There was a time when Puente Hills Mall was anything but empty.
Growing up just a few miles away, we watched it become one of the San Gabriel Valley’s busiest gathering places. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the mall had a carousel, then koi fish, a skate park, packed theaters and enough stores to make an afternoon disappear. Borders Books and Music was a destination before a movie, and special events could fill the parking lot with people hunting for memorabilia and meeting up with friends. It was a gathering place for many in the La Puente/Rowland Heights areas and was a constant figure in many people’s lives growing up. We know for sure it made an impact on us as kids.
Today, the same corridors can feel like something out of a Backrooms video. Vacant storefronts stretch across the mall, with AMC and Round1 providing much of the remaining activity. But the emptiness is only the latest chapter in a property with a surprisingly dark history.
THE 1991 MALL MURDERS
The most notorious incident occurred in 1991, when a group of four criminals carried out a violent crime spree across the San Gabriel Valley that left five people dead. Two of their victims were abducted from Puente Hills Mall.
On August 24, 1991, Elizabeth Nisbet, 49, was sitting in her husband’s vehicle while he went into the mall. The attackers forced their way into the vehicle, abducted her, and made her withdraw money before taking her to the San Gabriel River Freeway, where she was killed.
Three days later, Mary Denogean, 56, was targeted after visiting the mall. She was kidnapped, forced to provide banking information and later murdered. Her body was found along the Pomona Freeway. The crimes became known as the “mall murders,” and authorities increased patrols at the shopping center as investigators pursued the suspects.
My uncle, John Michael Salas, worked security at Puente Hills Mall during the 1990s. He remembers the guard towers that once overlooked the parking lots and the heightened concern surrounding reports of robberies and abductions.
Some of the stories passed down about crimes around the mall are difficult to verify today, so we’re not going to present every local account as fact. What is documented is disturbing enough: people were being targeted at a place where families went to shop, eat and watch movies.
Whether the 1991 crimes directly contributed to the mall’s eventual decline is impossible to establish. Retail competition, changing shopping habits, and the rise of online shopping all played major roles. But fear can change how people perceive a place, and Puente Hills Mall acquired a reputation it would never completely escape.
We remember people in the area actively avoiding the Puente Hills Mall during this time and going to other local malls instead. My uncle, as mentioned before, even told me “You need to stay away from the mall until things cool down.” So, we did just that and would go to West Covina’s mall or the mall in Brea off of Imperial Blvd. These were nicer and newer malls but never had the pull the Puente Hills Mall did for me as a youth.
A MALL WITH A GHOST STORY
That reputation eventually expanded beyond true crime, and ghost stories began to surface online about noises, disembodied voices, and even spectral sightings inside the mall.
We can confirm the following: A man died in the 80s where the AMC is now, and staff have said they have heard coughing as well as footsteps when no one is around. If that wasn’t enough, many former AMC employees have said that some of the theaters had issues where they would hear kids inside the theaters, but it would be completely empty when checked.
There is no reliable evidence proving the mall is haunted, and we’re not going to confuse local legend with documented history. Still, the combination of violent crimes, deaths and an increasingly deserted building has given those stories plenty of room to grow.
The mall doesn’t need a ghost to feel unsettling now.
TWIN PINES MALL
That is a strange fate for a location once associated with one of the most recognizable movies of the 1980s.
Puente Hills Mall became Twin Pines Mall in BACK TO THE FUTURE, where Marty McFly and Doc Brown meet in the parking lot before the DeLorean sends Marty hurtling into 1955. The location became permanently connected to the film, and fans returned decades later to celebrate its place in movie history.
The surrounding City of Industry has also appeared in productions including CLERKS II, MR. & MRS. SMITH and FUN WITH DICK AND JANE, making the area a familiar backdrop for Hollywood productions. There is an upcoming event at the mall that is being labeled as “ONE LAST MEET-UP AT TWIN PINES” and that may be very telling if things move forward on the mall and its future.
For those of us who remember the mall at its peak, however, the movie connection was just one part of its identity.
It was where you went on weekends. Where you met friends. Where you killed time before a movie. Where an ordinary Saturday could turn into an entire day. We spent hours inside the TILT arcade as kids and on any random weekend, you would find us inside the PYRO Skatepark that the mall had for a while. We’ve seen countless movies at the AMC and still make a point to go there for new films today.
Now the property is facing a very different future.
THE FUTURE OF PUENTE HILLS
The mall’s redevelopment could ultimately transform the property into an industrial site, with a large data center among the possibilities being considered. The project is still subject to the planning and approval process, so the final fate of the property has not been determined. There is an odd symmetry to that possibility.
Puente Hills Mall once played the fictional role of Twin Pines Mall, a place where BACK TO THE FUTURE imagined what tomorrow might look like. Now its real future may involve the infrastructure powering the technology of tomorrow.
For people who grew up here, that transition is difficult to watch. We remember the carousel and koi fish. We remember Borders, the packed theaters, and the parking lot events. We remember when the mall felt alive. The parking lots were slammed with cars and people meeting up before a film or just gathering to hang out.
Now, walking through it can feel like visiting a place that has already disappeared. Halls literally feel like caverns of despair and dread. The echoes from lone footsteps can feel maddening when you walk through the mall on the way to the AMC. The parking lots look like a used car lot as only scattered vehicles line the lot now. Maybe that’s why the ghost stories fit so well. The ghosts aren’t necessarily supernatural.
Some are the victims whose stories remain part of the mall’s history. Others are the memories of the thousands of people who once filled those corridors. We know that if the bulldozers eventually arrive, Puente Hills Mall won’t just be losing a building.
It will be losing one of the places that defined growing up in the San Gabriel Valley.