Bodies at the Boarding House

This episode covers the crimes of Dorothea Puente.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Laura and I'm Jil and this it's Crack Divers.
Hello everybody, welcome to our Big John episode. Hello everyone,

(00:23):
welcome back. Thanks for joining us. So, Jil, where in
the world are we?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
We're in America?

Speaker 3 (00:29):
And what is your title?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Bodies at the boarding house?

Speaker 4 (00:32):
Okay, I guess there's gonna be some bodies, you would think,
shall we dive in?

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah, let's dive in.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
So, yeah, you just made the noise of the chair.
That's fine, Just get yourself company. Sorry, right, so we're
going to be talking. I'm going to tell you about
Dorothea twenty. Okay, So Dorothya pwenty. She was born as
Dorothea Helen Gray on the ninth of January nineteen twenty nine.

(01:01):
Oh that's the way back on, Yeah, in Redlands, California.
Her parents were Trudy Met Gray and Jesse James Gray. Unfortunately,
her parents were alcoholics and her dad like he would
often think he was suicidal, but he would like often
like threaten to kill himself in front of Dorothea and

(01:22):
her siblings. Imagine that, like he would have a gun
in his hand and he would be threatening to kill
himself and like, you know, the kids would be plead
them with them and you know, daddy, please, you know,
don't kill yourself a traumatic, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
And the mum she wasn't any better.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
She would she would neglect the children like should no
matter what age they were, Like she would disappear for
days on end, and like she would sometimes she just
doesn't bother feeding them, like she would lock them in cupboards,
like she was.

Speaker 4 (01:48):
Just disgusted, like you know, sounds like, I mean, what
mother does that to the children.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
So Jesse Dorothy's dad.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
He died of tuberculosis in nineteen thirty seven, and then
following year, the mum she lost custody, not surprisingly of
all the kids, and then she actually died in a
motorbike accident. So Dorothy and her brothers and sisters were
sent to an orphanage and where unfortunately, Dorothy I was

(02:16):
sexually abused. So in nineteen forty five, so we're going
up to she's sixteen now, So nineteen forty five, Dorothy
I got married just sixteen years old to freg freg
sorry freg Fred McFall. They had two daughters between nineteen
forty six and nineteen forty eight, but she sent one

(02:37):
child to live with relatives and Sacramento, and she put
the other child up for adoption and that marriage ended
in nineteen forty eight, so it was like three years.
That marriage lasted four and she obviously didn't want children.
So yeah, so hopefully they were better off with, you know,

(02:57):
wherever they went to, hopefully they were better off. So
in the spring of nineteen forty eight, Dorothy I was
arrested for buying items with forged checks. She was charged
with two kinds of forgery, and she said four months
in jail and was on three years probation. In nineteen
fifty two, she married a Swedish Man called Axel Bren

(03:18):
Johannisan in San Francisco.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
She told him that her name.

Speaker 5 (03:22):
Was Teya Singuala Narda and she claimed to be of
Muslim and sorry, she claimed to be a Muslim of
Egyptian and Israeli descent.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
So one of her parents was is really another one
was Egyptian.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
Sounds quite complicated. It's quite hard to believe that if yet,
because when you see a picture of her, she doesn't
look like she's from Egyptian or Israeli descent. It's just
a plain old white woman like so, yeah, Axel. He
was away a lot her husband, as he was a

(03:59):
merchant seaman. So Dorothea would invite men to their home
obviously you know what for yes, and she would also
like gamble away all these money. Oh god, she said, say,
oh this is nothing.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah, crazy, this is just getting worked up to it.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
Okay, she was working as a sex worker and behind
Axel's back. But when he found out about that, he
wasn't happy and that he actually after that he started
to become abusive and it was just a bad marriage.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
So you know, they would argue.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
She was drinking, he was abusing.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
You know, it was just just not good at all.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
So in nineteen sixty, Dorothea was arrested for owning and
operating a brothel under the disguise of a bookkeeping firm
and Sacramento, she was found guilty and sent us to
ninety days in jail. So the following year, Axel had
Dorothea committed to de Witt State Hospital after a binge

