Our Girl Dorthea

I don’t have much time or inclination to write today, but I wanted to share something I found online. Now I know that this falls under the “a little late” category, as this story happened in the 80's but you know, I didn’t have a blog in the 80's. I only had pegged pants.

Today my boss and I were talking about Dorthea Puente, a serial killer lady from Sacramento. I don’t know if she made news anywhere besides here, but she was huge in Sac. She was this little old lady who had a boarding house and basically killed off her tenants, buried them in the backyard, and kept cashing their government assistance checks. She was a planner this Dorthea.

The reason we got to talking about her was because her boarding house is mere blocks from where I live and for some reason this is a perfectly logical subject of conversation while putting off actual work. So then. I was trying to figure out where exactly her house was in relation to mine so I did a Google search on the old hag. I found a bunch of different stories about our hometown hero, but there was one in particular that cracked me up:

“In November 1985, Puente hired Ismael Florez to install some wood paneling in her boardinghouse. Dorothea Puente then asked Florez to do one more thing; build a box 6 feet by 3 feet by 2 feet to store 'books and other items'. She then asked Florez transport the filled, and nailed shut, box to a storage depot. Florez agreed and Puente joined him. On the way, however, she told him to stop while they were on Garden Highway in Sutter County and dump the box in the river bank. Puzzled, Florez questioned why but Puente told him that the contents of the box were just junk.”

Oh Ismael. Dear, sweet, body-disposing Ismael. What are we going to do with you.

Future reference: If someone asks you to oh, just whip up a box that oh, just happens to have the dimensions of oh, a COFFIN and then asks you to oh, THROW IT IN A RIVER, then um, you might want to go ahead and find another gig. Just a thought Ismael.