Dorothea Puente's Boarding House Of Horrors | The New Detectives | Real Responders

a serial killer in texas goes undetected for 11 years police identify a suspect but their case must be pulled from the trash investigators hope new forensic techniques can establish a link among the murders and put an end to the violent rampage in california a missing person's case leads detectives to a secret burial ground at a sacramento boarding house an unlikely suspect becomes the focus of a mass murder investigation can science help unmask the murderer hiding behind a kindly face homicide investigators find that things aren't always what they appear to be seemingly insignificant clues may expose a pattern and put police on the trail of a killer whose compulsion is to kill again [Music] [Music] on the morning of december 21st 1984 in wichita falls texas lisa boone returned home from her job at a local hospital and found herself locked out lisa asked her landlady to unlock the apartment she'd given her keys to terry simms a friend and co-worker who was spending the night but terry wasn't answering the door inside the women found the apartment had been ransacked lisa called out to terry but got no response [Music] the landlady noticed blood on the floor and followed the trail it led to terry simms body [Music] officers from the wichita falls police department responded to the scene upstairs they found the 20 year old victim dead on the bathroom floor she was nude except for socks her hands had been tied behind her back police processed the scene looking for any clue that might identify the killer they collected blood samples a pair of white tennis shoes with the laces still tied [Music] and a woman's hospital uniform [Music] they also recovered a blood-stained bedspread and sheets at the police station lisa told detectives that she and terry sims left the hospital together after working the 3-11 shift she explained that she was also a part-time student at midwestern state university and had an exam the next day terry was going to stay the night at lisa's apartment to help her study in the morning but lisa said the hospital was short staffed that night so she volunteered for an extra shift she dropped her friend off at the apartment around 12 30 gave terry her keys and returned to work lisa told police she'd arrived back home around 7 a.m and knocked on the door she had no idea who could have murdered her friend an autopsy was performed on terry sims and cause of death was determined to be multiple stab wounds to the chest and back while there was no sign of forcible rape biological evidence was collected from the victim's body most murder victims know they're killers so wichita falls police began interviewing terry sims family and friends they quickly focused on her ex-boyfriend he denied involvement investigators had little evidence against him but they had a new forensic tool in their arsenal in 1984 dna profiling was in its infancy and held the potential to link a killer to his crime through biological evidence left at the scene but large amounts of evidence were needed to successfully perform the tests hoping samples recovered in terry simms case might identify her murderer police submitted them to the gene screen lab in dallas but their hopes were soon dashed there wasn't enough material for dna testing with no hard evidence linking a suspect to the murder the investigation stalled and the case remained unsolved on february 15 1985 two months after terry sims was found murdered an electric company employee was working on a transformer just outside the wichita falls city limits he made a horrifying discovery he stumbled upon a woman's body he called 9-1-1 [Music] deputies from the archer county sheriff's department arrived at the scene in the woods they found the victim nearby they recovered a leather jacket bloodstained nurse's uniform and a pair of sneakers with the laces still [Music] [Applause] a tied of police databases turned up a missing person fitting the victim's description [Music] an autopsy confirmed her identity as tony gibbs a 23 year old nurse from wichita falls reported missing by her brother a month earlier the pathologist determined that she died from stab wounds to the chest and abdomen biological evidence was collected from the victim's body [Music] archer county investigators developed several suspects they soon focused on a man named danny wayne laughlin he was the last person seen with tony gibbs he had also been held on suspicion of rape in kansas city missouri less than a year before loughlin denied killing tony gibbs but three separate polygraph tests suggested deception at investigator's request he provided blood and hair samples for dna testing though the results were inconclusive police believed they had the right man laughlin stood trial for the murder of tony gibbs the jury was unable to reach a verdict a mistrial was declared laughlin was never tried again the gibbs case remained open on october 10 1985 a maintenance worker was cutting grass alongside a road in wichita county in the overgrowth he discovered a woman's body he called the wichita county sheriff's department when deputies responded they found the body of a woman nude except for one son there were no clues as to the victim's identity police searched the surrounding area and found her clothing nearby they also recovered a pair of sneakers with the laces tied an autopsy was performed