Puente was charged with nine killings, convicted of three and died in 2011 at 82 at the Central California Women\u2019s Facility in Chowchilla.<\/p>\n
Sisters Deborah Smith and Tamara Welch, 73, have a rare view of Puente. Long before the serial killings, Puente publicly claimed to have adopted them \u2014 revealing her desperate need for attention and a compulsion to lie.<\/p>\n
Welch has never told her story. Smith spoke at a 1993 sentencing hearing for Puente. The fraternal twins shared their story in August in Springfield, Oregon, where Smith lives. Welch lives a few miles away.<\/p>\n
![\"Sisters](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_0870.jpg\" "\\"IMG_0870.jpg\\"")
Sisters Deborah Smith, left and Tamara Welch sit together at Smith’s home in Springfield, Oregon, in August. The fraternal twins stayed with the future Dorothea Puente, who falsely claimed to have adopted them, in 1963. GRAHAM WOMACK gwomack@sacbee.com Adopted by Dorothea Puente<\/p>\n
Smith began laughing when Welch showed her the decades-old newspaper clipping attesting to their supposed adoption.<\/p>\n
The story, like so much associated with Puente, was fantastical and largely invented.<\/p>\n
The sisters corroborated that they stayed with Puente in the Sacramento area in June 1963 when they were 10. Welch said they spent a few weeks with Puente and returned afterward to their parents.<\/p>\n
![\"\u201cIt](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/EYR.jpg\" "\\"EYR.jpg\\"")
\u201cIt is difficult to ascertain which is the widest smile \u2014 that of Debbie Marti, left; Tammy Marti, right; or their adoptive mother, Mrs. Dorothy Johansen, center\u201d reads part of a caption in a 1963 edition of the East Yolo Record, a newspaper that served what is now West Sacramento. The sisters, now 73, said no adoption ever occurred, and their stay with Johansen, who would later become serial killer Dorothea Puente, was brief. <\/p>\n
But Puente, who lied pathologically, spun a more elaborate story of the sisters\u2019 visit. Puente claimed to a Sacramento-area newspaper<\/a>, over multiple stories<\/a>, that she was adopting the girls after their father had died and their mother had gotten sick. Puente also claimed that she\u2019d lost a twin son and daughter at birth the year before.<\/p>\n \u201cShe said that she put money away for us,\u201d Smith said of Puente.<\/p>\n \u201cReally?\u201d Welch replied. \u201cI never saw any.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNot me either,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n Welch and Smith were born in 1952 and moved to Chico in early childhood. They were the youngest of five children born to Robert and Lorrayne Marti and came from an impoverished background.<\/p>\n \u201cOur parents today would have been classified as child abusers because when they spanked us, it was with a belt and my dad had a hard time reining his anger in,\u201d Welch said.<\/p>\n Puente had had her own troubled childhood, born Dorothea Helen Gray in Southern California in 1929 and orphaned around her 10th birthday.<\/p>\n She developed an ability to draw people in, be it vulnerable individuals, needy families or reporters she cultivated relationships with. The Sacramento Union wrote in 1966 about her work with a short-lived charitable operation<\/a>, The Samaritan House, when she was known as Dorothea Johansson.<\/p>\n \u201cMrs. Johansson, long active in local charity work, makes this her first formal work in the field of the problem drinker and alcoholism,\u201d the paper noted. \u201cMost notable of Mrs. Johansson\u2019s work for many years has been her assistance in work with unwed mothers and underprivileged children.\u201d<\/p>\n The sisters were living in Chico when they met Puente. Puente and her husband at the time, Swedish-born carpenter Axel Johansson lived nearby, Welch said.<\/p>\n \u201cMy memory is that they lived down quite a long driveway, and we spent some time \u2013 not a great deal that I recall \u2013 but we did spend some time with them,\u201d Welch said.<\/p>\n Ada Scott, an elderly reporter who was close to retirement, regularly wrote glowing dispatches about Puente in the 1960s for The East Yolo Record, a newspaper that operated in what is now West Sacramento.<\/p>\n In a May 1963 story where she referred to Puente as Dorothy Johansen, Scott wrote that Puente \u201cbecame acquainted with her future adoptive daughters two and one half years ago when their mother, a widow with five other children, left the youngsters with the Johansens overnight. They stayed 10 months.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLiar,\u201d Welch said in a sing-song voice as she listened to the passage.<\/p>\n By this stretch of her life, Puente was already having problems. This included her arrest on prostitution-related charges<\/a> under the name Teya Johansson in April 1960. She was busted running a fake bookkeeping office on Fulton Avenue in Sacramento County, receiving a 30-day jail sentence.<\/p>\n Carla Norton wrote in the 1994 book \u201cDisturbed Ground\u201d that Johansson had Puente committed to DeWitt State Hospital in 1961, where doctors determined she was a \u201cpathological liar\u201d with an \u201cunstable personality.\u201d<\/p>\n Puente babysat Welch and Smith in Chico. Those visits didn\u2019t pass without multiple incidents for Welch at the hands of Puente.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first time was, she was trimming my bangs or cutting my hair or something, and she told me to go in the bathroom and get a mirror, but do not look,\u201d Welch said.<\/p>\n Welch said she did as was told but when she returned from the bathroom, Puente \u201cjust hauled off and hit me across the face and said that I had looked.\u201d<\/p>\n Then there was the time Puente had Welch sweep up the kitchen and then inspected her work.