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00:00I look at it and I think nothing makes sense.
00:16This is absolutely crazy.
00:17Sir, I have not killed anybody.
00:20You are the keeper of the house.
00:23I think you know about Mr. Montoya.
00:26He's in that backyard, I believe, Dorothea.
00:28He is in that backyard or he's been disposed of in some other manner.
00:32Not by me.
00:46If you had your choice, you'd live where life had something to offer.
00:52If you had your choice, you'd live where you were close to work, schools, and affordable housing.
00:57Sacramento was recently voted one of the two best places in the country to live.
01:01No surprise at all to our nearly one million residents.
01:04Now people are asking, what's been going on with this sleeping giant,
01:08the two-river capital of the seventh largest economy in the world?
01:11Around 1988 in Sacramento, it was a time of a real good growth spurt.
01:25I mean, people were buying houses and new developments were coming about.
01:31But this neighborhood, for the most part, is still the same.
01:35There's tons of homeless coming up and down the street.
01:39That's where the homeless shelters are.
01:41The homeless represent a serious human tragedy that is year-round.
01:50And the effort to help them goes on.
01:52A city report found that one in five who sought help or food was turned away.
01:57At that time, County Mental Health had created a homeless task force.
02:05Volunteers of America was part of that task force.
02:09Our goal was to get them off the street and get them connected with mental health services
02:14and a decent place to live.
02:17They suffer from paranoia, and that keeps them from going to shelters,
02:22from getting into decent living situations.
02:32On the very first day, I noticed him.
02:36I have it on video.
02:40His birth name was Alvaro Gonzalez Montoya.
02:46People called him Bert.
02:49I have a son that's Manalio.
02:52And he had a lot of delusions and a lot of fears.
02:56And I recognized that in Bert right away.
03:00The voices that talk to you, did they go away with the medicine?
03:05No, they didn't go away.
03:06They didn't go away.
03:07Bert was born in Costa Rica, and he came with his family
03:11when he was about 16 to one of the southern states.
03:16He began to get schizophrenia at age 16.
03:20Do you think if you took medicine for a couple of weeks, they wouldn't go away?
03:25No, it would make you too sick.
03:27The medicine makes you sick?
03:29His parents had tried to help him and put him in a mental institution,
03:35and they gave him a whole lot of shock therapy.
03:42When he got out, he left home.
03:44He didn't tell his family.
03:47I don't know how he made his way to Sacramento.
03:49But he did end up at Detox.
03:53He wasn't an alcoholic, but he was the one person they liked staying there.
04:00And so right away, I said, well, why isn't he in a place for mentally ill?
04:04And they said, no, because some of those houses aren't good,
04:08and he might not be treated well.
04:10How is it living in Detox compared to a boarding house?
04:15Better in a boarding house.
04:17Better in a boarding house?
04:20Okay.
04:21Well, if we can find a good boarding house for you,
04:25would you prefer to go there?
04:26Okay, we'll try and do that.
04:33But there happened to be a place that was so well recommended,
04:38so very well recommended,
04:40by saying there's a wonderful woman there,
04:43and she really takes really good care of her clients.
04:48Dorothea Puente was loved by her community,
04:52and loved by local politicians,
04:53because, of course, she donated their campaigns and things.
04:56She would donate to local charities and give them bags of clothing.
05:00She was taking in all these people.
05:02She treated her neighbors well.
05:04And every Wednesday or Thursday was burrito day.
05:07And so she was giving free food away to the community.
05:17When someone moved in to Dorothea's house,
05:21Dorothea lived on the top floor,
05:23and they lived down below.
05:26These were people that someone called the shadow people of our society.
05:32Some of the boarders that she would take in were alcoholic.
05:36Some had mental disabilities.
05:38They had very little to do with their relatives.
05:41Out of their Social Security checks, or what monies they had, they would pay for their rent.
05:47Their meals were provided as part of that payment.
05:51In some of these cases, she became the person that could actually sign those checks
05:56and place them in the banks and place them in the bank, in which she did.
06:02So we went to Dorothea Puente's house to see if it would be okay for Bert.
