Dorothea Puente was a 59-year-old landlady who took in boarders at a rented Victorian house on F Street in downtown Sacramento. Social workers and service agencies sent her people who were hard to house: elderly men and women, people living with mental illness, and long-term drinkers, most of them living on Social Security or Supplemental Security Income checks. In November 1988 a social worker's report about a missing tenant brought police to the house. Over three days they took seven bodies out of the yard.
Puente fled while the digging was going on and was arrested in Los Angeles four days later. She was charged with nine murders: the seven people in the yard, a man whose body had been found in a box by the Sacramento River in 1986, and a woman who had died in her care in 1982. A jury in Monterey convicted her in 1993 of three of the murders, those of Dorothy Miller, Benjamin Fink and Leona Carpenter. It could not reach verdicts on the other six deaths, and those counts were dismissed. The jury also deadlocked on whether she should be executed, and she was sentenced to life in prison without parole. She denied killing anyone, and she died in prison in 2011.
Little was reported about Puente's early life, and most of what is on the record comes from her own defense. At her trial her lawyers described a hard childhood: a mother who worked as a prostitute and died when Dorothea was 10, a father who drank and threatened suicide, and sexual abuse she said she suffered at an orphanage, according to a McClatchy-Tribune obituary in 2011. Accounts of how many brothers and sisters she had varied, with reports of seven and of 18 children. Her defense exhibits, now held by the Center for Sacramento History, include childhood photographs of her and a brother named Ray, a family timeline and juvenile court records.
By the late 1970s she had built a public role in Sacramento's Hispanic community. The defense exhibits include a 1980 photograph of her with George Deukmejian, Spanish-language newspaper features showing her at a Chamber of Commerce meeting and with a local attorney, and 1979 articles about a recognition event in her honor. She told a television reporter in 1988 that she had worked for the Mexican Chamber of Commerce, and that she "used to be a very good person, at one time."
Her criminal record began well before the deaths. In 1978 an arrest for forgery led to five years of probation, and the terms barred her from running a boarding house; she then worked as an in-home caregiver, according to the Center for Sacramento History's guide to the case records. Members of the Senate Special Committee on Aging said in 1989 that her record included 30 counts of Social Security fraud.
In August 1982 Puente was convicted in Sacramento of administering a controlled substance to another person, grand theft and forgery, and she was sent to state prison for five years. A McClatchy-Tribune account described that case as drugging elderly victims in order to rob them. The prosecution's file on it, kept with the murder case records, includes plea transcripts and the testimony of a man named Malcolm McKenzie. She served about three years.
She was paroled in September 1985. The conditions of her parole barred her from running a boarding house, from caring for the elderly and from handling other people's government checks. She went back to 1426 F Street and began taking in tenants again.
Ruth Clausen Munroe was the earliest death in the case. She had retired in 1980 from a job as a pharmacy clerk, had five children and 18 to 20 grandchildren, and in June 1981 had married Harold Munroe, an alcoholic man with terminal cancer. Their medical bills had led her to file for divorce. In April 1982 she moved in with Puente, and the court later described her as a healthy and happy 61-year-old woman.
She moved in on April 11, 1982. Within weeks she was ill. On the night of April 27 a relative visited at about 8 p.m. and found her sound asleep with a pulse. At 5:30 the next morning Puente called the relative. Puente said a doctor had given Munroe "a shot," or that she had been taken to an emergency center, that she had a heart condition, and that she had been alive at 4 a.m. Later Puente said the shot had been "a shot of alcohol."
The autopsy found very high levels of acetaminophen and codeine in her blood and estimated that she had died at about midnight, from respiratory depression caused by codeine. There was no alcohol and no injury. The coroner listed the cause of death as undetermined, and her death was at first assumed to be suicide. Her children grew suspicious after reading that Puente had been convicted of drugging other people. Munroe's death was charged as a murder in 1990. The jury did not reach a verdict on it.
Everson Gillmouth was 77, a retiree from Oregon in fairly good health. He had come to know Puente while she was in prison, and in about September 1985 he drove down with his truck and trailer to live with her. His income was a Social Security check of 632 dollars a month and a small pension.
