Motive Monday: Dorothea Puente
The Lure of the Death House Landlady
What if your next landlord turned out to be your undoing? Dorothea Helen Puente, born 1929 in Redlands, California, and later dubbed the Death House Landlady, pulled off just that.
She presented herself as a benign matron running a cozy Sacramento boarding house for the elderly, mentally ill, and addicted... until the bodies started surfacing in her yard, buried like secrets waiting to rot. Her crimes unfolded throughout the 1980s, culminating in her arrest in November 1988 and fading into her death in prison in 2011.
The Making of a Predator
Puente’s childhood reads like a tragedy. Her father, a cotton picker plagued by tuberculosis, was abusive and often threatened to kill himself in front of his children. He never carried it out; the disease claimed him when she was eight. Her mother died soon after in a car crash, and the siblings were scattered into orphanages. Sexual abuse was also reported during this period, an upbringing soaked in neglect and trauma.
Her early crimes? Low‑level forgery, fraud, and even brothel‑running. But later she recast herself as a caring caregiver; a sweet, grandmotherly figure wearing vintage clothes, large glasses, hosting AA meetings, helping the disadvantaged. That disguise wasn’t cute; it was deliberate.
She targeted the vulnerable, tenants with mental illness, addiction, no family. The pattern: lure them in, drug them, kill them, and collect their Social Security checks. She wasn’t killing for rage; she was filling her wallet.
When the Net Tightened
Suspicion came not from some dramatic confession, but a social worker noticing a missing tenant, Alvaro “Bert” Montoya. Police visited the address (1426 F Street) and noticed disturbed ground. They dug and found bodies. Then they found more. Bodies enough to raise the official count to nine suspected dead.
Puente fled briefly, but an LA retiree recognized her from news and turned her in. The hunt ended after just a few days.
Judgment Rendered
She went on trial in 1993 in Monterey County. The jury heard 156 witnesses, saw over 3,100 exhibits. After excruciating deliberations, she was convicted of three murders: Benjamin Fink, Leona Carpenter, and Dorothy Miller. The jury deadlocked on six others. She escaped the death penalty and was sentenced to life without parole. She died behind bars of natural causes in 2011.
Victims
Confirmed victims:
Benjamin Fink (55)
Leona Carpenter (78)
Dorothy Miller (65)Those are the three Puente was convicted for.
Suspected/unproven victims:
Ruth Munroe (61)
Everson Theodore Gillmouth (77)
Betty Mae Palmer (78)
James Gallop (62)
Vera Faye Martin (61)
Alvaro “Bert” Gonzales Montoya (51) These are the six cases the jury deadlocked on or officially suspected without conviction.
Survivors of other crimes:
Malcolm McKenzie (74) was drugged and robbed by Puente in 1982 but lived to testify against her.
Law enforcement also linked her to a broader pattern of drugging and stealing from elderly men in Sacramento. Several victims survived these encounters, though only McKenzie’s case was proven in court.
Why the Mask Slipped
Puente’s motivation wasn’t complicated. Money. She needed to sustain her boarding house persona and fund her lifestyle. She selected targets who were socially isolated and easy to control. Experts flagged her as a high‑functioning psychopath: superficial charm, zero empathy, methodical, manipulative, financially predatory. That “mask of sanity” let her bury people (while stealing their money) near her rose bushes, for years.
Echoes in the Dark
The public and media couldn’t stop gawking. She became a staple of true crime TV, rumored as “evil grandma.” Her house turned into a grim tourist spot. Investigations into policy shifts around oversight for caretakers followed, though that’s still under-discussed. Her case remains a textbook in forensic psychology and a warning about evil in plain sight.
Documentaries & Docuseries Featuring Dorothea Puente
Murders at the Boarding House (2021, Oxygen/Prime Video)A two-part unscripted documentary that dives straight into the moment Sacramento detectives cracked the case: when a social worker flagged a missing tenant. Expect police scenes, yard excavations, and the fallout of Puente’s twisted caregiving façade.
World’s Most Evil Killers – S2 E18 This episode in the World’s Most Evil Killers lineup focuses on Puente’s reign of terror. It follows the usual formula: dramatized lore, cold logic, and that grim pull of “neighbor turned nightmare.”
Netflix’s Worst Roommate Ever – “Call Me Grandma”
Puente takes the spotlight in an episode of this Netflix true-crime series, which premiered March 1, 2022. It portrays her as the smiling grandma who turned lethal, and the stories featured are rich with police audio, family interviews, and that haunting sense of trust gone tragically wrong.
Bonus: There’s a docu-short called The House Is Innocent from 2015, spotlighting Puente’s former boarding house. It’s more atmospheric history than true-crime adrenaline.
What do you think?
How much of her success came from murder, and how much from society’s blind trust in a kindly face?
Would Puente have thrived without the grandmother disguise, or was the costume her deadliest weapon?
When the mask of kindness crumbles, what remains underneath?
Sources
Wikipedia entry on Dorothea Puente
People.com true‑crime retrospective “Sweet Grandma…”
