Grandmotherly-looking or not, Dorothea Puente had plenty of priors in her criminal history. From a legal standpoint, she should not have been running a boarding house at all. According to ScreenRant, the notorious killer who wound up taking Vera Faye Martin’s life had already spent three years in prison for related crimes — notably robbing and drugging elderly people she was charged with caring for in her past. The Los Angeles Times reports that during that time, there were even allegations of possible homicide, which authorities refused to comment on further.

She got by running her boarding house under a loophole, since it was not technically deemed a “care facility.” As the case began unfolding and Puente’s façade faded, Kathleen Lammers, Executive Director of the California Law Center on Longterm Care, told The New York Times, “These entities fall through the cracks.” She then pointed out that the case of Vera Martin and countless other victims are examples of the need for stricter laws pertaining to elder abuse. Puente’s shadowy past notwithstanding, it’s important to note that authorities dropped by this house of horrors not once, not twice, but fifteen times, and still remained clueless to the fact that there were bodies buried in the garden, per the Los Angeles Times.

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