He spoke with his sister by telephone in mid-September 1985. It was her last contact with him. Puente told the sister that she and Gillmouth planned to marry on November 2, that he had sold his trailer and that he was going to Palm Springs. Later she wrote to the family under another name, saying he had suffered a stroke and that they were living in Oklahoma. She opened a joint bank account in both their names and wrote checks on it. From January 1986 his Social Security and pension checks were redirected, and a retroactive Social Security check for more than 2,500 dollars was sent in July 1986.
On January 1, 1986, his body was found in a wooden box beside the Garden Highway in Sutter County, near the Sacramento River. It was wrapped in plastic and tape and badly decomposed. There was no sign of injury, the cause of death was listed as indeterminate, and a tissue test in 1990 found no drugs, a result the court described as inconclusive. A handyman had been paid with Gillmouth's truck and 800 dollars to build the box and take it to the river, and he said he had not known a body was inside. He was later given immunity and testified. The body was not identified as Gillmouth's until early 1989, after the bodies on F Street had been found. The jury did not reach a verdict on his death.
Puente rented the upstairs flat of the two-story house at 1426 F Street and ran what the court called a room-and-board operation, mostly for alcoholic tenants. Tenants came to her through social workers and other placement workers. A local reporter who covered the case later wrote that she crowded as many as 20 tenants into three small bedrooms and a living room.
The tenants' checks were the point of the arrangement, the prosecution said. Puente became the representative payee, the person the Social Security Administration pays on a beneficiary's behalf, for several of them, and obtained power of attorney for others. She forged endorsements on their checks and filed applications in their names for state energy and rent assistance and renter's tax credits. Prosecutors told the jury she took about 87,000 dollars in all and spent part of it on a facelift, according to the McClatchy-Tribune account. Between October 1985 and September 1988 she filled 35 prescriptions for flurazepam, a sedative sold as Dalmane, the court found.
The court record names the seven people whose bodies were later found in the yard. What is known about each of them comes mostly from the trial evidence, summarized by the California Court of Appeal and quoted in the federal court's 2006 ruling.
Betty Palmer was 78. She had received Supplemental Security Income since 1974 and had several psychiatric diagnoses; the court described her as private and secretive, with a habit of signing herself out of hospitals. She took the antipsychotic haloperidol and had been prescribed flurazepam in 1985 after breaking a hip. She came to F Street in the fall of 1986, and in December her checks were redirected there.
On October 14, 1986, Puente obtained a California identification card in Betty Palmer's name bearing Puente's own photograph. She forged endorsements on Palmer's checks totaling nearly 7,000 dollars and filed assistance applications in her name in 1987 and 1988. Palmer was buried in a shallow hole in the front yard. Parts of her body were never found. The coroner could not determine a cause of death; her tissue contained doxylamine, haloperidol and flurazepam. The jury did not reach a verdict on her death.
Leona Carpenter was 78 and had received Supplemental Security Income since 1974. She had long struggled with alcohol, codeine and sedatives. In September 1986 she was taken to a hospital in a coma that doctors believed was an overdose of Dalmane, and she said she no longer wished to live. On October 21, 1986, Puente brought a notary to her hospital room and obtained power of attorney, and she cashed Carpenter's next check, signing it "Dorothea Puente for Leona Carpenter." Over time she forged checks in Carpenter's name totaling more than 7,000 dollars.
Carpenter lived at F Street for two weeks in December 1986, went back to the hospital and returned in late February 1987, looking close to death. A few weeks later she was gone. Puente told one tenant that Carpenter's daughter had taken her away, and later said she had taken her to a nursing home. In the spring of 1987 a hole was dug in the southeast corner of the yard. Carpenter's body was found there in November 1988, the first to be recovered. Her brain tissue showed low levels of codeine, diazepam and flurazepam, and the experts ruled out a massive dose of flurazepam. The jury convicted Puente of second-degree murder in her death.
