True Crime Friday: Dorothea Puente, Death House Landlady Serial Killer
Dorothea Puente, born Dorothea Helen Gray, was introduced to the world on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California. Dorothea did not grow up in a stable family environment. Her father died of tuberculosis when Puente was eight and her mother was an alcoholic who routinely abused her children. The mother died in a motorcycle accident a year later. Dorothea ran a boarding house for under serviced adults. These adults were considered to be the less dead. People who did not mean much to others in life so they are considered less dead by police. Many of the residents in this boarding house were addicted to drugs, alcohol, transients or mentally challenged. She murdered the elderly and mentally disabled boarders in order to get her hands on their Social Security payments. She committed nine murders before being caught. You see one tenant had a social worker that cared about him and would check in on him regularly. She became suspicious when the tenant named Bert could not be reached. Each t
