Twisted Listers Presents TCC #10 Dorothea Puente Part 2

Part 2! This week, we are diving into a personal favorite case: the story of Dorothea Puente! This murderous granny lived a wild life before turning her petty crimes up many notches, all the way to serial murder. From humble beginnings in Redlands, CA, all the way to dancing with the Governor and rubbing elbows with California's politically elite, and all the way back down to life in a jail cell, Dorothea Puente's life was anything but boring. It was also immensely evil, tragic, and just plain sad, and we'll be sure to talk all about all those things in this two part case!

Fear not, we will be posting both parts back to back, so no waiting! Part one will outline her life before her murder spree began, while part two jumps right in to the killing, as well as her ridiciulous near escape, and the obvoius conclusion to the story - life in prison!

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Sources:
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/she-nicknamed-death-house-landlady-112800788.html
https://archive.org/details/bonegardensacram00wood_1/page/210/mode/2up
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1989/03/25/Accused-mass-killer-got-drugs-from-therapist/1593606805200/
https://casetext.com/case/puente-v-mitchell-2

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Dark Cast Network. Out of the shadows come the best
indie podcasts. Hey everyone, welcome to True Crime California. I'm
your host, Cindy, and I'm glad you're here. Hey guys,

(00:32):
we're back with part two of the Tale of Dorothea Plente.
I have a little vocal fry and I'm really, like,
I don't know, paranoid about it because I hear all
of these reviews of podcasts or people talking about them
like I can't stand their vocal fry, and I'm like,
I don't think people realize how much vocal fry you

(00:55):
get when you're talking this much like you can drink water,
you can like do whatever you want to do, like
try to project, and like you just have it. It
just happens sometimes, and I get really paranoid about it. Also,
I'm getting a little sick. My son has had the
flu for like five days, which is unheard of for him,
and he's passing it on to me, which I'm really

(01:15):
excited about because tomorrow's my birthday and I think I'm
gonna wake up with a fever, so that's gonna be
really cool. Anyway, my dogs are in the bed with me,
being loud and crazy and making this very difficult, as
they do every time I record, which is just so fun. Anyway,
I guess this is maybe like my little energy surge
before I go down with the flu. So this is

(01:39):
part two of Dorothya Pente. I actually recorded some of
it when I was doing part one before I realized like, hey,
this is gonna have to be two episodes, so I'm
gonna sort of just like pop it in. And as
a reminder, Dorothea had just been released on her own
recognizance from jail, meaning she couldn't afford to pay the bail,

(02:00):
but the judge just let her out, assuming she would
show up for the court date. This was for the
poisoning of an eighty two year old woman and then
the man Malcolm Mackenzie, who she robbed him of his
pinky ring while he was staring at her, immobilized because
she had poisoned him. So she is going to go
to trial for those things, but she is out and

(02:21):
able to sort of live her life before she goes
in front of a judge. And while she is out
and free, she plans and executes the first murder for
profit that she she's gonna do a lot of these,
and this is like the first one now I know,
with Esther Bugsby. In the previous episode. Esther did die

(02:43):
about a year after Dorotheas stopped poisoning her, and it
is thought that potentially part of why she died was
because of the poisonings, but that is not really attributed
to her as like an actual murder. So we're gonna
talk about her first murder while she is out on bail.
While out on bail, Dorothea wasted no time trying to

(03:03):
find her next victim, and while at a bar, you'll
never believe she met another man. However, this man, Harold Monroe,
was actually married and was also dying of terminal cancer.
He was also a crazy alcoholic before he got too sick.
He introduced Dorothea to his wife, Ruth Monroe. Ruth and

(03:27):
Dorothea got along very well and quickly decided to go
into business together. Dorothea was working as a cook at
the bar. Again like trying to be on the straight
and narrow for a minute, and they decided to start
a catering business together. I guess Ruth had experience on
the business side, so they figured they could work together
and make some money. Now, The first thing that Dorothea

(03:48):
did was she convinced Ruth to open a joint bank
account and to move all of her savings into this
joint account to help open the business. And this was
like some thousands of dollars. She also had Ruth move
into the house at fourteen twenty six f Street since
her husband was now in hospice at the VA Hospital.

(04:09):
Ruth had a lot of friends in the area, as
well as four grown children with whom she spent nearly
every Sunday. But for whatever reason, you know, I think
Dorothea charmed her. She did that thing, and she got
her in her web. One Sunday, a few months after
she'd moved in, on April twenty fourth, nineteen eighty two,
while at the beauty parlor, Ruth saw one of her

(04:32):
many friends and told her that she was so sick
she thought she might die. She said she couldn't go
to the doctor because she couldn't even remember eating dinner
or going to bed. The friend later said she appeared dazed,
scared and had no idea what was going on. Ruth
rushed out of the parlor, saying she was going to

(04:53):
go get into bed. Prior to this, Ruth had always
been a happy, vibrant person, full life, full of love,
so this was really scary for her friend, and it
was really scary for her kids, who would come to
visit her at F Street and started to notice that,
even though Ruth never really drank before, they would find
her drinking a green liquid which she said was cremmedamnth

(05:17):
and that Dorothea was giving it to her to calm
her nerves over the state of her husband and her marriage. Now,
on the night of April twenty fourth, which was the
same day that her friend saw her at the beauty parlor,
Ruth's son came over to F Street to check on
his mother and found her in quite a state. Dorothea
quickly rushed him out of the house, saying that she

