Dorothea Puente's House

Author: Jewls Krueger

From 1982 to 1988, a soft spoken, grandmotherly Sacramento landlady named Dorothea Puente ran what looked like a charitable boarding house for the city's elderly, homeless, and disabled residents at 1426 F Street. She would go on to be charged with nine murders. The bodies of seven of her victims were found buried in the yard beside her home.

Dorothea Puente

Dorothea Helen Puente (née Gray) was born on January 9, 1929 in Redlands, California. By the time she opened her boarding house at 1426 F Street, she had already accumulated a long criminal history that included forgery, fraud, drugging clients to steal their money, and running an unlicensed boarding house at 2100 F Street a few blocks away.

In 1982, Puente was convicted of theft and forgery for drugging four elderly people to steal their Social Security checks. While serving that sentence, she began writing letters to a 77 year old Oregon retiree named Everson Gillmouth. He picked her up from prison upon her release on September 9, 1985 and moved into her boarding house at 1426 F Street.

The Puente Boarding House

Puente rented and operated the upstairs of the two story Victorian home as a boarding house for low income tenants. The downstairs flat was occupied by the Ricardo Ordorica family, who owned the property. Puente ran her boarding house at 1426 F Street with the outward appearance of a service to the community, giving elderly, homeless, and mentally ill people a warm bed, cooked meals, and help applying for their Social Security and disability benefits. The reality of the situation was much more sinister. From 1982 through 1988, Puente was slipping her tenants prescription tranquilizers, primarily the sedative Dalmane, and cashing their government checks after they died.

Bodies in the Garden

Puente's undoing began in the fall of 1988, when a Volunteers of America outreach counselor named Judy Moise grew suspicious after her client, 51 year old Alvaro "Bert" Gonzales Montoya, seemed to disappear from Puente's boarding house. On November 11, 1988, Sacramento Police Detective John Cabrera and Detective Terry Brown, along with federal probation agent Jim Wilson, arrived at 1426 F Street to question Puente. When one of the tenants secretly passed the detectives a note saying that Puente was lying to them, they asked to dig in the yard.

Although when initially questioning Dorothea investigators didn't feel suspicious that she had done anything wrong, they proceeded to dig up the garden where they discovered a badly decomposed body. They kept digging through the garden and ultimately found seven bodies buried in the garden next to the home.

Since investigators initially didn't believe Dorothea was involved, she was allowed to leave the home the following morning after asking to walk to a nearby hotel to meet her nephew for tea. Investigators thought she had just gone to get a cup of coffee, but Dorothea had jumped into a cab and eventually made her way to Los Angeles. A manhunt for Dorothea ensued and on November 16, 1988, she was arrested at a Los Angeles motel after trying to befriend an elderly man at a nearby bar who eventually recognized her from the TV reports and tipped off police.

Dorothea Puente's Fate

Dorothea was charged with nine murders. The victims she was charged with killing were her boyfriend Everson Gillmouth, 77; her former business partner Ruth Munroe, 61; and seven of her tenants: Leona Carpenter, 78; Alvaro "Bert/Alberto" Gonzales Montoya, 51; Dorothy Miller, 64; Benjamin Fink, 55; James Gallop, 62; Vera Faye Martin, 64; and Betty Palmer, 78.

After preliminary hearings in 1990 and a change of venue, her murder trial began in Monterey County in early 1993. It lasted more than five months due to the large amount of witnesses called by the prosecutor. Prosecutors claimed that Dorothea would target the elderly and those that received government checks. She would purposefully give them an overdose of the tranquilizer Dalmane, wrap their bodies in sheets, and bury them in the garden while she continued to collect their checks. Prosecutors would later estimate she had pulled in over $87,000 through the scheme. Dorothea claimed that all of the boarders died of natural causes and that she was innocent.

After deliberating for a month, the jury found her guilty of three murders (Leona Carpenter, Dorothy Miller, and Benjamin Fink) but deadlocked on the other six after one juror refused to participate further. Dorothea was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole on December 10, 1993 and died in prison on March 27, 2011 at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla of natural causes. She was 82 years old and maintained her innocence throughout her time in prison.

Dorothea Puente's House Today

The home where Dorothea Puente murdered and buried her victims is located in downtown Sacramento on the south side of F street between 14th and 15th street in the Mansion Flats neighborhood. Although the home was once painted a light blue, it has since been repainted to a more neutral tan color. The yard to the left of the home is where she buried her victims and has since been turned into a patio with fake grass.

The two story Victorian passed through several owners after Puente's arrest before being bought at auction in 2010 for $226,000 by Barbara Holmes and Tom Williams, who live in the home today. The couple has leaned into the home's history over the years, adding a mannequin dressed in a red overcoat similar to the one Puente wore when she fled the house on the front porch, and displaying case ephemera on the interior walls. They were featured in the 2015 short documentary "The House Is Innocent" by filmmaker Nicholas Coles, in a 2015 to 2016 episode of Travel Channel's "Ghost Adventures," and in the 2021 Oxygen network special "Murders At The Boarding House." The home has occasionally been opened for one day charitable public tours benefiting Sacramento's Francis House Center, which serves the same population Puente preyed upon.

The house is a private residence and is not regularly open to the public. Remember to be respectful of current residents and neighbors and to remain on public roads and walkways at all times.