(04:56):
of drinking, lyon criminal behavior and suicide a tempts and
so while she was there, the doctors diagnosed her as
a pathological liar with an unstable personality, which I think
we're kind of realized that. I think that's quite obvious.
That don't mean a doctor's diagnosis for that. So after
fourteen years of marriage, they eventually got to worce in

(05:19):
nineteen sixty six, and she changed her identity to Sharon Johansson.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
So she was still keeping his second name.

Speaker 4 (05:26):
But she was changing her name, changing her names, Like
how does she keep that was slipping up somewhere.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yeah, But she portrayed herself as like a kind Christian woman.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
So she's been from being Muslim before been Christian.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
I mean that might be a bit more believable.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Yes, I think that was a lot more believable.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
She opened up a halfway house and established established a
reputation as a caregiver, providing like young women with sanctuary
from like poverty and abuse.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
But they just had to hand over their government texts.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
You know that.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
I could tell by your.

Speaker 3 (05:58):
Face you were like, something's quite right.

Speaker 4 (06:00):
Yeah, yeah, because she didn't sound like a very you know,
well behaved women's caring about other people and there must
have been something in it for her.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
Yeah, So yeah, that's have to handle a hand over
the checks, which they were quite happy to do because
you know, she was she was providing a safe place
for them and she and she was running a business,
you know, so they were expected to pay for it.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
But she was probably taken no more than she should have.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
But if they were getting away from abuse, and yeah,
you know, they probably pay anything, so you can understand
why they're money. But she exploited that basically. Yeah, and
of course I was. It was completely illegal and unlicn
It wasn't even license it. It was unlicensed.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
But of course these women didn't know that.

Speaker 3 (06:42):
In nineteen sixty eight, Dorothea married a Mexican man called
Roberto Jose Puente. So this is what the point And yeah,
he was twenty years younger than our but he just
started cheating on her, like straight away, like what's the point.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
You get married and you're just gonna start cheating? Like
what get out with that?

Speaker 3 (07:00):
And one day they had a fight and she actually
just punched on square in the door and the door
and knocked them downstairs, like just one punch and lovely,
as we'll found out later, she must have been a
strong woman. Yeah, so after that, he just stole a
car and left her.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
You've knocked downstairs, I'm taking a car.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
So but they don't want to be married for about
sixteen months, and Dorothy has said the reason for their
breakup was a domestic abuse. She tried to serve Roberto
with a divorce petition, but he fled to Mexico and
the divorce wasn't finalized until nineteen seventy three, but Dorothy
asked she kept his surname. She did briefly get married
again for God's sake, to Pedro angel Montalvo excuse me,

(07:48):
although he left the relationship only a week after the wedding.
So I'm no idea. How the hell does she get
these men to then marry her? And then all of
a sudden they realized, oh, that was a mistaken off.
The she like put an act on to the point
of marriage and then she'd probably but then, of course,
like these men, you know, abusive, you know, like she
And so I mean, it's not the greatest men that
she's choosing. I thought, she's the greatest woman to be

(08:10):
chosen either.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
So I was like, what four marriages?

Speaker 3 (08:14):
So in nineteen eighty one, Dorothya began renting an apartment
at one four two sixth f Street in downtown Sacramento.
It was a Victorian boarding house and she took on
the role as caretaker for the other tenants, so basically.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
She was running the boarding house.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
Yeah, she was like the So I would have called
it a caretaker. I would have called it like the
land lady. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
I think she's actually.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
Been known as the landlady, the death house landlady or
something like that referred to.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
So yeah, so she was she was the landlady.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
So she read fifty two by now, So nineteen eighty two,
she met Ruth Monroe.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
Ruth had brought up five kids in her rown after
her husband.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
Had died, and she met Dorothea through a man that
she'd be that she was seeing.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
So the man obviously it was a mutual mchel faid.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
He introduced them and Dorothy and Ruth became friends. So
Ruth married Harold, the man that introduced them. But soon
after they got married, she was actually diagnosed with cancer.
So he ended up living like full time in the hospital,
you know, our hospice or you know, until he died.
Ruth didn't want to live alone, so Dorothea invited her