(05:37):
would care for Ruth. The next two days. Her kids
came by or would call, but were constantly turned away
by Dorothea, saying Ruth was being seen by doctors and
that she had just been given a shot to help
her sleep so she couldn't be disturbed. Then, around five
thirty am on April twenty eighth, Ruth's daughter Rosie got

(05:58):
a call from Dorothea saying to hurry over and that
she had called the paramedics as Ruth wasn't responding. When
Rosie got to the house, Dorothea was in tears and
told her her mother had died. Dorothea told the paramedics
that Ruth had a heart condition, but nobody knew about that.
She also kind of hinted that she may have overdosed,

(06:19):
which is weird because like, wouldn't she have called, wouldn't
she have said that when she called nine one one.
Ruth's body was taken for aptopsy and some weird stuff
was found, which I think is what Dorothea was trying
to set them up for, like, oh, maybe she odeed,
you know, trying to get ahead of it. First, it
looked as though she hadn't eaten in days. The only
thing in her stomach was creme demnth. Second, her liver

(06:43):
was enlarged and had fatty damage to it, like she
had a fatty liver, meaning either alcoholism or poisoning. Now, Ruth,
as I said, rarely drank, to the point that her
kids were surprised to see her with the creme de menth,
so it definitely was not alcoholism. Samples were for testing
and came back with lethal amounts of codeine in Ruth's

(07:04):
system now also thilan all because it's like a tylan
old codeine is how they used to prescribe it. But
it was the codeine that did it, even though there
was enough tilan all in her system to also kill her.
It was a pretty gnarly combo. Her death was ruled
undetermined because suicide wasn't ruled out, and shockingly, she didn't
have the codine prescribed to her. I bet we all

(07:25):
know who did. Though, the family got together and finally
someone said, hey, I suspect Dorothea killed Ruth. And the
family was split on this, but the ones who agreed
with that went to police without evidence, though Dorothea again
escaped any punishment for her crimes. In fact, because the
police said there was no proof, some of the kids

(07:46):
went back to believing their mother had killed herself, citing
the failure of her marriage, her husband's illness, and her
hatred of aging. Immediately after Ruth's death, Dorothea emptied their
joint bank account and bought a plane ticket to Mexico
because she knew the heat was on. She knew the
kids were on to her, and she thought it was

(08:06):
a good time to get out of Dodge before leaving
for Mexico, though, she did something so stupid that it
makes me wonder if she actually wanted to be caught.
Dorothea decided to call her friend who she'd known for
about a year, a woman named Dorothy who lived nearby,
and asked to come over. Dorothea was drunk and upset

(08:29):
about Ruth and talked about how she was being accused
by the family and how the cops were bothering her,
and Dorothy just kind of sat there and listened and
was like, this is kind of fucking crazy. She then
mixed Dorothy a drink, after which Dorothy passed out. When
she woke up, some of her checks were gone, and
she found an empty pill bottle and some red liquid

(08:51):
in the blender that Dorothea had used to mix her drink. Now,
she had only mixed Dorothy a drink, and when Dorothy said,
aren't you go to drink with me, Dorothea replied, I'm
only drinking vodka, So she was like drinking straight vodka,
but of course had time to mix a drink for
her friend. Now, Dorothy took this liquid scooped it into

(09:13):
the prescription bottle and called the police. She knew who
Dorothea was and gave them her name, and Dorothea had
also told her her plan to flee to Mexico. She
was like, she drugged me, she robbed me. She lives
at you know, fourteen twenty six f Street. She's trying
to go to Mexico. Dorothea was arrested on May nineteenth

(09:33):
and had Dorothy's checks on her when she was taken
into custody. She ended up for this getting five years
in prison as part of a plea deal that she
first declined before she realized that the DA had information
on esther Busby. After the DA brought that up, she
quickly agreed to five years and went to do her time.

(09:57):
While in prison, the family of ruthman Ro called the
DA and said, hey, we think that she maybe killed
our mother. Seeing her go to prison for drugging and
robbing people was all it took to bring the family
together on that subject. But unfortunately at this time there
wasn't much to be done about it due to lack
of evidence. But we will come back to this later.

(10:20):
Dorothea did her time in prison and was released early,
once again for good behavior and work credits in nineteen
eighty five, and I want to say that good behavior
and work credits are absolutely not an indicator of your
chances for reoffending. Obviously, while in prison, she started a
penpower relationship with seventy seven year old Everson Gilmouth, who

(10:40):
went by Gil and he lived in Oregon and got
about seven hundred dollars a month in social Security and
pension money combined. He also owned an airstream in which
he lived, and he lived on his sister's property in Oregon,
and he also had a really nice new red Ford
pickup truck. The two entered into relationship while Dorothea was

(11:01):
still in prison, and on her release in August nineteen
eighty five, ever, since I guess I should call him,
Gil was there waiting for her in his nice red truck.
Gil had been widowed, and was is that the word
for it, widowed? He's a widower and had been looking
to get remarried ever since his wife died. I have

(11:22):
no idea why, but he chose to write to multiple
women in prison to try to find his next wife.
I'm not really sure what that's about, but that's how
he went about finding his next wife and that's how
he met Dorothea. Now that you had already agreed to
live together in the upstairs unit at fourteen twenty six
f Street, which she had kept up rent payments on.
By allowing Ricardo to cast her social Security checks while

(11:46):
she was locked up, she also fooled Ricardo and Gil
into thinking her crimes were far less serious than they were,
which again is sort of herm and as long as
it works, she's going to keep lying. Ever since, sister
was actually able to read up on Dorothea, because remember,
at one point she was like a socialite that went
to prison and then she goes in for five years again.