<\/p>\n \u201cShe said, \u2018Did you sweep under the refrigerator?\u2019\u201d Welch said. \u201cWell, no. So she swept under the refrigerator and put it in the dustpan and made me eat it.\u201d<\/p>\n Welch said she felt horrified but that she didn\u2019t recall telling her parents of either incident.<\/p>\n Staying with Puente<\/p>\n The Marti family moved to Oregon around October 1962. The sisters\u2019 parents kept in contact with Puente. Welch isn\u2019t sure how they did it, though Scott offered an account for The East Yolo Record.<\/p>\n \u201cDuring the ensuing years, after the mother took them home again, the Johansens and Martis have corresponded,\u201d Scott wrote. \u201cThe local couple has sent the girls clothes, money and playthings. Now their mother in ill health has consented to their adoption.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked if any of this was true, each sister said no.<\/p>\n \u201cYou had to ask, I know, but I think you already knew the answer,\u201d Welch said.<\/p>\n However it occurred, the sisters made their way in time to Puente in the Sacramento area.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was simply just to go see her and come back,\u201d Welch said. \u201cThere was no mention, ever, of us staying with her. Well, there\u2019s no way. My mom was raised in an orphanage, so her kids were pretty much everything. So I could never imagine my parents ever relinquishing custody.\u201d<\/p>\n Smith remembered traveling by bus when she and Welch went to stay with Puente in June 1963.<\/p>\n It is unclear where the girls stayed with Puente. Scott reported that Puente and Johansson lived at 226 Fifth Street in Broderick, which is now part of West Sacramento. But the sisters remember features of 2100 F St. in Sacramento, another house that Puente was associated with in the \u201960s.<\/p>\n In the girls\u2019 time with Puente in 1963, they went to the park, swam in a pool and tried smoking. Puente sent them downtown to buy silver hairspray for her hair, which she kept in a French roll.<\/p>\n Welch said she and Smith only stayed with Puente once.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was just so eccentric,\u201d Welch said. \u201cThat\u2019s the way I look at it.\u201d<\/p>\n After the visit<\/p>\n Before Puente was sentenced in 1993, Welch received a call about testifying on her behalf. Puente\u2019s defense team was trying to prevent her from receiving the death penalty.<\/p>\n Welch had been married for roughly 20 years. Her husband, a homicide detective, had investigated Diane Downs, an Oregon mother convicted in 1984 of killing two of her children.<\/p>\n Welch put the call about testifying at Puente\u2019s sentencing on speaker, so her husband could hear.<\/p>\n \u201cI wouldn\u2019t say it was like, \u2018No thank you, goodbye,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cI think there was a little bit of conversation around it.\u201d<\/p>\n She turned down the request. Welch wouldn\u2019t learn until years later that her twin sister accepted the invite. Smith had her travel expenses paid so she could go to Monterey County, where Puente\u2019s trial was held after a change of venue from Sacramento.<\/p>\n Smith was one of several people to appear in 1993 on behalf of Puente, who was ultimately sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.<\/p>\n Smith didn\u2019t tell her sister about the trip until five years ago. During the August interview, Welch asked Smith why she went to sentencing. Smith replied that she was curious. Welch also quizzed her sister on why she hadn\u2019t told her sooner about her testimony.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know, I don\u2019t know,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n \u201cI just find that so incredibly weird,\u201d Welch said.<\/p>\n The sisters never saw Puente again. Puente is not known to have ever mentioned the women, though she told an interviewer late in life<\/a> that she\u2019d had twin girls who died by suicide within a week of each other in early adulthood.<\/p>\n A Bee story about Puente\u2019s sentencing<\/a> described Smith as \u201can impeccably dressed and groomed mortgage and loan officer\u201d living in Oregon.<\/p>\n Smith testified that she and her sister spent a summer with Puente, which she said was a reprieve from dysfunctional home life and that it represented sanctuary. Puente, Smith said then, showed them \u201cthe feminine side of being a young lady.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI just hate to think about where I would be today if this woman had not touched my life,\u201d Smith said then.<\/p>\n Asked if she remembered saying this, Smith said she did not. Nor could she recall having positive feelings toward Puente in the years after the visit.<\/p>\n For Welch, she said her association with Puente was good fodder for playing the game \u201cTwo Truths and a Lie.\u201d She said she played once and said that a serial killer had babysat her and that she\u2019d had a cousin who was murdered.<\/p>\n \u201cThen I made something up,\u201d Welch said.<\/p>\n Follow More of Our Reporting on Inside Look<\/p>\n![\"Dorothea](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Puente2.jpeg\" "\\"Puente2\\"")
Dorothea Puente leaves her F Street boarding house on Nov. 12, 1988, walking past a homicide detective, right, as Sacramento police officers began searching her yard for bodies. Puente did not return and was arrested five days later in Los Angeles. GENARO MOLINA Sacramento Bee file <\/p>\n Dorothea Puente, known as the \u201cDeath House Landlady,\u201d sits in court in 1993 for sentencing on charges of murdering her tenants at 1426 F St. in Sacramento. She was convicted of three murders. OWEN BREWER Sacramento Bee file <\/p>\n
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