(09:23):
to live with her at the boarding house. So she
marid in on Easter Sunday, nineteen eighty two, but unfortunately
she died two weeks later.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
M her son.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
Her son Bill said that he visited her every day
that she lived there. He would like pop in on
his way his way home from work, and the last
three days of her life, she seemed like she was
getting sick, and he said that she like she had
a drink in her hand, which was strange because Ruth
didn't drink. It was like an alcoholic drink and she
didn't drink. So Bill asked her, like, what are you drinking?

(09:55):
And she said, I was a drink that Dorothea had
fixed for her camera nerves. So I didn't think anything
of it because he knew the were good friends, you know.

Speaker 4 (10:03):
Dorothy was just trying to help her my mind's and
thinking of something of it.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
Well, obviously we're doing a true podcast, but he was.
He was just thinking, this is my mom's friend.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
She just made her up some kind of I don't know,
some kind of maybe a terrible sort.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
Of remedy help her feel better, you know.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
But Ruth, Ruth deteorated so badly over the next couple
of days that the next time that Bill went to
visit her, she was almost catatonic. He said that she
was just lying in bed, and he sat next to
her and held her hand, and he said he actually
said to her, Dorothy, Dorothy is taking care of you.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
You'll be fine.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
And he said that his mom just had a tear
like coming out of her eyes and she just didn't
say and then she she was just lying there. Do
you think she knew something was off? Probably? And the
next morning because well, of course, you know, according to Bill,
he was like the way that he would be all
moms getting and Dorothy as trying to fix her, but
the way that she would have been looking at was
like I felt fine until I started drinking a drink.

(11:06):
But it's a shame she couldn't obviously communicate that. Yeah, I
think by that point obviously he said, she really catnic.
So the next morning Bill got a call from his
brother telling them that their mum had passed away. So
Bill went straight over at the boarding house and she
had already been taken away.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
By the corner.

Speaker 3 (11:22):
He spoke to Dorothea and she told him that Ruth
had committed suicide right, and he struggled with that, as
he thought she had everyent to live. For her she
seemed happy, she had her children, she had grandchildren, and
he just couldn't believe that she'd been suicidal.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
But her death was actually ruled as suicide.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
So unfortunately, he just, you know, he just had to
grieve and yeah, just kind of deal with his mum's
death and just started get on with it. A few
weeks later, the police turned up at the boardinghouse because
a man called Malcolm McKenzie, who was a seventy year
seventy four year old pensioner, accused Dorothea of drugging and

(12:03):
stealing from him, and apparently she's also done the same
with three other pensioners.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
I think I didn't really read.

Speaker 3 (12:10):
Too much into that, but I think she'd been like
sort of meeting them maybe in the pub or whatever,
you know, and like getting friendly with them and then
drugging them and then Yeah, So on the eighteenth of
August nineteen eighty two, she was convicted of three theft
charges and she was sentenced to five years in prison.
So when she was in prison, she started writing to

(12:32):
a man called Everson Gilmouth. They had a penpal friendship
while she was inside, and when she was released after
seven three years, he met her outside the prison and
I read nineteen eighty four pick up. They got, you know,
of the officers started seeing each other romantically and ended
up getting engaged. But I'm going to go back. I'm
going to come back to Everson later. Sticky you puining

(12:53):
every soon for now, Okay. So soon after they had
got engaged, Dorothy I started taking in more borders. She
lived at the top of the house, and the borders
would like live below her, most of them, like they
wouldn't have any close family or friends, and she would
look after them. She like cooked for them and cleaned
and you know all that kind of stuff makes herself
sound like quite the same, don't Well, yeah, I'm actually

(13:13):
just about to tell you that that she actually she
turned her image into a respectable old older matron by
wearing like vintage clothing and wearing like big granny glasses, and.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
Like she let her hair naturally go great.

