Highlighted Crime
Story of the Week -
On November 11, 1988, police unearth a corpse buried in
the lawn of 59-year-old Dorothea Puente’s home in Sacramento, California.
Puente operated a residential home for elderly people, and an investigation led
to the discovery of six more bodies buried on her property.
Puente was a diagnosed schizophrenic who had already been
in trouble with the law. She had previously served prison time for check
forgery, as well as drugging and robbing people she met in bars. After her
release, she opened a boarding house for elderly people. Beginning in 1986,
social worker Peggy Nickerson sent 19 clients to Puente’s home. When some of
the residents mysteriously disappeared, Nickerson grew suspicious. Puente’s
neighbors, who reported the smell of rotting flesh emanating from her vicinity,
validated Nickerson’s concern.
Although all the buried bodies were found to contain
traces of the sedative Dalmane, the coroner was never able to identify an exact
cause of death. Still, during a trial that lasted five months and included
3,100 exhibits, prosecutors were able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that
Puente had murdered her boarders, most likely to collect their Social Security
checks. Though she was formally charged with nine counts of murder and
convicted on three, authorities suspected that Puente might have been
responsible for as many as 25 deaths. She died on March 27, 2011 at age 82 from
natural causes at a California women’s prison facility in Chowchilla.
Check back every
Monday for a new installment of “This Week in Crime History.”
Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for www.crimemagazine.com and is the author
of seven nonfiction books that includes the award winning Murder and Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked early California, 1849-1949
and the soon to be released In the
Company of Evil Thirty Years of California Crime, 1950-1980. Visit Michael’s
website www.michaelthomasbarry.com
for more information. His books can be purchased from Amazon through the following
links:
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