Vanessa Richardson

They'd usually end up behind bars for 30 days, which was enough time for Dorothea to move someone else into their room and kill them before the original tenant came back.

That is just utterly cold-hearted.

Do you think she views life as a game of survival of the fittest, and so she doesn't feel any kind of sympathy toward others?

Dorothea's tactics only got more diabolical from there.

She used former residents' IDs, including Ruth Monroe's, to fill prescriptions for sleeping pills, which she used to drug and kill her victims.

Then she rolled their dead bodies up in plastic tarps that she'd placed underneath their bedsheets.

Usually before killing someone, she isolated them from everyone else first.

She'd keep people restrained in their bedrooms and tell the others they'd fallen ill.

That way, Dorothea thought no one would be surprised when the person passed away.

If other tenants or even the neighbors ever asked about someone who'd gone missing, Dorothea would make up excuses.

Sometimes she said they'd moved to another city or that she had to move them into a hospital.

At the same time, she knew she couldn't keep hiring people to help her move bodies.

Ismael had seemed to know something nefarious was going on, so if she continued to enlist others, it would only be a matter of time before someone notified the authorities.

So,

Dorothea worked alone.

When the other tenants weren't around or they were sleeping, she dragged her victims' bodies out into the backyard and buried them in the garden.

Then she covered their shallow graves with flower pots or even planted new trees.

Her home looked immaculate and well cared for.

She didn't think anyone would suspect a thing.

Dorothea's role as caregiver was her greatest disguise, so great that she not only duped everyone, but she also came to believe it herself.