but advanced decomposition made it difficult to determine how the woman died based on available evidence however the medical examiner concluded the cause of death to be undetermined homicidal violence wichita county sheriff's deputies determined that the victim fit the description of a woman reported missing a month earlier she was identified as 21-year-old ellen blau they interviewed two suspects who had been with her the night she was last seen but deputies had insufficient evidence to charge them after several months the case remained unsolved while the three cases were investigated by different law enforcement agencies they all fell under the jurisdiction of the wichita county district attorney's office barry maca had recently been elected district attorney and took over just days after terry sims murder the unsolved murders haunted him the absolute terror that they went through in the final minutes of their lives motivated me to find the person responsible for their deaths but investigators in each of the cases had exhausted all their leads and there was nothing more maca could do [Music] more than a decade would pass before there was a break in the unsolved murders by 1996 more than 11 years had passed since the murders of terry sims tony gibbs and ellen blau in texas police still had no viable suspects in any of the murders [Music] but improved forensic procedures prompted the wichita county district attorney to request a re-examination of the evidence from two of the three murders some of the evidence was sent to glenn unash a latent print examiner at the texas department of public safety crime lab in austin he found a partial print on a sneaker recovered from the terry sims murder scene that had gone undetected it didn't belong to terry simms however there was insufficient detail to make a comprehensive analysis because blood will darken as it absorbs the light younash hoped more ridge characteristics would emerge under laser light he was disappointed there was one more option a dye staining technique but there was a risk involved dye staining technique could possibly destroy what is there so the print was photographed prior to that once i got that photograph back i examined it to make sure it re i recorded all the characteristics unesh was now ready to try the dye staining process he saturated the print with amino black which reacts to proteins and blood and turns them dark blue or black but the process didn't develop any further ridge detail the evidence enhancement he had hoped for eluded him over the next three years he examined a series of suspect prints provided by the wichita county district attorney's office and compared them to the one found on terry sims sneaker i did not identify any of the suspects that they had sent me reported to them that the print appears to be partial second third joint or another area of the palm they started sending me in some palm prints i made those comparisons and i still did not identify the print at the same time dna testing of the biological samples from the sims and gibbs cases was again underway at gene screen in dallas a new technology pcr analysis could provide forensic scientist judy floyd with more conclusive results than previous tests the requirements were not astringent and therefore we were able to use this very old very degraded dna and obtained a genetic profile of the perpetrator the new dna process eliminated all previous suspects including danny wayne laughlin who had stood trial for the murder of tony gibbs a decade earlier but it did turn up a startling piece of evidence biological samples recovered from both victims came from the same individual [Music] emerging technology and improved forensics had linked two apparently unrelated cases now there was evidence a serial killer had claimed the lives of terry sims and tony gibbs district attorney barry maca wondered if some of the other unsolved cases were related he began taking a closer look at those files one caught his attention that of ellen blau maca noted that circumstances of her murder were similar to the sims and gibbs homicides down to the sneakers laces still tied found by her nude body [Music] on january 12 1999 maca asked his investigator john little to review the three cases and try to develop a suspect he also gave little a possible lead though the victims had been discovered in three different police jurisdictions they all lived within a relatively small geographical area because of the close proximity i felt that the person responsible for their deaths had some connection to that neighborhood and i emphasized that to john and asked him to review the files and and see if he could establish anyone with a connection to the neighborhood that may be involved in the cases little began by probing for common threads among the women it didn't take him long to find them he noticed that they all shared several physical characteristics all the victims were around the same age pretty much the same build their they were all around five foot tall not much taller they all weighed 120 pounds or less they all seem to have pretty much the same features a distinct pattern was emerging suggesting all three women had been killed by the same person then he found a name in the ellen blou file a man named faryon wardrip [Music] while in custody on a murder charge back in 1986 wardrip had told police that he knew blau it meant nothing to the police at the time