Disturbed Ground (25 page)

The landlady was always cordial to Dr. Drake, but he couldn't help but notice her other side. Any breach of the rules brought a fit of cursing down on the head of the transgressor. It rarely happened twice, Dr. Drake noticed, "He was either out of there or else he changed his ways."

Her new enterprise flourished, as did her reputation, propelled along by serendipitous associations within Sacramento's Hispanic community. This identity as Dorothea Puente suited her emergence as something of a social butterfly. She befriended a big, charismatic man
named Francisco Suarez and helped him launch his weekly Spanish-language newspaper,
la Semana News.
Soon she was rubbing elbows at Mexican-American fund-raisers, having her picture taken for the paper. She picked up some Spanish, dropped a lot of cash, and became known as “
la doctora.
"

At the pinnacle of her fame and glory, Dorothea was like a junkie with a philanthropic habit. Charities, scholarships, radio programs, and assorted individuals all benefited from her sponsorship. If your daughter needed a wedding reception, ask Dorothea. If your cousin needed to pay his "coyote" for getting him across the border, ask Dorothea. Everyone dipped into her pot and benefited from her largess. And those who cautioned Dorothea that she was being taken advantage of were rebuffed. "I'm a wealthy woman," she told them. "I own this house, a house in Mexico, and a house in Spain."

She savored her renown and grew intoxicated by her own fantasy. At one point, she told her attorney, Donald Dorfman, that she was going into the hospital for surgery—cancer, of course—and she needed to draw up a will. Dorfman obliged, and was astonished by all the "adopted" children for whom Dorothea wished to provide, nearly a dozen, plus grandchildren (though she specifically dispossessed one). The benefactress to the end, she also left a large sum to a Catholic school.

At the time, Dorfman believed that Dorothea was a "highly respected and affluent member of the Hispanic community." Only later did he realize that she owned none of the assets she wished to bequeath.

At forty-seven, Dorothea set her sights on husband number four. Having soured on younger men, she was sweet on one of her tenants, a handsome fifty-one-year-old laborer from Puerto Rico named Pedro Angel Montalvo. "She told me she fell in love with me as soon as she saw me," Montalvo recalled years later. They were wed on August 28, 1976, in her favorite wedding spot, Reno, Nevada. Now she had thoroughly grasped her false Mexican identity, giving her father’s name as Jesus Sahagun, and her mother's maiden name as Puente. (On the marriage certificate she also claimed this was her second marriage.)

Montalvo almost immediately started feeling uncomfortable with his beautiful, vain bride. Her free-spending ways and lying habits sparked distrust and resentment. "She was always lying. She never told the truth," he said. "She told me she was a doctor. Lies. She told me she owned property in Mexico. Lies. She told me she was Mexican, but she doesn't speak Mexican."

After just a week of marriage, he walked out. It would take months to get the marriage annulled, and even then, the two couldn't end it. They kept breaking up and then getting back together.

Montalvo recalls a relationship of destructive passion. "I had had enough. I said to myself: This will be the end. I told her: You will destroy me. I was a sick man. I wanted her to leave me alone, but she never did. We were on and off for a long time after we divorced. We would spend holidays together. She would call me up and say: Honey, come over."

Finally, Dorothea was through with marriage. She might have boyfriends now and then, but there would be no more husbands. She was on her own.

Using the name Dorothea Montalvo when it suited her, she continued with her exploits as
la doctora Dorotea Puente.
She lavished money on the Mexican-American Youth Association. At charity functions, she danced with Governor Jerry Brown and had her picture taken with his successor, George Deukmejian. And she was so generous with various musical groups—including the well-known
Los Terricolas—
that she earned herself another nickname:
La Madrina de los Artistas
_,
the Godmother of the Artists.

Meanwhile, she ran her lovely and spacious boardinghouse. The residence was surely large enough to support a legitimate business, for sometimes she had as many as thirty boarders. But according to rumor, she pursued shady enterprises at this address as well. With her false reputation as a doctor, she supposedly administered black-market medical treatments, even giving injections. And one source claimed that her locked basement was "always full of wetbacks" that she helped conceal from immigration officials.

Whatever else she may have been guilty of, Dorothea Montalvo was doubtless filching benefit checks intended for her tenants. She forged signatures, signing the checks over to herself, then depositing the money into her own accounts. Toward the end of 1978 she was caught and convicted. But apparently, illegally cashing thirty-four federal checks didn't impress the judge as especially serious. Her sentence was light: five years probation and four thousand dollars restitution.

When Pedro Montalvo, who still harbored tender feelings for his ex-wife, went to ask her about her crimes, she reportedly told him, "I did it because I wanted to be somebody."

"We are all somebody in this life," he replied. "Why do you have to steal?"

She looked at him and answered, "The way that I steal, I give to others."

Kevin Clymo sighed when he heard the psychiatrist's disappointing news: Dorothea Montalvo Puente was complex, and she fit no simplistic categories; unfortunately, neither did she fit the narrow criteria of a true multiple personality. There were no trancelike transformations from one distinct personality to another, no "blackouts" during which she "lost time."

Despite all the people who said, "The Dorothea I know could never have done this," her attorneys would have to contend with the ink on her record, and with that first hint of blood on her hands.

CHAPTER27

Big and broad-shouldered, John O’Mara had the shape of an ex-athlete, undisguised by his pin-striped suit and a few extra pounds. But he was years past calling any plays on a muddy field; now he coached a team on much dirtier turf, the DA's office, homicide. Every homicide case in Sacramento County landed on the desk of Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney John O'Mara, head of the major crimes division, ruling monarch of the fourth floor of the DA's office. As homicide supervisor, he not only tried but assigned cases, usually giving death penalty trials to each deputy DA in turn so that no one prosecutor was overwhelmed.