06:07She seemed so sweet.
06:11She had a box of kittens.
06:14She had little bottles of milk that she was feeding them.
06:17And she said, excuse me, I've got the kitties here.
06:21And we're really impressed with that.
06:23We're thinking, geez, she is nice.
06:25You know, she's got a box of kittens.
06:29When we went downstairs to look at the room, I did meet someone that I was familiar with.
06:34His name was John Sharp.
06:37He said, well, there's a lot of pluses staying here.
06:41You know, maybe it's just a room.
06:44But to have a nice place, have some really nice food, it works out very well for us.
06:50I was impressed.
06:54I thought, this does sound like a good place.
06:57And I mentioned it to her.
06:58And she said, well, you know, I'm independently wealthy.
07:03I just have these people here because I like helping people.
07:09In order to live at Dorothea's, Bert was going to get social security checks
07:15to pay for room and board.
07:17We didn't have any connection with his family.
07:20So she said, I will be his payee.
07:25So I went back to detox and they said, well, let's let him try it.
07:37In the beginning, Bert seemed to be thriving under Dorothea's care.
07:41And I was very pleased to see him develop friendships within the house and have his own bed,
07:51his own recliner, his own TV.
07:56It was nice that he had a decent home.
07:58I did want to keep tabs on what he was doing, so I did call Dorothea to check on Bert.
08:18After a few months, she told me that Bert wasn't here right now.
08:22That he was in Mexico, staying with her brother.
08:26There had been a fiesta.
08:27I'm hearing that and I'm thinking, it's not like Bert at all.
08:34There was something very wrong with that.
08:36She said, he'll be back maybe on, say, Friday.
08:46When I called, no, he isn't here.
08:48He'll be back next week.
08:49Don't worry about it.
08:50Then I said, no, what I'm going to do is on Monday, I am going to call the police.
08:57And I am going to say, there's a missing person here.
09:04Monday morning, I come into my office and there's a phone call right away.
09:11I pick up the phone and it was a man who said that his name was Don Anthony
09:18and that Bert was now no longer at the house.
09:23He had come home from Mexico and his family came and picked him up.
09:32I didn't believe it.
09:35Somehow I knew where I could find John Sharp, who lived there.
09:38I said, John, what's going on with Bert?
09:42He said, he's not there anymore.
09:44And I said, did you go to Mexico?
09:48He said, none of us went to Mexico, no.
09:51And then I said, so tell me about where you live.
09:57Like, is something wrong?
09:59He said, yeah, something is wrong here.
10:03She's been digging a lot of holes.
10:09When you first look at her, you just go like, this could be my grandmother.
10:13Or the little old lady next door.
10:16You cannot judge a book by its cover.
10:20And she had one heck of a cover.
10:25Dorothea Puente was born Dorothea Gray in Redlands, California in 1929.
10:31She had a hardscrabble upbringing and both of her parents died
10:35relatively early when she was young.
10:37Her first crimes were committed down in Southern California.
10:40As I remember, the first recorded time when she hits the system is in 1948.
10:46She was convicted of felony forgery of writing a fictitious check.
10:51In the 1950s, Dorothea worked as a prostitute in Sacramento.
10:55And then after a period of years, she became a madam.
10:58She was arrested and prosecuted for being both a prostitute and a madam
11:03and sent to jail for a short period of time.
11:12In 1982, I was in the Sacramento District Attorney's Office on a temporary assignment.
11:17The first time that I became aware of Dorothea Puente was a case involving
11:22a gentleman named Malcolm McKenzie.
11:28McKenzie was an older man that Puente picked up at a bar.
11:33They had two drinks together.
11:35He then told her that he lived nearby and took her home.
11:40When they got to his house, he began to feel very strange and he laid down.
11:44And at that point, he could not move.
11:46He said he was absolutely paralyzed.
11:49But he was able to see what Puente was doing inside of his apartment.
11:55He had been administered some kind of stupefying agent.
11:58But he was able to watch her go through his belongings, take some coins.
12:04She came over to him and actually pulled a ring off his hand and then left.