little wondered if it meant anything now he learned wardrip had worked as an orderly at the same hospital as tony gibbs [Music] and records showed that he had left that job four days after the first victim terry sims was found murdered [Music] as investigators dug deeper they uncovered more connections between wardrip and the three women he had lived in an apartment downstairs from ellen blau that apartment was two blocks from the residence where terry sims was murdered when ellen blau was murdered wardrobe no longer lived at her apartment complex he had moved to a residence across the street from the sub shop where she worked authorities had placed wardrobe in the neighborhood and established links between him and the victims they were a long way from proving murder but now they felt they were finally on the right track a background check confirmed that wardrip was a convicted murderer he had confessed to killing a wichita falls woman in 1986 according to the records he'd fled to galveston but turned himself in to police there during the 11 years he was incarcerated there were no murders in wichita falls that were similar to those of sims and i felt like he was a very strong suspect but the only way to find out for sure if he was the one responsible for these murders or not was to obtain a dna sample although circumstantial evidence pointed to wardrip it wasn't enough to obtain a court order to force him to provide dna samples maca and little decided to try to collect them surreptitiously [Music] their plan would require surveillance investigators contacted wardrip's parole officer for information they learned that wardrip lived in nearby alma texas where he taught sunday school and worked at a window screen company according to the parole officer wardrip was being electronically monitored and was restricted to his apartment complex unless he was at work or church appreciate it [Music] and that posed problems for investigators for three days they watched wardrip at work behind a locked chain-link fence he seemed to be beyond their reach but on the fourth day they got a break [Music] on february 5th 1999 the fence was unlocked and wardrip was outside he was with his wife eating crackers and drinking coffee from a disposable cup when he tossed the cup into a trash can just inside the gate it was the opportunity they had been waiting for [Music] the undercover investigator approached wardrip and asked if he could get a tobacco spit cup wardrip told him to help himself [Music] with that any evidence obtained by investigators would be admissible in a court of law he retrieved wardrip's cut investigators hoped they now had their dna sample but would a few drops of coffee and cracker crumbs be enough to prove murder more than a dozen years had passed since the murders of terry simms tony gibbs and ellen blau in wichita falls texas investigators had finally gathered physical evidence they hoped would prove ferian wardrobe was the killer now it was up to jean screen lab in dallas judy floyd carefully swabbed the lip of the cup to collect wardrobe saliva when she compared that to dna samples retrieved from the sims and gibbs murders she was able to establish a match [Music] and there was more she discovered that wardrip's profile was unique he had not one but four very rare markers in his genetic profile his profile was so rare that you would expect it to occur only one time in several thousand times the population of the earth and in effect we were able to say that we have established identity with this particular individual to the evidence involved in miss sims and miss gibbs case investigators didn't stop there at the texas department of public safety crime lab glenn unash compared wardrip's fingerprints to the partial print found on terry sims sneaker they matched besides making a positive identification unash could explain much more i can also determine how that shoe was held or when that print was left on that shoe and it was in a direction that the defendant held the shoe or was taking the shoe off the victim's foot somewhat similar to this which would be consistent with pulling it off of a victim's foot [Music] investigators patience and ingenuity had paid off it was time to take wardrip into custody they again enlisted the cooperation of his parole officer [Music] on the pretense of a meeting wardrip was summoned to the parole office on february 13 1999. when he arrived police arrested ferry in wardrip and charged him with the murder of terry [Music] simms based on the evidence police believe wardrip saw terry simms at the door of lisa boone's apartment after forcing his way inside he tied her hands behind her back then raped and killed her fairy and wardrip pled guilty to the capital murders of terry simms tony gibbs and ellen blau he was sentenced to death in the sims case and received life terms in each of the others wardrip also confessed to an additional murder in all he had ended the lives of five young women in texas a serial killer's guilt was contained in a disposable coffee cup but on the west coast police would have to dig deeper for proof of murder on november 7 1988 in sacramento california social worker judy moyes contacted sacramento police about one of her clients 52 year old bert montoya she said bert had disappeared from the boarding house where she'd placed him his landlady seemed unsure about his whereabouts ms moyes told police that dorothea