SACRAMENTO, Calif. — There’s a handwritten recipe framed on the wall of Tom Williams and Barbara Holmes’ home. They’ve never made it, but they don’t think much of the creator’s cooking — or anything else about her, really.
Williams and Holmes live in the former home of Dorothea Puente, Sacramento’s notorious serial killer who lodged vulnerable boarders before murdering them and burying the bodies in her backyard. They’ve preserved her original recipe for garbanzo bean salad, written in cursive red ink on lined paper.
The salad serves eight and calls for lemon juice, garlic, white wine, red onion and herbs, but those ingredients don’t have anything to do with Williams and Holmes’ aversion. Nor does its creepy origin — the couple bought Puente’s former house knowing full well who had lived there.
No, Williams and Holmes just don’t think of Puente as a cook, murders aside. The recipe can be found on Page 24 of “Cooking with a Serial Killer: Recipes From Dorothea Puente,” a novelty cookbook by Shane Bugbee and published in 2005.
Williams and Holmes unsurprisingly own a copy of “Cooking with a Serial Killer,” but Puente didn’t have access to a test kitchen in prison, and errors abound, they said. When Holmes used the cookbook to bake honey cookies in the shape of their house for a tour, the desserts were appreciated but not eaten.
“It’s not very good, and she did it all from memory. She hand-wrote those and gave them to this guy to put into the book,” Holmes said. “You can see where there’s a bunch of mistakes, like instead of a teaspoon she has a tablespoon of something.”
Puente began corresponding from prison with professional provocateur Shane Bugbee in the early 2000s, and he eventually authored “Cooking with a Serial Killer.” Williams then bought the original, handwritten garbanzo bean salad recipe from Bugbee three years ago via a website called Murder Auction.
Williams and Holmes moved into 1426 F St. in 2010, when the Great Recession had dropped the duplex’s price to $226,000. Williams had believed the bookstore they owned in Georgetown was haunted and liked the Puente house’s lore, while Holmes just wanted a multi-unit home to accommodate her mother.
They knew the house would be a point of interest but didn’t anticipate the true-crime genre’s rise in popularity throughout the 2010s, Williams said. They’ve hosted two nonprofit tours, installed cheeky decor and set up a QR code outside the house leading to a documentary on Puente’s crimes, which more than 6,000 people have scanned.
The homeowners have leaned into the bit, even in a part of the house that most people don’t see. The entryway includes Puente’s likeness holding a shovel on a T-shirt reading “Sacramento — I dig it!”
“We understood that in owning a place like this, that’s part of the history. We knew that going in, that people would be interested,” Holmes said. “Not this interested, but … they seem to be tickled.”