12:10When he reported it to the police several hours later, after he had regained his motion,
12:16Puente was arrested. During that same period of time, Dorothea was passing herself off as a medical
12:23doctor to various elderly women and taking advantage of them. She would sometimes carry
12:29around a medical bag to make it look as though she was a practitioner of some sort. She had a
12:34stethoscope in there. She had a blood pressure cuff. She was not a doctor. She was not a nurse.
12:38They were props. She was administering some kind of stupefying drug to them because all of the
12:44victims reported the same kind of symptoms. And when they awoke, jewelry, coins, checks were missing.
12:52And Puente would be cashing the checks.
12:55Dorothea pled guilty to five felonies. And she was sentenced to five years in state prison.
13:03She went to prison in 1982. She was written up in the local media. My name appeared in that report.
13:12And the day afterward, I received a phone call from a man. And he said, we saw your name in the
13:19newspaper. We think Dorothea poisoned our mother.
13:28My mom's name was Ruth Monroe. She had been working at Chemco Pharmacy for like 13 years.
13:36The last couple of years, it was this guy that was coming in trying, kept asking her out.
13:43Mom and Harold started seeing each other. He was taking her a visit.
13:49Different bars, steakhouses. Dorothea was a part-time cook at the Flame Club. And she knew Harold.
13:57That's how mom and Dorothea got to be friends.
14:02When we first met her, she seemed like a nice person. Real friendly.
14:09And then after a while of being around, then that's when she started saying,
14:14well, call me grandma. Mom had a little bit of money. And Dorothea was talking about opening a
14:24restaurant, the little cafe at the corner bar. So her and mom went in on it together.
14:31But Dorothea kept saying that it wasn't making money. So mom needed to put more money into it,
14:36more money into it. So mom would put more into it. It'd be okay for a while. And then same thing again.
14:46She kept hitting her for more money, more money.
14:51And then Harold ended up with terminal cancer. Mom didn't want to live alone.
14:58So she had us move her into Dorothea's place as a roommate.
15:08I would stop by there every day after work. And everything was fine up until the last three days.
15:15The last three days, I saw mom had a drink in her hand.
15:23And my mom didn't drink. Alcohol actually bothered mom. She was allergic to alcohol.
15:30And she said, Dorothea had fixed her a drink to calm her nerves because the restaurant closed down.
15:35She said, it wasn't making any money and we don't have any more money to put into it.
15:38And the drink, I said, well, what is it? And she said, cream de mint.
15:47The next day, I get there and Dorothea's sitting at the table.
15:53I looked around. I said, where's mom? She said, well, she's sleeping. She's not feeling well.
16:02I said, well, I'm going to go see her. And she said, no, don't go in there. Just let her rest.
16:07I said, no, I'm not leaving until I see my mom.
16:19So I sat down on the edge of the bed, put my hand on her, on her shoulder. And she didn't say anything.
16:26She just kind of, just, she had her eyes open. And then she was like, tears were coming down.
16:33I said, mom, you'll be okay. Dorothea's taking care of you. And Dorothea had talked about being a nurse at one time.
16:40So we felt that she knew what she was doing and that she would take care of her.
16:45So I'm saying, you'll be okay. You'll be okay. I'll see you tomorrow. Give her a kiss and I left.
16:54That next morning, six o'clock in the morning was when I got the phone call from my sister
16:58saying that my mom died.
17:00She got a phone call from Dorothea saying, come and get your mom's stuff, which was an empty purse.
17:10Mom had jewelry. She had money and everything was gone. Dorothea said, your mom gave me everything.
17:20And she gave back an empty purse. Dorothea had called the coroner and she said that her roommate committed suicide.
17:34When they did the autopsy, the amount of drugs that were in my mother were all at toxic levels.
17:40She poisoned her. And I think it was over time with those drinks, little by little, putting it in her system.
17:50We went to see the prosecutor, Bill Wood, so that they could pursue a murder charge against Dorothea for my mother's death.
18:00My first reaction was I was in absolute shock.
18:03She drained the bank account that she and Ruth Monroe held jointly as business partners, and then she killed Ruth Monroe.
18:10Unfortunately, it was my last day actually in the district attorney's office. So I turned them over to our major crimes unit.
18:18They reviewed the matter. The crime lab in Sacramento was not set up to test for certain things in 1982.
18:25So there was no way to determine that Ruth Monroe had not in fact committed suicide.
18:33Mom did not commit suicide. Dorothea murdered my mother.
18:37Mom did not commit suicide.
18:40After Dorothea Puente was released from prison in 1985 for the cases that I had been prosecuting her on,
18:47she decided she had to change the way she was doing things. She could not be a caregiver outside of the home.
18:52So she started taking in tenants from 1985 forward at 1426 F Street.
18:59Was there a mechanism in place at that time to catch someone like Dorothea Puente?
19:04There were a lot of mechanisms. She was prohibited by the terms of her parole from having anything to do
19:10with individuals as a caregiver. She was totally, um, well, she was totally illegal.
19:16But every so often somebody would come by to kind of inspect and take a look and see what was going on.
19:21She knew all the magic words to say to these government officials or people working for social
19:26services. Remember record keeping in 1985 is not what it is today. She had been married four times.
19:34At various times her married name was Dorothea McCall, Dorothea Johansson, Dorothea Montalvo.
19:42So sometimes law enforcement agencies didn't exactly know exactly what somebody had on their record.
19:47Sometimes they did. Sometimes they didn't. So it was about two and a half years that she was running
19:53an unlicensed care facility, having people come in and out, providing medications to them,
19:58taking their government checks from them. And nobody was keeping an eye on her until 1988.
20:04It was missing. So I went to file a missing person. But I really fear that there's other things going
20:20on in that house that John Sharp talked to me about.
20:23In 1988, I was a homicide detective and I also was a detective in charge of the missing persons unit.
20:31And an officer went over to 1426 F Street to take a missing persons report. Spoke to Dorothea,
20:39spoke to everybody, and they all said the same thing that Bert had left with a relative. All of them,
20:45same story. But one of the boarders slipped the officer a note.
20:59John Sharp would tell us later that he didn't know exactly what happened to Bert,
21:13but he knew that what Dorothea was telling them to say wasn't true.
21:17What did she tell you exactly? She just said, John, I'm going to ask you to lie for me today.
21:23She said, I think I'm going to jail. And she said, the police are coming out. And she said,
21:28I want you to tell them that I was gone Thursday and Friday, and that you saw Bert on Saturday.
21:35And she said, I'll make it well worth your while. And so I start researching who was Dorothea Puente.
21:50And I find out that she was on federal parole. You know, she was incarcerated for putting knockout
21:56drops in individuals' drinks, taking their money and their Social Security checks. I started to say,
22:02wait a minute. It was evident that I needed to get into her house and to talk to her,
22:08and I needed to find out what happened to Bert. Judy was very persistent about us taking shovels.
22:19Yes, I did want them to go dig. We've got to do something, because I still have a guy missing,
22:25and I want to know where he is. You've got to do it.
22:32My partner and I went to Dorothea's boarding house with her parole officer,
22:35Jim Wilson. So we went in. I asked her about Bert. She said that she was expecting us.
22:41She went on and told me, you know, only thing she knows is that Bert had left with a relative.
22:46She was gone to church then. I asked her specifically,
22:50what exactly was it here at this place that she was running?
22:56And I'll never forget this. She looked directly at her parole officer, and she said, Jim,
23:04I'm in violation of my parole. And I looked at him, and I remember he had like a stunned look.
23:10I then asked her if it would be okay if I could search her premises, and she agreed.
23:20While I was scurrying around looking under the bed in the closet for Bert,
23:26I kept finding blue pills, capsules. And people that have sleep disorders, they take this drug.
23:35Her past using drugs to knock out her victims, everything started to gel a little bit. I knew
23:43that there was something really wrong here. Before we were getting ready to leave, and I think she felt
23:49that it was all done and said, other than her facing a parole violation, I said, oh, Dorothea, one more thing.