(12:08):
So she's very worried about about Gil going to live
with Dorothea, and she even went as far as calling
the Sacramento Police when she hadn't heard from him for
a few days, which I'm going to say right now
was a very very smart move. Unfortunately, the timing was off,
so in this instance, he was still alive and well,
and he was really upset with his sister for doing

(12:30):
this and basically called her and told her to fuck off.
It was actually the last time they ever spoke, which
is really really sad. From there, his sister did keep
trying to get in touch, but with no luck, probably
because her calling the cops pissed off and spooked Dorothea,
who moved up the timeline on her plan. Now. Eventually,

(12:51):
his sister, whose name was Reba, received a letter from
Gil saying he and Dorothea were to be married, and
then shortly after this letter, Dorothea wrote her a letter
saying something similar and that Gil was going to Palm
Springs to sell his woodworkings. Shortly after that, she got
a mail gram from Gil, supposedly Gil, saying he was

(13:14):
leaving Dorothea and moving south. She received another one saying
he was marrying another woman. Altogether, this terrified her because
a mail gram is typed, so there's no way to
prove who sent the letter because there's no handwriting. But
she'd already checked on Gill once it didn't go over well,
so while she was worried about her brother, she basically

(13:35):
left it alone. And I want to call out that
during these following months, she would receive these mail grams
occasionally from a woman named Irene, who said that she
was Gil's new wife to be and would give intermittent
updates on Gil. But she never actually talked to Gil again,
and she never even got another mail gram from him.
She also said that it seemed like all of these

(13:57):
mailgrams were being written by the same person. In the
they matched the first letter sent to her by Dorothea,
which makes sense. Meanwhile, back at f Street, Ricardo Rica
is still living in the downstairs part of the house
and he really grew to like Gil, who putted around

(14:18):
carving wood and enjoying his days while Dorothea seemingly doted
over him. Ricardo had planned to go to Mexico to
see his family around Christmas nineteen eighty five, and before
he did, he noticed that Gil's health was starting to decline,
ever so slightly. Nothing major. He's older, you know, he's
seventy seven or seventy eight, but he seemed to start
having heart issues that sometimes bothered him. Nothing out of

(14:42):
the ordinary, we'll say, so Ricardo kind of keeps this
in mind, and then he leaves for Mexico for the holiday,
and upon his return in January nineteen eighty six, he
found that there was no Gill anywhere. Dorothea just basically said, oh,
it didn't work out. He went back to Oregon and
Ricardo was like, Oh, that's a bummer, and that was

(15:03):
kind of it. Now, a few months prior, in September,
she had hired a man to help around the house.
This man, Ismail Flores, was now driving Gil's truck in January,
and according to Dorothy Dorothy Dorothea, this is because Gil
had sold it to him before leaving. She said, he
also sold off his airstream and that was kind of

(15:25):
the end of that as far as Ricardo was concerned,
because again he trusts and believes Dorothea. Now, as for Ismail,
he had met Dorothea It's going to shock you wear
in a bar, which her favorite place to meet people.
She offered him a job doing handyman work around the
house and he did things like painting, gardening, and building

(15:45):
things for her from time to time. Now, at one
point in mid December, she asked him to build her
a box about six feet high by two to three
feet wide, you know, like a coffin. She said she
needed it for storage for books and random items she
wanted to hold onto, but also wanted to get out
of the house. And of course she can't just go,

(16:08):
you know, buy some cardboard boxes at like a moving
supply place, like she's got to have him build her
a fucking coffin. So Ismail he just did as he
was asked. He built her this box. Then once she
had filled it with books I e. Gil, Ismail loaded
it into the red Ford truck he now owned because

(16:29):
she'd already sold it to him, and she actually gave
it to him for a discounted price in return for
his work, which is so messed up, and had him
drive her to take it to storage. On the way,
Dorothea was like, you know what, I actually just want
to get rid of this stuff. Can you just dump
it on the side of the road by the river.
So he did. He was just like sure, I'll go

(16:50):
push it down on the river bank, and I think
Dorothea's hope was that the water would rise and take
the box away. Later on, Ismail went to sell the truck,
but he didn't have a bill of sal so he
took it to Dorothea, who forged Gil's signature saying it's mine.
He gave it to me, and Ismail was kind of like,
uh okay, and so's he's just a trusting man. I

(17:12):
don't really know. On New Year's Day, ever since Gilmouth's
body was found in the box in the river by
a man fishing. Sadly, the body was too decomposed to
determine a cause of death or even figure out who
it was, so it was filed as a John Doe
in Sutter County, which is near Sacramento County. And that
was it for a while for poor gil who also

(17:33):
was found with a bunch of garbage in the box.
So that's the kind of person Dorothea is. Meanwhile, Dorothea
is definitely still caching his pension and social Security checks,
but Gil is no more from here. Dorothea again opened
a boarding house, despite her parole specifically forbidding this. Ricardo

(17:53):
didn't mind and eventually even moved out of the house,
allowing Dorothea to take it over entirely and rent out
the rooms under the radar of the government or her
parole officer, because again, like she's not allowed to be
doing this, they have no idea what she's doing. According
to her parole officer, she's just renting a room, but
in fact she's turning this into another boarding house, which

