Pod Insights Serial Killers & Murderous Minds SERIAL KILLER: The Death House Landlady Pt. 2 About this episode In the shocking conclusion to the Dorothea Puente story, Killer Minds uncovers how a seemingly warm, grandmotherly caretaker manipulated an entire community while murdering the vulnerable people she vowed to protect. As Dorothea’s fraud escalates into calculated killings, Vanessa Richardson and Dr. Tristin Engels trace her descent into a chilling cycle of deception, exploitation, and control. From forging letters to grieving families to burying victims in her garden, Dorothea’s crimes went unnoticed for years—until one missing tenant and one determined social worker cracked her façade. This episode follows the investigation that exposed the “Death House Landlady” and reveals the psychology behind a killer who hid in plain sight.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Vanessa Richardson? Hi, everyone. Before today's episode, there's another show I want to tell you about. It's called What the Fact with Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum and Carter Roy. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from history and tell you the full story behind them. Plus, Connor's infectious energy that'll make you realize history is the most fascinating thing on earth. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen, or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.
0:36 Speaker 01 This is Crime House.
0:42 Vanessa Richardson? We've all been misled by someone we trusted. Maybe it was our own misguided notions, or maybe they tricked us. Either way, we can usually dust ourselves off and learn from a mistake. But when it comes to someone as cold and calculated as Dorothea Puente, the deceit can leave scars that last a lifetime. Dorothea spent decades perfecting her innocent act. She convinced everyone around her that she was a respectable, charitable woman. Some people even viewed her as a savior. But Dorothea was the opposite. And when she finally crossed paths with someone she couldn't trick, the world learned she was nothing more than a cold-hearted killer.
1:39 Vanessa Richardson? The human mind is powerful. It shapes how we think, feel, love, and hate. But sometimes it drives people to commit the unthinkable. This is Killer Minds, a Crime House original. I'm Vanessa Richardson.
1:53 Tristin Engels? And I'm Dr. Tristin Engels. Every Monday and Thursday, we uncover the darkest minds in history, analyzing what makes a killer.
2:01 Vanessa Richardson? Crime House is made possible by you. Follow Killer Minds and subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts for ad-free early access to each two-part series. Before we get started, you should know this episode contains descriptions of child abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence, and murder.
2:21 Vanessa Richardson? Today, we conclude our deep dive on Dorothea Puente, a scammer turned serial killer who posed as a caretaker to gain people's trust and bleed them dry. Dorothea hid her crimes in plain sight, but eventually, people caught on to the woman known as the "death house landlady", and the true extent of her heartless crimes was revealed.
2:45 Tristin Engels? As Vanessa goes through the story, I'll be talking about things like how some criminals are able to garner blind trust from those around them, even as they're actively carrying out violent crimes; how some offenders exploit known flaws in the system to manipulate and maintain control over others; and why even the most ruthless killers sometimes can't own up to their own actions.
3:09 Vanessa Richardson? And, as always, we'll be asking the question, "What makes a killer?"
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3:49 Vanessa Richardson? By 1982, 53-year-old Dorothea Puente had drugged and killed one of her boardinghouse tenants, a woman in her 60s named Ruth Monroe. Shortly afterward, Dorothea drugged and robbed a man in his 70s named Malcolm McKenzie after meeting him at a bar. Dorothea thought she was getting away with her escalating crimes, but in reality, Malcolm, who'd been paralyzed but conscious while Dorothea robbed him, had gone to the police, and so did Ruth's son, William. While investigators couldn't prove that Dorothea had killed Ruth, William did hand over paperwork that showed Dorothea had been stealing money from her. So, officers geared up to arrest Dorothea
4:33 Vanessa Richardson? on charges of theft, forgery, and parole violation, since she wasn't supposed to be running a boardinghouse in the first place. However, Dorothea heard through the grapevine that they were closing in on her, so she packed her bags and caught a taxi to the airport, where she planned to flee to Mexico, the country that she lied about being from. But as Dorothea loaded her baggage onto the taxi and envisioned the new life she was about to embark on, her dreams were quickly dashed. The cab barely pulled away from Dorothea's house before police surrounded her. They arrested Dorothea, and ultimately, she was charged with multiple counts of theft and fraud. Dorothea didn't bother trying to fight her charges.
5:17 Vanessa Richardson? She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison, with the possibility of parole after three.
5:24 Tristin Engels? So this sentence is very lenient when you consider the magnitude of what she'd actually done. She actually murdered someone, and they couldn't prove it. And so she essentially got away with it. And that sends a powerful message regarding her effectiveness and a powerful message on how to refine methods that aren't as effective to her either. And for someone who is already deeply entitled, detached, and confident in her cleverness, that's reinforcing emboldening. So rather than serving as a deterrent, prison likely set the stage for her escalation when she was released.