23:57Would you give us permission to dig in your yard? And she kind of looked at me and says, whatever for?
24:08And I said, well, the social worker, I just want to be able to tell her we've searched everywhere,
24:13we dug around, and we found nothing. And with that, she just went, yeah, okay, whatever. Yeah, you can.
24:19So we took the shovels. There were three of us. We started digging three holes. This is a small garden area.
24:28It's about 15 by about 20. It goes on to the back. There was some digging in this area, also in this area.
24:42At one point, I started finding pieces of garbage, eggshells, paper, cigarette butts.
24:50As I was digging, I looked up, I saw Dorothea standing out on the balcony on the second floor.
24:56And she was just staring at me. And then I started finding pieces of cloth, and I would pull them up,
25:03and they were kind of a light pinkish color. And I kept pulling these pieces of cloth up,
25:08so I set them in a pile. But I was also finding, as I was digging, pieces of what appeared to be
25:16leather pieces.
25:21It basically looked like beef jerky. And then I kept digging and digging, and my shovel had struck
25:29something hard.
25:30I decided to get down in the hole, brace myself, grab this with my hands, and yank on it.
25:39And when it broke loose, I could see it had a ball in the end, and it was a femur bone. It was a human
25:49femur bone.
25:50And then I could see that it was attached to other skeletal body parts. It got out of the hole, and I knew
25:58right away, I told them, we've come up on human remains.
26:00What was the beef jerky?
26:03It was actually human flesh that had come off of the bone.
26:09Going through the dirt, I was finding it and removing it.
26:14Sacramento police dug up the backyard of a home at 1426 F Street after receiving a tip
26:20that renters there were being poisoned and buried. Police did indeed find some human remains and took
26:26the landlord, Dorothy Puentes, along with her tenants, in for questioning.
26:38Okay, Dorothy.
26:40I had to get to the bottom of this, so I thought, I'm going to have to see if I can press some of her
26:45buttons to get her to tell me if, in fact, she knew about what was in the ground or what really
26:51happened to Bert.
26:52Nothing makes sense here, Dorothy. Nothing makes sense.
26:55Everything you said, you can't really substantiate. Mr. McCauley tells me another thing, Mr. Sharp
27:01tells me another thing, and I've got a guy that's been missing for at least two and a half, three months.
27:06She was emotionless, and she would just look straight into my eyes and answer every question.
27:12You know what I heard? I heard, hey, Dorothea, over at 1426 F Street, killing people and burying them in
27:19her backyard.
27:25How do you explain the body in the backyard?
27:27I don't know. Two and a half feet down?
27:28I don't know. I don't know. With clothing and everything with it?
27:30How? When you find out how old it is and see that I didn't have anything to do with that?
27:36Do I see it? Sir, I don't know anything. I'm going to ask you right now again.
27:43Are there any other bodies in your backyard? No. Not that I didn't even know that one was there.
27:48But she never flinched. She never said anything. She denied everything.
27:52She hasn't been arrested yet, and she has not been called a suspect yet in this case. Police will
27:58bring in an anthropologist, a crime scene expert from San Diego, to supervise a complete dig starting
28:04tomorrow morning. We found the skeletal remains on the first day, and then we, on the second day,
28:11start digging up other areas. We have Ed Smith of the Sacramento County Coroner's Office and Dr.
28:16Hilger, an anthropologist, in the hole, conducting the excavating. And that is one of the occupants,
28:24Melvin McCauley. I heard McCauley yell, Mr. Cabrera, Dorothea would like to talk to you.
28:31So I walked upstairs, and she came out round by the kitchen. She says, am I under arrest? Because all
28:40this is making me nervous, and I'd like to go get a cup of coffee over at my nephew's. And I said,
28:45well, where is that? And she goes, right over at the hotel around the corner.
28:49We didn't have anything to a restaurant. I had no probable cause or evidence to indicate she had
28:53killed anybody. Bert had only been missing for three months. This wasn't Bert. So I told her,
29:00I said, yeah, no problem. She came out, and she was wearing a red coat. She had just a little purse.
