2 Bodies Unearthed at Boarding Home; Manager Is Sought

The bodies of two elderly people were unearthed in the yard of a small downtown boarding house Saturday and police said they expect to find at least two others buried there.

Sacramento police issued an all-points bulletin for the manager of the Victorian-style boarding home Saturday, hours after she was allowed to leave the house, Lt. Joe Enloe said. The manager, Dorthea Montalvo Puente, is being sought for investigation of homicide.

Enloe said Montalvo, 71, was not prevented from walking away from the house earlier in the day because police lacked sufficient evidence to hold her.

Arrests of other suspects are expected, Enloe said. “We do not believe she acted alone . . . Someone else probably had knowledge of what was going on,” he said.

Robbery was believed to be the motives in the deaths, Enloe said, explaining that the victims’ Social Security checks had been cashed.

Police, however, were unable to say how the victims died.

“They had been there for weeks and maybe months,” said Lt. Larry Gibbs. One of the bodies, he added, had decomposed to “just bare bones.” Anthropologists and the coroner’s office were assisting with the excavations, he said.

Gibbs said heavy machinery was being brought in to clear away cement that recently had been poured in the rear and side yards. Several recently planted trees had to be removed and a gazebo in the back yard torn down to uncover the graves.

“We have located two other sites which we believe contain additional bodies,” Gibbs said. “I think there is a possibility that they are more than four.”

The digging was expected to continue for several days.

Montalvo was convicted in 1982 of grand theft involving charges that she drugged three elderly people and took their possessions after meeting them in bars, police said.

“She was very, very odd, always yelling at people if they put even a step onto her lawn,” said Demy Bautista, a neighbor.

Police went to the house Monday after neighbors reported that a former tenant had been missing since August. A human leg bone was discovered Friday after officers received a tip there was a body buried in the yard, Enloe said.

The two bodies, including the remains of an elderly woman wrapped in a table cloth--”like a mummy, all the way up and around her head”--were discovered Saturday before darkness forced workers to suspend their efforts, he said. The victims were not identified.