By admin 
The line to get into Dorothea Puente’s former boarding house at 1426 F St. stretched down the street and half a block around the corner around noon Sunday.
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The house was the marquee attraction during Preservation Sacramento’s 50th Annual Historic Home Tour. More than 1,000 people bought tickets for the event, raising more than $30,000 for the nonprofit.
Puente’s house was once the site of unspeakable horrors. Sacramento Police dug up the bodies of several of her former residents in November 1988. She faced charges of killing nine people, was convicted of three counts of murder and later died in prison.
On Sunday, people went through Puente’s former room, walked around the outside of the property where bodies were once buried and seemed generally nonplussed.
“I think they’re kind of excited about coming through,” said Barbara Holmes, who owns the house with her husband Tom Williams. “I haven’t seen any frightened souls, but so far, so good. They all seem to be happy to be here.”
The house was previously on Preservation Sacramento’s Historic Home Tour in 2013.
Historical value of Puente’s former home
Catherine Turrill-Lupi, a retired Sacramento State professor and chair of the tour committee for Preservation Sacramento, said Puente’s home was on the tour partly because of its historical value.
The light blue house dates to 1895 and has been on Sacramento’s local historic register since 1977. Were it not for the house’s historic status, it might have been torn down, as sometimes happens with notorious properties. That was the fate of Jeffrey Dahmer’s former apartment building and the Idaho house where Bryan Kohberger murdered four college students.
But Turrill-Lupi also conceded that there was a pragmatic reason for including Puente’s former boarding house on the tour.
“We like to have at least one house that people know about and are interested in visiting,” Turrill-Lupi said.
For Preservation Sacramento, getting a property people want to see onto the home tour has tangible impacts.
The funds raised from the tour help support Preservation Sacramento’s activities, such as raising awareness of properties and adding sites to the National Register of Historic Places. The tours also help bring in new members.
And the tours can showcase under-the-radar parts of Sacramento.
“I see it as a way of getting people to know a part of the city they might not know,” Catherine Turrill-Lupi said. “This is not an area that many people come to necessarily, even if they’re going to the performances at the theater, which is not that far away.”
The house was also on the tour because Holmes and Williams have steadfastly recognized its interest to the public since they purchased the property at auction in 2010.
“We kind of knew what we were getting ourselves into,” Holmes said.
People come to the house on a more or less daily basis to take photos in front of it. Williams and Holmes keep their gate closed and ask people to not step foot on the property, though they have a QR code out front that provides information about the documentary “The House is Innocent.” Approximately 9,000 people have scanned the QR code, according to Williams.
The couple wasn’t paid for having the house on the tour.
“We’re happy to make money for the nonprofits here,” Williams said.
‘Kind of creepy’
Elise Arata, a former employee of the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office, treated two friends to the tour and brought info on her phone related to Puente, including a map showing where bodies were buried.
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“I think I’m smiling because I feel lucky to be in here,” Arata said.
Christian Dulay toured the home while wearing a T-shirt with the words “Bury Me in Sacramento” and a picture of Puente. Dulay grew up in Sacramento and was a child when police dug up bodies at Puente’s boarding home.
“I can still remember all the descriptions on the news and the speculation,” Dulay said. “So it was really fascinating to sort of connect that and be in those spaces.”
Elaine Heieck, a Granite Bay resident, said she found it “kind of creepy” to be in the house.
“It’s very surreal,” Heieck said. “It’s hard to imagine that something like that could happen.”
Holmes’ late mother once told her she’d seen a ghost in the basement. While there were no known ghost sightings Sunday, Sarah Smith said “the vibes were off” in Puente’s former bedroom, where police believe she handled deceased bodies.
“It was weird energy in there,” Smith said. “Felt very heavy, very dark, very creepy.”
Kim Linman said the house is owned by the right people.
“I feel like the owners were really mindful of the history of the house and were very respectful with it,” Linman said. “But you can also tell that they’re people that appreciate more of the macabre. So I think it’s done really respectfully, and I think it’s in the right hands.”
The house is bright and cheerful inside and looks remodeled.
“It’s actually neater than I thought it was,” said Mihai Lopazan of Roseville. “I expected it to be more rundown.”
Other stops on Preservation Sacramento’s tour
Puente’s former house was not the only part of Preservation Sacramento’s tour Sunday.
The tour also included Washington Elementary School at 520 18th St., the Van Hall House at 614 19th St., IreneHouse at 1630 F St., the James H. Winn House at 1523 G St. and Washington Neighborhood Center at 400 16th St.
As she toured the house with her family, Peggy Etzler praised the James H. Winn House, which architect James Ough designed in 1878, according to Preservation Sacramento.
“This is the best one,” Peggy Etzler said of the house. “It’s been kept the best from what I’ve seen.”
South Land Park resident Jennifer Kennedy, touring with her husband and her mother, said she loved Victorian buildings and Sacramento’s history. It was cool to her that IreneHouse, an 1894 Queen Anne Revival, was still standing.
As for Puente, Kennedy said she would have “absolutely” been on the tour regardless of if Puente’s former house was on it.
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“She’s a pull, but she’s not the only reason,” Kennedy said.