01x01 - Call Me Grandma

[bunniefuu]

[tense music playing faintly]

[man speaking]

[woman speaking]

[man speaking]

[man continues speaking]

[Dorothea speaking]

[tense music rises]

[door closing]

[heartwarming music playing on TV]

[man on TV] If you had your choice,

you'd live where life
had something to offer.

If you had your choice,

you'd live where you were close to work,
schools, and affordable housing.

Sacramento was recently voted

one of the two best places
in the country to live.

No surprise at all
to our nearly one million residents.

Now people are asking,

what's been going on
with this sleeping giant,

the two-river capital of
the seventh-largest economy in the world?

[sinister music playing]

[Det. John Cabrera]
Around 1988 in Sacramento,

it was a time of a real good growth spurt.

I mean, people were buying houses,
and new developments were coming about,

but this neighborhood,
for the most part, is still the same.

There's tons of homeless
coming up and down the street.

That's where the homeless shelters are.

The homeless represent
a serious human tragedy

that is year-round,
and the effort to help them goes on.

[reporter] A city report found that

one in five who sought help
or food was turned away.

[Judy] At that time, County Mental Health

had created a homeless task force.

Volunteers of America
was part of that task force.

Our goal was to get them off the street

and get them connected
with mental health services

and a decent place to live.

[Judy on video]
They suffer from paranoia,

and that keeps them
from going to shelters,

from getting
into decent living situations.

[gentle piano music playing]

On the very first day, I noticed him.

I have it on video.

His birth name was
Alvaro Gonzales Montoya.

People called him Bert.

I have a son that's mentally ill,

and he had a lot of delusions
and a lot of fears.

And I recognized that in Bert right away.

[Judy on video]
The voices that talk to you,

did they go away with the medicine?

- No, they didn't go away.
- [Judy on video] They didn't go away.

[Judy] Bert was born in Costa Rica.

And he came with his family
when he was about 16

to one of the southern states.

He began to get schizophrenia at age 16.

[Judy on video] Do you think if you took
medicine for a couple of weeks,

they would go away?

The medicine makes you too sick.

[Judy on video]
The medicine makes you sick?

[Judy] His parents had tried to help him

and put him in a mental institution,

and they gave him
a whole lot of shock therapy.

When he got out, he left home.

He didn't tell his family.

I don't know
how he made his way to Sacramento.

But he did end up at detox.

He wasn't an alcoholic,

but he was the one person
they liked staying there.

Right away, I said, "Why isn't he
in a place for mentally ill?"

And they said, "No, because
some of those houses aren't good,

and he might not be treated well."

[Judy on video] How is it living at detox
compared to a boarding home?

I think it's better in a boarding home.

[Judy on video]
Better in a boarding home!

Okay.

If we could find
a good boarding house for you,

would you prefer to go there?

Yes.

[Judy on video]
Okay, we'll try and do that.

[Judy] But there happened to be a place
that was so well recommended,

so very well recommended
by saying there's a wonderful woman there,

and she really takes
really good care of her clients.

[Cabrera] Dorothea Puente
was loved by her community

and loved by local politicians

because she donated
to their campaigns and things.

She would donate to local charities
and give them bags of clothing.

She was taking in all these people.

She treated her neighbors well.

And every Wednesday or Thursday
was burrito day.

And so she was giving free food away
to the community.

[gentle piano music playing]

[Cabrera] When someone
moved into Dorothea's house,

Dorothea lived on the top floor,
and they lived down below.

These were people that some would call
the shadow people of our society.

Some of the boarders
that she would take in were alcoholic.

Some had mental disabilities.

They had very little
to do with their relatives.

Out of their Social Security checks
or what monies they had,

they would pay for their rent.

Their meals were provided
as part of that payment.

In some of these cases,

she became the person
that could actually sign those checks

and place them in the bank, which she did.

[Judy] So we went
to Dorothea Puente's house

to see if it would be okay for Bert.

She seemed so sweet.

She had a box of kittens.

She had little bottles of milk
that she was feeding them.

And she said, "Excuse me.
I've got the kitties here."

We're really impressed with that.

We're thinking, "Gee, she is nice.
You know, she's got a box of kittens."

When we went downstairs
to look at the room,

I did meet someone
that I was familiar with.