James Gallop was 62 and very frail. He had an inoperable brain tumor that was not cancerous, wore an eye patch, drank heavily and had smoked for 50 years. He moved to F Street in February 1987 after surgery, and Puente managed his medications. He was prescribed flurazepam in May 1987. He disagreed with her over his checks, because he did not want her to be his payee.
On July 20, 1987, a test showed a growth in his colon that might be cancer, and he agreed to more tests. Puente then called the doctor's office and said he had gone to Los Angeles indefinitely. She told an acquaintance he had vanished in the middle of the night, and told a friend that he had died and been cremated because he had no family. She forged his signature on checks totaling more than 2,000 dollars. His body was found under a gazebo in the yard. His tissue contained his prescribed drugs and flurazepam; the cause of death was undetermined. The jury did not reach a verdict on his death.
Vera Faye Martin, 61, had received Supplemental Security Income since 1974 and had a long history of drinking. She was placed at F Street on October 2, 1987. She had little contact with her children, but she usually called them on their birthdays, and in October and November 1987 she did not call either of them.
Puente forged an endorsement on one of Martin's checks on October 5, 1987, three days after she arrived, and went on to forge checks in her name totaling more than 7,000 dollars. Martin's body was found under a metal shed in the yard. Flurazepam was the only drug the court listed in her tissue, and the cause of death was undetermined. The jury did not reach a verdict on her death.
Dorothy Miller was 65. She had lived with alcoholism, paranoia and outbursts of anger for years, and had attempted suicide. She received Social Security and a Veterans Administration pension of 517 dollars a month. She was placed at F Street on October 21, 1987.
In late October Puente introduced Miller to a man who became her representative payee in early November. Within a few weeks of her arrival Miller disappeared. Puente gave different accounts: that Miller had been arrested for shoplifting and thrown out, that a nurse had taken her away, and that she was in a hospital in Martinez being treated for alcoholism. Miller missed an appointment on November 13. A worker cleaned an upstairs floor where something had been spilled, and on November 20, 1987, a carpet cleaner was hired for the same room. Puente told people the room was haunted. She forged endorsements on Miller's checks totaling more than 11,000 dollars, beginning that October, and handed Miller's checks to the payee each month as part of her own rent.
Miller's body was found under a concrete slab in the yard. Her tissue contained carbamazepine and flurazepam. The jury convicted Puente of first-degree murder in her death.
Benjamin Fink was 55. He had been hurt in a car accident in 1980, walked with a cane and drank heavily, and he often went to emergency rooms. A few days before he moved to F Street, a plasma center turned him away for general feebleness. He was placed with Puente on March 9, 1988, and his brother visited him every week for about six weeks.
At the end of April 1988, while Fink was drunk, Puente said she was going to take him upstairs and make him feel better. He was not seen again. About four days later a tenant noticed a smell of death; Puente said the sewer had backed up. She forged endorsements on about 6,000 dollars of his checks. She later told police that Fink had left for Marysville in the summer of 1988 after she told him never to come back, because she could not stand his drunken falls any longer.
His body was found in front of the metal shed. His tissue contained amitriptyline, nortriptyline, loxapine and flurazepam, and the cause of death was undetermined. The jury convicted Puente of first-degree murder in his death.
Alvaro Gonzales Montoya, whom friends called Bert, was 51. The court described him as an innocent, passive man who drank whenever he could and heard voices he called spirits of the dead. He had lived at a detox center for five years before he was placed with Puente in early February 1988, and in January 1988 he had qualified for Supplemental Security Income for probable chronic schizophrenia. In March 1988 Puente made herself his representative payee, listing herself as his cousin. She received his first check, for 637 dollars, in June, and a retroactive payment of 1,598.97 dollars in July. She also took his food stamps.
Montoya took several prescribed drugs, and his last prescription for flurazepam was filled on July 11, 1988. Puente made sure he took his medicine with his evening meal. She paid a local bar owner each month for his beer and burritos. He was last seen drinking on August 24, 1988, and he missed a medical appointment on August 29. Within a day, Puente told a tenant she had sent him to Mexico, and she kept saying she was in touch with him there.
His body was found in the southeast corner of the yard, two feet from Leona Carpenter's. The jury did not reach a verdict on his death, the one that had led police to the house.
