Dorothea Puente: The ‘Death House Landlady’ Who Killed Her Tenants
Owen Brewer/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesDorothea Puente killed at least nine of her tenants in the 1980s.
At first glance, California serial killer Dorothea Puente seemed like an admirable person. Small with large glasses, Puente used her Sacramento boarding house to take in “shadow people” who lived at the margins of society.
No one knew that she was actually murdering her most vulnerable tenants, burying them on her property, and cashing their Social Security checks.
But the warning signs were there. By the time police showed up at Puente’s doorstep in 1988 in search of one of her tenants, a developmentally-delayed 51-year-old man named Alvaro Montoya, Puente had already established a quiet pattern of tenant abuse.
According to SF Gate, Puente had been put on probation 10 years earlier for cashing her tenants’ checks. And she was sent to prison in 1982 after one of her tenants, a 74-year-old retiree, claimed that Puente had drugged him.
Genaro Molina/Sacramento Bee/MCT/Getty ImagesCalifornia serial killer Dorothea Puente’s infamous Sacramento boarding house.
Things escalated when Puente returned from prison. Then, though few people noticed, her tenants slowly started to disappear. It wasn’t until Montoya’s social worker alerted police that he was missing that anyone realized that something sinister was happening at Puente’s boarding house.
While searching for Montoya, police came across a body buried in Puente’s yard. Then another one. And then another one. In all, police uncovered seven bodies wrapped in tarps or sheets.
Though Puente briefly escaped — fleeing the scene as police searched the boarding house premise — she was arrested in Los Angeles and charged with murdering eight tenants. According to SF Gate, Puente had poisoned her victims, strangled them, buried them in her backyard, and continued to collect their benefits.
She might not look like a murderer, but Dorothea Puente was one of the most insidious California serial killers in history.
After reading about these California serial killers, discover the story of another California serial killer, Richard Ramirez. Or, look through this list of female serial killers.
