Human Harvest - by Daniel J Blackburn (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The landlady who buried her tenants in the backyard.

In November 1988, Sacramento police dug up seven bodies in the yard of Dorothea Puente's boarding house at 1426 F Street. Puente was a disarming, grandmotherly woman known for renting to the poor, the elderly, and the disabled. She targeted the lonely and the vulnerable so she could murder them and cash their Social Security checks, with no one suspecting a thing. One tenant, a gentle man named Bert Montoya, was missing for months before his 82-year-old mother learned he had been found in Puente's yard.

Daniel J. Blackburn knew Puente while she was still killing, and went on to write the first full account of her crimes. What he found was a woman who could have been anyone: a neighbor, a friend, your mother.

Human Harvest reveals how this polite psychopath got away with it for so long, stripping away her lies and her charm and nailing to the wall the agencies that sent her tenants and looked the other way, until two social workers refused to let it go.

A true crime account of a woman serial killer, the Sacramento boarding house murders, and Social Security fraud in 1980s California.

About the Author

Daniel J. Blackburn has been a journalist most of his professional life -- with brief forays into the bowels of government (for educational purposes only) where he spent time as an executive in California's water industry; a lobbyist; and a legislative aide. He's also an author; co-founder of a daily news website in California, CalCoastNews.com; and a fairly competent videographer. He's dad to three sons, Patrick, Alan, and Joey, and lives with his wife Maria amid SOME of the world's great producers of fine wines.