His name was John Sharp.

He said, "Well, there's a lot of pluses
staying here, you know."

"Maybe it's just a room,
but to have a nice place,

have some really nice food,
it works out very well for us."

I was impressed.

I thought this does sound
like a good place,

and I mentioned it to her, and she said,

"Well, you know,
I'm independently wealthy."

"I just have these people here
because I like helping people."

In order to live at Dorothea's,

Bert was going to get
Social Security checks

to pay for room and board.

We didn't have any connection
with his family.

So she said, "I will be his payee."

So, I went back to detox, and they said,
"Well, let's let him try it."

In the beginning,

Bert seemed to be thriving
under Dorothea's care.

And I was very pleased

to see him develop friendships
within the house

and have his own bed,
his own recliner, his own TV.

It was nice that he had a decent home.

[Judy on video] Do you like living
where you're living now?

Yeah, I like it.

[dark music playing]

[Judy] I did want to keep tabs
on what he was doing.

So I did call Dorothea to check on Bert.

After a few months,

she told me
that Bert wasn't here right now,

that he was in Mexico,
staying with her brother.

There had been a fiesta.

I'm hearing that, and I'm thinking,

"That's not like Bert at all."

There was something very wrong with that.

She said,
"He'll be back, maybe, say Friday."

When I called, "No, he isn't here.
He'll be back next week."

"Don't worry about it."

Then I said, "No, what I'm gonna do

is on Monday,
I am going to call the police,

and I am going to say
there's a missing person here."

[menacing music playing]

[Judy] Monday morning,

I come into my office,

and there's a phone call right away.

I pick up the phone,

and it was a man who said
that his name was Don Anthony,

and that Bert was now
no longer at the house.

He had come home from Mexico,

and his family came and picked him up.

I didn't believe it.

Somehow I knew where I could find
John Sharp, who lived there.

I said, "John, what's going on with Bert?"

He said, "He's not there anymore."

And I said, um, "Did you go to Mexico?"

He said, "None of us went to Mexico. No."

And then I said,

"So tell me about where you live,
like, is something wrong?"

He said, "Yeah, something is wrong here."

"She's been digging a lot of holes."

[discordant music playing]

[Cabrera] When you first look at her,
you go, "This could be my grandmother

or the little old lady next door."

You cannot judge a book by its cover,

and she had one heck of a cover.

[dramatic music playing]

[William P. Wood] Dorothea Puente was born

Dorothea Grey in Redlands,
California, in 1929.

She had a hardscrabble upbringing,

and both of her parents
died relatively early when she was young.

Her first crimes are committed
down in southern California.

As I remember, the first recorded time
when she hits the system is in 1948.

She was convicted of felony forgery
of writing a fictitious check.

In the 1950s,

Dorothea worked
as a prost*tute in Sacramento.

And then, after a period of years,
she became a madam.

She was arrested and prosecuted
for being both a prost*tute and a madam

and sent to jail
for a short period of time.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Wood] In 1982, I was in the Sacramento
District Attorney's office

on a temporary assignment.

The first time
that I became aware of Dorothea Puente

was a case involving
a gentleman named Malcolm McKenzie.

[menacing music playing]

[Wood] Mackenzie was an older man
that Puente picked up at a bar.

They had two drinks together.

He then told her that he lived nearby
and took her home.

When they got to his house,

he began to feel very strange,
and he lay down.

And at that point, he could not move.

He said he was absolutely paralyzed,

but he was able to see
what Puente was doing

inside of his apartment.

He'd been administered
some kind of stupefying agent,

but he was able to watch her
go through his belongings,

take some coins.

She had came over to him
and actually pulled a ring off his hand

and then left.

When he reported it to the police,

several hours later
after he had regained his motion,

Puente was arrested.

During that same period of time,

Dorothea was passing herself off as
a medical doctor to various elderly women

and taking advantage of them.

She would sometimes
carry around a medical bag

to make it look as though
she was a practitioner of some sort.

She had a stethoscope in there.
She had a blood pressure cuff.

She was not a doctor. She was not a nurse.

They were props.

She was administering
some kind of stupefying drug to them

because all of the victims
reported the same kind of symptoms.

