Deliberations Drag On in Murder Trial of Landlady

The serial murder trial of Dorothea Montalvo Puente is taking so long that the bailiff on duty at the start of the trial has died of leukemia, one of six alternate jurors is pregnant and the prosecutor’s apartment lease has expired. He is now driving back and forth each day from Sacramento.

Jurors in the trial of Puente, a 64-year-old woman charged in the murders of nine tenants at her Victorian boardinghouse, are in their second month of deliberations. Trial participants and observers are wondering why the process is taking so long.

“It surprises me,” said prosecutor John O’Mara. “Hopefully, they (jurors) can resolve the case. Sometimes they can. Sometimes they can’t. . . . It’s a lot of counts and a lot of information they were presented.”

Measured from the date jury selection began, the trial has lasted nine months. Jury deliberations, which began July 15, entered their 19th day on Monday.

Puente was arrested in 1988 and charged with murder in the deaths of the nine tenants during the previous six years. Held without bail, she has spent nearly five years in jail.

During trial testimony, O’Mara painted Puente as a coldhearted killer who did away with her victims to cover up her theft of their Social Security and other benefit checks.

But Puente’s attorneys have said the tenants died as the result of suicide or natural causes, and implied that Puente buried the bodies to avoid parole problems. Puente served time in prison in the mid-1980s for drugging and stealing from her tenants and was prohibited from taking in boarders.

Eleven days ago, the jurors reported to Superior Court Judge Michael J. Virga that they were deadlocked on all counts. Virga asked jurors to continue deliberating, and two days later they reported “quite a bit” of progress.