Speaker 3 (13:26):
I mean she's in her fifties anyway, so like she
was starting to go great, but she just let it
rather than die in it, she'd just like go gray.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
And she did.

Speaker 3 (13:34):
When you see a photover, she looks like someone's granny,
you know, this little old woman.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, it's just a sweet old lady.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
She was loved by her community and even the local
politicians as she donated to their campaigns.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
She was good to her neighbors.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
She donated to charity regularly, like bags of clothes and
things like that, not money obviously, and every Wednesday or
Thursday was burrital Day, which is when she would get
away free food to the community.

Speaker 6 (14:02):
So you know, the lovely Oh yeah, maybe she had
changed her ways so like, because she was looking after
these vulnerable people. You know, they were all they were vulnerable.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
You know. There wasn't anybody that had particularly close family
or ending like that. You know, they were you know,
there were maybe forgotten about them and their parents their
their parents not their parents, sorry, their families maybe just
didn't care about them, you know, like and that's why
she targeted them. Because these people were self safe and
they're in her care. Yeah, nobody was going to miss them. Yeah,
they you know, they trusted her and they didn't realize

(14:34):
that she was actually stealing from that, so whichual get
on here as well. So for three years, tenants at
the boarding house came and went until November nineteen eighty eight,
when a local social worker, JOJ.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
Moyes filled a missing.

Speaker 3 (14:49):
Personal report after losing touch with a fifty one year
old man called Bert Montoya. Bert suffered from mental disabilities
and was a diagnosed schizophrenic. His last snown address on
for two six s Street, So the police started running
a check on Bart and also on Dorothea because she
was supposed to be caring for him. On the eleventh

(15:12):
of November nineteen eighty eight, police officers John Cabrera and
his partner Terry Brown, and Dorothea's parole officer because she's
still on parole at this point, Jim Wilson, they decided
to pay the bordering house a visit to search for
some clues at like an Birt's disappearance. And the social worker,
you know, the one that had tried the missing report
missing persons report, she actually.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Said to them, you better take some shovels.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
And they were like what, like why we're just looking
at here, missum Parison, And she's like, well, she said
that she'd driven by a few times and she'd seen
like mounds of dirt in the ground, like in the yard,
and it kind of looked like a burial ground, burial
ground in her words, So armer shovels John, Terry and
Jim arrived. Oh, John Terry, I'm calling them John Tenny,

(16:01):
John Comma, Terry and Jim. I was thinking, I'm sure
there was three of them there. And they arrived at
the boardinghouse. They knocked on the door. Dorothy answered. Jim
said that she was dressed really nicely. But she looked
at them and she was like, I was expecting you guys. Okay,
so she knew her time was up. Well she I
think she actually just thought they were gonna be really

(16:23):
looking for Bart. Okay. I don't think they expect she
expected shutles. So they asked about Bart, and they asked
about the boarding house, like what is it that you
do here? And then she just looked at the parole
officer and said, Jim, I'm in violation of my parole.

(16:44):
So just quite quite the thing. Yeah, because Dorothea had
actually been ordered not to run a boardinghouse because remember
she'd been none one before. Actually, so she was ordered
not to run a born house after her release from
prison in nineteen eighty five, but so far she got
away with it for three years due to her seemingly
charming persona. Like when I thought it, it came around

(17:06):
and like support her something. She just managed to charm
her way through it. I don't know how she said
she lived there or something, I have no idea, but
she managed. She managed to get away with it anyway.
So she had been playing a role and she put
on her good performance as a harmless little old lady.
She would often even take her teeth out and tell
people she was actually ten or fifteen years older than
what she actually was.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
So everybody did him and allowed to said she was in.