5:59 Vanessa Richardson? We talk a lot about criminals' cavalier attitudes on this show, especially when it comes to offenders who invade justice or receive relatively light sentences. We also know that every criminal we cover is unique. They're all different. So how might Dorothea be different, or not?
6:16 Tristin Engels? What stands apart in terms of Dorothea from many of the other offenders we've discussed is not just that she's a woman, though gender absolutely shaped both her methods and her trajectory, but most of the men we've covered used overt violence, coercion, or physical intimidation in their tactics. Their crimes were loud. Dorothea's were quiet, calculated, and relational. She weaponized trust, caregiving roles, and social expectations, which are strategies that are statistically more common in female offenders because society gives them different tools and different blind spots to work within. And they need to use more covert tactics because most generally can't rely on physical dominance
6:59 Tristin Engels? to overpower their targets. Dorothea understood that people tend to see elderly caregivers, landlords, or maternal figures as safe. She used that to her advantage. While the men we've covered manipulated from positions of dominance, Dorothea manipulated from positions of nurturance. That's part of why she evaded suspicion for so long. Like I discussed, her crimes blended into roles people don't question often. But here's another key difference. Her time in and out of institutions actually refined her. Prison gave her structure. It gave her an audience and access to medical manuals. It gave her time to rehearse new identities, test out caregiving personas,
7:43 Tristin Engels? and study the vulnerabilities of others. Most offenders escalate impulsively. Dorothea escalated strategically. And a lot of offenders, in fairness, that we cover do learn how to refine their tactics or even become more versatile when they are incarcerated because they learn from other incarcerated individuals. But for Dorothea, prison served as dedicated practice time for her, which is markedly different and truly scary to think about.
8:11 Vanessa Richardson? During this latest prison stint, Dorothea didn't reflect on her ways. If anything, she was bored. So she turned to the prison's pen pal program to seek a little companionship. And that's how she met Everson Gilmath, a 71-year-old widower from Oregon.
8:28 Tristin Engels? And this is exactly what I mean. Instead of using prison as a period of reflection, she treated it as an opportunity and other way of refining her methods.
8:37 Vanessa Richardson? Definitely. Well, Everson was a kind, lonely man who believed Dorothea had only committed some financial crimes out of desperation. The more they wrote to each other, the more they bonded. And soon, Everson was regularly depositing money into Dorothea's commissary account. From there, they started planning their life together. Dorothea was released in late 1985 after serving just three years of her five-year sentence. When the 56-year-old walked out of the prison gates, her lover was there, waiting for her in his red pickup truck. The terms of her parole forbade her from running a boarding home or working with any vulnerable populations, like the disabled or mentally ill, ever again. But within weeks,
9:22 Vanessa Richardson? Dorothea secured a lease on a house just a few doors down from her former boarding home on F Street in Sacramento. She also opened a joint checking account with him and used the money to reopen her business. It's not clear whether Everson knew Dorothea was violating her parole. He was just enamored with her determination to help others less fortunate than her.
9:44 Tristin Engels? Dorothea's manipulation of Everson is a textbook example of how a seasoned offender exploits loneliness, vulnerability, and unmet emotional needs. As a grieving widower, Everson was isolated and emotionally primed to idealize anyone who offered him nurturance, which is what she is skilled at performing. Dorothea understood this immediately. She wasn't interested in him as a partner, only as a resource. And the moment she stepped out of prison, she went straight into control mode. Like you said, she opened a joint bank account, accessing his pension and securing housing with his money. But she hid her intentions in the language of compassion. She offered him a role that made him feel important, like he was also helping people rebuild their life in some way.
10:30 Tristin Engels? And in doing so, she's concealing the reality that he was being financially sort of gutted and psychologically isolated by someone who viewed empathy as a tool.
10:41 Vanessa Richardson? Everson wasn't the only one who admired Dorothea. The city's social workers also continued to support her. They knew that she was violating her parole, and they also knew that the system didn't provide enough housing to the kinds of populations she served. And remember, Dorothea had never been charged for killing Ruth Monroe, so they kept sending people to live with her. Meanwhile, Dorothea was hatching a plan. She had every intention of returning to her murderous ways, but knew she couldn't keep faking people's suicides. So one day, when Everson wasn't around, Dorothea put a plastic tarp underneath their bed sheets. Then, for the next few weeks, she started slipping sleeping pills into his food and drinks.
11:26 Vanessa Richardson? Everson started sleeping throughout the day, until finally, one day in December 1985, he laid his head down on the pillow and never woke up. Once Dorothea was sure he was dead, she wrapped the plastic tarp around him and moved his body to a corner of the room. But she never told anyone that he'd passed away. In fact, she did the opposite. She wrote letters to Everson's children, who were adults, in his handwriting, pretending to be him. With no one the wiser, Dorothea kept collecting Everson's pension checks.
