SACRAMENTO (AP) — Dorothea Montalvo Puente, the Sacramento landlady convicted in 1993 of killing three of her tenants to collect their government checks and burying them in her backyard, died on Sunday at a prison in Central California. She was 82.

Ms. Puente died of natural causes at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, said a corrections department spokeswoman, Terry Thornton.

Ms. Puente was serving two life sentences and a concurrent 15-year-to-life sentence. She was initially charged in nine deaths, but the jury did not reach verdicts in six of them.

Ms. Puente was arrested in 1988 after the authorities found the bodies of seven people buried in the yard of her boardinghouse. All seven, as well as two others buried elsewhere, had been Ms. Puente’s tenants.