And when they awoke,

jewelry, coins, checks were missing,

and Puente would be cashing the checks.

Dorothea pled guilty to five felonies,

and she was sentenced
to five years in State Prison.

She went to prison in 1982.

She was written up in the local media.
My name appeared in that report.

And the day afterward,

I received a phone call from a man,

and he said, "We saw your name
in the newspaper."

"We think Dorothea poisoned our mother."

[suspenseful music playing]

[Bill] My mom's name was Ruth Munroe.

She had been working at Temco pharmacy
for like 13 years.

The last couple of years,

there was this guy that was coming in,
kept asking her out.

Mom and Harold started seeing each other.

He was taking her
to visit different bars and steakhouses.

Dorothea was a part-time cook
at the Flame Club,

and she knew Harold.

That's how Mom and Dorothea
got to be friends.

When we first met her,
she seemed like a nice person,

real friendly.

And then after a while of being around,

then that's when she started saying,
"Well, call me 'Grandma.'"

Mom had a little bit of money,

and Dorothea was talking
about opening a restaurant,

the little cafe at the corner bar.

So her and Mom went in on it together.

But Dorothea kept saying
that it wasn't making money,

so Mom needed to put more money into it,
more money into it.

So Mom would put more into it.

They'd be okay for a while
and then the same thing again.

She kept hitting her
for more money, more money.

And then Harold ended up
with terminal cancer.

Mom didn't wanna live alone.

So she had us move her
into Dorothea's place as a roommate.

[sinister music playing]

[Bill] I would stop by there
every day after work.

And everything was fine
up until the last three days.

The last three days,

I saw Mom had a drink in her hand.

And my mom didn't drink.

Alcohol actually bothered Mom.
She was allergic to alcohol.

She said Dorothea had fixed her a drink
to calm her nerves

because the restaurant closed down.

She said, "It wasn't making any money,
and we don't have more to put into it."

And the drink, I asked, "What is it?"
And she said, "Creme de menthe."

The next day I get there,
and Dorothea is sitting at the table.

I looked around. I said, "Where's Mom?"

She said, "Well, she's sleeping.
She's not feeling well."

I said, "Well, I'm gonna go see her."

And she said, "No, don't go in there.
Just let her rest."

I said, "I'm not leaving
until I see my mom."

[sinister music playing]

So I sat down on the edge of the bed,
put my hand on her shoulder,

and she didn't say anything.

She just kind of...

Just... She had her eyes open.

And then she's...
There were tears coming down.

I said, "Mom, you'll be okay.
Dorothea is taking care of you."

And Dorothea had talked about
being a nurse at one time.

So we felt
that she knew what she was doing

and that she would take care of her.

So I'm saying, "You'll be okay.
You'll be okay. I'll see you tomorrow."

Gave her a kiss, and I left.

[breathes in]

The next morning,
six o'clock in the morning,

was when I got
the phone call from my sister

saying that my mom died.

She got a phone call from Dorothea saying,
"Come and get your mom's stuff."

Which was an empty purse.

Mom had jewelry, she had money, and...

everything was gone.

Dorothea said,
"Your mom gave me everything."

And she gave back an empty purse.

Dorothea had called the coroner.

And she said
that her roommate committed suicide.

When they did the autopsy,

the amount of drugs that were in my mother
were all at toxic levels.

She poisoned her.

And I think it was over time

with those drinks, little by little,
putting it in her system.

We went to see the prosecutor, Bill Wood,

so that they could pursue a m*rder charge
against Dorothea for my mother's death.

My first reaction
was I was in absolute shock.

She drained the bank account

that she and Ruth Munroe
held jointly as business partners,

and then she k*lled Ruth Munroe.

Unfortunately, it was my last day actually
in the district attorney's office.

So I turned them over
to our Major Crimes Unit.

They reviewed the matter.

The crime lab in Sacramento was not set up
to test for certain things in 1982.

So there was no way to determine
that Ruth Munroe had not, in fact,

committed suicide.

[dark music playing]

[Bill] Mom did not commit suicide.

Dorothea m*rder*d my mother.

[unsettling music plays]

[Wood] After Dorothea Puente
was released from prison in 1985

for the cases
that I had been prosecuting her on,

she decided she had to
change the way she was doing things.