12:01 Tristin Engels? To impersonate a deceased partner so convincingly like this and live with their body in the next room, that requires emotional coldness, detachment, and a complete absence of empathy. She's not thinking about Everson as a human being who died in her home. She's not thinking about his children as people who might worry about their father. She's thinking about herself and logistics, specifically how she can maintain this illusion long enough to keep the money flowing. Impersonating someone after death is one of the most invasive forms of psychological violation. It tells us she's not only needing control, she needed continued control, even after Everson was gone. And that level of detachment
12:45 Tristin Engels? is exactly what made her capable of escalating in the way she ultimately did.
12:51 Vanessa Richardson? As far as Dorothea was concerned, her new scheme worked flawlessly. There was just one problem. She would have to get rid of Everson's body, and soon, because an odor was forming in her bedroom. A couple of weeks after killing Everson, Dorothea contacted a handyman she knew, named Ismael Flores, and asked him to build a pine box for her. In exchange, she told Ismael he could have Everson's red pickup truck that he no longer wanted. Ismael agreed and went to Dorothea's boarding house to help her. But if the handyman was suspicious, he kept his thoughts to himself. He built the box. Everson's body was placed inside. Then they hauled it into the truck and drove onto the highway.
13:35 Vanessa Richardson? However, as they passed a river, Dorothea suddenly asked Ismael to pull over. They dumped the box onto the embankment, and once again, Ismail didn't ask any questions. When they got back to the house, she not only let Ismail drive away in the truck, but she also handed him a wad of cash. Ismail understood that this was hush money. Dorothea felt like a true criminal mastermind, and now that she'd perfected her methods, she'd use them again and again.
14:13 Speaker 01 The moment a body is found, the clock starts ticking. Forty-eight hours. That's how long detectives have before the trail begins to go cold. From A and E and Crime House, this is the official podcast from the famous true crime series, The First Forty-Eight. Step inside the critical window, the interrogations, the dead ends, and the breakthroughs that crack a case wide open. I'm Carter Roy. Each week, I revisit a landmark homicide investigation with the depth you know and immersive, long-form storytelling built for your ears. Real detectives, real cases, real stakes. This is The First Forty-Eight.
14:58 Speaker 01 New episodes every Thursday. Listen to and follow The First Forty-Eight on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
15:14 Vanessa Richardson? In late 1985, 56-year-old Dorothea Puente killed her lover, Everson Gilmath, in order to steal his pension and life savings. With the help of a local handyman, Dorothea disposed of Everson's body in a river. Now, she believed she'd found the perfect method for getting away with murder. But what Dorothea didn't know was that in early 1986, a fisherman discovered Everson's remains. However, they weren't identifiable, so he was buried in a pauper's grave.
15:48 Vanessa Richardson? Meanwhile, Dorothea continued to bring in new tenants to her boarding house, just like she'd always done. She earned their trust by providing them with hot meals and a clean, warm, welcoming home. Then she gained access to their pensions, social security checks, and disability benefits. Whenever Dorothea went to the bank to deposit her tenants' checks for them, she siphoned some of the money into her own account. At this point, her income was about $5,000 a month. That's about $14,500 today. But she wanted even more, and she knew she could make it happen. She just had to make sure to keep a steady rotation of tenants.
16:28 Vanessa Richardson? Dorothea also pretended to be much older than she was. She wore large-framed glasses and colored her hair white so that she'd appear elderly. This helped her trick people into thinking she was frail and harmless. Dorothea's mind games didn't end there. She also started encouraging some of her tenants to go out and enjoy local bars. She chose people who she knew had struggled with alcohol addiction in the past, and she even gave them cash. Then, after a couple hours when Dorothea figured they were nice and liquored up, she'd call the police and report a drunk in public, which they'd be arrested for. They'd usually end up behind bars for 30 days,
17:10 Vanessa Richardson? which was enough time for Dorothea to move someone else into their room and "kill them" before the original tenant came back.
17:18 Tristin Engels? So it's incredibly hypocritical when you look at how much admiration she received, even from social workers, who knew she was breaking the rules. On one hand, I understand why they praised her. Resources for vulnerable populations are scarce, and someone opening their home can appear heroic, but also, it's useful for them. But that praise gets dangerous when the person providing the help is also violating the law. Once someone is willing to cross legal and ethical boundaries for a good cause, you have to ask, where does that boundary stop? They should have asked those questions of Dorothea, but instead of doing that, they looked at her like she looked at her victims. They saw her usefulness only and filtered out the rest.