29:08So after I saw her go into the back of the hotel, I turned around and I walked back,
29:13and I resumed digging where I left off.
29:20Then I started lifting up, and when I lifted up and it came to the surface, there was a leg in the
29:27shovel.
29:27I yelled to my commander, we got another one. And he comes running over and he goes, where's Dorothea?
29:39And I told him, I said, I just walked over to the coffee shop. So he took off. And then he comes back
29:46a short time later, and he looks at me and he says, where did you say she went? And at that time, I thought,
29:52oh, no, she's taken off.
29:58After we dug up the second body and her fleeing the scene, we put out a bolo to be on the lookout to
30:06all police agencies.
30:08I was following the case hour by hour as the stories were coming up. There was suspicion
30:13that she may have fled to Mexico. There was a nationwide manhunt here in the United States.
30:18The search goes on today for the manager of a Sacramento boarding house.
30:23We had help from Secret Service, FBI, the marshal's office, the media. I mean, satellite dish trucks.
30:31We did everything we could putting the information out there to get her picked up or arrested.
30:43She was gone. We had her permission. So we just going to dig up the whole yard.
30:51This is dig site number three. What he is holding there would appear to be fingers.
30:57Even though we couldn't see the body because it was wrapped carefully in blankets and plastic,
31:05it was a big person.
31:09This one is 200-some pounds. We're going to need some muscle in here.
31:17And it left no doubt in my mind that had to be Bert.
31:21When I heard about it, I thought, what have I done? You know, I blame myself. How could I not?
31:38You know, I, but how would I know that she was a serial killer? I didn't know.
31:43Bert Montoya was the third body that we found. And so we continued to dig.
31:58And this body we recovered. These remains were located underneath the metal shed that was pulled
32:05back. Each time we found one, it was just mind-boggling. You know, you'd look at it and go,
32:11here's another one. And then here's another one. And another one.
32:16Police found bodies number six and number seven on Monday. And before suspending their search for
32:21the evening, said their work is far from over. We found seven bodies now,
32:26and we won't stop until we've dug up every square inch of this yard.
32:30Later, I went back into the house so that we could go through it with a fine-tooth comb. While I was
32:43conducting the search, I looked in the kitchen, and I looked on the calendar that she had hanging up.
32:50She had written on some dates, Bert left, as though I would find it,
32:58look at it, and then go, oh, wait a minute. She has it here right on the calendar.
33:05Okay, let's close shop, men. We know where Bert went. That's how far she went to make this real.
33:12One of the things that made Puente successful as a murderess and as a criminal was that she would
33:22make a terrific effort to seem not menacing, both in the way she dressed, the way she talked.
33:28She used all of her means to rise above suspicion. You know, her little chiffon dresses, makeup every day.
33:35I think I was around 50 at that time. She told me she was 65 or 70. She was my age at that time,
33:57and this is what I find out later.
33:59She looked older than she was. She played that part, I guess, to get you to believe in her,
34:08so she could take advantage. Who would suspect a person like this back in 1988?
34:14Nobody in the neighborhood. Neighbors are wondering why they never noticed anything.
34:19Never, never. I had never any indication. I can't believe it. Right next door to my house.
34:26The most magnificent thing were the marvelous tomato plants all the way around in the garden.
34:31You smelled what you thought was dead. Now, your prior experience led you to believe this.
34:38What's your prior experience? I worked for the Kansas City Mortuary Service.
34:44And it was coming from that room off the kitchen. Yeah, you couldn't smell it any other place.
34:49On the second floor, adjacent to her kitchen, I was walking around and I noticed how cushy the carpet was,
34:55and then I looked down and I realized it wasn't just one carpet, it was two carpets.
35:00So I reached back and I pulled the carpet up, and when I pulled the carpet up,
35:07I was overcome by a stench
35:12that I had smelled only a few times before.
35:15I would find later on that what permeated the floor was putrefied body fluid. This is where I believe
35:26she prepared all of her bodies.
35:27I was going to be able to do this.
35:31Have you ever had any or had the need for any lye around the house?
35:34Lye?