Speaker 3 (17:27):
Her fifties, but everybody thought she was like in her seventies,
because that's how she made herself look. Because who's going
to suspect a little a little woman doing bad?

Speaker 2 (17:38):
You know, she wanted to present herself as innocent and kindly.

Speaker 3 (17:41):
When she was like obviously anything but oppositely. So while
Jim and Terry chatted with Dorothea in the kitchen, John
began searching the boarding house and it looked like better,
just like vanished in the thin air. John said that
after he completely looked through all the rooms he didn't
find anything. He went back to the kitchen, remembering what
the social worker had said about the minds of dirt,

(18:03):
so he just said to Dorothy, I like, you know,
oh sorry, yeah, Dorothy, ever you could dig in the yard.
And she was like, well, do you know what, why
don't we just do this right? You go, you guys,
go back to your office. I know you've got a
lot better work to do than being over here. And
I'll make a phone call. I'll call some people. They'll

(18:24):
come over here and they'll do the dig in for you,
and then you can come back and how will look,
you know. And John was like, well, thank you for that,
you know, for thinking of us. But you know what,
we're here, we've got the shows. I think we'll just
go ahead and like have a have a dig around
and if there's anything like we put out a place,
we'll do. We'll do our best to get back the

(18:45):
way it was, you know, like try to not just.

Speaker 4 (18:47):
They we're never going to go away and let her
tig up because then she get rid of the evidence.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
That's exactly what.

Speaker 7 (18:54):
But it was just the way that we're so polite
to each other, you know, So yeah, thanks for that,
but you know what, we're just we're just gonna go
ahead and exactly so, Dorothya said, no, oh okay, and
the men went outside to dig around the three men.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
They actually only brought two shovels, so John even borrowed
one from Dorothea. I want to dig in your yard,
but can I use your trouble as well? So they
started digging. So John said that he first started seeing
like pieces of garbage, like eggshells cigarette, but it's like
bits of paper.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
But then as he dug a bit more, he.

Speaker 3 (19:24):
Said, he found something that looked like cloth, and he
pulled up it was like a light pinkish color. And
then he pulled up more bits of cloth and like
put them in a pile. I think it was actually clothing.
It was also digging up pieces of pieces of what
appeared to be leather pieces, and said it looked like
beef jerky, but he realized later that it was actually

(19:45):
human flesh. That it came off the bone. Oh lovely
or not lovely?

Speaker 8 (19:51):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
When he dug down, you're about three feet, John said
he struck what he thought was a tree route, So
he started like banging on it with a shovel and
tried to slodged the root like or to like sever
it so you could continue to dig down, but it
just wouldn't break.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
So you like jumped out of.

Speaker 3 (20:07):
The hole, and he's like kept pulling his hands and
he was pulling and pulling in and trying to dislodge
this route, and eventually it broke away and he sort
of fell back on his bumb and he was just
sitting there holding on.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
To what looked like a human femur bone.

Speaker 3 (20:22):
So he jumped out going, oh my god, what the
hell we've come across human remains. Oh she's busted.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
So the met well not yet, we'll get onto it.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
And the men were completely stunned, as apparently was Dorothea.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
She looked down into.