18:02 Tristin Engels? And that's exactly why her tactics worked. Dorothea weaponized that contradiction. The image of the benevolent caregiver paired with the reality of predatory behavior. Psychologically, this tells us who she really is. She's someone who is a skilled manipulator and a chameleon, even to the professionals who should be able to see that.
18:24 Vanessa Richardson? That is just utterly cold-hearted. Do you think she views life as a game of survival of the fittest? And so she doesn't feel any kind of sympathy toward others?
18:33 Tristin Engels? I think sadly, this is a predictable outcome of a lifetime shaped by danger and deprivation, emotional disconnection, and her personality structure. People who grow up in environments like hers sometimes learn to view the world through a stark, binary lens, like I survive or I don't. And Dorothea learned early that people were either sources of threat or sources of utility, and there was no middle ground. So by the time she was running her boarding home, she wasn't seeing human beings. She was scanning for the needs that she could exploit, vulnerabilities she could capitalize on, and opportunities to maintain absolute control. Over time, that mindset didn't just like harden. It became pathological.
19:16 Tristin Engels? Empathy was never something she learned or internalized. Now, to be clear, there are a lot of people who grew up in very scarce environments, who don't, you know, turn out to exploit other people or become the Dorothias of the world. But Dorothea's pathology is very different. And that is what's really taking center place right now.
19:40 Vanessa Richardson? Dorothea's tactics only got more diabolical from there. She used former residents' IDs, including Ruth Monroe's, to fill prescriptions for sleeping pills, which she used to drug and kill her victims. Then she rolled their dead bodies up in plastic tarps that she'd placed underneath their bed sheets. Usually before killing someone, she isolated them from everyone else first. She'd keep people restrained in their bedrooms and tell the others they'd fallen ill. That way, Dorothea thought no one would be surprised when the person passed away. If other tenants or even the neighbors ever asked about someone who'd gone missing, Dorothea would make up excuses. Sometimes she said they'd moved to another city or that she had to move them into a hospital.
20:26 Vanessa Richardson? At the same time, she knew she couldn't keep hiring people to help her move bodies. Ismail had seemed to know something nefarious was going on, so if she continued to enlist others, it would only be a matter of time before someone notified the authorities. So, Dorothea worked alone. When the other tenants weren't around, or they were sleeping, she dragged her victims' bodies out into the backyard and buried them in the garden. Then she covered their shallow graves with flower pots, or even planted new trees. Her home looked immaculate and well cared for. She didn't think anyone would suspect a thing.
21:03 Tristin Engels? Again, she weaponizes domesticity and uses biases to her advantage. She knew society would actively trust someone who presented as sweet, kind, harmless elderly woman, and she capitalized off that. But at the same time, which is also really disturbing, she used these same symbols of care, like the garden, flower pots and trees, to hide the bodies of her victims. She just seamlessly blended two very oppositional worlds and turned it into her strategy.
21:35 Vanessa Richardson? What is it about our biases that makes it harder to spot red flags?
21:41 Tristin Engels? So there's a couple of things. There's something called the representative heuristic. That's when we judge someone based on how well they match our internal template of a quote "good person." Most of us are taught to see a maternal woman who, for example, keeps a tidy home, tends a garden, bakes cookies, and cares for vulnerable people as safe and trustworthy. We are also influenced by a confirmation bias. Once we decide someone is kind or trustworthy, we unconsciously filter out information that contradicts it. Any small red flag gets reframed as a misunderstanding, or some kind of quirk, or someone else's problem. Social workers did this. Neighbors did this. Even the tenants did this. There's also the halo effect.
22:25 Tristin Engels? When a person appears warm or helpful in one domain, we assume goodness and generalize that to all other domains. Dorothea presented herself as altruistic, so people extended that trait to everything she did. Put all those biases together, and you get a psychological blind spot, big enough for someone like her to operate in plain sight, undetected, for as long as she did. And when a predator looks nothing like our mental image of a predator, we're less likely to notice warning signs, even when they're right in front of us.
22:55 Vanessa Richardson? Dorothea's role as caregiver was her greatest disguise. So great that she not only duped everyone, but she also came to believe it herself. She monitored tenants closely to make sure they were taking their medications, prepared home-cooked meals, and made sure everyone's laundry was pressed and their rooms were tidy. By 1987, when Dorothea was 58 years old, no one had any idea that she'd killed about six people. Everything was going smoothly for her until one of her tenants, 77-year-old Betty Palmer, started to give her trouble. Betty started openly questioning why Dorothea was cashing everyone's checks for them. She even told her bank not to let anyone else cash her checks,
23:39 Vanessa Richardson? which meant Dorothea no longer had access to Betty's money. And without her money, Dorothea had no use for Betty. So she used her usual methods to take Betty's life. However, Dorothea took extra measures when it came to burying her. Dorothea contacted a man who went by the name Chief, who she occasionally hired for odd jobs. He was big and strong, the perfect person for the manual labor she needed done. And he was also an unhoused ex-convict who likely wouldn't go to the police. She brought him up to Betty's room, where her body was, and asked Chief to "dismember" her. Chief did as Dorothea asked.