(18:16):
I'm going to tell you right now becomes a house
of horrors. Again, she took in many alcoholics and elderly,
but did not provide care in the way she had previously. Instead,
all she did was basically feed them and do their laundry,
but otherwise mostly left them to their own devices. With
one very unsurprising caveat. They were not allowed to open

(18:38):
their own mail. Dorothea had control over that and would
open all their checks and cash them and give each
one a very small allowance. Now, Dorothya had quite a
few people coming in and out of the house, and
at one point she linked up with someone who helped
place unwanted people and who obviously didn't know who she was.
So she was giving her alcoholics, people with mental health

(18:59):
isish shoose, people that were just difficult to place and
who were needing in need of care. And this woman
sent Dorothea three or four people over the months between
nineteen eighty seven and nineteen eighty eight, and we will
talk about all of them, but right now I want
to focus on the one who I think was brought
into her from two social workers, and this is kind

(19:21):
of the start of Dorothea's downfall. This man's name was
Alvaro bert Montoya. He was fifty one and had lived
the last five years in a detoc center, but was
not able to stay sober. He was kind of sent
to Dorothea as a way of minimizing harm to himself.
They were like, Okay, he's not going to stop drinking.
We can't keep in control of him. We'll give him

(19:43):
to her, and you know, she seems to have away
with people, so we'll just let him live there now.
Bert was a mentally ill but also very sweet and
very harmless man. The danger he posed was only to
himself due to suicidal thoughts, sorry hearing voices, and not
being able to care for himself. He said that he

(20:03):
would often hear his father, who had died, telling him
to kill himself so that they could be together. So
he's definitely very very mentally ill, but he's not wanting
to hurt anyone else, and he was very well liked
by everybody that knew him. The two social workers who
brought him to Dorothea were at first really happy with
how things were going. Bert had gained some weight, he

(20:25):
was clean and showered, he had nice clothing, and he
seemed to be taking his meds. So Dorothea was definitely
giving him a higher level of care and She even
allowed him to drink a little bit and had set
a tab up at the nearby bar so that he
could go have a few beers and eat a burrito
every week, like once or twice a week. Basically, he
led a simple life and seemed to thrive under Dorothea's care,

(20:48):
at least at first. After just a few months of
being with Dorothea, in April nineteen eighty eight, Bert came
back to the Detok Center and said that Dorothea had
been drugging him. He stayed the night and said he
didn't want to go back because she made him do
all sorts of work and was not nice to him,
but because he was mentally ill and because they didn't

(21:08):
have good resources, the social workers convinced him to go
back to Dorothea, which he did the next day. And
I want to say that this is a big problem
for you know, in the mental health field. People will
say things like this and if they have you know,
schizophrenia or kind of a history of making things up,
they're not going to be taken seriously. And the problem

(21:31):
with that is in this instance is a great, you know,
example of when they need to be taken seriously. But
it's very difficult to know what is real and what isn't,
and so I think, especially when in situations like this,
they just did the best they could, and they're like,
go back, we see that you're fine. There's no reason
for you to not be there. So he goes back
to Dorothea, and she's pissed. Obviously this is a close call,

(21:55):
especially considering her barely hidden past, so she's got to
lock him down. Bert remained with her for a few
more months, with Dorothea cashing his checks giving him this
small allowance, and he started to kind of get a
little more out of control, I think, because he wasn't
happy there. At one point in July nineteen eighty eight,

(22:15):
Bert got ahold of some extra money by recycling some
cans and got himself real, real drunk. This again really
pissed Dorothea off, as she hated drunks despite being one herself.
This is another part of her self loathing psychology, which
is super weird. Then, in August nineteen eighty eight, Bert
went to the bar, had a beer and a burrito,

(22:37):
and then collapsed on the ground. He was carried back
to f Street, where Dorothea was very worried about him. Yeah, right,
And then on August twenty fourth, Dorothea caught him drinking
in the street. So at this point she's getting sick
of him, obviously, his drinking one beer and collapsing, she's
starting to poison him, and after the twenty fourth of

(22:59):
August she was done with him. He was never seen
again after that. Luckily, this man, unlike many of her difficult,
wayward lost soul tenants, as I mentioned, was very well
liked and looked after by these two social workers and
anybody else who knew him really liked him. So when
he missed a doctor's appointment on August twenty ninth, the

(23:20):
social workers were notified and came to find out what
was going on. Dorothea told them that Bert had gone
to Mexico to see her family, which she does not have.
So this is just a crazy fucking lie. Like I said,
during this time, she was catching all her tenants checks
and even posing as them to get her hands on

(23:40):
their prescriptions, which included sedatives of course, antipsychotics, and other
hardcore pharmaceuticals. Anyway, so the social workers keep trying to
get a hold of Bert, and Dorothea kept saying he's
in Mexico. He'll be back soon. Finally, one of them said,
just before November. We need to see him by the
first or he's going to lose all of his benefits,

(24:01):
which obviously is going to be a problem for Dorothea
because she wants the money to keep coming in. Dorothea
promised he'd be back by then, but of course he wasn't.
She said his brother took him to Utah or somewhere
before she could have him check in with them. Finally,
the social workers are like, fuck this. They call the
cops and they asked them to check it out, and shockingly,

(24:24):
the cops did come and check it out. It's mid
November at this point, and the cops go to fourteen
twenty six f Street and they asked Dorothea if they
can speak with Bert. Dorothea said, oh, he's with his
brother or brother in law. And one of her tenants
who was interviewed, said the same thing. Now, when this

