Dorothea operated a boarding house in Sacramento, California where she offered quality lodgings for elderly people on fixed incomes. She also offered poison and a bed of flowers to bury their corpses in. As she offed her boarders she kept cashing their social security checks. In 1988, after too many of her boarders disappeared, cops showed up with shovels and unearthed seven corpses from her garden. Another body discovered in the Sacramento River in 1986 was added to her hit list. It's believed that she might have killed up to twenty-five others. She was arrested in Los Angeles on November 17, 1988 after she inquired about an acquaintance's disability check and offered to fix him a nice Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings.