Latest / Crime Night / Dorothea Puente: America's Most Dangerous Woman

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Dorothea Puente: America's Most Dangerous Woman · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome.
• 0:00
  Speaker 2: Imagine this, it's Sacramento, nineteen eighty eight. You're walking down
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: f Street, maybe it's a warm evening. You pass this
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: old Victorian house. Looks a bit worn maybe, but the
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: garden's tidy. And this is the home of Dorothea Plinting. Locally,
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: everyone knows her. She's this kindly older woman runs a
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: boarding house for people who've sort of fallen through the cracks,
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: the elderly, the vulnerable.
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it really did look like a safe haven, place
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: of compassion. Yeah, but what we're diving into today is
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: how that whole image was just a meticulously crafted stage.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: Behind that friendly facade, there's this chillingly calculated operation involving fraud, manipulation,
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: and ultimately serial murder.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Right, So our goal here is to really unpack that.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: How did this house known for kindness become a burial ground?
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: And maybe more importantly, how did she fool everyone for
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: so long? Why didn't anyone suspect the sweet old lady.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: It's a digly disturbing question. And what's really striking is
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: how she used the system, use people's assumptions against them.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: It wasn't just random violence, it was methodical. She weaponized
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: that image of harmlessness.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's start at the beginning with how this whole
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: thing were set up. Dorothea Puente. She specifically looked for
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: residents who were well, difficult placements, people with significant mental
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: health issues, addictions, disabilities.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: Exactly the kind of people that sadly society often overlooks.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: Maybe they didn't have family checking in or friends asking questions.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: They were isolated and that.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Made them vulnerable. One resident was Alvaro Montoya. He had schizophrenia,
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: physical disabilities, a really tough case. His social worker, Judy Mius,
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: she had struggled to find him a place.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: And Punte's house seemed like a godsend. MIAs placed him there,
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: probably feeling relieved, thinking he was finally somewhere safe, somewhere stable.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: But then just a month later, Montoya is gone, vanished.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Judy Mius calls Puente to check.
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: In and Puente has this story ready. Oh overo. He
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: suddenly decided to take a trip, went down to Mexico,
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: she said, to visit some friends. Very spontaneous.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Sounds okay on the surface, maybe, but Mius knew better, right, That's.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: The critical moment. Mius knew Montoya's medical details, inside out
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  Speaker 3: his condition, his mental state. There was just no way
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: he could manage a solo trip like that, especially across
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: the border. It simply didn't add up.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: So her professional alarm bells are ringing. But you can
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: see the dilemma, can't you. She's got this gut feeling,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: this strong suspicion, but no actual proof.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: And she's dealing with this woman who seems like a
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: pillar of the community doing good work. Do you report
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: her based on a hunch, risk damaging her reputation, maybe
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: even closing down a needed facility.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: It's tough.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: She did notify the police, but even then she kind
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: of hedges her bets right, acknowledging he might have just
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: run off.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and the police initially treated it cautiously. They go
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: to the house, Quente repeats the Mexico story, probably very convincingly,
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: very sweetly. They're likely thinking, Okay, maybe he did just
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: wander off missing person case.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: Until that one small detail changes everything. As the officers
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: are leaving one of Puente's tenants, you can imagine him
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: being terrified. He slips a note to one of.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: Them, passes it over secretly, and that note says, she
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: makes me.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Lie Wow, talk about a dramatic turn. Suddenly it's not
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: just a missing person anymore.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: Exactly, that little piece of paper blows the whole facade apart.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: The police immediately switch gears. Now they're thinking possible crime scene.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: They start looking around the yard and it doesn't take
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: long to spotted areas where the soil looks freshly dug up.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: Disturbed, obvious signs of recent activity. But here's where Puente's
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: composure is just chilling. The officer asks for permission to
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: dig in the yard.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: And what does she do.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: She doesn't panic, she doesn't object, She apparently smiles, cheerfully agrees,
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  Speaker 2: and even offers them shovels.
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: Incredible, isn't it. Then she goes upstairs, stands on the
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: balcony and just watches them like she's observing some routine
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  Speaker 3: gardening work. The confidence is staggering.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: So they start digging and they find something bones looks
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: like a lower torso, but they're pretty decomposed, and.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: This leads to a major miscalculation by the police. Initially, well,
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: the decomposition suggests the body's been there for a while.
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: They look at Puente, this seemingly frail older woman, and
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: think Okay, maybe this body is old, maybe from before
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  Speaker 3: she lived here, or she couldn't have done this alone,
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: dismembered and buried someone.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: Right, they underestimate her physical capability, or maybe they just
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: can't square the image with the act. They figure this
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: particular body probably isn't Montoya, given the state it's in.
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  Speaker 3: Precisely, they call for forensic backup to identify the remains,
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: but crucially, they don't immediately see Puente as the prime
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: suspect for this particular discovery. They're still partly blinded by
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: that kind old lady persona.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: So picture the scene.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: Police are digging up human remains in her yard, Forensic
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: teams are arriving, neighbors are gathering, maybe reporters too. It's
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: becoming chaotic, and.
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  Speaker 3: Puente seizes the moment pure manipulation. She tells the officer
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: in charge that all this commotion is upsetting her, making
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: feel faint. She needs to step away, maybe get a
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: cup of coffee down the street to calm down.
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  Speaker 2: And the officer, still likely seeing her as this distressed
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: elderly woman, lets her go.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: Let's her walk right out of there. She just calmly
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: leaves the property, supposedly heading for.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: Coffee, but just so she's walking away. This situation back
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: in the garden escalates dramatically.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: Yes, the digging continues and they find a second body.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: Oh wow, now they realize this isn't an old, isolated incident. Yeah,
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: something much, much worse is happening here. They immediately try
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: to find Puente.
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  Speaker 2: And she's gone vanished, use the coffee break as her escape.
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, a manhunt begins. The police have to split their focus,
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: chase down Puente, who's now officially a fugitive and suspected killer,
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: and continue the excavation, which is clearly revealing a mass grave.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: And then another residence steps up. Someone who saw what
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: was going on.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: Yes, someone watching from the crowd comes forward. He tells
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: the police that Puente often paid him to dig holes
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: in the yard.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Paid him to dig holes.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: What was her explanation.
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: She told him it was for burying trash and senior ways.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: See your waist. That's horrifyingly cynical. She was literally calling
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: her victims trash.
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: It's chilling and it shows how she normalized the activity.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: Digging in the yard just seemed like part of the
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: house is, you know, somewhat unusual. Routine. This witness points
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: out the spots where.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: He dug, and using his directions.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: They unearthed five more bodies, bringing the total count from
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: that garden to seven, including tragically the remains of Alvarro Montoya,
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: the man whose disappearance started it all.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: So the kindly landlady facade is completely shattered. She's exposed
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: as a serial killer.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: She fled, but they caught up with her.
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: They did. She made it to Los Angeles, and incredibly,
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: she didn't really go into hiding. She tried to blend in,
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: even started to befriend another older man.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Trying to find another victim.
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: Maybe it seems likely, but thankfully this man recognized her
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: face from the news reports. Her picture was everywhere. By then.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: He called the police and they arrested her.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: And once she was caught, her past started coming out right.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: This wasn't her first brush with the.
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  Speaker 3: Law, not at all. Turns out, Dorothy A. Puente was
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: already registered felon. She'd done time before for things like theft,
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: forging checks, specifically check stolen from elderly people she was
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: supposed to be helping or caring for, So.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: This boarding house scheme was just an escalation of her
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: previous crimes exactly.
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  Speaker 3: It was the same pattern, just on a much deadlier scale.
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  Speaker 3: The boarding house wasn't just a cover, it was the
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  Speaker 3: entire mechanism for her real business. Yeah, systematic fraud.
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  Speaker 2: Let's talk about that financial motive. It wasn't random, was it.
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  Speaker 2: She chose these people for a reason.
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  Speaker 3: Absolutely calculated. She took in vulnerable seniors, homeless individuals, people
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  Speaker 3: with disabilities, specifically so she could get access to their
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: Social Security checks, their pensions, any government benefits they received.
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  Speaker 2: And the killing was part of the business model.
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  Speaker 3: It seems so. The killing allowed the fraud to continue uninterrupted.
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  Speaker 3: Think about it. She targeted people who often had no
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: family or close friends checking on them, hard cases, as
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: you said earlier, so when she killed them, their absence
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: might not be noticed for a long time. Meanwhile, she
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: could continue collecting and cashing their checks. The bureaucracy involved
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: in stopping or redirecting those payments can be slow, especially
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: if no one reports the person missing or deceased.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: She was exploiting the system's blind spots. She knew these
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  Speaker 2: vulnerable people might disappear and the checks would just keep
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: coming for months, maybe even years.