24:22 Vanessa Richardson? Then, they buried Betty's remains in the backyard. And that apparently wasn't the end of Dorothea's plan, because soon after, Chief went missing. And since he was a bit of a drifter, there were no official records of him, which meant the authorities had no way to find him.
24:39 Tristin Engels? I think this moment marks a major escalation for Dorothea. It's the first time that she's enlisted someone in a way that couldn't be concealed or reframed. There was no handyman unknowingly hauling a sealed box. There's no ambiguous odd job. This was explicit. Chief saw exactly what she was doing. And because Dorothea's worldview was entirely transactional, both Betty and Chief had reached the end of their usefulness to her. So at that point, they aren't human beings to her anymore. They were liabilities. Anyone who could question her, expose her, or simply knew too much, became a threat to her survival and her control. And threats were meant to be eliminated.
25:23 Tristin Engels? So for Dorothea, control, again, was the only form of safety that she ever believed in and the only thing she placed her trust in. So when someone compromised her control, she responded the only way her psychology allowed, and that's by removing them entirely.
25:39 Vanessa Richardson? Does Chief's potential murder suggest that Dorothea is probably paranoid? And if so, has she gotten in over her head? Or does she think her actions are maybe justified, even if they are punishable by law?
25:52 Tristin Engels? So it absolutely suggests she's paranoid, but I don't think it's necessarily in a clinical, delusional sense, but rather one that's rooted in hypervigilance and a lifetime of believing that the only safe person is herself. So in that sense, it's functional paranoia, the kind that reinforces her belief that she's smart enough, careful enough, and justified enough to keep going. Has she gotten in over her head? From the outside looking in, absolutely. She's juggling fraud, multiple victims, forged letters, a backyard full of victims, people starting questioning her. It's a house of cards, but from her perspective, she's maintaining control. She believes her actions are justified because the rules she's following aren't legal rules.
26:36 Tristin Engels? They're her rules in her society that she's living in, that she's constructed, and that she's the authority over.
26:44 Vanessa Richardson? At the end of the day, Dorothea's desire for control overpowered everything else. The fewer people who knew what she was up to, the more in control she felt. But what she didn't realize was that there were people out there who were more determined than she was to protect the city's at-risk populations. And soon, they'd beat Dorothea at her own game.
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28:33 Speaker 04 Did you know penicillin, the drug that has saved more lives than any other in history, was discovered because a scientist forgot to clean a Petri dish before going on vacation? I'm Connor Tomlinson, and history is my thing, has been my whole life.
28:49 Speaker 01 And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact, the history lesson you actually wished you had in high school with everything they cut for being too interesting, put back in.
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29:28 Speaker 05 The police closed my sister's case in 2019. Last month, her killer commented on my post. On Reddit, true crime doesn't come from journalists. It comes from the victims, the witnesses, and sometimes the suspects themselves. People post the things they'd never say out loud, anonymous, unfiltered, and completely real. And every Tuesday on Crimes of Reddit, we read them out loud. I'm Sabrina Deana-Roga from Two Girls One Ghost. And I'm Alexis Linkletter from The First Degree. Each week, one of us brings the most unhinged true crime stories the internet has to offer. And the other goes in completely blind. No prep, no spoilers, reacting in real time, same as you. And then we swap.
30:11 Speaker 05 And we pull every thread until the whole twisted picture comes into view. It's dark, it's messy, and the scariest part is that these are real stories posted by real people. New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen to and follow Crimes of Reddit, available now wherever you get your podcasts.
30:30 Vanessa Richardson? By 1987, 58-year-old Dorothea Puente had killed about seven people, maybe even more. She'd buried most of her victims in the backyard garden of her boarding house, where she still cared for elderly and disabled tenants. Then, in 1988, Dorothea met the tenant who would change her life forever. That year, a social worker named Judy Moise was looking for a new home for her client, 52-year-old Alvaro Montoya, who went by the nickname Bert. Bert suffered from schizophrenia. He sometimes heard voices, and on top of that, he mostly spoke Spanish, which made it harder for him to find stable, long-term care. Until Judy found Dorothea.
31:14 Vanessa Richardson? Judy felt extremely protective of Bert, and Dorothea was one of the only people she trusted to care for him. When they met, Dorothea instantly agreed to take Bert in. She told Judy that he reminded her of herself when she was young, struggling to learn English and integrate. This, of course, was a complete fabrication, but like everyone else in Sacramento at the time, Judy was familiar with Dorothea's story and believed it.
31:41 Vanessa Richardson? Dorothea took Bert to get a haircut, bought him new clothes, and cooked up warm nutritious meals for him. She also helped him develop a sense of routine by giving him some simple household chores. He even dug a hole in the backyard for a peach tree Dorothea was gonna plant there. Slowly, Bert started speaking to other people more, both in Spanish and English. When Judy came to check on him and saw the progress he was making, she was overjoyed. Judy had no idea that Dorothea had also taken Bert to the social security office and listed herself as his cousin in order to receive his government checks. And after Judy left, Dorothea thought she was gone for good.
32:24 Vanessa Richardson? So she started dosing Bert's food with sleeping pills. Unlike the tenants before him, Bert quickly realized that something was wrong, and he tried to tell someone. One day, Bert visited another care facility where he used to live. Dorothea accompanied him. When Bert got a moment alone with one of the nurses, he told her that Dorothea had been giving him medicine that was making him feel sick. Dorothea overheard what he was saying and immediately interjected. She told Bert that if he wasn't happy, he could stay at that facility and sleep among rows of people on cots. Bert apologized profusely, and Dorothea let him go back to the boarding house with her.
33:08 Tristin Engels? Dorothea knew exactly where to hit him, right in the center of his lived experience. Bert knew what institutional living felt like. She, and she weaponized that instantly. She hit him where it hurts because she knew it would, on a personal level. It taps into his shame, his fear of abandonment, and his desire for stability. And just like that, the power dynamic snaps back into place. Dorothea was conditioning him. She reminded him that she controlled not just his present, but also his options, and that any attempt to seek help could result in a return to a life he wanted to avoid. This is coercion rooted in intimate knowledge of a person's history. It's not impulsive, it's strategic, and it shows how expertly she exploited the very
33:53 Tristin Engels? vulnerabilities that made her tenants trust her in the first place. And it's more disturbing when you consider that Dorothea herself knows what it's like not to be cared for, to fend for yourself, to live on cots and be dependent on others for your next meal.
34:10 Vanessa Richardson? So, thinking back to Betty, how would someone like Dorothea feel after they realize that someone they have power over is trying to undermine them?
34:19 Tristin Engels? So, someone like Dorothea would experience that as a direct threat to her survival. It makes her feel exposed and betrayed, which are two emotions that instantly heighten her hypervigilance. So, when she's fearful, she becomes tactical because in her worldview, losing control of one person can feel like losing control of everything, her whole operation. That's the point where she converts fear into justification for elimination, which in this case is murder. It's also important to consider the entitlement that's driving her because she provides care, even if it's purely performative. She likely believes she's owed some kind of blind loyalty and unquestioned gratitude as a result.
35:01 Tristin Engels? So, anytime someone challenges her, she isn't just threatened, she gets enraged. In her mind, undermining her authority is a violation, and that's something that she needs to correct.
35:13 Vanessa Richardson? The situation with the nurse had set Dorothea off. She couldn't accept Bert trying to criticize her like that again. So, that evening, back at the house, Dorothea poisoned Bert with enough pills to kill him. She kept his body in her bedroom overnight, and the next morning, the peach tree that Bert had dug the whole four arrived. Dorothea buried Bert's body in the hole and planted the tree on top. Then, in front of the other tenants, she pretended to be inconsolable after learning that Bert had left in the middle of the night to go live with his sister without saying goodbye. However, over the next few months, Dorothea told Judy, as well as another social worker,
35:55 Vanessa Richardson? Peggy Nickerson, inconsistent stories about where Bert was. Sometimes she said he was visiting family in Utah, other times Mexico. But Judy and Peggy knew that Bert didn't have any family in Mexico. Continuing to build her web of lies, Dorothea then said that Bert wanted to stay with his sister and her husband and live with them permanently in Utah. She was racking her brain for ways to keep them off this case. Despite Dorothea's efforts, Peggy then insisted that she needed to talk to Bert's family. In response, Dorothea called in a favor with yet another former convict she was acquainted with. She asked the man to pretend to be a member of Bert's family when Peggy called.
36:38 Vanessa Richardson? He agreed, and Dorothea gave Peggy the man's phone number. Still, the call only raised more questions. Peggy had a hunch something was wrong when she heard the man on the line. First, the man referred to Alvaro as Bert, but he had no reason to call him by his relatively new nickname. To make matters worse, the man used his own name instead of the one Dorothea told him to give. Now Peggy was fed up with Dorothea's games. She tapped into her network and quickly identified the man on the call as one of Dorothea's ex-con associates. Peggy was left with no other option than to call the police. Detective John Cabrera answered her call.
