Dorothea Helen Gray was born on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California.
Dorothea Puente was a convicted serial killer who operated a boarding house in Sacramento, California in the 1980s. She cashed the Social Security checks of the elderly and disabled boarders living in her house after she murdered them. Many of them were found dead and buried in the compound of the boarding house.
Ruth Monroe, a close friend and business colleague of Puente, rented a room in an apartment that belonged to Puente in April 1982. Monroe passed away from a codeine and Tylenol overdose not long after moving in. Puente said that Monroe had been despondent as a result of her husband’s illness when questioned by the police. The death was formally ruled as suicide by the police.
Malcolm McKenzie, 74, charged Puente of drugging him and stealing his pension a few weeks later. In August of that year, Puente was accused of stealing, found guilty, and given a five-year prison term. She started a relationship with 77-year-old Everson Gillmouth while she was incarcerated. After serving her sentence for three years in 1985, she created a joint bank account with Gillmouth.
The House where she carried out her crimes
Puente hired Ismael Florez, a handyman, to install wood paneling in her house in November of that same year. Puente handed him a $800 bonus for finishing the task and a red 1980 Ford pickup truck, the same make and style as Gillmouth’s vehicle. She informed Florez that the truck was her boyfriend’s and that he had given it to her.
Puente also hired Florez to construct a box for her that measured six feet by three feet by two feet and was intended to hold “books and other belongings,” according to Puente. She then drove to a roadway in Sutter County with Florez.
Puente told Florez to stop while they were on Garden Highway in Sutter County and dump the box of “junk” on the riverbank at an unofficial household junk dumping site. On January 1, 1986, a fisherman spotted the suspicious looking coffin-like box near the river and called police. Investigators opened the box and found the badly decomposed and unidentifiable body of an elderly man inside.
Puente kept running her boarding house at this time, housing elderly and disabled people. She checked their mail and collected any cash or Social Security payments they received.
She gave them each a monthly stipend, but she kept the rest to cover what she said were boarding house costs. Due to prior orders for her to avoid elderly people and refrain from handling government checks, a number of parole officers paid a visit to Puente’s boarding house. Despite these frequent visits, she was never charged with anything.
Puente was charged with nine counts of murder, for the seven bodies found at her house in addition to Gillmouth and Montoya
Alvaro Montoya, another resident of Puente’s home, vanished in November 1988. Montoya suffered from schizophrenia and developmental disabilities. His social worker reported him missing after he skipped meetings. When the police came, they immediately started searching Puente’s boarding house. Seven bodies were found in the yard when they found newly disturbed soil. Puente was not thought to be a suspect when the investigation started. She escaped to Los Angeles as soon as authorities allowed her to leave their sight, where she visited a bar and began to talk to an elderly pensioner. The man recognized her from the news and called the police.
Puente was charged with nine counts of murder, for the seven bodies found at her house in addition to Gillmouth and Montoya. She was convicted of three of the murders, as jury could not agree on the other six.
Puente was sentenced to two life sentences which she served at Central California Women’s Facility in Madera County, California until her death in 2011 at age 82. Until her death, she continued to insist that she was innocent and that the tenants had all died of natural causes.