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  Speaker 3: That seems to have been the core plan maximize the
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: isolation of the victim, to maximize the duration of the
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  Speaker 3: income stream after they were disposed of. It's utterly cold blooded.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: And the deception about her own identity played into this too,
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  Speaker 2: didn't it the whole frail old lady act.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: Oh, definitely. When she was arrested, she was actually only
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: fifty nine years old, but she presented herself as much older,
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  Speaker 3: much more fragile.
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  Speaker 1: How did she do that?
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  Speaker 3: She deliberately dyed her hair white or these large thick glasses.
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  Speaker 3: She cultivated this image of a harmless grandmother. It was
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: pure theater, designed to make people underestimate her, trust her,
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  Speaker 3: maybe even pitier.
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  Speaker 1: A disguise used as a weapon.
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  Speaker 3: Precisely, it likely helped her deflect suspicion, maybe even manipulate
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: officials or police initially, but the forensic evidence, once they
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: started piecing it together, painted a very different, very brutal picture.
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  Speaker 2: What did the forensics reveal about the bodies themselves beyond
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: just identifying them?
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  Speaker 3: This is where it gets particularly gruesome. All seven bodies
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  Speaker 3: found in the garden had been dismembered. They were missing
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: their heads, their hands, and their feet.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Why what was the purpose of that purely.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: To obstruct identification. No head means no easy dental record comparison,
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: no hands means no fingerprints, no feet maybe harder to
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  Speaker 3: estimate height. It was a calculated effort to make it
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: as difficult as possible for police to figure out who
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: these victims were.
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  Speaker 2: But investigators were able to identify most of them despite that.
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  Speaker 3: They were remarkably they had to use other methods. These
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: like medical implants, unique surgical scars, sometimes clothing fragments found
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: with the remains, and where possible, DNA. Eventually it was
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: painstaking work, but her attempt to erase their identities ultimately failed.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Was there a final piece of evidence that tied her
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: directly to the murders themselves?
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: Yes, there was the toxicology reports on the victims. They
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: found a consistent pattern, which was all the victims had
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: been heavily sedated before death with the same specific type
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: of potent tranquilizer drug.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Let me guess a drug she had access to exactly.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: It turned out that this particular tranquilizer was a medication
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: for which Dorothea Puente and only she in that house,
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: had a valid current medical prescription.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: So that was the smoking gun.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: The chemical signature linking her directly to the deaths.
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: Pretty much undeniable. I proved she wasn't just neglecting them
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: or involved in fraud. She was actively drugging and killing them.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: She was eventually tried and convicted on nine counts of murder.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: Nine but they only found seven bodies in the garden.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: That's right. The prosecution believed, based on other evidence like
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: missing persons reports and financial records tied to former residence,
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: that there were at least two other victims whose bodies
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: were never.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: Recovered, Which leads to one of the big lingering questions,
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: doesn't it? How did she physically manage all this? A
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: woman fifty nine, not particularly large, dismembering and burying seven,
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: possibly more bodies alone.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: It's a huge unanswered question. The sheer physical labor involved
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: is immense. Did she have help? She never admitted it.
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: How did she do it without neighbors noticing? More? The
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: digging was explained away as trash, But the dismemberment, where
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: did that happen?
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: And where are the missing parts? The heads, the hands,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: the feet. Were they ever found?
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: No, never recovered. That's another dark mystery left behind. Dorothy
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: a plane died in prison in twenty eleven, taking those
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: secrets with her. The full truth of what happened inside
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: that house, only its walls really know.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: It's just a chilling reminder, isn't it How completely appearances
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: can fool us. How something seemingly safe and compassionate it
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: on the surface, can hide unimaginable darkness.
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  Speaker 3: It really makes you think we rely so much on
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: trusting certain images. The kind neighbor, the helpful caregiver, the
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: unassuming little old lady Puente understood that trust and exploited
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: it ruthlessly, and the cost was devastating. Consider this final thought,
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: how often do we let a comforting image or just
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: bureaucratic routine blind us to signs that something is wrong.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: How many others might be targeted precisely because they are forgotten,
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: their absence unlikely to cause an immediate stir. Dorothy Appunty
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: didn't just kill people, She prayed on those society had
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: already started to leave behind. That might be the most
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: terrifying lesson of all. From f Street