puente's boarding house was a refuge for indigent people many with histories of alcohol and drug abuse it seemed ideal for bert a street person with no place to go [Music] he had his own room and tv and was happy there after years of living on the streets but after a few months bert started saying he wanted to leave judy moyes hadn't heard from bert in three months mrs puente finally explained that bert had gone [Music] that made no sense to judy moyes she knew bert montoya didn't have any family she asked police to look into it [Music] officers went to interview dorothea puente she seemed a gracious grandmotherly woman charming and eager to cooperate she said bert had gone to live with family in utah [Music] one of the residents in the boarding house corroborated the account [Music] but as the officer was leaving the resident slipped him a note he wanted to talk he told police that he'd seen some strange things at the house bert wasn't the only one who vanished another tenant ben fink had two and there were others but their social security checks kept coming he also described a terrible odor around the boarding house he said he'd once worked at a mortuary and recognized the smell of death the police officer filed a missing persons report on bert montoya detective john cabrera of the sacramento police department was assigned the case the name dorothea puente was familiar to him she was known as a champion of the dispossessed she was highly respected for all of her charitable things that she had done to the hispanic community there were people that visited from other countries who came here to praise her and talk to her and she was known in the hispanic community as doctor which is spanish for doctor now detective cabrera requested a background check on dorothea puente based on her reputation it wasn't what he expected [Music] he learned that the kindly grandmother was actually only 59 years old and had a criminal history of preying on the elderly she'd been previously convicted on multiple counts of forging social security checks and had served four years in prison for investigators her mo was surprising and she was getting these checks by putting knockout drops in these individuals drinks and of course when they passed out she took their check and signed it conditions of dorothea puente's parole prohibited her from keeping a boarding house [Music] that gave detectives a reason to look deeper into the situation four days after bert montoya was reported missing they met with judy moyes hoping she could provide more information about the boarding house [Music] she said most of the residents were poor the forgotten elderly who exist on the fringes of society but dorothea puente always had a place for them and she had a reputation for treating tenants like family moyes claimed that several other social workers began to notice that their clients sometimes disappeared from the house never to be seen again [Music] bert montoya was the most recent [Music] perhaps some of the tenants had simply wandered off or family members had decided to take care of them investigators decided to find out later that morning police met with dorothea puente although they didn't have a warrant she graciously gave them permission to conduct a search in one of the upstairs bedrooms police found prescription medication a sedative in the name of dorothy miller she was related mrs puente told them it belonged to a relative who had stayed with her for a while investigators asked if they could dig around in her backyard mrs puente not only gave them permission she offered to get people in to dig for them that didn't seem the action of a person with something to hide [Music] investigators declined her offer and began digging themselves after finding nothing in three holes they began to think they were wasting their time but in the fourth they found corrosive lime often used to mask odors and speed decay they decided to keep digging to their surprise they uncovered what appeared to be a human leg bone [Music] at a boarding house for the elderly run by 59 year old dorothea puente sacramento police uncovered human remains we need to get uh forensics here the car owner's office and a crime scene unit were dispatched to the scene fuente agreed to accompany police to the station to make a statement she was very cooperative and appeared genuinely shocked that bones were found in her yard she said she had been living there for a little more than a year perhaps the previous owner could explain the bones [Music] but puente's criminal past could not be ignored police asked her outright if she'd killed her missing tenant 52-year-old bert montoya dorothea puente calmly denied it since there was no evidence of any crime investigators took mrs puente home [Music] the next morning the search at the voting house continued as more police and excavation equipment arrived curious onlookers and reporters began to assemble outside the house around 9 45 mrs puente asked if she was free to go to the corner coffee shop since she'd been so cooperative and detectives had no proof of her involvement in any foul play they let her go 15 minutes later at 10 a.m forensic technicians uncovered a second body wrapped in a tarp buried under a cement slab the condition of the tarp indicated that this body hadn't been underground very long a police officer was dispatched to pick up dorothy aguente at the coffee shop she wasn't there we