At least one person tried to warn the police. Brenda Trujillo had met Puente in 1982, when both were in jail and prison, and later stayed at F Street briefly. She later testified that in 1986 Puente told her "Gill" had died and asked her to help get rid of the body for 4,000 dollars, and that Puente said she had killed people and buried them in her yard. Trujillo said she had seen Puente empty powder from capsules into a man's drink, take money from his pockets after he passed out, and drug her as well. In April 1988 she told the police that Puente "was killing people." They took no action. A McClatchy-Tribune account said the tip was set aside because it came from a heroin user facing criminal charges. Letters Trujillo wrote in 1987 and 1988, including one to the Social Security Administration about checks being cashed while she was in prison, are among the trial exhibits.
Montoya's social workers did not accept the story that he had gone to Mexico. Judy Moise, a social worker who had referred him to the house, reported him missing to the Sacramento police, the Associated Press reported in 2011. A man claiming to be Montoya's brother-in-law telephoned with conflicting stories. The court found that the caller was a man staying at the house, acting at Puente's direction, who also mailed a letter for her from Reno, Nevada.
On November 7, 1988, Puente told a police officer that Montoya had been in Mexico for two months and had come back three days earlier, and that his brother-in-law had taken him away. She asked a tenant to tell police he had seen Montoya.
At 9:15 a.m. on November 11, 1988, Sacramento homicide detectives John Cabrera and Terry Brown came to the house with her parole officer, a man named Wilson. Puente told them the same story about Montoya. She said Fink had lived there until four months earlier. Wilson told her he would write up her running of the house as a parole violation. Puente agreed to let the officers search and dig in the yard, saying she had no problem with it. Inside, Cabrera found a vial crammed with blue capsules and an empty pill vial labeled "Dorothy Miller." Puente said Miller was a relative. In the yard the diggers found bones and a shoe.
Steve Martarano, then the daytime crime reporter for The Sacramento Union, was told about the find that afternoon and drove to 14th and F Streets. A homicide lieutenant told him human remains had been found after a day of digging and that police would break up a concrete slab in the side yard the next day. A neighbor told him there had been a terrible smell since the summer, and a former resident said he had moved out after seeing Puente doing a lot of digging. Martarano watched police walk her into the house, a neatly dressed older woman in a red coat. A former tenant, Homer Myers, 74, told the Associated Press that tenants had dug holes without knowing why; Puente had first asked him to dig one for an apricot tree. The court found that inmate laborers had dug and filled holes and poured concrete in the yard at her direction.
On November 12 Puente asked Cabrera whether she was under arrest. He said she was not. She told him she was nervous and wanted to have coffee with her nephew at the Clarion Hotel, and Cabrera escorted her away from the house. About 20 minutes later the diggers found a body. She did not come back. Over November 12 to 14 the police recovered seven bodies, six along the eastern edge of the yard and one in the front yard on the west side.
After leaving the house, Puente went to a bar in West Sacramento with a friend and then took a taxi to Stockton for 60 dollars. From there she reached Los Angeles. A warrant was issued on November 14. The FBI obtained a federal warrant to join the search, and its papers noted that she had 14 close relatives in Mexico and had asked her parole agents in 1986 for permission to travel there. Officers looked for her in California, Mexico and Las Vegas.
On November 16, in a Los Angeles bar, she met an older man, introduced herself as Donna Johanson, offered to cook him Thanksgiving dinner and suggested she might move in with him. He recognized her from television news. A tip reached KCBS-TV, which alerted the police, the Associated Press reported. Officers arrested her at about 10:30 that night near the downtown motel where she had registered as Donna Johanson with a San Francisco address. She had 3,042.25 dollars in cash. "She looked like she expected the police," a Los Angeles police officer, Paul Von Lutzow, told the Associated Press.
The Sacramento television station KCRA chartered a jet to fly its reporter Mike Boyd to Los Angeles, and the authorities used it to bring Puente back to Sacramento. Boyd was allowed a short interview on condition that he not ask about the case.
