Ruth Munroe, a 61-year-old woman, died on April 14, 1982, in Sacramento, California, after moving into the home of Dorothea Puente. Munroe brought all her belongings and $6,000 in cash and intended a business partnership with Puente. At the time her husband was terminally ill in a Veterans Administration Hospital; Munroe had written optimistic letters to him before moving.

Within two weeks of moving in, Munroe told a friend at a beauty parlor that she felt like she was going to die, though she gave no reason. Three days later she was found dead of a massive overdose of Tylenol and codeine. The coroner ruled the death a suicide for lack of evidence of foul play, and Munroe’s death was not included in the later formal murder charges against Puente.

A month after Munroe’s death Puente was arrested and sentenced to five years for drugging and robbing elderly people; she was released in 1985 and later, in 1988, linked to multiple bodies buried at her boarding house and convicted of murdering several tenants. Munroe is now suspected by some to have been Puente’s first victim; definitive evidence tying her death to Puente was not established. Did anyone who knew Ruth or saw her in Sacramento in early 1982 notice anything that might clarify what happened?