sent people over there to find out who had seen her if anybody had talked to her what was going on they went over there and they had ascertained that she had got into a taxi cab and drove off sacramento police traced the cab and learned it had taken her to the stockton bus station 50 miles away there they learned she boarded a bus to los angeles not knowing where she might be heading investigators launched a nationwide search for dorothea puente [Music] she was now wanted on suspicion of murder at the boarding house authorities continued digging their search for missing person bert montoya had unearthed human remains of one victim and a second buried corpse of statements that several residents had disappeared police feared mrs puente's yard might conceal more ugly secrets the second body had been discovered under a cement slab that seemed out of place now they realized that several more sheds slabs and planters were oddly situated they soon discovered the reason for that laura santos deputy coroner of sacramento county supervised the search under every one of these odd seeming things like the sink there was a body under the poorly poured piece of concrete there was a body next to the shed that looked hastily assembled there was a body after three days the dig finally came to an end seven bodies had been uncovered in dorothea puente's yard police were dealing with a mass murderer [Music] it seemed impossible that seven people could have been buried right under the neighbor's noses without anyone seeing anything hoping for information or witnesses detectives began interviewing mrs puente's neighbors it was hard to find anyone with anything negative to say about her it was like fighting an uphill battle the community first of all did not want to accept the fact that this gray-haired little woman who they loved so much and who had given so much to the community was responsible for this gruesome task of putting these people in the yard while investigators canvassed the neighborhood the grim task of identifying the seven victims three men and four women was underway at the sacramento coroner's office all the bodies were x-rayed then forensic pathologists performed autopsies on them the coroner started with the victim most closely matching bert montoya's description she began by carefully removing layers of wrapping and documenting each the body like many of the others was wrapped in a signature way that suggested a methodical but twisted mind sheets wrapped with duct tape then quilts were stitched together blankets then more sheets more tarps i remember there were blue tarps on a couple of the cases and then each layer would somehow be secured either with twine or duct tape or actually stitched with thread and then the entire bundle perhaps duct taped together the wrappings concealed advanced decomposition which made it impossible to establish a cause of death for any of the victims but because of the circumstances all were ruled homicide the condition of the bodies also prevented pathologists from immediately identifying any of the victims as dr santos explains most people are identified by fingerprints first next by dental records and then by other means four out of the seven bodies were too decomposed to get decent fingerprints from none of them had any teeth so the usual methods that we make in identification could not be used the tissue samples were sent to forensic labs for further analysis to aid in identification efforts investigators tried to locate people who had disappeared from the boarding house they found the brother of 55 year old ben fink one of the tenants believed to be missing but he told police he hadn't heard from ben in three months investigators feared ben fink had already been found to build their murder case against 59 year old dorothea puente police needed physical proof linking her to the victim's deaths investigators went through the boarding house again they found twine duct tape and a coffee can with the word lie written on police found dozens of bottles of the prescribed sedative dalmate that didn't seem unusual in a boarding house full of elderly people but investigators noticed all of the doll name although prescribed by several different doctors was in dorothy puente's name as details of the investigation became public police began hearing from witnesses who helped them reconstruct an account of dorothy apuente's daily routine it seemed she had a penchant for pre-dawn gardening and became very angry if interrupted they also learned that she insisted on personally collecting the mail every day particularly at the end of the month she was always there to get the mail because of course the mail had the checks and she would take the checks and keep control of all the money investigators learned that nobody had questioned that control since most of the boarding house residents had drug or alcohol problems it seemed a logical way to keep them from lapsing into their old habits [Music] police believe that by persuading residents to sign their monthly checks over to her mrs puente would be assured that the money would keep coming even after the tenants disappeared in fact she was getting 10 to 12 federal assistance checks each month some for people who hadn't lived at the boarding house in years police believed money was the motive for murder but they still needed to find their suspect despite the manhunt dorothea puente was still at large on