O'Mara worked on the Puente case while it was breaking, advising the police to get a forensic anthropologist to oversee the exhumations, issuing search warrants. After filing the first murder count against Puente, O'Mara then handed the case over to Deputy DA Tim Frawley, a tall, lean man whose every sinewy inch was testament to a serious running regimen. In private, Frawley had a soft-spoken manner, so that he sometimes startled defense attorneys with his commanding presence in the courtroom.

O'Mara felt confident that Frawley would do an excellent job in bringing this case to trial. From now on, he thought, the Puente case
would demand only slightly more of his attention than the usual media-
grabbing, multi-murder case.

He was wrong. The prosecution of Dorothea Montalvo Puente would demand far more than anyone anticipated, consuming time and energy in vast, unruly quantities, swelling and spreading like a feverish, misdiagnosed illness.

Despite a growing witness list, investigators were smacking up against a lot of dead ends. They questioned tenants and neighbors: Had they seen anything—struggles, suffocations? Had they heard any strange sounds at night? Screams for help? Had anyone seen Puente mixing drugs or chemicals into food or drinks? Or giving injections? Had anyone seen her carrying or dragging or burying anything suspicious? They’d come back virtually empty-handed.

With fading hopes of finding any eyewitnesses, they shifted their focus to the paper trail, subpoenaing financial accounts and accumulating dozens of canceled checks. They studied pill bottles, located prescriptions, called on pharmacists, and queried doctors. Meanwhile, the crime scene investigators prepared scores and scores of detailed diagrams, as if the very layout of the house and garden could somehow convince a jury that Dorothea Puente was guilty of murder.

Some feared that the Puente case wasn't being pursued with enough vigor or insight. But others thought, hell, they'd found seven bodies in that woman's yard—what else did they need to get a conviction?

The case continued to make headlines. The last two bodies at the morgue were identified: Leona Carpenter and Betty Palmer, both in their late seventies. Carpenter had been the first body discovered (the skeletonized leg bone, the dirty sneaker), and newspaper accounts reminded the reading public that Betty Palmer's identification had been complicated by the fact that she was missing her head, hands, and feet.

Who were these aged ladies? And why was Puente being charged with only
one count
of murder?

With allegations of octuple murders—seven bodies pulled from her yard and another found beside the river—the investigation had sprouted tentacles. That solitary murder charge was beginning to seem awfully lonely, yet weeks passed with little evident progress.

And the feds were getting hot about all the government checks Puente had allegedly forged, wanting to charge her with federal charges of fraud and forgery. But O'Mara argued that this case was complicated enough without dragging in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of lesser charges. The jury was going to be overburdened as it was.

Since there was no statute of limitations on the federal charges, the feds agreed to back off; if Puente didn't go down for murder, they'd get her later. For now, the numerous, checks would be used to prove motive.

Despite growing pressure, the DA's office didn't want to rush to file charges yet. Frawley and O'Mara agreed that a case like this demanded caution, thoroughness—especially since there was now another suspicious death, a 1982 "suicide" that looked an awful lot like murder.

One afternoon in late 1981, Dorothea Montalvo Puente clicked her high heels into one of her favorite drinking establishments, a place with a rounded exterior topped with a neon cocktail glass called the Round Corner Tavern. Inside, she spied Harold Munroe and his new wife, Ruth. Nice couple. They invited her to join them, so she pulled up a chair and nudged the wheels of fate into motion.

Ruth Munroe had been out of work since leaving the pharmacy at Gemco, she said, and the plump, sixty-one-year-old grandmother was ready to try something new.

Why, it just so happened that the owner of the Round Corner was interested in leasing out the restaurant portion of the tavern, Dorothea told her. "I've been thinking, this kind of opportunity may not come around again," she said, looking at Ruth, "but I sure could use a partner."

By leasing the restaurant, she and Ruth could launch their own business with minimal start-up costs. They would make a terrific team, Dorothea said. And Ruth wouldn't even have to cook; Dorothea would handle the kitchen. Since Ruth was the one with a car, she could handle supplies and transportation.

The venture seemed just about perfect, and after hours of discussion, they were sparked with enthusiasm. Ruth Munroe withdrew the capital for her share of the investment and handed it over to her new partner. They were in business.

Soon, Dorothea was working there in the kitchen nearly every day. And she was busy cooking up more than just hamburgers.
The restaurant business was faltering, she told Ruth. They needed more capital just to keep the business afloat, and Dorothea was forced to ask Ruth for more and more money, either for the business or for personal loans. The bills kept mounting, Dorothea kept complaining, and thousands of Munroe's dollars were drained into the enterprise.

Meanwhile, Ruth Munroe had other things weighing on her mind. Her husband wasn't a well man, and since marrying him the previous year, Ruth had unfortunately found herself taking him to the veterans hospital with increasing frequency. Early in 1982, Mr. Munroe's doctors diagnosed terminal cancer. Finally, they decided he ought to stay in the hospital, and Ruth returned home alone.

In Ruth's time of need, her new friend stepped forward with a generous offer. It just so happened that one of her boarders was moving out, Dorothea told her. "Why don't you just move in with me? We get along so well. Besides, it would be less expensive than staying in that place all by yourself. I just thought that, with your husband in the hospital and all, we could help each other."