She could not be a caregiver
outside of the home.

So she started taking in tenants
from 1985 forward at 1426 F Street.

[interviewer] Was there a mechanism
in place at that time

to catch someone like Dorothea Puente?

There were a lot of mechanisms.

She was prohibited,
by the terms of her parole,

from having anything to do
with individuals as a caregiver.

She was totally...
Well, it was totally ill*gal.

But every so often, somebody would come by

to kind of inspect and take a look
and see what was going on.

She knew all the magic words
to say to these government officials

or people working for social services.

Remember, record-keeping in 1985
is not what it is today.

She had been married four times.

At various times, her married name
was Dorothea McCall, Dorothea Johanson,

Dorothea Montalvo.

So sometimes, law enforcement agencies
didn't exactly know

exactly what somebody had on their record.
Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't.

So it was about two and a half years

that she was running
an unlicensed care facility,

having people come in and out,
providing medications to them,

taking their government checks from them,

and nobody was keeping an eye on her
until 1988.

[Judy] Bert was missing.
So I went to file a missing person,

but I really fear

that there's other things going on
in that house

that John Sharp talked to me about.

[Cabrera] In 1988,
I was a homicide detective,

and I also was a detective in charge
of the Missing Persons Unit.

An officer went over to 1426 F Street
to take a missing persons report,

spoke to Dorothea, spoke to everybody,

and they all said the same thing,
that Bert had left with a relative.

All of them, same story.

But one of the boarders
slipped the officer a note.

[sinister music playing]

- [Cabrera on video] Your first name is?
- John.

- [Cabrera] Sharp?
- Mmm-hmm.

- [Cabrera] S-H-A-R-P?
- Yup.

[Cabrera] John Sharp would tell us later

that he didn't know
exactly what happened to Bert.

But he knew that what Dorothea
was telling them to say wasn't true.

[Cabrera] What did she tell you exactly?

[Sharp] She said, "John, I'm gonna
ask you to lie for me today."

She said, "I think I'm going to jail."

She said the police are coming out,

and she said, "I want you to tell them
that I was gone Thursday and Friday,

and that you saw Bert on Saturday."

- Then she said...
- You hadn't seen him for two months?

[Sharp] I hadn't seen him. And she said,
"I'll make it well worth your while."

And so, I start researching
who was Dorothea Puente,

and I find out
that she was on federal parole.

She was incarcerated

for putting knockout drops
in individuals' drinks,

taking their money
and their Social Security checks.

I started to say, "Wait a minute."

It was evident that I needed
to get into her house and to talk to her,

and I needed to find out
what happened to Bert.

Judy was very persistent

about us taking shovels.

Yes. I did want them to go dig.

We've gotta do something
'cause I still have a guy missing,

and I wanna know where he is.

You gotta do it.

[Cabrera] My partner and I
went to Dorothea's boarding house

with her parole officer, Jim Wilson.

So we went in. I asked her about Bert.

She said that she was expecting us.

She went on and told me,
yeah, only thing she knows

is that Bert had left with a relative.

She was gone to church then.

I asked her specifically

what exactly was it here at this place
that she was running.

And I'll never forget this.

She looked directly at her parole officer.

And she said,
"Jim, I'm in violation of my parole."

And I looked at him,
and I remember he had like a stunned look.

I then asked her if it would be okay

if I could search her premises,
and she agreed.

While I was scurrying around

looking under the bed,
in the closet for Bert,

I kept finding blue pills, capsules.

And people that have sleep disorders,
they take this drug.

Her past,
using drugs to knock out her victims,

everything started to gel a little bit.

I knew that there was something
really wrong here.

Before we were getting ready to leave...

And I think she felt
that it was all done and said...

other than her facing a parole violation.

I said, "Oh, Dorothea, one more thing."

"Would you give us permission
to dig in your yard?"

And she kind of looked at me and says,
"Whatever for?"

And I said, "Well, the social worker."

"I just wanna be able to tell her
we've searched everywhere,

we dug around, and we found nothing."

And with that, she just went,
"Yeah. Okay, whatever. Yeah, you can."

So we took the shovels.

There were three of us.
And we started digging three holes.

[on video] This is a small garden area.
It's about 15 by about 20.

