are tranquilizers and were used to poison the victims. The victims were Leona Carpenter, 81; Dorothy Miller, 65; Benjamin Fink, 55; James Gallop, 64; Vera Faye Martin, 65; Betty Palmer, 80; and Bert Montoya, 52. She was also charged with the murder of Everson Gilmouth and Ruth Munroe. She took all these lives for the small little social security checks. She collected around $50,000 in benefit checks. The case was a hard one to try because Puente admitted to cashing the checks, but she claimed the victims died in their sleep and then she just buried them. She said she couldn't call the police because she was on parole. She was convicted of two first-degree murders and one second-degree murder. She was sentenced to life without parole. The jury deadlocked on the six other murder charges. Three of those included Ruth Munroe, Everson Gillmouth and Bert Montoya.

Martin Kuz wrote a lengthy article for Sactown Magazine in 2009. He conducted several interviews with Dorothea in prison and the clear message was that this was a woman who was still continuing to lie and had no remorse for the things she had done. She would die of natural causes at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, California at the age of 82 on March 27, 2011. But her spirit is not at rest and since she died with no repentance, that isn't surprising. Her former boardinghouse took on the reputation of being a murder house. Because it is a historic home built in 1890, it is protected and cannot be razed. Tom Williams and Barbara Holmes bought the residence in 2011 at a public auction for $215,000. They knew the house's reputation and they embrace it even going so far as to put crime scene tape on their shower curtain, a mannequin in the backyard dressed like Puente and holding a shovel and signs on the house that read, "It was that awful, awful woman who did it! Don’t blame me! – The House," "Trespassers will be drugged and buried in the yard," "The ghosts like to get out to terrorize the neighborhood" and "The House Is Innocent," which was inspired by the 2015 documentary of that name. 

The house is regularly included on ghost tours as a stop. And in 2016, the crew from Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures conducted a paranormal investigation in the house. It was an intense investigation based on the production. I take Zak Bagans and his crew with a grain of salt. Zak has a penchant for the dramatic and there is pressure to entertain a TV audience. But it is easy to believe that the circumstances surrounding the history of this house would lend it to hauntings. One of the coolest parts of this episode is that the lead detective for the case, John Cabrera, joined Zak to explain the details of the case and tours them through the house, pointing out the death room where the bodies were prepared for burial. Cabrera said he thought some of the bodies might have been buried alive because of their positioning in the fetal position. And one body was missing its head, hands and feet and these were never recovered.

A neighbor named Chad said the house had a dark cloud over it until the current owners moved in and renovated it. The cloud lifted, but then returned after Puente passed away. Peggy Holmes, Barbara's mother, was 91-years-old when the show was taped and she lived in a downstairs apartment. She told the crew that she feels a presence in the room at night whenever she awakens from sleeping. She even saw the full-bodied apparition of an elderly woman in a yellow dress staring and grinning at her after a researcher from the crew came to speak to her. This would have been Jeff Belanger, a well known researcher in the paranormal field. And Peggy has smelled the phantom scent of death in the house. She described it as being like old blood. She has also smelled a strong perfume scent.

Now as a paranormal investigator, I know that you don't go into these locations without a recorder. It's the single best piece of equipment. Zak had a portable recorder with him while he talked to Peggy. During their discussion, Peggy said she hoped the spirit showed up again so she could ask her some questions and Zak asked what she would ask. Peggy answered, "Why are you here? What do you want?" Zak later played the audio to check it and an EVP was captured. It says something and "to die." Only the "to die" part is decipherable. Peggy also wanted to ask, "Why me, why not somebody else?" and an EVP answered "you're dead."

The crew then started their own investigation and brought in a psychic couple, Michael and Marty Perry, who were blindfolded. Michael kept clearing his throat and he felt like he was choking. He claimed to be communicating with a man who was murdered. He wrote down an A and a B. Was this Alvaro who went by Bert? The most fascinating part for me, if I believe this was all legit, is that Michael went into the kitchen and wondered where the wall was. Detective Cabrera had told Zak during the tour that there had been a wall here in the kitchen that was removed during renovations. Michael felt that Bert was channeling through him and I was a bit astonished how he laughed and here's why. This episode is from 2016. I watched the Netflix episode from 2022 before this. On the Netflix show, Bert is on a tape that Judy the social worker had made. Bert laughed like Michael was laughing. It wasn't a big laugh, it was a small amused laugh. This psychic more than likely would not have known this about Bert.

Michael also stopped in the death room and felt like he had been laying there as Bert. Michael's wife's psychic gift is that she can draw the spirits. She drew a picture that really resembled Puente without glasses and when they showed it to Peggy, she said that was the spirit she had seen. Later, Zak tells Dorothea he has no fear of her and an EVP saying "I don't care" was captured. The Spirit Box had the same male voice come through three times and one time said the name "Peter." This doesn't match any victims, but when another member of the crew was in the backyard asking questions and getting answers on a ovilus, the word "fifteen" came up when he asked how many spirits were buried in the backyard. Were there more victims? Were all the bodies recovered? The number fifteen came up again and then throughout the investigation, several names came up on all the different pieces of equipment. These were not names that matched the victims, but when added to the known victims, the total would be fifteen. The current owners, Williams and Holmes, claim that they have had no experiences of their own. The couple think that the spirits probably like them.

Show Notes:

Martin Kuz article in August-September 2009 issue of Sactown Magazine about his interviews with Puente: https://www.sactownmag.com/the-life-and-deaths-of-dorothea-puente/

Los Angeles Times article: https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-xpm-2011-mar-28-la-me-0328-dorothea-puente-20110328-story.html