Coroner Confident Bodies Will Be Identified in Boardinghouse Deaths

County Coroner Charles Simmons predicted Friday that most of the seven bodies unearthed in the yard of a Sacramento boarding house will be identified, but said he doubted if it will ever be determined when they died.

Simmons, who spoke to reporters at a news conference shortly after pathologists completed an autopsy of the fourth victim, said six of the seven bodies had been wrapped in plastic and sheets, which drastically altered decomposition and prevented authorities from pinpointing a time of death.

But he said the plastic wrappings had made it easier to get fingerprints and he is hopeful they will provide a quick means of identifying the victims. “I would be surprised if we didn’t identify a majority of them.”

To assist in the identification, he said, police had provided a list of 16 people who lived at the boarding home.

The scientific material now being uncovered by pathologists and anthropologists is expected to provide key evidence in the state’s case against murder suspect Dorothea Montalvo Puente, 59, the landlady of the downtown boarding house where police began retrieving bodies a week ago. Police suspect she may have killed some of her boarders to get their Social Security checks.

Puente, who fled Sacramento last weekend after bodies began to be unearthed, was arrested Wednesday night in Los Angeles and has been charged with one count of murder. Prosecutors have said they will file additional counts and may seek the death penalty.

Searching for more evidence, police on Friday probed the ground of a second boarding house operated by Puente but announced by day’s end that “nothing led them to believe anything is buried there.”

Simmons said he hoped to complete all autopsies by early next week but it could take a week or more.

He said experts have determined the first four bodies uncovered were those of two men and two women.