Goes on to the back.

There was some digging in this area,
also in this area.

At one point,
I started finding pieces of garbage.

Eggshells, paper, cigarette butts.

As I was digging, I looked up.

I saw Dorothea standing out
on the balcony, on the second floor.

And she was just staring at me.

And then I started finding
pieces of cloth,

and I would pull them up, and they were
kind of a light pinkish color.

I kept pulling these pieces of cloth up,
so I set them in a pile...

but I was also finding, as I was digging,

pieces of what appeared to be
leather pieces.

It basically looked like beef jerky.

And then I kept digging and digging,

and my shovel had struck something hard.

I decided to get down in the hole,
brace myself,

grab this with my hands, and yank on it.

And when it broke loose,
I could see it had a ball in the end,

and it was a femur bone.

It was a human femur bone.

[dark music playing]

And then I could see that it was attached

to other skeletal body parts.

I got out of the hole,
and I knew right away.

I told them,
"We've come up on human remains."

[interviewer] What was the beef jerky?

It was actually human flesh
that had come off of the bone.

Going through the dirt,
I was finding it and removing it.

Sacramento police dug up the backyard
of a home at 1426 F Street

after receiving a tip that renters there
were being poisoned and buried.

Police did indeed find some human remains
and took the landlord,

Dorothea Puente, along with her tenants,
in for questioning.

[ominous music playing]

[Cabrera on video] Okay, Dorothea.

I had to get to the bottom of this.

So I thought I'm going to have to see
if I could press some of her buttons

to get her to tell me if, in fact,
she knew about what was in the ground

or what really happened to Bert.

[on video] Nothing makes sense here,
Dorothea. Nothing makes sense.

Everything you said,
you can't really substantiate.

Mr. McCauley tells me another thing,
Mr. Sharp tells me another thing.

And I've got a guy that's been missing
for at least two-and-a-half, three months.

She was emotionless.

She would just look straight into my eyes
and answer every question.

[on video] You know what I heard?

I heard,
"Hey, Dorothea over at 1426 F Street

is k*lling people
and burying them in her backyard."

[Dorothea mumbles]

How do you explain
the body in the backyard?

- [Dorothea] I don't know.
- Two and a half feet down.

With clothing and everything with it. How?

[Dorothea] I don't know!
When you find out how old it is

and see that I didn't have anything
to do with that...

- Dorothea...
- Sir, I don't know anything about it.

I'm gonna ask you right now again,
are there any other bodies...

- No.
- ...in your backyard?

No, and I didn't even know
that one was there!

But she never flinched.

She never said anything.
She denied everything.

She hasn't been arrested yet,

and she has not been called a suspect yet
in this case.

[reporter] Police will bring in
an anthropologist,

a crime scene expert from San Diego,

to supervise a complete dig
starting tomorrow morning.

We found the skeletal remains
on the first day.

And then we, on the second day,
start digging up other areas.

[Cabrera on video] We have Ed Smith
of the Sacramento County coroner's office

and Dr. Hilger, anthropologist,
in the hole, conducting the excavating.

And that is one of the occupants,
Melvin McCauley.

[Cabrera] I heard McCauley yell,

"Mr. Cabrera,
Dorothea would like to talk to you."

So I walked upstairs,
and she came out round by the kitchen.

She says, "Am I under arrest?"

"Because all this is making me nervous,

and I'd like to go get a cup of coffee
over at my nephew's."

I said, "Where is that?"

She goes, "Over at the hotel,
around the corner."

We didn't have anything to arrest her on.

I had no probable cause or evidence
to indicate she had k*lled anybody.

Bert had only been missing
for three months.

This wasn't Bert.

So I told her, I said, "Yeah, no problem."

She came out,
and she was wearing a red coat.

She had just a little purse.

So after I saw her go
into the back of the hotel,

I turn around, and I walked back.
I resumed digging where I left off.

[menacing music playing]

[Cabrera] Then I started lifting up,

and when I lift it up,
and it came to the surface,

there was a leg in the shovel.

I yelled to my commander,
"We got another one!"

And he comes running over,
and he goes, "Where's Dorothea?"

And uh, I told him, I said,

"I just walked her
over to the coffee shop."

So he took off.

