10 months ago
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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KGPE) - As Halloween approaches, homes are being transformed into scary places to frighten trick-or-treaters. But what if you lived successful a location that already had an evil history?
1426 F Street successful Downtown Sacramento was the boarding location wherever Dorothea Puente was believed to person killed 9 radical successful the 1980s to cod their societal information checks.
“She’s buying perfume, she’s getting integrative surgery, she’s conscionable buying a clump of worldly that’s not important. It’s not similar she’s trying to enactment her kid done schoolhouse oregon enactment up her location oregon something. She’s conscionable buying crap and that’s what’s truthful troubling astir it. It’s like, what is the point,” said Senior Archivist for Sacramento History Kim Hayden.
The boarding location was catered to the mentally sick and those needing a 2nd accidental - often recovering from alcoholism. She buried 7 bodies successful her yard.
Today, Barbara Holmes and Tom Williams telephone 1426 F Street home. It is simply a location fewer are welcomed wrong oregon would adjacent situation to visit.
“Nobody could spot past the partition to spot what was going connected - and it’s present wherever she was doing each the evil crap," said Williams arsenic helium gave a circuit of the residence.
A circuit wrong the location is capable to nonstop chills up the spine.
"This is our bedroom. This is what they telephone the decease room. This is wherever she laid retired the bodies. She drugged them, but the cops deliberation she smothered them due to the fact that successful the graves galore of them had their mouths wide open. To get the humor retired she bleached the full halfway of the floor,” Williams continued.
Dorothea Puente poisoned her victims successful her house, dragging their bodies from country to country and down the stairs to the gait wherever she buried them nether the screen of darkness.
She was truthful cold, truthful calculated. Puente adjacent wrote to the families of her victims to marque it look arsenic if they were live months aft she buried them successful her yard.
“Two were buried close adjacent to the obstruction and past the halfway of the beforehand gait is wherever the archetypal unfortunate was recovered and she was… nary hands, head, oregon feet,” Williams said arsenic helium made his mode done the yard.
Betty Palmer was the lone 1 of Puente's victims to beryllium dismembered. Her head, hands, and legs person ne'er been found.
November 2024 marks 36 years since Dorothea Puente's arrest.
“They interviewed present and fto her spell and she instantly fled to LA wherever she was caught due to the fact that she was successful a barroom chatting with a antheral who recognized her connected the TV arsenic a fugitive and called police," Hayden said.
40 years later, the location inactive garners attention.
“Daily, daily, galore times a day,” Holmes said.
Barbara and Tom invited the attraction portion leaning into the horrifying past, with signs like:
- “NO TRESPASSING. WE’RE TIRED OF HIDING THE BODIES”
- “IT WAS THAT AWFUL, AWFUL WOMAN THAT DID IT!"
They adjacent person a life-sized fig of Dorothea successful handcuffs successful her iconic reddish coat, greeting guests astatine the door. The homeowners bash not idolize the horrific events that took spot astatine the residence and picture Puente arsenic “slimy. nasty. creepy.”
“Just evil. I mean conscionable greedy,” Holmes answered. "Greed, due to the fact that that’s wherefore she did it. She did it for the money, for the societal information checks. She was conscionable greedy, and she got distant with it, truthful she conscionable kept connected going and kept connected going.”
With the horrific past of the house, immoderate wonderment if it is haunted.
“We person felt nothing. Barbara’s ma lived downstairs for a agelong time. She was delicate to it. She did accidental she saw Dorothea lasting astatine the extremity of her furniture 1 night, but she would consciousness things and you know,” Williams said.
“She decidedly felt determination was a beingness determination and we haven’t,” Holmes said.
And up of Halloween, immoderate whitethorn beryllium amazed to perceive astir visits from trick-or-treaters.
“No. Interestingly capable we don’t. There are not that galore kids successful the vicinity and we’ve tried. Last twelvemonth I sat my lad retired determination with a large vessel of candy and not 1 idiosyncratic came through,” Holmes recalled.
The Victorian-style bungalow bought by the 2 astatine an auction for conscionable $215,000 is connected the National Register of Historic Places, meaning it tin ne'er beryllium torn down.
When asked their plans for the location erstwhile they are nary longer present some joked, “The kids volition person to woody with it."
The assemblage connected Puente's lawsuit deliberated for 24 days and recovered her blameworthy of 3 counts of murder. She was sent to a Chowchilla situation wherever she died astatine the property of 82 successful 2011.
"Why she wasn’t convicted of the different ones, I don’t know," Hayden said.
To this time it is chartless wherever Puente's cremated remains lie.
