University Daily Kansan / Thursday, November 17, 1988
Landlady suspected in deaths of 7 elderly tenants arrested
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES - A 59-year-old landlady suspected in the deaths of seven tenants whose bodies were unearthed in the yard of her rooming house was arrested yesterday after a five-day search, police said.
Dorothea Montalvo Puente was taken into custody at about 10:30 p.m. yesterday by Los Angeles police who tracked her to a downtown hotel on the basis of a tip provided to a television station.
"This is definitely the person we are looking for," said police Officer Paul Von Lutzow.
She was arrested after a tipster called the television station, saying the woman police were seeking was drinking in a downtown bar, KCBS-TV reported. The station alerted police and officers closed in.
Police believe Puente killed tenants who lived in her Sacramento boarding house to collect their Social Security benefits. They have a list of two dozen people who live in the city and are accused of Puente's eight-bedroom house at one time or another.
Puente was taken into custody near a hotel where she had been staying since Sunday, the station reported.
had been staying since Sunday, the station reported. "She looked like she expected the police," Voutzow said.
One former tenant, Homer Myers, told reporters yesterday that he and other tenants unknowingly helped Puente dispose of the bodies by digging the makeshift graves.
ford for an april appointment.
She had not been seen since Saturday, when police allowed her to walk away from the house while they dug for bodies. State and federal authorities had been searching for her in Mexico and Las Vegas as well as California.
Myers, 74, said Puente first asked him to dig a hole in the back yard for an apricot tree.
The FBI late Tuesday got a federal warrant to allow FBI agents to join in the search. Documents supporting the warrant declare that she has 14 close relatives in Mexico and that she asked parole agents for permission to travel to Mexico in 1986.
to travel it did she had contacted a nursery and they told her she needed a hole that was four feet by four feet and five feet deep. I thought that was a little deep. Now I know why."
Digging was completed at the boarding house yard Tuesday and police searched the inside of the blue house. Detectives removed several items from the house, but would not say what evidence was found other than the seven bodies.
seven bodies.
Kearns said there has no decision whether to dig at any other sites, including a house several blocks away where Muere lived several years ago.
The coroner's office, assisted by several forensic anthropologists, is still in the process of identifying the bodies and performing autopsies to determine cause of death.
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