Then he comes back a short time later.

And he looks at me, and he says,
"Where did you say she went?"

And at that time, I thought,
"Oh, no, she's taken off."

[suspenseful music playing]

After we dig up the second body,
and her fleeing the scene,

we put out a BOLO.

A "Be On The Lookout"
to all police agencies.

I was following the case hour by hour
as the stories were coming up.

There was suspicion
that she may have fled to Mexico.

There was a nationwide manhunt
here in the United States.

The search goes on today for the manager
of a Sacramento boarding house.

[Cabrera] We had help from Secret Service,
FBI, the Marshal's office, the media.

I mean, satellite dish trucks.

We did everything we could
putting the information out there

to get her picked up or arrested.

[suspenseful music continues]

[Cabrera] She was gone.
We had her permission.

So we're just going
to dig up the whole yard.

[sinister music playing]

[on video] This is dig site number three.

What he is holding there
are what appear to be fingers.

Even though we couldn't see the body

because it was wrapped carefully
in blankets and plastic,

it was a big person.

[man on video]
This one is 200-and-something pounds.

We're gonna need some muscle in here.

And it left no doubt in my mind,
"That had to be Bert."

[somber music playing]

[Judy] When I heard about it,

I thought, "What have I done?"

You know, I blame myself.

How could I not? You know, I...

But how would I know
that she was a serial k*ller?

I didn't know.

[Cabrera] Bert Montoya
was the third body that we found,

and so we continue to dig.

[on video] And this body we recovered.

These remains were located

underneath the metal shed
that was pulled back.

Each time we found one,
it was just mind-boggling.

You know, you'd look at it and go,
"Here's another one."

And then, "Here's another one.
And another one."

[reporter] Police found bodies number six
and number seven on Monday,

and before suspending their search
for the evening,

said their work is far from over.

We found seven bodies now,

and we won't stop until we've dug up
every square inch of this yard.

- [ominous music playing]
- [indistinct police radio chatter]

[Cabrera]
Later, I went back into the house

so that we could go through it
with a fine-tooth comb.

While I was conducting the search,

I looked in the kitchen,

and I looked on the calendar
that she had hanging up.

She had written on some dates

"Bert left," as though I would find it,

look at it and then go,
"Oh, wait a minute."

"She has it here right on the calendar."

"Okay. Let's close shop, men.
We know where Bert went."

That's how far she went to make this real.

[Wood] One of the things
that made Puente successful

as a murderess and as a criminal

was that she would make a terrific effort
to seem not menacing

both in the way she dressed,
the way she talked.

She used all of her means
to rise above suspicion.

You know, her little chiffon dresses,
makeup every day.

[Dorothea on video]
I don't want to go back to prison.

[Cabrera] Well, I realize that.

- I'm an old lady.
- I realize that too.

I'm trying to get off parole.
I'm trying to... get my life together.

I think I was around 50 at that time.

She told me she was 65 or 70.

She was my age at that time.

This is what I find out later.

[Bill] She looked older than she was.

She played that part, I guess,

to get you to believe in her
so she could take advantage.

[Cabrera] Who would suspect
a person like this back in 1988?

Nobody in the neighborhood.

[reporter] Neighbors are wondering
why they never noticed anything.

Never. Never. I had never any indication.

I can't believe it.
[laughs] Right next door to my house.

The most magnificent thing
were the marvelous tomato plants

all the way around in the garden.

[Cabrera on video] You smelled,
what you thought, was death.

[Sharp] Was death.

[Cabrera] Yes. Now, your prior
experience led you to believe this.

- [Sharp] Yes.
- What's your prior experience?

[Sharp] I worked for
the Kansas City Mortuary Service.

And it was coming from that room
off the kitchen.

Couldn't smell it any other place.

[Cabrera] On the second floor,
adjacent to her kitchen,

I was walking around,
and I noticed how cushy the carpet was.

I looked down,
and I realized it wasn't just one carpet.

It was two carpets.

So I reach back,
and I pulled the carpet up,

and when I pulled the carpet up,

I was overcome by a stench...

that I had smelled
only a few times before.

I would find, later on,
that what permeated the floor

was putrefied body fluid.

This is where I believe
she prepared all of her bodies.

