Dorothea Puente, the notorious F Street landlady convicted of killing her tenants and burying them in her backyard, died Sunday.

Puente, 82, died at 10:15 a.m. Sunday of natural causes at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla, state corrections officials said.

"She served as a living illustration of the notion that one cannot judge a book by its cover, the epitome of evil without a trace of evil appearance," former Sacramento County Sheriff John McGinness said Sunday.

Even in a city with no shortage of infamous and gruesome murders, the Puente case stands out.

She was a sweet-looking, grandmotherly woman who ran a boardinghouse out of a rented two-story Victorian at 1426 F St.

Puente began the business in 1980, renting out the top floor of the home, but she was sent to prison for three years for drugging her elderly tenants and stealing checks from them.

She was back in business by 1985, renting the entire house and offering rooms to elderly and disabled residents, some of whom she met while cruising bars in the area.

The case broke open in 1988, after social worker Judy Moise finally convinced police something was wrong at the boardinghouse. Moise, who worked for Volunteers of America, had referred Alvaro "Bert" Montoya, a 51-year-old mentally impaired homeless man, to stay at the boardinghouse, where Puente was known for lavishing her tenants with gifts and home-cooked meals.

Montoya disappeared from the home after a few months, and Moise filed a missing persons report on Nov. 7, 1988, with Sacramento police. An officer went to the home to question Puente, and during the course of his visit a tenant slipped him a note that said Puente had asked him to lie.

Four days later homicide Detectives John Cabrera and Terry Brown showed up at the house with Puente's federal parole agent, Jim Wilson, and some shovels. They began digging in the backyard and Cabrera unearthed what he thought was a tree root. It turned out to be a leg bone belonging to 78-year-old Leona Carpenter. Eventually, seven bodies would be unearthed from the grounds of the home.

But on the second day of digging, as police were discovering a second body, Puente strolled away from the home wearing a red coat, purple high-heeled shoes and carrying $3,000 in cash. She took two cab rides to Stockton, then headed to Los Angeles as embarrassed police launched a nationwide search.

A few days later, Puente was recognized in a Los Angeles bar and arrested, and police detectives who had hitched a ride on a chartered jet from Sacramento television station KCRA returned with her in custody. During the flight, Channel 3's police reporter Mike Boyd scored an interview with her, and she declared, "I have not killed anyone."

A jury would later disagree. Nine deaths occurred at Puente's Victorian home in downtown Sacramento. The Bee reported seven bodies were found buried in Puente's gardens, one was dumped in a makeshift coffin on a Sacramento River levee and one was thought to be a suicide. Puente faced trial in Monterey County on the nine murder counts because of massive publicity in Sacramento.

Evidence would show she drugged her tenants and had cashed at least 60 government assistance checks belonging to them. After nearly five months of trial that included 156 witnesses, more than 3,100 exhibits and 22,000 pages of transcripts, Puente was convicted of murdering three tenants at her F Street boardinghouse, and sentenced to life. The six other counts ended with the jury deadlocked. After Judge Michael J. Virga declared mistrials, each of the six hung counts was dismissed. Puente, who never took the stand, was sent to the prison in Chowchilla.

The case generated worldwide attention at the time and remains a subject of fascination. The court files from the case are stored at the Center for Sacramento History, and the Mansion Flats home on F Street was sold at auction last year to a Georgetown couple for $215,000.

Barbara Holmes and Tom Williams said at the time that they were aware of the home's history, but were not concerned.

"It's a sweet little home," Holmes said.

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