Disturbed Ground (50 page)

One juror turned his eyes on Puente and stroked his chin in contemplation.

Covering ground like a storm front, O'Mara showed how Puente had looted the accounts of her tenants, not only the victims, but other, short-term boarders: Federal, state, and county benefit checks were all funneled through her hands, ranging from Julius "Pat" Kelley's tax refund of nearly $10,000 to Everson Gillmouth's pension checks of $42.50.
According to O'Mara's handwriting expert, Puente had forged signatures on hundreds of checks totaling some $85,000 (and checks were still coming in).

Flipping through Puente's check stubs, O’Mara spotted a three-hundred-dollar check for "shoes for Leona," which showed how cynically Puente had written these checks. "Three hundred dollars for shoes for Leona, huh? So she'll have some nice shoes to wear while she's over there in the yard?"

The money trail showed that Vera Faye Martin, who had come to Puente's boardinghouse on October 2, 1987, had been murdered almost immediately. Puente was forging her signature three days later, on October 5. And even the most reliable witnesses couldn't remember ever laying eyes on Vera Martin.

Dorothy Miller disappeared just a month or so later. She'd been described as "the goofy lady" who Puente had forcibly kept in her room upstairs (the infamous bedroom off the kitchen). Sometimes Miller would sneak downstairs, then scurry back up. And when one tenant noticed that she wasn't around anymore, Puente told him, "She got arrested for petty theft, and I had to throw her out."

Tracing dates and events, O'Mara sometimes relied on Puente's scrawled notes on her calendars, which he waved in front of the jury. He pointed out that certain entries, all written in the same color ink, were distinctly self-serving in tone. For example, on Sunday, November 7, 1988, when the mythical brother-in-law had supposedly taken Bert to Utah, she'd written, "Bert left while I was at church."

O'Mara couldn't resist a wisecrack: "We have to bring God into this somehow, because we know He wouldn't be involved if this weren't true."

But perhaps O'Mara was alienating the very people he was trying to convince.

(The jury remained unfathomable. Media types buzzed about how curiously cheerful and boisterous some were. One day, as a joke, the XREM1ST and some of his cohorts came in wearing sunglasses. Others were steadfastly impassive.)

Later, O'Mara addressed the subject of poor Jim Gallop, the man with the brain tumor. Reviewing Gallop's medical records, O'Mara noted, "He's certainly got a serious condition, but it's worlds apart from a malignant tumor."

The records also noted that Gallop was living with a woman he'd met in a bar. "He thought it was Mother Teresa," O'Mara said snidely, "but it wasn't!"

The defense attorneys squinted at him and jotted notes.

Noting that all of these people had been in and out of emergency rooms, O'Mara intoned, "These people had wretched lives. They made it through all kinds of things. They survived." He paused. "Then they go to this island of peace—this oasis!—this woman who takes in homeless and gives them new lives. They make it there, and most of them don't live out the month! Isn't it kind of ironic? They go to this warm, grandmotherly place, and they're history!"

Watching the jurors' faces, O'Mara spied the occasional nod, the knowing smile that told him they, too, thought Puente's guilt was obvious. He was sure he was reaching them, sure he was winning convictions.

Later, he would wonder how he could have been so wrong.

The morning of Friday, July 9, the defense moved for a mistrial, charging prosecutorial misconduct. By evoking God and making references to Mother Teresa and Christian conduct, they said, O'Mara's argument was prejudicial and inflammatory, and was not fair comment on the evidence. But Judge Virga quickly ruled that O'Mara had not exceeded the bounds of proper argument.

Next, the defense moved that the jury be given an additional instruction for count seven, the alleged murder of Ben Fink. According to the prosecution, they said, Puente felt so outraged by Fink's drunken behavior that "she just lost it" and killed him. That sort of "heat of passion" killing required an instruction for voluntary manslaughter.

Judge Virga agreed. And once the jury was again seated, they were instructed that, for count seven only, they had this additional option.

And the more options, the more possibility for friction. Such was Clymo's logic.

Back on his feet, O'Mara put responsibility for the morning's delay in the lap of the defense. He hadn't meant to imply that Ben Fink had been murdered in a fit of anger, he said, cluing them to the fact that the additional instruction had come from the other side.

O'Mara still had plenty to cover. He pulled out more charts and warned, "We're going to talk about something boring—the famous Dalmane Wars," and several jurors smirked.

He summarized the toxicological findings, stressing the strange coincidence that all the bodies showed traces of Dalmane. And he enumerated Puente's ceaseless refills for the drug. All the while, he attacked the defense experts and commended his own.

The defense expected nothing less.

