Sweet-looking elderly woman opens her house for the homeless and disabled. Then she kills them all
Dorothea Puente looked like a typical grandmother. She wore vintage clothing, large glasses, and kept her graying hair natural. In the 1980s, she ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California, where she took in elderly people, alcoholics, and disabled individuals. She held Alcoholics Anonymous meetings at her home and helped people sign up for Social Security benefits. To the community, she appeared to be a caring woman who wanted to help society’s most vulnerable.
But behind this kind image was a serial killer. As per LA Times, between 1982 and 1988, Puente murdered at least nine of her tenants at her Victorian-style boarding house on F Street. She drugged her victims with substances like flurazepam and doxylamine before they died. After killing them, she buried their bodies in her yard and continued to collect their Social Security checks and government benefits.
The investigation started in November 1988 when a social worker named Judy Moise became suspicious about a missing tenant named Alvaro Montoya. Montoya was 52 years old and had mental health issues. When police arrived at Puente’s home to search for him, they discovered disturbed soil in the yard. They eventually uncovered seven bodies buried on the property. Two more victims were found later, including Everson Gillmouth, whose body was discovered in a box in the Sacramento River. Prosecutors claimed that Puente collected $87,000 from her victims and spent the money on things like a face lift.
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