Perrini - WOMEN SERIAL KILLERS OF THE 17th CENTURY

Dorothea Helen Puente, nee Gray, was born in Redlands, California on January 9th, 1929. Her parents Jesse James Gray and Trudy Mae Yates were cotton pickers, and Dorothea was their sixth child. Her father became terminally ill shortly after her birth and was in and out of hospital. Trudy Yates turned to drink and prostitution.

For the children, it was a living nightmare. Her father would suffer from serious suicidal depression and would threaten to kill himself in front of the children. In 1937 , when Dorothea was eight years old, her father died of tuberculosis, and the mothers drinking spiraled out of control. She would often disappear for days leaving the children to fend for themselves. Social Services finally intervened in February of 1938. Dorothea and two other siblings were sent to an orphanage, the Church of Christ Home in Ontario, California until relatives from Fresno, California, took her in. While at the orphanage, Dorothea was sexually abused. They lived at the orphanage until Dorotheas eldest brother James and his wife Louise took them to live with them. In 1938, her mother died in a motorcycle accident.

When she was older, Dorothea lied about her childhood, saying that she was one of three children who were born and raised in Mexico. She lied rather than admit the truth of her appalling childhood , and lying became second nature to her. She claimed at one point in her life that she had been an American prisoner of war during the Second World War, had survived the infamous Bataan Death March (at the age of 13), and had witnessed the Hiroshima bombing. She also had claimed to others that the Swedish ambassador was her brother and that Rita Hayworth, the Hollywood actress, was a close acquaintance. These were just a few of the many fabrications she made up about her life.

In 1945 when Dorothea was sixteen and a particularly attractive girl , she married twenty-two-year-old Fred McFaul, a soldier who had just returned from the Philippines. The marriage produced two daughters. One daughter went to live with Freds mother, and the other she had adopted. In 1948, Dorothea had a miscarriage. Shortly after this, her husband, much to her humiliation, left her. Fred had become weary of Dorotheas constant lies and fabrications and her expensive tastes in clothes and silk stockings. Rather than admit the truth, Dorothea lied to friends and family that he had died of a heart attack.

Dorothea, now single, attempted to forge checks to help fund her expensive taste in clothes and silk stockings . This career move was not a success as she was arrested and sentenced to a year in prison. After six months, she was paroled, became pregnant by a man she hardly knew, and gave birth to a daughter whom she gave up for adoption. In 1952, Dorothea married Axel Johanson, a Swedish merchant seaman. This was the beginning of a turbulent 14-year marriage. Axel would be away at sea for long periods of time and on many occasions when he came home he would find other men residing with Dorothea. Axel and his wife would then fight, separate, and then make up in a pattern that lasted throughout their marriage.

In 1960, Dorothea was arrested for prostitution in a downtown , seedy, Sacramento house of ill repute and was sentenced to 90 days in the Sacramento County Jail. Following her release, she was arrested for vagrancy and sentenced to another 90 days in jail. Following her release from her second 90 days Dorothea found work as a nurse's aide, caring for disabled and elderly people in private homes.

In 1966, Dorothea divorced Axel Johansen. On February 23, 1968 when Dorothea was thirty-nine, she married a man nineteen years her junior, Roberto Puente. The marriage barely lasted two years. Following the marriage, she began operating "The Samaritans, a half-way house for alcoholics. Dorothea was married for the fourth and last time in 1976, at the age of 47, to Pedro Angel Montalvo, one of her tenants. Pedro was a 51-year-old laborer from Puerto Rico. This marriage lasted only a few months. He soon became unhappy with Dorotheas spending and incessant lying. They had married in Reno, Nevada; on the wedding certificate, she had written her fathers name down as Jesus Sahagun and her mothers maiden name as Puente . Dorothea had told him that she was a Mexican doctor and that she owned property in Mexico. After a month, he walked out on her but like her earlier marriage to Axel Johanson, they would argue, separate, and make up, a pattern that continued even after the divorce. The halfway house closed down after she accrued a $10,000 debt on the business and was found to have forged thirty-four checks she had taken from her alcoholic tenants. Dorothea was sentenced to five years probation. The judge also ruled that she should receive counseling; one psychiatrist who examined Dorothea thought that she was schizophrenic and in his opinion a "highly disturbed woman." While on probation, she continued to commit the same fraud by spending time in local bars looking for older men who were receiving benefits. She would then forge their signatures and steal their money. On occasion, she would drug their drinks and fleece them for what she possibly could.

Dorothea took over a three-story, spacious , 16-bedroom care home at 2100 F Street in Sacramento, California. The neighborhood had, at one time, been the fashionable area of the state capital. Just two blocks away stood the former governor's enormous mansion. Since then, the area had depreciated and many of the once-fine and luxurious homes were now flophouses or boarded up. Here, Dorothea took in elderly and mentally disabled boarders and stole their social security checks. Sometimes she had as many as 30 boarders. Dorothea projected to her neighbors an air of respectability and of a hard-working landlady. Her house was clean with well-polished floors and efficiently well run.

In late 1981, when Dorothy dressed to the nines and in her high heel shoes , dropped into one of her regular watering-holes the Round Corner she befriended Harold Munroe and his wife Ruth. During the course of the ensuing conversation, Ruth told Dorothea that she was seeking employment. Dorothea inquired whether she might be interested in investing in a restaurant with her. Dorothea explained that the owner of the Round Corner wanted to rent out the restaurant part of his bar at lunchtimes. Dorothea had said she wanted to take it over but needed a partner who could drive, as she didnt. Ruth was excited and at the age of sixty-one said she wanted a new challenge. After hours of discussion, they agreed to go into business. Dorothea would run the kitchen, and Ruth would take care of handling supplies and transportation. Ruth withdrew the funds for her share of the partnership and handed it over to Dorothea.

Dorothea worked hard in the restaurant every day at lunchtime but within a short amount of time told Ruth that more funding was needed. Ruth handed over thousands of dollars to Dorothea. Ruth was distracted from the business as her husband Harold had become seriously ill. Early in 1982, Harold was diagnosed with terminal cancer and was confined to a hospital. Dorothea generously offered to let Ruth come and stay in her boarding house for free rather than fret at home on her own. Ruth leapt at the offer and on April 11 th , 1982, with the help of her sons, moved into Dorotheas house. Just two weeks later, Ruth Monroe became sick with a mysterious illness. Her children came to visit her and were aghast at her appearance. Dorothea reassured them that she would take excellent care of their mother, telling them that she used to be a nurse. Then Dorothea, on the morning of April the 28 th , phoned them to tell them their mother had died. The coroners report put the cause of death as an overdose of codeine and acetaminophen and judged the death a suicide.