Finally, he was coming to things he had saved for last. Some bits of evidence had been numbered and entered into the record with hardly a comment. Found on Puente's dining room table, for instance, was a scrap of paper torn from a spiral notebook. "This is a very interesting piece of paper," O'Mara said, showing them a huge blowup of a scrawled tally:

Jim
   
657

V     
687

B     
687

B     
687

L     
500

D     
600

J     
700

-----------

     5,058

A glance brought a slap of realization. O'Mara hardly needed to explain, but he did. Jim was Jim Gallop, V was Vera Martin, the two B's were Betty Palmer and Ben Fink, L was Leona Carpenter, D was Dorothy Miller, and J, he said, was either John Sharp or John McCauley. "What she's figuring out is how much money she can expect every month. She's computing her income."

What else could one conclude? Her addition was off, but this tally closely reflected what each person received from Social Security, SSI, and other sources.

"I suggest that this was before Bert Montoya was killed," O'Mara said grimly. "Otherwise, there would be three B's."

Why had she murdered these people? For the money, mainly, but not
only
for the money, he explained. For the prestige, for the lifestyle, for the respect that money can buy.

O'Mara picked up a box of Christmas cards that had been found on Puente's dining room table in November 1988, and passed one to the jury.
Flipping it open, they saw festive, preprinted Season's Greetings from "Dr. Dorothea Puente."

The woman had more than a lifestyle to support. She had an image to maintain.

He put away the cards and mused, "I'm sure she rationalized in her mind: ‘They're better off dead. They're going to be dead soon anyway, so what's the difference? I'm really doing them a favor.'"

But the prosecutor didn't believe she'd done them any favors. He snatched up the photographs that showed her simple, final solution. He marched the photos past the jury box, announcing them name by name: "Everson Gillmouth, wrapped with garbage bags about the face. Betty Palmer, with garbage bags on the torso. Dorothy Miller, with a Chux pad on her face and duct tape to hold her arm in place. Ben Fink also has a Chux pad over his face. And Mr. Montoya—the man she treated like a son!—Mr. Montoya has a garbage bag over his face."

"Do you notice the similarities?" he shouted. "Suffocation couldn't have been detected twenty-five minutes after death.
Why are these objects over their faces?"

He set aside these dreadful images. "Whether you believe they were poisoned to death, whether you believe they were smothered to death, does it really matter?"

Square in front of the jury box, he made his final plea: "Don't buy this story that they all died of natural causes. She murdered each one of them. She did it
willfully,
she did it
deliberately,
she did it with
premeditation.
And if there's any doubt in your mind as to whether she did it in that fashion, think about after she did the first one. If there isn't deliberation on the first one, there sure as heck is by the time you get to number two!
And when you get to three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and NINE, what do you think is going through your mind?”

O'Mara folded into his chair, his question reverberating through the paralyzed court.

Part VII: SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL

Some call her the devil incarnate, others call her an angel.

—
Kevin Clymo, defense attorney

She had many personalities. At one moment she is the virgin. At other times she is the devil.

—
Pedro Montalvo, Dorothea’s fourth husband

I can tell when Mom drinks because she gets so mean I can smell it.

—
Dorothea Helen Gray, age seven

CHAPTER 46

Her short curls intensely white against the midnight blue of her sweater, her small hands folded before her, Dorothea Puente looked especially grandmotherly and proper on Monday morning as she watched the jury box fill. In the gallery, two elderly women peered over reporters' shoulders, guessing her age at perhaps seventy-five. "She's so pasty," one whispered, "her skin matches her hair."

Judge Virga swept his black robes into court, assumed the bench, then announced, "Mr. Clymo, you may proceed."

The defense attorney rose to his full height.

After O'Mara's heart-stopping summation, expectations for the defense were not high. Clymo was expected to finish this same afternoon. After all, observers wondered, what could he possibly say?

Clymo wasted no time. "If you believe all that the prosecutor
testified
to last week"—said with heavy cynicism—"if you believe all he's told you, you'll probably convict Dorothea Puente on nine counts of murder," he began simply. "The passion, the anger, the prejudice that were directed at yo ..."  He spread his hands helplessly. "The plea was very, very powerful."

He smiled. "At one point, I looked up at the jury and I thought, oh my God, they're not only going to convict Dorothea, they're going to convict us for sitting beside her!"

But then he realized, he said, that these very sensible jurors would not let their "passions dictate."

Good-humored and unpretentious, Clymo spoke to them in confidential tones. "I agree with Mr. O'Mara about one thing," he said, "this truly is the mother of all circumstantial evidence cases. It's a difficult case, difficult for the prosecution, difficult for the defense."

He reminded them that the change of venue was necessary because emotions ran so high in Sacramento that Puente couldn't get a fair trial there. They'd been selected, after months of interviews with hundreds of prospective jurors, because they could weigh both sides fairly.

As an aside, Clymo grinned and said, "I almost wore my fish tie today," flipping his necktie. "A trout in the milk is very strong circumstantial evidence—
but of what?"

Serious again, he continued, "It's a tough case, and it will take a truly
courageous
jury to ignore that passion and to apply the law objectively."