Dorothea Puente
| Dorothea Puente | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Dorothea Helen Gray January 9, 1929 Redlands, California, U.S. |
| Died | March 27, 2011 (aged 82) Chowchilla, California, U.S. |
| Other names | Death House Landlady |
| Criminal penalty | Life imprisonment |
| Killings | |
| Victims | 15 |
|
Span of killings
|
1982–1988 |
| Country | United States |
| State(s) | California |
|
Date apprehended
|
November 11, 1988 |
Dorothea Helen Puente (January 9, 1929 – March 27, 2011) was a convicted American serial killer. In the 1980s, Puente ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California, and cashed the Social Security checks of her elderly and mentally disabled boarders. They were killed and buried in her yard. Newspapers dubbed her the "Death House Landlady".
She was born Dorothea Helen Gray on January 9, 1929 in Redlands, California, to Trudy Mae (Yates) and Jesse James Gray. Her father died of tuberculosis in 1937 when she was eight years old, and her mother died in an automotive accident the following year. She was sent to an orphanage. In later life, she lied about her childhood, saying that she was one of three children who all were born and raised in Mexico.
In 1945, she was married for the first time, at the age of 16, to a soldier named Fred McFaul, who had just returned from the Pacific Theater. Puente had two daughters between 1946 and 1948, but she sent one to relatives in Sacramento, and gave the other up for adoption.
She became pregnant again in 1948, but suffered a miscarriage. In late 1948, McFaul left her. Humiliated at being abandoned, Puente would lie about this marriage and claim that her husband died of a heart attack within days of their union. She tried to forge checks, but she was eventually caught and sentenced to a year in jail; she was paroled after six months. Soon after her release, she was impregnated by a man she barely knew and gave birth to a daughter, whom she gave up for adoption. In 1952, she married a Swede named Axel Johanson, and had a turbulent 14-year marriage.
In 1960, she was arrested for owning and managing a brothel and was sentenced to 90 days in the Sacramento County Jail. After her release, she was arrested again, this time for vagrancy, and sentenced to another 90 days in jail. Following that, she began a criminal career that over time became more serious. She found work as a nurse's aide, caring for disabled and elderly people in private homes. In a short time, she started to manage boarding houses.
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