37:20 Vanessa Richardson? He'd just solved a serial killer case in Sacramento, and when he arrived at Dorothea's boarding home on F Street, he found a cheerful scene with smiles, music, and food. Dorothea let Detective Cabrera look around and even interview each resident in private. During his conversations with them, they all said the same thing: they didn't know anything about Bert, and everything at the home was fine. Just as Detective Cabrera was getting ready to wrap up this investigation, one of the tenants approached him and shook his hand goodbye. In that moment, Cabrera noticed that the man had slipped him a note. He waited until he was in his car to read it.
38:01 Vanessa Richardson? When he did, it read, quote, "She is making us lie for her."
38:08 Vanessa Richardson? Now Cabrera knew something was wrong. So the very next morning, on November 11th, 1988, he returned to the boarding home. This time, he brought backup with him. He hoped Dorothea would let him and his colleagues look around, despite them not having a search warrant. And she did. Inside the house, Cabrera and his colleagues found a few suspicious objects, including drug reference books with notes on pages that discussed sedatives, and a prescription bottle for Dorothy Miller, which Dorothea offered an excuse for. But Cabrera still found it strange. Not to mention, he noticed a foul odor in Dorothea's bedroom, but he couldn't place it.
38:50 Vanessa Richardson? So instead, he turned his attention to the garden. Cabrera and his team started digging. And when they realized they were short one shovel, Dorothea let them borrow one of hers.
39:03 Tristin Engels? I think her decision to let officers in her home, or even give them a shovel to dig up her yard, is her once again performing. I think she was betting that this performance of cooperation would override suspicion. There's also an element of psychological misdirection. When someone invites you to search the very place that you should be suspicious of, it can be disarming. Like, surely she wouldn't let us dig if she had anything to hide. But frankly, there's a degree of denial or naivete woven in as well. This was her domain. A world she had engineered and managed without interference. And I believe that led her to miscalculate the risk of this and overestimate her cleverness.
39:48 Tristin Engels? It's as if she believed she could manage the investigators the same way she managed all of her tenants and everyone else.
39:55 Vanessa Richardson? If Dorothea was panicked at all, she didn't show it. She stood calmly and looked on as the officers started with what seemed to be the newest patch of turned soil. They dug around and found some pieces of cloth and plastic. Then they pulled on something that seemed to be a root, but it wouldn't relent. They kept digging around it until they could finally tug it free. And that's when they saw what it really was: a human shin bone. When the officers looked back at the hole they'd just dug, they also spotted a shoe with a severed foot inside of it. The policeman froze. They turned to face Dorothea, who wore a look of shock and horror.
40:38 Vanessa Richardson? However, Detective Cabrera wasn't immediately suspicious. He'd seen dead bodies before, and he could tell these remains had been here much longer than Bert had been missing. Cabrera knew something terrible had happened here, but he still didn't think Dorothea was guilty of anything. So he told his team to pack up and made plans to return the next day with a full forensic team. This allowed him to obtain a full search warrant of the property in the meantime. When they returned the next day, Dorothea welcomed them onto her property again, but instead of lingering in the backyard, she went upstairs to her bedroom. As she watched them from her window, reality started to dawn on her.
41:21 Vanessa Richardson? They were going to find the bodies, some of which may still be recognizable. She had to get out of there. Dorothea stuffed $4,000 in cash into her purse and walked out to the garden. She asked Detective Cabrera if she was under arrest, and he reassured her she wasn't. Then she asked him if she could go to a nearby hotel to grab a cup of coffee to calm her nerves. Cabrera offered to drive her himself. When he dropped her off, he told her to call him when she was ready to be picked up.
41:54 Vanessa Richardson? Dorothea thanked him, and as soon as he drove away, she booked it to the airport. She bought a ticket to Los Angeles, but she knew the detectives would discover this, so instead of getting on the plane, Dorothea took a bus to LA instead. No one had any idea she was on the run, and over the course of the next several hours, investigators dug up seven more bodies in her backyard. One of the bodies, which belonged to a woman, was wearing a wristwatch that was still ticking. Unlike a lot of the other remains, the detectives realized that she hadn't been dead for very long. In fact, she seemed to have died during the time that Dorothea lived at the house.
42:38 Vanessa Richardson? Detective Cabrera realized he'd made a huge mistake by letting Dorothea go. He immediately launched a search for her and enlisted the help of the FBI. Meanwhile, Dorothea had arrived in LA, and her first stop was a bar, where she sought out a man she could potentially rob. She ended up meeting a man named Charles, and they made plans to see each other again in a few days. However, their meeting would never happen, because after that night at the bar, the next time Charles saw Dorothea was when her face was plastered across the news. Charles alerted the police, and soon, officers and reporters had Dorothea surrounded at her hotel.