The Sacramento County coroner's office, working with forensic anthropologists, identified the bodies and carried out autopsies. In every case the cause of death was listed as undetermined. Toxicology found flurazepam in all seven, together with other drugs, some prescribed to the person and some not. Several bodies were found wrapped with duct tape, twine and absorbent pads. The body found in the box in Sutter County in 1986 was identified as Everson Gillmouth's in early 1989. Police also looked again at the 1982 death of Ruth Munroe, whose family had pressed for a new investigation.
The case reached Washington. On June 6, 1989, the Senate Special Committee on Aging, chaired by David Pryor of Arkansas, held a hearing on the Social Security Administration's representative payee program. Several senators cited the Sacramento case. Pryor said the agency had made her the payee for one of the people whose murders she was charged with, and senators said her record of Social Security fraud had not stopped the agency from trusting her with beneficiaries' checks. Senator Quentin Burdick called the case the extreme example of what could happen when the payee system went unchecked. Some of the senators' statements were inaccurate: Pryor spoke of eight bodies, and Senator Richard Shelby's statement said she had been convicted of murder, four years before any verdict.
The preliminary hearing began in Sacramento in April 1990 and ran into June. Witnesses included Moise, Cabrera, Trujillo, the handyman who built Gillmouth's box, and the man who had served as Dorothy Miller's payee, who received a federal immunity letter in 1992. On July 3, 1990, Puente was charged in Sacramento County Superior Court with nine counts of first-degree murder, with the special circumstance of multiple murder, which made the case eligible for the death penalty. She pleaded not guilty in August 1990.
On February 19, 1992, a judge granted a change of venue because pretrial publicity in Sacramento had made a fair trial there impossible, and the case was sent to Monterey County on July 9, 1992.
Jury selection began in Monterey on November 2, 1992, and lasted about three months. The jury of eight men and four women then heard more than five months of testimony and received about 3,100 exhibits, UPI reported. The judge was Superior Court Judge Michael Virga.
The prosecution's case was circumstantial. The tenants had lived in Puente's house; their bodies were buried in her yard; she gave false explanations for their disappearances; she controlled their money and went on cashing their checks; and flurazepam, a drug she obtained in quantity, was in every body. The jury was also instructed on a duty of care toward the tenants who depended on her. Prosecutors called her one of the most cold and calculating female killers the country had seen and said she preyed on people investigators called "shadow people."
The defense said the tenants had died of natural causes, from age, illness and drinking. Puente had buried them, her lawyers said, because she feared going back to prison for running a boarding house in violation of her parole, and because she had already been suspected once, after Ruth Munroe's death. Defense exhibits set out the tenants' medical histories, her troubled childhood, her support in the community and the effect of the press coverage. Expert witnesses drew charts of drug half-lives and drug sensitivity for the jury, now kept among the defense exhibits.
Deliberations began on July 15, 1993. On August 26, 1993, after 24 days of deliberation, it returned verdicts on three counts. It found Puente guilty of the first-degree murders of Dorothy Miller and Benjamin Fink, found the multiple-murder special circumstance true, and found her guilty of the second-degree murder of Leona Carpenter.
The jury could not agree on the other six counts: Ruth Munroe, Everson Gillmouth, Betty Palmer, James Gallop, Vera Faye Martin and Bert Montoya. On four of them the jurors stood 11 to 1 for first-degree murder. A mistrial was declared on those counts, and the prosecution later dismissed them. Puente was never convicted in any of those six deaths.
Reviewing the case in 1994, Publishers Weekly noted that the jury's split verdict left six deaths without a result. The review was of Disturbed Ground, a book on the case by the journalist Carla Norton.
The jury then heard evidence on whether she should be sentenced to death or to life without parole. After three days of deliberation the jurors reached an impasse, and on October 13, 1993, Judge Virga declared a mistrial in the penalty phase. The jurors said they had split 7 to 5, with most favoring prison over death. Prosecutors chose not to try the penalty again, so Puente, then 64, would receive life without parole. Afterward the judge invited the jurors into his chambers for lemonade and cookies.