(24:45):
tenant was done talking to police, he was like, oh,
hold on a second, and he handed them a piece
of paper. Now, the cops go downstairs and they read this,
and on this piece of paper it said, she's making
me lie to you. So the cops then find out
way to meet up with this tenant, and he met
them down the street and told them he hadn't seen
Bert in months now. Also around this time, Dorothea had

(25:09):
employed a number of prisoners from a minimum security sort
of halfway house to come do work for her in
her yard. This included digging a lot of holes in
trenches and sometimes filling them up with concrete like the
following day kind of thing. She would pay them hourly
for their work and gave them extra money to keep
their mouths closed about exactly what they were doing in

(25:29):
the yard. None of them knew why, but they all agreed,
because why wouldn't they. Before the cops were called, one
of the social workers received a call from a man
claiming to be Bert's brother in law, saying he'd taken
him to Shreveport, Utah, which very much is not a place.
Shreveport is in Louisiana, and when the social worker asked

(25:51):
to speak with Bert, this man refused. This turned out
to be one of those inmates. Which is so bold
of Dorothea to do that and not expect to get caught,
Like what is she thinking? So anyway, she has these
inmates doing all this like unscrupulous work for her just bold.
She's so bold if nothing else. So the cops show

(26:12):
up and they're like, Okay, Bert's not here. We have
this tenant saying that she paid him to lie to us.
We need to get to the bottom of this. So
they show back up and they ask her, hey, can
we look around and can we dig in your yard?
And again this request didn't come from nowhere. They had
been watching Dorothea and waiting for her to slip up
since Ruth and Rose death. Like remember, the family went

(26:35):
to the police and said, we think she killed our mom,
and the police strongly agreed with this, but again they
had no proof. So now they've got this call about her,
about Bert, and they're like, all right, we're gonna take this,
you know it. And they didn't downplay or ignore the
call because they had so many other things on her.

(26:55):
So her cute little lady act is no longer working now.
While they're at the house and before they start digging
in the yard, they did mention to her like, hey,
you're going to go back to jail for running this
boarding house because this is a parole violation. And they
said that she was like really calm about that and
was like, okay, no problem, totally understand. They then asked,
you know, can we dig in the yard, and she

(27:16):
straight up said yes. She was like, yeah, go ahead.
Her defense later included, this is so silly. If I
killed someone and buried them in my yard, why would
I tell you to go ahead and dig there. So
it's sort of like, again, she's trying to get ahead
of it, but she's so fucking dumb, and she does
dumb things really often, And the problem I think is
that she got away with doing dumb things a lot

(27:38):
and making dumb lies and people just like either ignored
it or believed her. So this emboldened her to keep
doing this kind of shit. So now the cops are
looking through a house. They find not only a number
of pill bottles of people no longer living with Dorothea
and with unknown whereabouts, they also find in her yard
a number of bones. Now, at first they're unsure of

(28:01):
what kind of bones, maybe animal, And it wasn't until
they found a shoe with a foot inside that they
felt confident that they were finding human bodies. Now, Remember,
as far as they know, they're only looking for Bert Montoya,
and the shoe, foot and body that went with it
were too decomposed to be Bert's, so that was very

(28:22):
concerning for them. Dorothea was then detained and the grounds
were secured. She was interviewed for hours and told so
many lies, Like I actually watched one of these. You
can go to archive dot org and watch her interviews
and it's a forty minute interrogation and the lies she
told were endless. She once again said she had family
in Mexico, that Ricardo was her cousin or nephew, yet

(28:45):
she had no idea what the bodies were doing there,
and of course her amazing defense of why would I
incriminate myself like that? Now, after she was interviewed, she
was allowed to go back home since the body was
not that of Bert, and there was no proof that
Dorothea had actually put that body there, So I mean,
they know, but they can't prove it. So they're like,
all right, lady, go home. You can't really go anywhere.

(29:06):
We're securing the you know, the location, we're going to
start digging. So the police kind of stay there overnight
and they resumed their digging the first thing the next morning. Meanwhile, upstairs,
Dorothea and one of her tenants she didn't seem to
want to kill, Mervin John McCauley, were getting ready to
leave the premises. Dorothea told him she needed to get

(29:27):
away and asked that he accompanied her to the hotel
down the street where Ricardo worked. He agreed, helping her
pack up the money and items that she might need,
just kind of basically wait, know, she's going to make
her escape. I want to note that while he dug
holes and did chores for her, this man didn't seem
to have any idea of what she was up to,
and she wasn't at this point under arrest, So he

(29:47):
didn't really do anything wrong in this situation, at least
not like legally speaking. And I will say that he
was arrested leader, as was Ismail, the like her house,
the carpenter guy that she hired around the house. As
far as I know, neither of them actually saw any
jail time because they didn't actually do anything. They were
just kind of idiots. So Dorothea gets dressed and she

(30:10):
goes downstairs, and she's wearing this like white or white,
this red coat and this cute dress, and she goes
downstairs to the detectives and she's like, hey, can I
just go get a cup of coffee at my nephew's
hotel where he works down the street. The police didn't
really want to let her go, but at the same time,
they hadn't really found any other bodies, They had nothing

(30:31):
to really hold her, and she's not under arrest, so
they're like, okay, yeah, you can just go get coffee.
Just come back, you know, hurry back. And one of
the detectives even walked her to the curb or to
her car so she could get to the hotel. I
think she walked, but there's a photo of him like
walking her off the premises. It's like a famous photo
because the cops fucked this up so bad, like how
did they let her go? And they got absolutely like

(30:53):
torn apart, you know in the community, and you know,
the newspapers were like idiot, fucking caught, like what are
they doing? So anyway, she leaves and she and John
get to the hotel where Ricardo, her not family member,
is not working. From there, she calls a cab and
uses the three thousand dollars she hasn't stolen money to

(31:14):
get herself out of the city. Going all the way
down to Los Angeles, and it's a good thing for
her that she left when she did, because cops found
another body about ten minutes later and went looking for
her at the hotel. Of course it was too late.
Now let's go ahead and talk about the bodies they found.