43:21 Vanessa Richardson? Once she was in handcuffs, Dorothea quickly admitted to stealing from her tenants, but she denied killing anyone.
43:29 Tristin Engels? Dorothea is a master at rewriting her story and herself. It started as survival, as we outlined from her childhood, but it transitioned into manipulation and a sense of power and identity. If you recall, she also would get deeply upset whenever her past was mentioned. So she has this enduring pattern of detachment from that part of her life, so it's deeply ingrained, and because of that, it's not surprising that she's unable to own up to the worst of her actions. That would require confronting the darkest, most irreconcilable truth about who she really is. So instead, she retreats to the part of the narrative that still allows her to preserve some dignity.
44:11 Tristin Engels? Theft is a survivable offense, and at the same time, committing theft could be framed as survival itself. It also fits with her curated persona, someone who is resourceful or even misunderstood. But you can't spin murder, especially multiple.
44:29 Vanessa Richardson? Do you think Dorothea is admitting to some things to make it seem like she's owning up, like a way to try and face lighter consequences? Or is she unwilling to admit that she's becoming just as bad of a person as those who once hurt her, if not worse?
44:44 Tristin Engels? So it's not uncommon for offenders like Dorothea to admit to partial truths. In fact, partial admission is a classic strategy among individuals with antisocial traits. It allows them to appear cooperative without actually surrendering control of the narrative. By confessing to a lesser offense like theft, Dorothea signals just enough compliance to seem reasonable while still distancing herself from the more damning accusations. So in that sense, it most certainly is a strategy to mitigate consequences. But as I mentioned, there's really a deeper layer here, too, with regard to outrunning the truth of who she really is
45:23 Tristin Engels? and how, like, to the core, how she is potentially just as bad or worse than the people who harmed her.
45:32 Vanessa Richardson? Dorothea's lies had brought her this far, but it was the end of the road. She was initially charged with one count of murder. However, investigators soon identified all seven bodies. The victims were Alvaro Bert Montoya, Betty Palmer, and Ruth Monroe, as well as Benjamin Fink, Dorothy Miller, Leona Carpenter, Vera Fay Martin, and James Gallup. In addition, Everson Gilmoth's body was soon identified. This brought Dorothea's murder charges up to nine counts.
46:07 Vanessa Richardson? Now Ruth's family finally learned the truth about her death, and Judy and Peggy learned the truth of what happened to Bert. And while all the families now had closure for their missing loved ones, the reality was nonetheless devastating. All of Dorothea's victims had entered her home in search of peace and stability. Instead, they were robbed and murdered. After a series of delays, Dorothea's trial began on February 9, 1993, when she was 64 years old. The proceedings ended up being the longest trial in California history at the time. The prosecution had decided to drop the fraud charges against her because they didn't want to confuse the jury, so they focused exclusively on the murder charges.
46:52 Vanessa Richardson? However, there were still more than 150 witnesses and thousands of pages of documents to present to the court.
47:01 Vanessa Richardson? Dorothea's lawyers tried to rely on character witnesses, who reiterated the goodwill Dorothea had built in the community and the number of people she had helped. The jury ultimately deadlocked on most counts, but convicted Dorothea on three. For much of the jury, the circumstantial evidence and the heavily decomposed remains made them hesitant to draw certain conclusions. However, they felt certain about three victims. They found Dorothea guilty of first-degree murder for two of her tenants, Dorothy Miller and Ben Fink, because the planning and profit were clearly evident. Then they concluded she committed second-degree murder for Leona Carpenter. They all agreed Dorothea killed her, but they couldn't prove she'd planned it beforehand.
47:46 Vanessa Richardson? In the end, Dorothea was sentenced to life without parole. In the women's prison at Chowchilla, California, Dorothea would continue to claim her innocence. She was a bit of a celebrity, and she relished in the attention and notoriety. Finally, on March 27, 2011, at the age of 82, Dorothea Puente died of natural causes. Of all the things she ever claimed to be, Dorothea never owned up to becoming the monster that she was.
48:34 Vanessa Richardson? Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next time for a deep dive into the mind of another killer.
48:40 Tristin Engels? Killer Minds is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on all social media at Crime House. And don't forget to rate, review, and follow Killer Minds wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference.
49:01 Vanessa Richardson? And to enhance your listening experience, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode of Killer Minds ad-free, along with early access to each thrilling two-part series.
49:14 Vanessa Richardson? Killer Minds is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson, and Dr. Tristin Engels, and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Killer Minds team: Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Laurie Marinelli, Natalie Pritzowski, Sarah Camp, Sarah Bachelor, Inez Renike, Sarah Tardif, and Carrie Murphy. Thank you for listening.
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