On December 10, 1993, she was sentenced to two concurrent terms of life without the possibility of parole, for the murders of Miller and Fink, and a concurrent term of 15 years to life for the murder of Carpenter.
Puente appealed and at the same time petitioned for habeas corpus. On August 28, 1997, the California Court of Appeal for the Sixth District affirmed the judgment in an unpublished opinion. It found the evidence sufficient even though no cause of death could be proved, pointing to the secrecy of the deaths, the burials in her yard, the flurazepam in the bodies and her control of the victims' money. It also ordered the lower court to look into her claims about the jury. The California Supreme Court denied review on December 10, 1997.
The Sacramento County Superior Court held an evidentiary hearing on her juror-misconduct claims in 1998. On September 25, 1998, it found no misconduct and denied the petition. In a renewed petition filed in March 1999 she raised three new claims about the jurors. On July 20, 2000, the Court of Appeal denied relief on the hearing findings and held the new claims procedurally barred. The California Supreme Court denied her petitions on November 15, 2000, and May 23, 2001.
Her federal petition for habeas corpus, filed in August 2002 and heard in the Northern District of California, raised five claims: that the evidence was insufficient; that she had not been given fair notice of the prosecution's theories of murder by poison and second-degree felony murder; that the jury had been wrongly instructed on a duty of care; that evidence about a prosecution toxicologist had been wrongly excluded; and that juror misconduct had denied her a fair jury. One of the juror claims concerned a juror who had talked during deliberations about his or her own past use of the prescription drugs found in the victims; the federal court held that this was permissible. On March 10, 2006, Judge Jeffrey S. White denied the petition and her request for a hearing. He wrote that the jury could have doubted the exact cause of each death but that the inferences from the evidence supported the verdicts. On March 28, 2006, he refused her a certificate of appealability, calling her contentions clearly without merit. The United States Supreme Court denied her petition for certiorari on February 19, 2008.
Puente served her sentence at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla. While there she corresponded with the artist Shane Bugbee, and in 2004 he published a book of her recipes under the title Cooking With a Serial Killer. She denied the killings, saying her tenants had died of natural causes.
She died at about 10:15 a.m. on Sunday, March 27, 2011, at the prison, of natural causes, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said. She was 82. KCRA reported that she died in the prison's on-site skilled nursing facility.
The house still stands. It was bought and sold several times after 1988. In 2011, KCRA reported, it was sold at public auction for 215,000 dollars to a Sacramento couple who renovated it with full knowledge of its history. In 2013 it was one of five homes on the Sacramento Old City Association's home tour, and John Cabrera, the lead detective, and Laura Santos, a deputy coroner who had worked the case, came to see it, the Associated Press reported. Cabrera, visiting for the first time in at least 25 years, pointed out the upstairs bedroom where, he said, tenants were kept after being drugged, and the narrow staircase down which they were carried. "I love this house," he said, adding that he had wanted to come back when it was happy.
In September 2015 about 600 people toured the house, with the proceeds going to the Francis House Center, which serves homeless people in Sacramento. A short documentary by the Los Angeles filmmaker Nicholas Coles, The House Is Innocent, featuring the owners and Cabrera, was judged the top documentary at the Sacramento Music and Film Festival that month. Capitol Weekly reported that Cabrera's career had been affected by the case. By March 2022 the first episode of the Netflix series Worst Roommate Ever had profiled her, KCRA reported.
Proven by final judgment: the first-degree murders of Dorothy Miller and Benjamin Fink and the second-degree murder of Leona Carpenter, with the multiple-murder special circumstance found true. The convictions survived direct appeal, state habeas proceedings, federal habeas review and a petition to the United States Supreme Court.
Charged, no verdict: the deaths of Ruth Munroe, Everson Gillmouth, Betty Palmer, James Gallop, Vera Faye Martin and Alvaro Montoya. The jury stood 11 to 1 for conviction on four of these counts, but no verdict was reached, and the counts were dismissed. In law she was not convicted in any of these deaths.
Cause of death: the coroner could not determine how any of the seven people in the yard died, and no drugs were found in Gillmouth's remains in a 1990 test. The convictions rest on circumstantial evidence. The courts held that a murder verdict can stand without proof of the exact cause of death.
