By Elleda Wilson
The Daily Astorian
Posted: Friday, April 8, 2011 11:07 am
If you ever decide to go “Borgia” and start poisoning people, how would you disguise the poison? It would be a difficult choice if you’re a creative chef like DOROTHEA PUENTE, pictured above, right.
She recently died in prison after being convicted of murdering her Sacramento, Calif., boarders by poisoning their food with the sleeping drug Dalmane, burying them in her backyard, and cashing their Social Security checks.
SHANE BUGBEE, pictured above, left, of the Long Beach (Wash.) Peninsula, co-authored a cookbook with her while she was incarcerated, “COOKING WITH A SERIAL KILLER, Recipes from Dorothea Puente” (2004). The recipes are simple but quite tasty.
He contacted “Thea” because he was interested in doing an article about female serial killers, but the article turned into a book. “I recall she was very interested in talking,” Shane told the Ear, “and once we started chatting, well, she sort of took the place of my dear old dead mum ... Thea jumped at the idea of a cookbook because it wasn’t a book detailing her crimes.”
Naturally, she was a great cook. Dorothea told Shane that one of her (lucky to be alive) boarders told an investigator that eating at her house was “like having Christmas, Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July and Labor Day every single day of the month.”
The book also has correspondence between Shane and Thea, transcripts of their conversations, poems and drawings, and can be found at Amazon.com andLulu.com (where it is also available as a free download). One reviewer noted, “The lady may be a serial killer, but her recipes are first rate.”
Dorothea, of course, proclaimed her innocence, claiming her boarders all died of “natural” causes. “I loved my people too much ... Why would I spend money fattening them up if I was going to kill them?” A rhetorical question, to be sure.
“Try her favorite salsa,” Shane advised wryly. “It’s killer!”
Shane also published a book with serial killer JOHN WAYNE GACY. But that’s a story for another day.
Reprinted with permission of The Daily Astorian of Astoria, Oregon.
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