Dorothea Puente: The Boardinghouse Killer

Dorothea Puente, born Dorothea Helen Gray also known as "The Boardinghouse Killer" and "Death House Landlady", was born in Redlands California January 9, 1929 to Trudy Mae and Jesse James Gray. Dorothea's father died in 1937 of tuberculosis when she was only eight years old. Dorothea's mother was a heavy alcoholic, locking her in a closet for hours or even days at a time to go out and drink. only to return sick with alcohol poisoning and make her daughter clean it up. She died a year after her husband in a motorcycle accident. This left Dorothea parentless, and was sent to an orphanage until she was taken in by relatives in Sacramento California. Later on in life, Dorothea would lie about her childhood, claiming she was born and raised in

They had two daughters between 1946 and 1948, one being put up for adoption and the other being sent to relatives in Sacramento. In 1948 Dorothea became pregnant once again, but this pregnancy ended in miscarriage. Mcfaul then left Dorothea. Mortified and humiliated about her husband leaving her, Dorothea would lie and say her husband died of a heart attack. She tried to forge checks in Mcfaul's name but was caught. She was sentenced to a year in jail and paroled after six months. Soon after being let out of prison, Dorothea was impregnated by a man she barely knew. She carried out the pregnancy and gave the baby girl up for adoption. In 1952 Dorothea married Axel Johanson, a marriage that lasted fourteen rocky

Some didn't like her stinginess and complained that she refused to give them their mail or money, while other praised her for her small acts of kindness and homemade meals. It is said that her motives for killing were purely financial. Dorothea's first victim was Ruth Monroe. In 1982, Monroe began living with Dorothea in her upstairs apartment . Monroe ended up dying of an overdose or codeine and paracetomol. When police questioned Dorothea of how Monroe died, she claimed she was depressed because her husband was terminally ill. The police believed her and ruled the incident as a suicide. A few weeks after Monroe's "suicide", Malcolm McKenzie accused Dorothea of drugging him and stealing from him. McKenzie was one of four tenants that accused Dorothea of drugging him. On August 18, 1982, Dorothea was convicted of three charges of theft and was sentenced to five years in jail. In jail, Dorothea formed a pen-pal relationship with Everson Gillmouth, a 77 year old retiree from Oregon. When Dorothea was released early in 1985, Gillmouth was waiting for her in his red 1980 Ford pickup. They shortly began to make wedding plans and opened a joint banking account to pay for the apartment