Under the guise of the benevolent grandmother lurked a lifelong
criminal, and diligent reporters carefully pieced Puente's life story
together and published it. She was born Dorothea Helen Gray on
January 9, 1929 in Redlands, California, and although she claimed to be
the youngest of 18 children, her birth certificate showed she was her
mother's sixth child, the Sacramento Bee reported. Hers
was a childhood marred by tragedy, with her father dying of
tuberculosis when she was 8 and her |