35:35White powder lye.
35:40In the hole we were digging, there was some residue of lime.
35:44Would there be any reason to be lime two feet below in the soil?
35:47Mm-hmm.
35:47None. You've never put any down?
35:49Never put something.
35:59So our investigation is at the end, and we've now found seven bodies in the yard.
36:06I was home and I was watching television, and I looked up, and on the screen
36:13was Dorothea Puente. And I mean, I just jaw dropped.
36:17She fled 400 miles to Los Angeles under an assumed name before she was recognized in a neighborhood bar.
36:23I remember seeing her face, and I put Sacramento together.
36:27He called a local TV station, and it was this tip that led police to arrest
36:32Puente at the motel where she was staying.
36:34And there she was, and she was being escorted by LAPD officers.
36:38I jumped up, got on the phone, called my boss.
36:40We got on a plane, we flew down, we taxied up on the tarmac,
36:46and an unmarked police car came out. She was sitting in the back seat.
36:50And we got her up on the jet, and we flew back to Sacramento.
36:56I sat next to her all the way.
37:00I used to be a very good person at one time.
37:10They have begun the grisly business of examining the seven victims.
37:16Most were found in the fetal position, wrapped in tablecloths and plastic bags.
37:21When the Dorothea Puente case broke, I got a phone call from family members of Everson Gilmuth.
37:30They were conveying that their father was engaged to Dorothea, and that they haven't heard from him,
37:36and they were nervous since now they're seeing all these bodies being found.
37:40GILMETH had started a pen pal relationship with Dorothea while Dorothea was incarcerated
37:49for putting people down with knockout drops. And Dorothea was telling him how she had really
37:56taken a look at things and wanted to get out of prison and change her life and get a new start.
38:01Right after she got out of prison, Everson Gilmuth came to live with her at 1426 F Street
38:07as a love interest.
38:10A short time later, detectives from Sutter County, just above Sacramento County,
38:15contacted me and said, you know, we had a John Doe back in 1986, similar to the type of bodies
38:21found in the yard, wrapped in plastic and duct tape.
38:25What we're viewing now is the plastic that had wrapped the body found inside of this box.
38:35It appears from all of the evidence that she killed him within about three or four weeks
38:39of his moving into F Street, then disposes of him in this horrible fashion by dumping him in a box
38:45near the river.
38:46How tall would you say that box? Have you measured it or?
38:50Pretty close to six foot.
38:52And then sends postcards to his sister for a period of months saying that Everson is fine
38:59or he's having trouble with his heart now, but lying to her this whole period of time,
39:03knowing that he was dead, and she'd thrown him out by the river.
39:10After she disposed of him, she began to bring in other individuals as tenants,
39:16where she could exert tremendous control over them in terms of what they ate, what they drank.
39:22Consistence throughout Puente's criminal activities is the use of stupefying drugs of various kinds.
39:29Dalmaine and other kinds of diazepam were involved with all of the victims buried at F Street.
39:38Dalmaine is a tranquilizer.
39:41Montalvo had done time in prison for drugging and robbing people she met in bars.
39:45When we saw the news about the F Street murders, we ended up going back to the district attorney.
39:51Bill Woods had retired and at that time it was John O'Mara.
39:55We were hoping he would include what she did to our mother with the other charges that he had against her.
40:01When the district attorney who was going to prosecute the case looked at the evidence and looked at the
40:06similarities, there was enough there to bring that into the fold and charged her with Ruth Monroe's murder.
40:14Puente was charged with nine counts of murder in the first degree, which means she could get the
40:20death penalty. The nine were Ruth Monroe, Everson Gilmuth, and then seven victims who were found buried
40:27on her property at 1426 F Street. What did they have? They had their little social security check
40:36and they had their life. That's all they had. They didn't have cars, they didn't have houses,
40:40they didn't have a lot of clothes, they didn't have anything. She took their checks away from them
40:44and then she took their lives away from them. The state took this first day to weave a bizarre
40:49tale of deception, fraud, and murder. They claimed Dorothea Puente plotted the murders
40:54to collect on about $50,000 in assistance checks. Prosecutor John O'Meara used a combination of
41:00visual aids and gruesome home video to make his point. It was a complex case because we didn't have
41:07a confession or anything that told us that she actually killed them. Her statement would be she
41:16admitted to cashing the checks. After they died in their sleep, they were sick, she didn't kill them,
41:22she buried them, she couldn't call the police authorities. Why? Because she was on parole.
