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Woman Living In Dorothea Puente's Former Home Says She Was Visited By Killer

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Tuesday marked the 26th anniversary of the day investigators dug up the first bodies at an infamous Sacramento serial killer's home.

While the owner of the home wasn't there, his mother-in-law told CBS13 about the times she believes the spirit of Sacramento serial killer Dorothea Puente visited her.

Peggy Holmes lives on the bottom floor of the old home. Her windows look out at where seven bodies were buried and later dug up by investigators. And decades after Puente killed her tenants for their Social Security checks at the home, which has since been remodeled, for Holmes and her daughter and son-in-law, it's now simply home.

Holmes admits though, she'll sometimes catch unexplained orbs of light on her walls. A psychic once told them a man's spirit lives in Peggy's room, who had quite a story to tell about Puente: she made him dig his own grave.

During the two years Holmes has lived there, she says she's experienced paranormal activity once. It was on her first night in the home, she says, when Puente's spirit visited her.

"There was a real heavy perfume that woke me up in the middle of the night, and I think it was her. It was stifling; it was a heavy, sweet perfume, you know, like an old woman would wear," she said. "I just went, 'Go away, I'm going back to sleep.'"

It seems like Puente's listened to her; she hasn't visited since. But Holmes says she thinks Puente stays away because she knows Homes isn't scared of her.

Puente died in prison in 2011. She told a pen pal before she died that she was battling cancer.

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