Dorothea Puente Boardinghouse Serial Killer

In the 1980s, Sacramento landlady Dorothea Puente ran a boarding house for elderly and disabled tenants, presenting herself as a kindly caretaker for the down and out. Instead, she drugged and murdered at least seven of her residents, many of whom received government benefit checks that she continued to cash.

Police discovered bodies buried in her yard in 1988 after a social worker reported a missing tenant, leading to an excavation that uncovered multiple corpses. Puente was convicted of multiple murders and died in prison in 2011, still insisting she had only tried to help people.

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