[on video] Have you ever had any

or had the need
for any lye around the house?

- [Dorothea] Lye?
- White powder lye?

[Cabrera] In the hole we were digging,
there was some residue of lye.

Would there be any reason
to be lye two feet below in the soil?

- None? You never put any down? Okay.
- [Dorothea] No, never put it down.

[menacing music playing]

[tense music playing]

[Cabrera] So our investigation
is at the end,

and we've now found
seven bodies in the yard.

I was home, and I was watching television,

and I looked up, and on the screen
was Dorothea Puente.

And, I mean, I just jaw-dropped.

[reporter] She fled 400 miles
to Los Angeles under an assumed name

before she was recognized
in a neighborhood bar.

I remember seeing her face,
and I put Sacramento together.

[reporter] He called a local TV station,

and it was this tip
that led police to arrest Puente

at the motel where she was staying.

[Cabrera] And there she was.

And she was being
escorted by LAPD officers.

I jumped up, got on the phone,
called my boss.

We got on a plane. We flew down.

We taxied up on the tarmac,

and an unmarked police car came out.

She was sitting in the back seat.

We got her up on the jet,
and we flew back to Sacramento.

I sat next to her all the way.

I used to... I used to be
a very good person at one time.

[somber music playing]

[reporter] They have begun

the grisly business
of examining the seven victims.

Most were found in the fetal position,
wrapped in tablecloths and plastic bags.

When the Dorothea Puente case broke,

I got a phone call from family members
of Everson Gillmouth.

They were conveying
that their father was engaged to Dorothea,

and that they haven't heard from him,
and they were nervous

since now they're seeing
all these bodies being found.

Gillmouth had started
a pen-pal relationship with Dorothea

while Dorothea was incarcerated

for putting people down
with knockout drops.

And Dorothea was telling him
how she had really taken a look at things,

and wanted to get out of prison,
and change her life, and get a new start.

[Wood] Right after she got out of prison,

Everson Gillmouth came to live with her
at 1426 F Street as a love interest.

[Cabrera] A short time later,
detectives from Sutter County,

just above Sacramento County,

contacted me and said,
"You know, we had a John Doe back in 1986

similar to the type of bodies
found in the yard

wrapped in plastic and duct tape."

[Cabrera on video]
What we're viewing now is the plastic

that had wrapped the body
found inside of this box.

[Wood] It appears from all of the evidence
that she k*lled him

within about three or four weeks
of his moving into F Street,

then disposes of him
in this horrible fashion

by dumping him in a box near the river.

[Cabrera on video]
How tall would you say that box is?

- Have you measured it or...
- [man] Pretty close to six foot.

[Wood] And then sends postcards
to his sister for a period of months

saying that Everson is fine,
or he's having trouble with his heart now,

but lying to her this whole period of time
knowing that he was dead,

and she'd thrown him out by the river.

After she disposed of him,

she began to bring in
other individuals as tenants

where she could
exert tremendous control over them

in terms of what they ate,
what they drank.

Consistent throughout
Puente's criminal activities

is the use of stupefying drugs
of various kinds.

Dalmane and other kinds of Diazepam

were involved with all of the victims
buried at F Street.

Dalmane is a tranquilizer.

[reporter] Montalvo had
done time in prison

for drugging and robbing people
she met in bars.

When we saw the news
about the F Street murders,

we ended up going back
to the district attorney.

Though Woods had retired
and at that time, it was John O'Mara.

We were hoping he would include
what she did to our mother

with the other charges
that he had against her.

When the district attorney,
who was gonna prosecute the case,

looked at the evidence
and at the similarities,

there was enough
to bring that into the fold

and charged her with Ruth Munroe's m*rder.

[Wood] Puente was charged with
nine counts of m*rder in the first degree,

which means
she could get the death penalty.

The nine were Ruth Munroe,
Everson Gillmouth,

and then seven victims

who were found buried
on her property at 1426 F Street.

What did they have?

They had their
little Social Security check.

And they had their life.
That's all they had!

They didn't have cars, didn't have houses!

They didn't have a lot of clothes!
They didn't have anything!

She took their checks away from them,
and she took their lives away from them!

[reporter] The state took this first day
to weave a bizarre tale

of deception, fraud, and m*rder.