Speaker 3 (20:40):
The hole and she could see the bone and she
like gasped and grabbed her mouth and went, oh, wow,
is that what I think it is? You know, I
diding totally shot. So John said, well, what can you
tell me about it? And she's putting out the innocent act.
You know, will other people lived here? I've been I
was in prison for a while, you know, lots of
other people have lived here before me, so you know,

(21:01):
you can't just assume that it was me. True, Well, yeah,
and it is fair. So John hated the dig as
a fool forendsic sception of the yard was going to have,
you know, they're going to get started the next day.
So Dorothy was taking at the police station to be questioned.
She was asked about the bone that was found. She
was asked about where Bert was, and Johnny Wan said

(21:23):
to her, I bet if we keep digging, we'll find
more bodies. And Dorothy I just looked right at him
and said, well, if you do, I didn't put them there.
She was just so calm and just I didn't do it.
I didn't kill anybody, like, you know, it just wasn't me,
you know. She just doesn't seem too bothered. As news
spread of the discovery of human remains, the press were

(21:45):
in attendance at the boardinghouse the very next day, which
was Saturday, the twelfth of November nineteen eighty eight. Deputy
Corner Laura Santos was in charge of the excavation.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
And she said there were reporters there from like all
over the world.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
There were crowds of people lying on the streets, and
people would shout things like at her, like turn towards
the camera when you're digging, like how doespets all? Is
that totally disrespectful? That's that's the thought that immediately came
out my head. I thought, there's human remains down there,
somebody's family or somebody's friend, or just a human being,
and they're being dug up, and they're like turn to

(22:20):
the camera and like trying to get her, like to
pose that just just to put on the front of
a newspaper. That's so during the dig, Dorothy I called
John into the house, you know, the police officer. I
just keep calling John because by this point I've forgotten
what second anymost you know, like rather than officer John.

(22:41):
So she called him into the house and asked him
if she was under arrest. Now at this point, despite
having a body unearthed in our yard, dorothya Chan has
been charged with any offense. And at this point there
was actually no reason to suspect that she may be responsible,
because I said, like, there's been plenty other people live there,
you know, until they determine who the remains were.

Speaker 4 (22:59):
Suppose that would then, because then I'm wondering, did she
don't realize it that it might happen or should happen,
But they're going to discover whose body is.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
Well at this point, she's obviously she's playing dumb and
John said, no, you're not under arrest. Why would you
think that? And she said, well, I don't know. She
just said she said, oh, this was making her nervous,
and she would like to go and get a cup
of coffee and go over to where her nephew was,
which was in a hotel rent the corner all of

(23:28):
a sudden, like a bit where you could go and
have a coffee. So John John said, right, okay, grab
your purse or whatever, and I'll walk you over there.
So he walked her ound the house into the hotel
and he watched her rent of the hotel and that
was the last issode of her for now. Oh okay, John, Yes,
she took off. Yeah. So John went back to the

(23:50):
house and started digging again and some At one point
he hit something and he struggled for a while to
get it up, but eventually he looked down at his
shovel and he had dug up a human. Less So
she over to his commander that he found another body.
And the commander came running over. And the first thing
you said, was where Dorothia. That was a good question.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yes, fifty nine year old Dorothea was now nowhere.

Speaker 3 (24:12):
It was seeing so she wasn't at the hotel having
her coffee that had just been a ruse so that
she could escape.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
So she was now on the run.

Speaker 3 (24:19):
She had walked at the hotel, went to the lobby
and used to pay for to call a taxi. So
the police is now called in the FBI, the Secret Service,
the Marshal's office, and the media to help find her
as soon as possible, because now she's just putting herselves
primes us. But so there was suspicion that she may
affect to Mexico. There was a nationwide manhunt in the

(24:40):
United States. And meanwhile, back at the boarding house, one
of the many people who had gathered to watch the
dig had given some important information to the deputy corner.
He told her that he had dug holes in this
yard for Dorothea and she had paid him in cash.
She had just told him that she was burying trash,

(25:01):
so he pointed out where he had dunk the holes.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
So he didn't know what he was doing in the holes.

Speaker 3 (25:04):
Far. We just dug some holes and she paid a mind.
He was like a handyman kind of person, you know whatever. Okay,
So the third body that we found was a big one.
It was carefully wrapped in blankets and plastic and they
could see it must have weighed over two hundred pounds.
And John, the police officer, he was like, left no
doubt in my mind that had to be burned. And
you know the man who did originally been looking for Yeah.