(31:36):
We're going to start with seventy eight year old Betty Palmer.
She was a reclusive woman who landed at fourteen twenty
six f Street in the fall of nineteen eighty six.
She and Dorothea did not get along, as Betty was
hard headed and secretive and did not like Dorothea telling
her what to do. Within just a few months of
her living there, Dorothea had already stolen her identity, getting

(31:59):
an ID car with Betty's name and Dorothea's photo. She
also cashed over seven thousand dollars in social Security checks
of Betty's, mostly after she was killed. Sometime in late
nineteen eighty six, John McCauley Mervin was asked to dig
a hole in the front yard by Ricardo ordo Ica,
which he did. Ricardo also didn't know what was going on,

(32:21):
but Dorothea had asked him to do it, so he
asked John McCauley. The next day he was told to
fill it back in with dirt. This is where Betty's
body was found, missing her head and hands, which by
the way, were never found. They had been taken off
to make it more difficult for her to be identified.
So this is really fucked up, and she was actually

(32:42):
Dorothea placed a statue of Saint Francis of ASSISI over her,
which just feels like adding insult to injury. The next
victim we're going to talk about was another seventy eight
year old, Leona Carpenter, who came to stay with Dorothea
in December of nineteen eighty six. Now, Leona was an
alcoholic and prescription drug abuser who was an acquaintance of

(33:04):
Dorothea's from the neighborhood. In October of nineteen eighty six,
a few months before she came to live with Dorothea,
Leona ended up in the hospital after an apparent overdose
on downers. I think it was actually like dalmain, which
doctors believed may have been intentional, so she was potentially suicidal.
During this time, Like I said, Leona was not yet
living with Dorothea, but Dorothea was still able to gain

(33:27):
power of attorney over Leona while she was in the hospital,
which is quite a feat and says a lot about
Dorothea's ability to manipulate. She straight up brought a notary
to Leona's hospital bed while she was on death's door
and had Leona give her power of attorney so she
could start cashing her social Security checks. Leona was in

(33:50):
the hospital for a couple of months before being released
in mid December, at which point she went and lived
with Dorothea. As you can imagine, she ended up back
in the hospital shortly suffering from yet another overdose. She
went home again to Dorothea in February and promptly disappeared.
Her body was found in the corner of the yard,
and brain tissue samples showed she had overdosed on multiple

(34:12):
prescription drugs, including codeine. So there's that one again. And
what's crazy is that Dorothea called a plumber to take
a look at some pipes right around the time that
Leona went missing. The plumber had to dig a big
hole which was left open overnight, and this hole is
where Leona's body was found, meaning that this very well

(34:34):
could have been like a crime of opportunity. Obviously, she's
killing people, and she's probably gonna kill Leona, but the
timing could have had to do with her being like,
look at that nice, big hole that I didn't have
to pay anybody to dig, or that I myself didn't
have to dig. It would be terrible to put that
hole to waste, and so she took this as the
time to murder this poor old woman. The next victim

(34:59):
was sixty two years James Gallup, who had moved in
with Dorothea after having surgery, or just before having surgery
of a benign tumor in his brain. James was an
alcoholic who smoked two to three packs of cigarettes a
day and as a result, as you can imagine, was
not in great health, but not anywhere near death by
any means. At this point, Dorothea took over medicating him

(35:20):
and used his prescriptions for Dalmain to over medicate him,
as well as other tenants. Dorothea and James didn't really
get along, and at one point they got into a
heated argument after James told Dorothea she could not be
the payee on his SSI checks, so she wanted to
be listed as the payee on his social Security checks,
and he was like absolutely not, like I'm going to

(35:43):
control my money. I'll give you what I owe you.
And we all know how Dorothea feels about that. So,
as you can imagine, he went missing very shortly after
this argument. Now it's interesting to see he was actually
scheduled for another cancer surgery as his doctor had found
more tumors in his colon, disappeared before he could go in.
Dorothea told people who had asked that he went to

(36:05):
Los Angeles or that he simply disappeared, and she even
told one person that he died and she had him cremated.
So just a string of lies. Meanwhile, he's buried under
the gazebo in her yard. And what's interesting is he
had friends, like he had a friend at the local bar,
a bartender, who while he was in the hospital for
his brain surgery, he called her to like check in

(36:27):
and be like, I haven't been at the bar because
I've been in the hospital. I don't want you to
think I would just disappear, you know, without saying goodbye.
So this friend, when he did disappear without saying goodbye,
she knew something was fishy, and she actually later testified
in the trial. Now, the next victim is Vera Fay Martin.
She came to live with Dorothea in October of nineteen