They claim Dorothea Puente
plotted the murders

to collect on about
$50,000 in assistance checks.

Prosecutor John O'Mara
used a combination of visual A*DS

and gruesome home video to make his point.

It was a complex case
because we didn't have a confession

or anything that told us
that she actually k*lled them.

Her statement would be
she admitted to cashing the checks

after they died in their sleep.

They were sick. She didn't k*ll them.

She buried them.
She couldn't call the police authorities.

Why? Because she was on parole.

That made sense.

We, the jury, in the above-entitled cause,

find the defendant,
Dorothea Montalvo Puente,

guilty of the crime of m*rder
in the first degree.

The defendant is to be imprisoned
in the state prison

for a term of life
without possibility of parole.

[reporter] A jury has convicted California
landlady Dorothea Puente of m*rder.

She was charged with k*lling nine people
and cashing their Social Security checks.

The jury declared her guilty
of three murders

and deadlocked on six others.

[Cabrera] There was one juror
that maybe believed her story

that they died naturally,

and he decided
that he wasn't going to find her guilty

on any more than three murders.

[Wood] He also probably
was one of the last people that had fallen

for the older, grandmotherly,
innocuous, harmless kind of look.

[dark music playing]

[suspenseful music playing]

[Wood] We are standing here
at the Sacramento County Courthouse.

Approximately four blocks from here

is where she was burying people
in her yard.

She was k*lling people on the main street
in the capital of the state of California.

I don't think any other serial k*ller
has been either that audacious

or gotten away with that kind of crime.

In the end,
I believe it was about money and power.

If somehow, for some reason, you were
receiving a Social Security check,

it's all right for you to designate me
as the payee for that check.

And then, of course,
if I could continue to get those checks

after k*lling you
and no one knew that you were dead,

then I just get those checks forever.

I think Dorothea
picked out people from the street

that had no relatives
that were there for them.

And so, in this vulnerability,
it can be taken advantage of.

[Cabrera] By Dorothea
k*lling these people,

she gained $100,000 in total,

and she was putting it to use,

donating money to the politicians,
free food.

And so she was always looked at
as a philanthropist who gave a lot,

and from that,
she gained status in the community.

That was the power.

She was able to operate
with nobody ever questioning her,

but the clothing
that she was giving to charities,

that was the clothing
that was from her victims.

[somber music playing]

[Wood] The people Dorothea m*rder*d
were Leona Carpenter,

Dorothy Miller,

Benjamin Fink,

James Gallop,

Vera Faye Martin,

Betty Palmer,

Everson Gillmouth,

Bert Montoya,

and Ruth Munroe.

They were real people.

Every single one of them.

[sniffles] I'm sorry.

I didn't think that would happen.

A Sacramento landlady,

convicted of k*lling three of her tenants
in the 1980s, has died in prison.

Prosecutors say Dorothea Puente

stole the Social Security checks
of her elderly tenants,

k*lled them, and then buried their bodies
in her backyard. Puente was 82.

[Bill] There is no closure to it.

I mean, you have to move on.

You still live,

but when there's no conviction,

there is no closure.

[Cabrera] After I arrested
Dorothea in Los Angeles,

when I picked her up on the tarmac,

the last thing she said was,
"Mr. Cabrera, I'm sorry."

I've always believed
that in that small moment

that she was
actually sorry for everything,

just in that moment.

Usually, the house that was used
in these crimes, they're generally razed.

They get rid of them and put
a park in there or something like that.

But in this case,
this is a historical home built in 1890,

and you cannot take these houses down.

It's gonna be here forever.

What area would you like to live in,
in a boarding home?

- What area?
- Uh-huh.

Yeah, do you like the downtown area,
or do you like to be out in the country?

- Do you like this area around here?
- Yeah.

[Judy] We connected
with Bert's family members.

We told them that he had passed
and how sad it was

and that we were going to have a memorial.

And we would be happy to pay their way

to come out and be there
for his funeral service.

[somber music playing]

At the gravesite, I did the eulogy.

And all the people
who knew and loved Bert were there.

It was a very sad ceremony, but...

[exhales]

I just feel that it was his destiny

to expose Dorothea Puente.

I just feel that way.

[sinister music playing]