41:29That made sense. We the jury and the above entitled cause find the defendant,
41:34Dorothea Montalvo Puente, guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree.
41:38The defendant is to be imprisoned in the state prison for a term of life without possibility of parole.
41:47A jury has convicted California landlady Dorothea Puente of murder. She was charged with
41:52killing nine people and cashing their social security checks. The jury declared her guilty
41:56of three murders and deadlocked on six others. There was one juror that maybe believed her story,
42:02that they died naturally, and he decided that he wasn't going to find her guilty on any more than
42:08three murders. He also probably was one of the last people that had fallen for the older grandmotherly,
42:15innocuous, harmless kind of look.
42:34We're standing here at the Sacramento County Courthouse. Approximately four blocks from here is
42:40where she was burying people in her yard. She was killing people on the main street in the capital,
42:50the state of California. I don't think any other serial killer has been either that audacious or gotten
42:56away with that kind of crime. In the end, I believe it was about money and power.
43:04If somehow, for some reason, you were receiving a social security check, it's all right for you to
43:08designate me as the payee for that check. And then, of course, if I could continue to get those checks
43:14after killing you, and no one knew that you were dead, then I'd just get those checks forever.
43:18I think Dorothea picked out people from the street that had no relatives that were there for them.
43:24And so, in this vulnerability, it can be taken advantage of.
43:30By Dorothea killing these people, she gained $100,000 in total. And she was putting it to use,
43:39donating money to the politicians, free food. And so she was always looked at as a philanthropist
43:47who gave a lot. And from that, she gained status in the community. That was the power. She was able
43:54to operate with nobody ever questioning her. But the clothing that she was giving to charities,
43:59that was the clothing that was from her victims.
44:05The people Dorothea murdered were Leona Carpenter, Dorothy Miller, Benjamin Fink, James Gallop,
44:18Vera Faye Martin, Betty Palmer, Everson Gilmuth, Burt Montoya,
44:26and Ruth Monroe.
44:33They were real people. Every single one of them.
44:36I'm sorry. I didn't think that would happen.
44:47A Sacramento landlady convicted of killing three of her tenants in the 1980s has died in prison.
45:00Rescued her say Dorothea Puente stole the social security checks of her elderly tenants,
45:05killed them, and then buried their bodies in her backyard. Puente was 82.
45:10There is no closure to it. I mean, you have to move on. You still live. But when there's no conviction,
45:21there is no closure.
45:27After I arrested Dorothea in Los Angeles, when I picked her up on the tarmac,
45:33the last thing she said was, Mr. Cabrera, I'm sorry. I've always believed that in that small moment
45:45that she was actually sorry for everything, just in that moment.
45:51Usually the house that was used in these crimes, they're generally raised. They get rid of them
46:00and put a park in there or something like that. But in this case, this is a historical home built in
46:061890, and you cannot take these houses down. It's going to be here forever.
46:12We connected with Bert's family members. We told them that he had passed, and how sad it was,
46:36and that we were going to have a memorial. And we would be happy to pay their way to come out and be
46:44there for his funeral service. At the gravesite, I did the eulogy. And all the people who knew and loved
46:57Bert were there. It was a very sad ceremony. But I just feel that it was his destiny to expose Dorothea Puente.
47:18I just feel that it was his destiny. I just feel that way.
47:48And this was my friend and the peace of mind. The one man said it was his destiny.
47:52But he had also his dream. And this was his destiny.
47:57He helped his dream, and it was his destiny. His dream and love is it?
48:03He was his daisy. His dream and the dream and his dream and the dream.
48:10He walked into the teilweise of the day and the day.
48:15He was his dream and his dream had been in that dream.