(36:49):
eighty seven. She was placed by a worker who didn't
know that Dorothea shouldn't have borders. I maybe mentioned her previously.
I've been recording this over several days, so I apologize.
I also have the flu, so I'm very out of it.
So if I repeated that, I apologize. But there was
a worker who didn't know that Dorothea shouldn't have borders tenants,

(37:10):
and so she was giving her difficult to place people. Vera,
of course, met with the same fate as the others,
very sadly, and Dorothea continued to cast her checks while
she lay buried in the yard. About a month after
Vera came to live with Dorothea, the same worker placed
sixty five year old Dorothy Miller in the f Street house.
Dorothy was a paranoid alcoholic who got in trouble for

(37:32):
petty theft just after moving in with Dorothea. That being said,
she was sort of the liaison between Dorothea and the
tenants who lived downstairs. So Dorothea very much ruled over
the house sort of like a queen, and she was
upstairs and her closest, you know, advisors were kind of
allowed in the upstairs area, and then all of her

(37:53):
subjects had to stay downstairs, and somehow Dorothy kind of
was able to work her way into getting invited upstairs.
She certainly wasn't like up there all the time, although
I do think at one point before she disappeared, she
was moved to the upstairs room, But I believe that
was more so that Dorothea could kill her more easily,

(38:14):
like medicating her and keeping her out of sight of
the other tenants. But anyway, I found it interesting that
she sort of became not a confidant, but she had
a good enough relationship with Dorothea that she sort of
was like the representative of the people of the house. However,
when she disappeared, Dorothea of course used the excuse, oh,

(38:35):
she got in trouble for stealing. She's back in jail.
I kicked her out of the house. We'll never see
her again. Dorothy, of course, was also found in the yard. Now,
around this time that Dorothy went missing, one of the
inmates that she hired to do that yard work was
asked to clean the upstairs room where Dorothy had previously
been sleeping. He later said he found large, foul smelling

(38:59):
stain in the room which looked like slime. This was
almost certainly vomit from Dorothy being poisoned. And I should
mention at this time that more than one of Dorothea's
victims were still alive when they were buried, and I
believe Dorothy was one of them. She actually showed signs
of trying to dig her way out of the grave,

(39:21):
which is absolutely fucked up and horrifying. Also, around the
time she went missing, Dorothea turned up at a hospital
posing as Dorothy and asking for refills on a bunch
of heavy sedative medications, all prescribed to Dorothy. So she
is stealing money and identities. She has no plans to
stop this craziness. The next victim was fifty five year

(39:44):
old Benjamin Fink, a severe alcoholic who lived to drink
is what I read, and had health issues as a result.
He lived with Dorothea for about two months before he
went missing. Now, during this time his brother visited him weekly,
but even so, least at first, his brother wasn't super
suspicious when he went missing because apparently Benjamin would drink

(40:07):
heavily and then black out and go and like wander
away and would like end up in the hospital with
unknown injuries. So at least at first, Dorotheo sort of
flew under the radar on this one. But you know,
when he was found in the yard, that kind of
put an end to that. So that sums up all
of the victims. And to be clear, there were a

(40:28):
lot of other people who lived in the house that
did not end up getting killed by Dorothea. A lot
of them had probably been drugged maybe didn't realize it.
I know, like Mervyn John McCauley, she was drugging him.
So she definitely was like hurting everyone. But those are
the people that actually died. Now, Like I said, there

(40:51):
were a lot of other things happening, poisoning people whatever.
One of those things included Dorothea stealing her quote unquote
friends checks after frame her for fraud and getting her
thrown back in jail. So Dorothea and this woman, Brenda Trujillo,
had met in prison and became friends, which is like
a funny word for anybody Dorothea had in her life

(41:14):
for whatever reason, though Dorothea had confided in this woman
about some of the murders, and she actually it later
came out during her trial that she confided in multiple
other inmates, which is like the worst fucking idea, but
also I'm glad she did. But she told Brenda, you know,
I murder them, I drug them, I steal their checks.
And then after she did this to Brenda, like you know,

(41:36):
got her and t I think what she did was
drugged her, and then she ended up feeling a drug
test because Dorothea drugged her, and then she ended up
back in jail, and Dorothea kept cashing her checks. So
she filed a complaint saying, you know, this woman did
this to me, but it ended up on the back
burner until Dorothea was arrested. But Brenda did testify in

(41:56):
her trial. But before we get into the trial, which
I'm just going to kind of gloss over because I
find trials boring and I hate to say, it's just
not really my thing. I'm not that podcast. But before
we get into that, let's talk about Dorothy's escape, which
I sort of started I think some of this with
so I think I left off where she ran away
from La which is wild and hilariously bold. I mean,

(42:19):
this woman is pure evil, but I do respect that
level of boldness that she has to just like go
for it over and over and it did keep working out,
so I understand why that made her feel like she
could just keep running away and doing whatever and making
it work. So anyway, Dorothea ends up for she's in Hollywood.
She spends the night there and then she takes a
Greyhound bus down to an area known as Westlake or

(42:42):
alternatively MacArthur Park, which is near downtown LA but sort
of situated between that and Echo Park for anyone who
sort of knows the area. There's this really big, nice,
beautiful lake nearby, but it's pretty overrun unfortunately with like
drug adda and homeless people, and it's just it hasn't
been taken care of. It's been neglected by the city

(43:05):
for years. So this has been a really rough area
for a very long time, including when Dorothea was staying here.
So the motels are super cheap, nobody cares what your
name is, so this worked out really well for her.
She set herself up in a motel and got some
dinner without being recognized. Her name and photo were all