(25:29):
So they kept digging and John said, we just kept
finding bodies and more bodies. It just seemed endless. Dorothea
had actually buried seven bodies in the small yard. I mean,
it wasn't even a big yard. It was a small yard.
The seventh and final body was found on the Monday,
the fourteenth of November, and it was actually buried like
right in front of the house, like just feet from

(25:49):
the sidewalk. You know, it was like basically buried there,
and then it was like the gate, and then it
was the street.

Speaker 4 (25:54):
You know.

Speaker 3 (25:54):
That's because it was such a small like this massive,
big gardener in him. So when the digging was done,
John and the other officers entered the house to do
a detailed search. He walked into the kitchen and he
saw that Dorothy I had a candor a calendar hanging up.
He noticed that on one day she had written Bert left.

(26:15):
So she was obviously clever enough to know that the
social worker or police would come looking for him. But
she was obviously stuber enough to think that they would
see on the calendar Bert left, and the think, ah, right, okay,
so Bert obviously just up and left, so there's no
point in ception from him here from here because he's
obviously Yeah, so she was stupid to think like that,

(26:37):
but go. So on the second floor, opposite the kitchen,
John was walking around and he noticed how cushy the
carpet was.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
He looked down and he realized it wasn't just car
one carpet, it was two.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
So he knelt down and pulled the carpet back, and
he said he was overcome by a stench that he
had almost smelled a few times before, and that she
was putrefied body fluid. Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
So meanwhile the seven bodies were being examined.

Speaker 3 (27:07):
Most were found in the fetal position, wrapped in tablecloths
and plastic bags. When the case had broke, John had
got a phone call from a family members of a
man called Everson Gilmouth.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
Do you remember who that is?

Speaker 3 (27:21):
The one that we put a pin in? Yes, the
one that she was engaged Dorothy was engaged to. We
put a pin in yes, so they told him that
Everson and their dad, and their dad was engaged to Dorothia,
but they hadn't heard from him, so they were nervous
because of course they've seen on the news that all
these bodies were being found. And a little while later,
because obvious, the identified any of the bodies yet. But

(27:42):
a little while later, detectives from Sutter County, which is
just above Sacramento County, contacted John and said they had
a John Doe back in nineteen eighty six similar to
the type of bodies that had been found in the yard,
wrapped on plastic conduct tape.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
And it turned out that this was Everson.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
And but Dorothy had actually killed him with it within
about three or four weeks of him moving on with her,
so they just got engaged. He moved in three or
four weeks later she killed him. So she then hired
a man called Ismael Flores to install some woodpan on
in her apartment. So she paid eight hundred dollars for that,
and she gave him a red Ford pickup.

Speaker 6 (28:25):
That was his.

Speaker 3 (28:27):
She said it belonged to her boyfriend she lived in
la and he didn't need it anymore, so here take
its payment. And then she asked Ismael to build a
six by three by two box to store books in.
So she letter asked it would take the filled sealed
box to a storage depot, and he's like, yeah, okay,

(28:47):
no problem.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
She's like, well, i'll come, I'll come with you.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
But then as they were dragon along they were on
the highway in Sutter County, Dorothea had told Ismael to
stop at the river bank and dump the box of junk,
as a part of this place was like a sort
of unofficial household junk, like dump inside. Okay, So she's like, oh,
do you know what actually like, it's just drunk, that's
a mat box. Let's just just get rid of it here,

(29:10):
just dump it. And on the first January nineteen eighty six,
a fisherman spotted the box and thought, but that looks
a bit like a coffin, you know, the kind of
you know, that looks suspicious.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
So he called the police.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
Investigators opened the box and found the badly decomposed an
unidentifiable body of an elderly man inside. So obviously they
they couldn't identify. And obviously back then, you know Dale,
you know we know that the story with that, so
he was just a John Doe, so nothing was done
about it. Basically, So Dorothya had continued to collect Gilma

(29:45):
ever since pension and wrote letters regularly to his sister,
so that his family thought he was still alive. But
she was because she was obviously they knew that they
were engaged, but she was a no, he hasn't been
very well, you know, but I'm looking after him. Yeah,
So you know, they obviously weren't a close no family
because obviously haven't even been visiting each other or anything
like that, but you know, enough to keep there, to

(30:06):
keep them sweet, you know, not to rouse any suspicion.
So yeah, so they thought.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
They just assumed it was still alive.

