HBO is developing a true crime drama series titled “Dorothea” based on the story of ’80s serial killer Dorothea Puente.
Geena Davis has been cast in the title role and executive produces alongside showrunner Joshua Michael Stern. Michael Rosenbaum and Jeff Frost also executive produce, with Rosenbaum having pitched the project to Frost’s Bristol Circle Entertainment, which later sold it to HBO. Rosenbaum’s writing partner Jane Whitney serves as co-executive producer.
Puente — also known by the nicknames Killer Landlady and Death House Landlady — was “a Sacramento woman who ran a boarding house for the less fortunate in the 1980s, but her seemingly benevolent actions belied her sinister motives,” the official logline reads. Puente ran her operation from between 1982 and her arrest in 1988. She was eventually charged with murdering nine people, including several of her tenants. Many of her victims were poisoned and buried around the boarding house, with Puente cashing their social security checks. Because of a deadlocked jury on six of the counts, Puente was only convicted of three. In 1993, she was sentenced to life in prison, and she died at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, Calif. in 2011 at age 82.