(43:25):
over the news and everybody was looking for her. But
she had put herself into a predominantly Latino area, so
she felt safe that people would basically just mind their
own business, and for the most part, they did. After
a couple of days, she decided to venture out, not
because she felt safe necessarily, but because she needed to
secure more money. Like she had a very finite amount.
It was whatever she could shove into her purse that

(43:47):
she had stolen from her victims. It wasn't like she
herself was getting any money or could like go cash
a check under her name. So she decides to go
out to a bar, the Monte Carlo, which liked the motel,
which is called the Royal Viking is still there today,
and the Monte Carlo has some really wild reviews on Yelp. Honestly,
it's mostly hipster's being angry that it's a real dive

(44:09):
bar and not like a curated fun one with updated amenities.
But to me, it looks like just a good, rough
dive bar. Like all the ones in downtown are gone.
They've been gentrified. It's weird, but I feel like MacArthur
Park and Westlake is one of the only areas that
has like truly stayed out of being gentrified. Somehow, it's
fought back. It's just not being turned into like a

(44:31):
fucking Disneyland for like rich La people, and I kind
of love that, but it's super rough. So anyway, Dorothea
goes out on November sixteenth, nineteen eighty eight, and she
is on the prowl. She meets a man at this
bar named Charles Wilgas and tells him her name is
Donna Johanson. They get to talking and she finds out

(44:52):
he's on Social Security and even tells him, oh, I
can help you get more benefits, like we can work
the system, like I'm really you know, I know it
do and clearly she does. So after a while, she
offers them to go out again, and he accepts. She's like, well,
you know, let's get together on Thanksgiving. You shouldn't be alone.
I'll come to your house and cook for you. And

(45:13):
he's like, yeah, that sounds great, and so she's laying
it on and she even goes as far as to
offer moving in together. She's like, why don't we share
an apartment? Which is fucking crazy. They've been talking for
like two hours and Charles was not immediately into this,
but he was open to seeing where things went. So
they decide, okay, let's meet up this coming Thursday. If

(45:34):
things go well, we'll keep hanging out, we'll do Thanksgiving,
we'll see where it goes. She got him to buy
her dinner to take with her back to her motel,
and she goes back there to eat and a few
hours later she gets a call from Charles. Apparently he's
just checking in with her, and you know, he's like, oh,
are you staying in for the night. She confirms it. Yes,
I'm at room thirty one at the Royal Viking Motel.

(45:56):
I'm not going anywhere tonight, and I'm looking forward to
seeing you on Thursdayay. So she's feeling really good. She's
feeling like she's setting this up, She's got her next victim.
Things are rolling. However, shortly after that phone call, there
is a knock on Dorothea's door. She gets up and answers,

(46:18):
and outside, looking straight into her room are the police
who arrested her without incident. As it turns out, after
leaving the bar, Charles, who had puzzled over where he
had seen Donna quote unquote before realized he had seen
her on the news, or dorothy a plenty rather, and

(46:38):
that she was wanted for murder and Sacramento after calling
to confirm she'd be there, he called the police and
led them right to her. Now, again, like I said,
I'm not going to get into the details of the trial,
but I will say that it was a bit of
a circus with I think one hundred and fifty something witnesses,
victim's families were involved, thirty one hundred pieces of evidence

(46:59):
were introduced. I mean, it was crazy. Now, at first,
Dorothea was charged only with the murder of Bert Montoya,
because that's kind of what kicked this whole thing off,
but the list ended up growing to nine people by
the time she went to trial. Now, the trial started
in February nineteen ninety three, so almost five years later,

(47:20):
or just over four, I guess. So it took a
very long time for like the discovery phase and setting
up the trial. And even though it started in February
of nineteen ninety three, it took all the way until
August twenty sixth of that same year to conclude, which
is a very long trial. If anybody doesn't know, that's
a long ass trial, and at the conclusion, Dorothea was

(47:40):
found guilty of only three murders, the murder of Benjamin Fink,
the murder of Leona Carpenter, and the murder of Dorothy Miller.
The jury actually deadlocked on the other six, which I
find crazy, but again I don't know all of the details. Now.
Although the death found he was an option, I think

(48:01):
due to her age and her cute little granny you know,
the way she presents herself, the jury couldn't come to
an agreement to put her to death, so instead she
was given life without parole. She was then moved to
the Women's Center in Chowchilla, California, where she remained until
her death at age eighty two. She died of natural causes.

(48:23):
And that really is that. Finally, this completes the tale
of the murderous old Lady Dorothea Plente and her House
of Horrors on f Street in Sacramento. Now I've gone
on Instagram and posted a picture of the house which
helps give you an idea of like the upstairs downstairs,

(48:44):
as well as some pictures of her victims and photos
of Dorothea as well, both being free. Although I think
she's in court in the first picture and her mugshot,
which is particularly fun to look at. This lady was crazy.
She is such an important part of true crime history
and California history. She's pure evil and I'm glad I

(49:06):
covered the case, but I'm also glad to move on
to something maybe a little less bulky for next week.
So thanks everybody for listening in. I'm sorry if I'm sniffley,
or if I sound stuffy, or if I mention anything twice.
The flu has hit our house hard. I thought I
had escaped its clutches, but I have not. So it's
been a lot of time spent in bed, but some

(49:28):
of that was recording this, So hopefully you know you guys,
enjoy and I'll be back next week with a whole
new case. And thanks again everybody for listening, and until
next week, stay safe.