Death House Landlady

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Discretion is it by him needed murder. Before Dorothea Puente became the serial killer

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known as the Death House Landlady,
she was a little girl growing up in

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a deeply troubled family. Born in
nineteen twenty nine, Dorothea was raised by

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two alcoholics, and throughout her childhood, her father would often stand in front

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of his own children and threaten to
take his life, but he never followed

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through on this threat. Instead,
when Dorothea was eight years old, he

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died from a tubercularis infection. The
next year, his widow was killed in

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a motorcycle crash, and Dorothea spent
the rest of her childhood in an orphanage

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where she suffered from repeated sexual abuse. At sixteen years old, Dorothea left

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the orphanage to marry an older man, a soldier named Fred McFall who had

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just returned to California after serving in
World War II. That happy couple had

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two daughters. The first one was
sent back to Sacramento to live with Dorothea's

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family, and the second one was
quickly given up for adoption. The marriage

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only lasted for three years, and
soon afterwards Dorothea was arrested for the first

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time after she was caught paying for
shopping with forged checks. She spent three

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months in jail and was released,
and then she met her second husband,

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Axel Johansson. And Axel Johansson sounds
like the lead singer of a rock band,

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but Axel was not a lead singer
of a rock band. He was

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a seaman, and by semen,
I don't mean that, I mean he

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was a sailor. And while he
was away, Dorothea would spend his money

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gambling with men she invited over to
the house. And she also created an

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elaborate persona pretending to be an Israeli
and Egyptian woman going by the name Teya

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Singola Niarda. Axel was concerned about
his wife's well being, so he had

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her hospitalized, where she was diagnosed
as a pathological liar. After she was

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then divorced for the second time in
her life, Dorothea created another identity for

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herself. This time she was a
modest traditional Christian by the name of Sharon

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Johansson. Acting as Sharon, Dorothea
attempted to become a trusted member of the

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local community, opening up her home
to women who were suffering from domestic violence

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or poverty. The deception worked,
and before long, Sharon was known as

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a caring, selfless woman. Dorothea's
next relationships ended in similar way ways,

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the third after a messy divorce resulting
in a man fleeing to Mexico, and

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the fourth marriage only lasting a week. After that third divorce, Dorothea fully

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committed to appearing to be a trusted
member of the community, wearing dated clothing

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and reading glasses, and growing her
gray hair out to appear older than she

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actually was. She decided to open
up a full blown boarding house in Sacramento,

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which she advertised as a refuge for
the homeless, the mentally ill,

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and those struggling with addiction. There
was no reason for the people around to

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suspect otherwise. Dorothea even ran AA
meetings from the boarding house, helped people

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sign up for Social Security benefits and
help to fund scholarships and charities. In

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nineteen seventy eight, Dorothea was arrested
for illegally cashing her tenants checks and was

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sentenced to five years of probation.
She'd spent her entire adult life lying,

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conning, and manipulating. It seemed
to be the only way that she was

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able to earn a living, and
her arrest and time on probation did not

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change that. Before long, she
was back to her old ways, slipping

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drugs into the drinks of elderly people
to incapacitate them before stealing their cash,

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credit cards, and jewelry. On
the twenty eighth of April nineteen eighty two,

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a sixty one year old woman who
had been staying with Dorothea for two

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weeks suddenly died after consuming enough codine
to cause her to stop breathing. Although

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her death was ruled as an undetermined
overdose, Ruth Monroe would later be counted

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as Dorothea Poente's first murder victim.
Three months after Ruth passed away, Dorothea

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was back in prison for theft.
While she was behind bars, she started

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writing letters to a seventy seven year
old man in Oregon named Everson Gilmouth.

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He became completely devoted to her and
wanted to help out in any way possible.

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By the time she was released in
September ninenineteen eighty five, Everson was

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waiting outside to pick her up.
In October, Dorothea sent a letter to

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Everson's sister letting her know that she
and Everson would be getting married the following

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month. Shortly after sending the letter, Dorothea hired a handyman, Ismail Flores,

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who she asked to build a six
foot long storage box. As well

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as a cash payment, she promised
that she would allow him to keep Everson's

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vehicle in exchange for his services.
If it had occurred to Ismail that the

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dimensions of the box were uncannily similar
to the size and shape of a coffin,

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he did not express his concerns.
When he returned the next day to

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find that Dorothea had put something inside
the box and then nailed it shut,

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he didn't say anything about that either. In fact, when Dorothea asked Ismail

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for his help transporting the box,
which was several hundred pounds heavier than it

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had been, he either genuinely wasn't
suspicious or he didn't care. Dorothea left

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the box on the shores of the
Sacramento River, where it remained undiscovered until

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January of nineteen eighty six. The
box, of course, contained the body

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of Dorothea's soon to be husband,
Everson Gilmouth. In early nineteen eighty eight,

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fifty one year old Alvaro Gonzales Montoya, known as Bert, came to

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stay with Dorothea in the boarding house. Shortly afterwards, an application was filed