november 16th less than a week after she fled investigators got a tip that dorothea puente was at a motel in los angeles an elderly man called police when he saw her picture on he'd tv her as the woman who'd struck up a conversation about his social security benefits she wanted to know things like you know how much he was getting and was he taking you know a benefit full benefit of receiving the money and of course you know he was inquisitive but she had told him that she knew how to raise his money allotment even as a fugitive she couldn't resist the opportunity to cash in her greed had finally caught up with her dorothea puente was finally in custody though they believed they knew her motive for the murders police had no physical evidence linking her to them in addition the victim's identities were still unknown a latent print examiner was brought in he compared known samples to fingerprints from three of the bodies he confirmed that one of the victims was bert montoya he would soon identify ben fink and dorothy miller as well science had made a liar of dorothea puente but there remained four victims without names police had compiled a list of 60 people who had received social security checks at dorothy apuente's boarding house they tried to track down every name on that list they found most of the people still alive having moved out of the house for a variety of reasons but a few were still unaccounted for they then assembled medical records on each missing person [Music] the files were forwarded to the sacramento coroner's office there forensic pathologists began the painstaking task of comparing x-rays of each body found in the yard to medical records from each of the missing persons they looked for distinguishing characteristics in the records that could be linked to each victim we did find anomalies in the bodies abnormalities like one person had had skull surgery and had evidence that he had a craniotomy and another person had irregular characteristics of one of her clavicles and she'd also had some mandible lower jaw fractures in the past and using that information from the bodies we were then able to start making comparisons with the medical records we'd obtained from this list that social security had provided us the victims had all finally been identified but police were still missing a crucial piece of the puzzle how they died until that question could be answered authorities would have a hard time proving murder they hoped a forensic toxicologist could give them answers in november of 1988 police investigating the murders of seven people at a sacramento boarding house enlisted the aid of toxicologist william phillips at the california department of justice with no obvious cause of death they hoped he would be able to determine whether drugs or poisons had ended the victims lives phillips began by analyzing all seven victims tissue samples with a radioamino acid or ria test which is sensitive to classes of drugs the test results showed all of the samples contained the sedative fluoresce pan which is used widely in dalmate the drug found at dorothea puente's boarding house it is a potent sedative often prescribed for the elderly it was the first physical evidence linking puente to the deaths of the seven victims next phillips subjected the samples to the tandem mass spectrometer the only one on the west coast at the time the apparatus uses negative ion detection to find the characteristic profile or footprint of individual drugs besides detecting the presence of fluorazepam or dalmaine in each sample it also measured the drug's concentration but because the bodies had been underground for varying periods of time those concentrations did not necessarily reflect levels present at the time of death some of the drug could have seeped into the ground the drug dowmain was present in all the samples but the concentrations were so varied that no one could say whether or not the drug caused their death but i was able to link all the samples all the tissues the brains the liver tissues from all these victims to dorothea puente investigators believe they had enough evidence to charge dorothea puente with the murder of her seven tenants based on the evidence police believe she would charm residents into giving her control of their money if they were reluctant she would invite them into her private rooms and give them a drink laced with drugs afterwards she would methodically wrap the bodies and hire men to dig holes in her backyard during her pre-dawn gardening the 59-year-old woman managed to bury her victims on august 15 1993 dorothea puente was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder the jury was unable to reach verdicts on the other four charges she was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole [Music] serial killers are methodical skilled at covering their tracks in order to keep killing but even the cleverest of predators cannot avoid detection for long today forensic scientists using sophisticated technology are helping police stop deadly criminals with an urge to kill again

Channel: Real Responders

Views: 1,354,133

Keywords: the new detectives, new detectives documentary, forensic science, crime documentary, crime documentaries full episodes, crime documentary murders, crime documentary murders 2020, serial killer documentary

Id: xPKmwjF3MiI

Length: 49min 41sec (2981 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 15 2021