Help with the burials: the court found that inmate laborers dug holes and poured concrete at her direction, and the handyman who built Gillmouth's box said he did not know what it held. No one else was convicted in connection with the deaths.
Details that vary between sources: Vera Faye Martin's age (61 in the court's statement of facts; 64 in the archive guide); Dorothy Miller's age (65 in the court record; 64 in the archive guide); whether Ruth Munroe's death was first ruled a suicide (archive guide) or undetermined and assumed to be suicide (court record); the year the house was bought by its current owners (2011 auction, KCRA; about 2010, Capitol Weekly); and the number of Puente's brothers and sisters (seven or 18). Some later reports say two bodies were found in the Sacramento River; only one, Gillmouth's, was found by the river, and his box was found in 1986.
1978: arrested for forgery; placed on five years' probation that bars her from running a boarding house.
April 11, 1982: Ruth Munroe moves in with her; Munroe dies on the night of April 27 to 28.
August 1982: Puente convicted of administering a controlled substance, grand theft and forgery; sentenced to five years in state prison.
September 1985: paroled, with conditions barring boarding-house work, elder care and handling others' government checks; returns to 1426 F Street.
About September 1985: Everson Gillmouth, 77, moves in from Oregon.
January 1, 1986: Gillmouth's body is found in a box beside the Garden Highway, Sutter County.
Fall 1986: Betty Palmer comes to F Street; October 14, Puente obtains an ID card in Palmer's name.
October 21, 1986: Puente obtains power of attorney for Leona Carpenter in her hospital room.
February 1987: James Gallop moves in; Leona Carpenter returns to the house late that month.
July 20, 1987: Gallop's medical test; Puente then tells his doctor he has gone to Los Angeles.
October 2, 1987: Vera Faye Martin is placed at F Street.
October 21, 1987: Dorothy Miller is placed at F Street.
February 1988: Bert Montoya is placed with Puente; she becomes his payee in March.
March 9, 1988: Benjamin Fink is placed at F Street; he is last seen at the end of April.
April 1988: Brenda Trujillo tells police Puente is killing people; no action is taken.
August 24, 1988: Montoya is last seen.
November 7, 1988: Puente tells police Montoya is in Mexico.
November 11, 1988: detectives and her parole officer search the house and begin digging; remains are found.
November 12, 1988: Puente leaves the house; bodies are recovered from November 12 to 14.
November 14, 1988: warrant issued.
November 16, 1988: arrested in Los Angeles; flown back to Sacramento.
Early 1989: Gillmouth's body identified.
June 6, 1989: Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing on the representative payee program.
April to June 1990: preliminary hearing in Sacramento.
July 3, 1990: charged with nine counts of first-degree murder with a special circumstance; pleads not guilty in August.
February 19, 1992: change of venue granted; case sent to Monterey County on July 9.
November 2, 1992: jury selection begins.
July 15, 1993: deliberations begin.
August 26, 1993: convicted of the murders of Miller and Fink (first degree) and Carpenter (second degree); jury deadlocks on six counts.
October 13, 1993: penalty-phase mistrial; prosecutors do not retry the penalty.
December 10, 1993: sentenced to two concurrent terms of life without parole and a concurrent 15 years to life.
1994: Carla Norton's book Disturbed Ground published.
August 28, 1997: Court of Appeal affirms; California Supreme Court denies review December 10, 1997.
September 25, 1998: Superior Court finds no juror misconduct.
July 20, 2000, to May 23, 2001: further state habeas petitions denied.
2004: Cooking With a Serial Killer published.
March 10, 2006: federal habeas petition denied; certificate of appealability refused March 28.
February 19, 2008: U.S. Supreme Court denies certiorari.
March 27, 2011: dies of natural causes at the Central California Women's Facility, Chowchilla, aged 82.
2011: the F Street house sold at auction.
2013: the house is on the Old City Association home tour.
September 2015: charity tour and premiere of The House Is Innocent.
By March 2022: Netflix's Worst Roommate Ever features the case.