Oh Dorothea

Golden girl turned serial killer

Dorathea Punete was known as the sweetest, kindest, Grandma-like woman you would ever meet. In fact, to me, she reminds me of the Grandma who was the Mom to Tweety Bird.

Dorothea Puente (nee Gray), was born on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California.

In her teens and 20’s she was well known in the S*x Trade industry making a living wage in the 1940s. She met and married her husband, and birthed a number of children whom she gave up for adoption. Within 3 years, her husband and her separated, and she moved back to Sacramento.

Turning back to a life in the trade, this is when she did her first stint in jail for forging a bad check. She spent a few months in Jail, and when let out on probation she skipped town and headed to San Francisco, where she met her second husband, Axel Bren JohanssonThough they were married for 6 years, trouble followed Dorothea. Her Husband was not happy with her life choices, and they frequently argued about her serious gambling and drinking addictions. In 1966 they divorced. Husband #3 was Roberto Puente in 1968, and within 16 months she was on to Husband #4 Pedro Angel Montalvo which lasted only 1 week.

In the 1970s Returning to Sacramento, Dorothea opened and ran a boarding houseSocial workers looked upon her boarding house with admiration. Puente had a reputation for taking in people considered “tough cases” — recovering alcoholics, drug addicts, the mentally ill, and the elderly. But, behind the scenes, Puente had embarked on a path that would lead her to murder.

She lost her first boarding house after getting caught signing her own name to tenants’ benefit checks. Effectively getting her house shut down.

In the 1980s, she worked as a personal caretaker — who drugged her clients and stole their valuables, and 1982, Puente was sent to prison for her thefts. Convicted and time served, She was released just three years later. It is on medical record that a state psychologist diagnosed her as a manic and schizophrenic with no “remorse or regret” who should be “closely monitored.”

Instead, Free to be, Puente opened up her second boarding house.

There, she quickly got back to her old tricks. Puente took in again more so-called “shadow people” — specifically seeking out people who were marginally homeless without close family or friends.Some of them began to disappear.

Even the probation officers of the missing, stopped by seemed to accept Puente’s explanation that the people living at her house were guests or friends — not boarders.

In April of 1982, a 61-year-old woman named Ruth Monroe moved into Dorothea Puente’s house. Soon after, Monroe died from an overdose of codeine and acetaminophen.

When the police arrived, Puente told them that Monroe had been depressed due to her husband’s terminal illness. Satisfied, the authorities ruled Monroe’s death a suicide and moved on.

It wasn’t until 1988 that suspicions first arose about Puente, after one of her tenants, 52-year-old Alvaro Montoya, went missing. He’d been referred to Dorothea Puente’s house because of her sterling reputation for welcoming people like him.

Unlike many who passed through Puente’s boarding house, however, someone had their eye on Montoya. His outreach counselor became suspicious when Montoya vanished. And she didn’t buy Puente’s explanation that he’d left on vacation.

Police were alerted, and went to the boarding house. They were met by Dorothea Puente, an elderly woman with big glasses, who repeated her story that Montoya was simply on vacation. Another tenant, John Sharp, backed her up, But as the police prepared to leave, Sharp slipped them a message. “She’s making me lie for her.”

The police returned and searched the house. Finding nothing, they asked permission to dig up the yard. Puente told them that they were welcome to do so, and even provided an extra shovel. Then, she asked if it would be okay if she went to buy a coffee.

It was in that yard, they found 7 Bodies and 2 sets of remains.

Less than 2 feet down.

Right next to her prized Rose’s.

Thank you for being a friend!