Serial killer’s house to be on Sacramento historic home tour. How to get tickets
John Cabrera remembered what it was like to return to Dorothea Puente’s house after 25 years.
Cabrera, who is 76 and retired from the Sacramento Police Department, was lead detective in November 1988 when seven bodies were unearthed at a boarding house Puente operated at 1426 F St. She was convicted of killing three people and sentenced to life in prison, where she died in 2011.
Two years after Puente’s death, Cabrera returned to the house when the home appeared on a historic tour organized by Preservation Sacramento. The home, which dates to about the turn of the 20th century, is on Sacramento’s local historic register making it difficult to demolish.
While the home’s owners, Barbara Holmes and Tom Williams, had put their own decorative stamp on the house by the time Cabrera returned, he was struck by what he saw on that visit.
“The floors, the walls, everything except for a wall in the kitchen, everything was exactly the same,” Cabrera said. “It was just like walking back in a time capsule.”
Now, Cabrera will return to the home for another tour. Preservation Sacramento has begun selling tickets for its 50th Annual Historic Home Tour on Sept. 20. The former Puente house is one of six properties on the tour in the Old and New Washington School historic districts, according to a news release.
Owners of Puente home embrace its notoriety
Williams and Holmes have accommodated an almost unending stream of visitors to their property since they purchased it about 16 years ago.
These have included journalists, people wanting to interview Williams and Holmes for reality television or documentary programming and the countless people who go to take selfies in front of the house.
Holmes explained to The Sacramento Bee in 2024 that the house, which they purchased in 2010 at auction for $227,000, was originally just something that met their needs. Over time, they’ve leaned into the history.
““We’re keepers of the house, and we just – it definitely does not die down,” Holmes said last September, when a fictionalized horror movie about Puente was due to screen at a Southern California film festival. “And we still have multiple, multiple people out front on a weekly basis.”
Williams and Holmes jumped at the opportunity when Preservation Sacramento reached out about booking the house for this year’s tour. “We’re open to any nonprofit kind of thing and this one’s a big deal, so we didn’t hesitate at all,” Williams said.
William Burg, president of Preservation Sacramento, admitted the house had "a lot of public focus on it" due to its association with Puente. But this isn’t the only reason for Burg’s group wanting to get it onto the tour. Burg said Preservation Sacramento was hoping to tell the full story associated with the house.
“There’s what you can see on the surface and then there’s the untold stories,” Burg said. “There have been people and then families living in that building for decades before and decades since and they each have their own story.”
How the tour will work
The tour will be a self-guided, docent-led look at the properties. Williams said that before the previous tour, they were instructed “to make ourselves scarce.” They spent about half the tour in their yard, before leaving to visit its other stops and have lunch.
Cabrera took a more hands-on approach while he was at 1426 F St. that day. “I was talking to people going through the house, pointing out the rooms, kind of like a tour guide,” Cabrera said.
Cabrera said he would plan to attend this tour as well. He’s become friends over the years with Williams and Holmes, with the three planning to meet up for breakfast soon.
Addresses for other properties on this year’s homes tour have not been disclosed. A news release said that the four houses on the tour date to the 1890s and that three are on F Street. Two commercial buildings not normally open to the public are also included.
The tour will also include the newly-reopened Washington Neighborhood Center at 400 16th St. The center features a mural by the Royal Chicano Air Force, whose members are being celebrated at a variety of venues this year.
There will also be a free street fair at Washington School during the tour’s hours.
If you go
What: Preservation Sacramento’s 50th Annual Historic Home Tour
When: Sept. 20
Cost: $40 for the general public, $30 for Preservation Sacramento members
Tickets: preservationsacramento.org/hometour
