Dorothy Miller, a 64-year-old Native American female and U.S. Army veteran, was living in the Victorian boarding house run by 59-year-old landlady Dorothea Puente at 1426 F Street in Sacramento. The modest room-and-board arrangement attracted elderly or disabled tenants whose Social Security or veterans' benefits could be managed by Puente; Miller—described by friends as soft-spoken and struggling with alcoholism—fit that profile.
The last verified sighting of the 64-year-old Native American woman was in October 1987, when her social worker watched her smoke a cigarette on the front porch. No public record fixes her exact date of death, and June 14 1987 is not documented in the investigative files available online.
When Miller's frail pension checks suddenly stopped being cashed in person, the social worker pressed police to look more closely at Puente's reputedly charitable home. Officers returned with shovels in November 1988. Beneath freshly turned soil they unearthed seven decomposed bodies; one was the 64-year-old Native American female victim. Her remains told a grim story: the 64-year-old woman's arms had been bound tightly to her torso with duct tape, an indication she was immobilized before burial. Toxicology later showed that most of the victims—including the 64-year-old Native American woman—had been heavily dosed with the prescription sedative Dalmane, a drug Puente obtained using Miller's veterans-identity card after the killing.
Detectives concluded that Puente's motive was financial: cashing the benefit checks of her frail boarders after sedating and suffocating them. On 11 November 1988, as police dug in her yard, Puente slipped away by bus to Los Angeles. A four-day manhunt ended on 17 November 1988 when LAPD officers arrested her at a downtown motel after a bar patron recognized the kindly grandmother from televised bulletins.
Puente was eventually charged with nine murders. After a five-month trial in Monterey County and 24 days of jury deliberation, she was found guilty on 15 August 1993 of first-degree murder in the deaths of Benjamin Fink and the 64-year-old Native American female Dorothy Miller, and second-degree murder in the death of Leona Carpenter. The jury deadlocked on six additional counts. On 10 December 1993, Superior Court Judge Michael Virga sentenced the boarding-house operator to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Though the state never established the precise moment the 64-year-old Native American woman lost her life, investigators believe she died shortly after her final October 1987 porch conversation, was bound, drugged, and buried in a shallow grave that Puente later adorned with fresh plants. No other suspects were identified; all available evidence points to Puente as the sole perpetrator, and she remained the only person arrested or charged in connection with the homicide of Dorothy Miller.