Speaker 3 (30:16):
So it was after she killed and that was as
I said, like before, and it was after she killed
Emerson that's when she started bringing the other tenants in.
So John was watching TV one day and Dorothy's face
appeared on the screen. She had been caught. So she

(30:37):
had actually fled four hundred miles to la under an
assumed name.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
Before being recognized in a bar.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
The guy she was chatting to was a pensioner, and
she was also just chatting to be chatting away, not
expecting to be recognized, but you know there was a
nationwide hunt for you.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
Yeah, and he had seen her on the TV.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
So he called the place and they arrested her at
the hotel that she was staying at. So John majorly
called his boss the jump to the plane, flew to La,
got off the plane, saw the police car driving along
the tarmac. Dorothy I was in the backseat. Come on,
grabbed her, put it on the plane, falling back to
the DOCUMENTO. So on the third of July nineteen ninety,

(31:16):
Dorothee was charged with nine counts of murder in the
first degree. So that was the seven bodies that were
buried in the yard, plus Everson and our friend Ruth.
So the victims were listed as follows. So there was
Leona Carpenter she was eighty one, Dorothy Miller sixty five,
Bert Montoya fifty two, James Gallup sixty four, Via Fay

(31:42):
Martin sixty five, Betty Palma eighty. Then obviously there was
Everson Andrews. So they're all like older I said, older
vulnerable people. So her victims had been drugged until the overdosed.
Dorothea would then wrapped them in bed sheets and plastic

(32:02):
lining before dragging them to the open pits in the
yard for a burial. And if you remember, this is
why I said, she must have been strong when she
punched her husband, because especially, as I said, like Wobert,
he was over two hundred pins.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
He was a big guy.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
Strong, Yeah, because she didn't have any help and burying them,
we're ending, So she must have been one hill. She
was a little old lady, but she must have been strong,
must have been.

Speaker 8 (32:25):
So.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
On the ninth of July nineteen ninety two, Dorothy's Dorothea's
trial began. The prosecution claimed that Dorothea plenty plotted the
murders to collect about fifty thousand dollars in assistance checks.
Dorothya didn't admit the murder and the victims so she said, yes,
she did cash their checks, but only after they died

(32:45):
in their sleep. Oh conveniently, they all died in their sleep.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
They were all sick.

Speaker 3 (32:51):
And when they died, yes, she did bury them, so
they were just sick.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
She buried them and took their money.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
And the reason why she did that while she buried them,
she didn't want to call the authorities because she was
on par remember, yeah, course, so she didn't want no authorities,
so the jury can agree on several of the murder
charges and ended up only convicting Dorothya on two charges
of the of first degree murder and one charge of
second degree murder. Wow, so she only got charge with

(33:21):
three of them, so she was She was found guilty
of murdering Dorothy Miller, Benjamin Fink, and Leona Carpenter and
was sent inns to life in prison without the possibility
of parole. And Dorothya died of natural causes in prison
on the twenty seventh of March eleven, eighty two.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
So there you go. What a lovely landlady.

Speaker 3 (33:44):
She was loved lady. Look honestly, see when you see
a picture of her, like, yeah, she was just like
I said, she just looked like somebody's granny. Yeah wow.
So thank you to our patrons for listening to us
once again. We'll be back soon season.

Speaker 8 (34:00):
Bye the don Don don Don

Speaker 3 (34:16):
Don Don