The Death House Landlady: Dorothea Puente’s Garden of Secrets

In 1980s Sacramento, a kindly gray-haired grandmother in frumpy dresses and oversized glasses ran a charming Victorian boarding house for society’s most vulnerable. Neighbors adored her. Social workers praised her. But beneath the flower beds and fresh concrete in her backyard, Dorothea Puente buried at least nine of her tenants after drugging them to death and cashing their checks.

Join host Alexander Lawson as we uncover the chilling double life of the “Death House Landlady”—a case of greed, deception, and murder that forced America to rethink how we protect the elderly and forgotten. This one will make you side-eye every sweet little old lady offering you tea. Listener discretion is advised.