SENIOR WITH A SINISTER SECRET

HOW DOROTHEA PUENTE TURNED HER BOARDINGHOUSE INTO A HOUSE OF HORRORS.

- SEAN NEUMANN

Although she was a serial killer, Dorothea Puente was so seemingly nonthreatening that authorities let her out of their sights time and time againeven after digging up bodies in her backyard. A mother of two who ran a boardinghouse in Sacramento, she would ultimately die in prison in 2011 after being convicted of three of the nine murders she was charged with in the 1980s. But for years the "white-haired landlady who handed out homemade tamales and fussed over her rose beds and vegetable garden," as Sactown Magazine described her, had been hiding her true intent behind her good deeds.