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for Dorothea to be the paye for
Bert's government benefits. The last time anybody

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saw Bert was the twenty fourth of
August nineteen eighty eight. After that,

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he missed a series of important appointments
and his social worker was unable to reach

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him. The social worker became suspicious. The social worker became suspicious, so

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Dorothea asked an acquaintance to pose as
Bert's brother in law, hoping to smooth

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things over, Claiming that he was
Bert's brother in law, Michael Abergonne,

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Dorothea's acquaintance contacted the social worker saying
that he had recently dropped Burt off in

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Utah. The ruse did not work. The social worker was even more suspicious

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about what had happened to Bert and
told Dorothea that she was going to the

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police. On the seventh of November
nineteen eighty eight, the police interviewed one

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of Dorothea's former residents, John Sharp, hoping to find out more information about

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Bert Montoya's disappearance. John insisted that
he had only seen Burt just a few

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days ago, but he passed a
note to one of the officers. There

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was handwritten and it read, She's
making me lie. Four days later,

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a detective arrived at Dorothea's boarding house
and noticed an area of the garden where

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the soil appeared to have been recently
disturbed. He asked Dorothea if he could

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dig up the soil, and she
agreed. But half an hour later,

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when the detective dug up the first
set of human remains, Dorothea managed to

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slip away from the authorities. Posing
as a harmless old woman. She was

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able to disappear. The forensic investigation
into Dorothea's property was seemingly endless. What

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it started as a search for one
missing man became a grim discovery of poorly

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buried corpses, all belonging to vulnerable
people who had genuinely trusted Dorothea. Bert

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Montoya's body was found in the southeast
corner of Dorothea's yard, buried next to

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another missing person, Leona Carpenter.
Next to the shed was a cement filled

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hole where the remains of fifty five
year old Benjamin Fink were found and sixty

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one year old Vera Fey Martin was
buried directly underneath the shed. Near Dorothea's

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rose bushes. There was a heavy
concrete slab which covered the body of sixty

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five year old Dorothy Miller. Another
victim, seventy eight year old Betty May

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Palmer, had been dismembered and buried
in a shallow grave, but despite an

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extensive search, her feet, hands, and head were never found. Forensic

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examination of the victims revealed that they
had each been killed by a drug overdose,

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often using the sedative drug florazepam,
which is often used to treat insomnia.

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After their deaths, they had been
wrapped up in plastic sheets and bed

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linen before being dragged outside to be
buried in the yard while investigators were searching

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for human remains on her property.
Dorothea remained on the run for five days

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until she was discovered at a Los
Angeles motel under a fake name. She

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was initially only charged with the killing
of Bert Montoya, but the complaint was

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quickly amended, adding charges for nine
counts of murder and officially qualifying the case

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with the death penalty. Still,
Dorothea pleaded not guilty. By the conclusion

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of Dorothea's trial, the court had
seen testimonies from more than one hundred fifty

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witnesses and viewed more than three thousand
exhibits. On the twenty sixth of August

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nineteen ninety three, Dorothea Puente was
convicted for three of the killings, but

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even after more than a month of
deliberation, the jury remained deadlocked on six

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more murders. Dorothea managed to escape
execution. Instead, she received a life

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sentence without parole. While in prison, Dorothea achieved something that she had stolen

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from each of her victims. At
eighty two years old, she died peacefully

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natural causes. That's ten minute murder
for today Brief and bingeable True Crime.

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I'm Joe. That's my name.
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Let your friends and family know all about

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Ten Minute Murder and that helps more
than you know quickly. An email question

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for today, Hello Joe, thanks
for doing this podcast because my ADHD brain

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wouldn't be able to let me listen
to longer shows. Yours is Perth.

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Anyway, the real reason for this
email. As a guy, and assuming

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you aren't a pilot, if the
pilot passed out or had a medical emergency,

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do you think you could land the
plane? Emily in Manchester? And

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Emily, what a weird question.
I know I couldn't land the plane.

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I've flown a plane like with my
hand. I've flown it like sitting in

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a little two seat plane. Someone
that I knew it was a pilot took

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me up and let me fly around
for a couple of minutes. I didn't

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take off, I didn't land.
I just maneuvered the plane a little bit

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and we came down. I didn't
take off and I didn't land. And

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even with that limited knowledge, there's
absolutely no way I could land a plane.

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Have you been inside of a cockpit? All the buttons and the gauges

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and the knobs and the dials,
and some of them aren't labeled. No,

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there's no way I could land a
plane. I could keep it up

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in the air long enough that would
let everyone tell their friends and families goodbye

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because things are not about to go
well. But I could not land it.

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No, And I feel like this
is Emily, Are you trying to

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trick me? I feel like this
is a trick question, like you've asked

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me something, You're setting me up
for some kind of answer, You're going

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to psychoanalyze me, or I don't
know, but thank you for your email.

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Anyway that's going to do it.
That is today's episode. Thank you

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so much for listening to ten Minute
Murder.