Fatal Fortune | The Black Widow of Florida: Judy Buenoano

0:23 Hey everyone, and welcome back to Exposed Scandalous Files of the Elite. I am your host, Jim Chapman. And before I get into today's episode, this is or it should be, the first episode I've recorded since twenty twenty six has started. So before I get into it, I want to say I hope you had a safe, fun New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Personally, I watched a ton of football. I watched the college football playoffs and man, if you're a football fan, did you watch the Sugar Bowl unbelievable game. Congratulations to Ole miss who is going to advance in that.

1:03 But I had a great time, safe time, no major incidents to report, thank God. And I really appreciate all of your support, listeners and celebrity members on Patreon for supporting me in what I do with Exposed Scandalous Files of the Elite. And I'm going to bring you a bunch more so get ready, but today I'm bringing you the story of Judy Whyna an O and this is going to be a Fatal Fortune series episode. Now. She is known as the Black Widow of Florida and she was the first woman to ever be executed via the electric care in nineteen ninety eight at the age of fifty four after having three boyfriends. Her husband and even her son died via arsenic poisoning between nineteen seventy one in nineteen eighty three, with greed being the motivation in all of these cases. So let's get in to it now.

2:01 Judy was born Judeas. I know, that's a strange first name, but Judeas Wealthy in nineteen forty three in a town called Quanta, Texas. And this is a very small town, y'all. It's about eight miles south of the Oklahoma Texas state line, but it has one hell of a history being named after Quana Parker, who was the chief of the command Chie Indian tribe. And incidentally, if you don't know that name, check out probably the best book I have ever read. It's called Empire of the Summer Moon. A guy by the name of S. C. Gwen wrote that book and it is about Quanta Parker and his dominance as the chief of the commanchee Innian tribe. I'm telling you, it's unbelievable.

2:56 But that's a whole another podcast. So back to Judy. She was the third of four children and as you may already expect. She had a very troubling upbringing. Her mother died of tuberculosis when she was just two years old, and her and her brother were sent to live with her grandparents for a stint. Her dad had to go find work out of town. And now her father eventually got remarried, and when he remarried, she and her brother moved to reunite with him. And you'll never guess where this guy lived. Roswell, New Mexico, the same Roswell, New Mexico, during the timeframe when people were claiming UFOs were landing every day in New Mexico. Just kind of a bizarre place to live during that time, but that's where they live now. This, unfortunately, was not what you would term a happy, loving family environment. Judy would actually endure severe physical abuse from both her father and her stepmother. Now this abuse would include beatings, starvations, cigarette burns, and even being forced to work around the house all day and all night long, basically being a slave to these parents. Now, at the age of fourteen, she would have enough. Judy

4:26 was done getting the ship beat out of her, being treated like a slave and all this other stuff, and she would attack her entire family, including her stepbrothers, by throwing a full pot of hot grease at them and then attacking them all with a broom handle. And this would obviously lead to her rest at fourteen years old and eventually a sixty day jail stint. Now she gets released after those sixty days and she attends what's known as Foothills High School, and that was a reform school in those days for bad kids. She does graduate with a high school diploma, and she did that at sixteen years old in nineteen fifty nine, so she wasn't stupid by any means. Now, after graduating, she starts working as a nursing assistant and at the age of eighteen, the young age of eighteen, she gives birth to a son.

5:30 Now remember the timeframe here, This is nineteen sixty one, and in those days, it was not common for women to have babies out of wedlock. As a matter of fact, you were looked down upon big time if you got pregnant, had a baby and you weren't married. And she would get ridiculed by those who worked with her, those who knew her that were friends and acquaintances of her, et cetera. And she would say that this early ridicule of her being pregnant. She would say much later on that she would actually resent her son, who she would name Michael, when he was born. So it was not too long after she had Michael that gd she landed herself a husband, and she married an Air Force sergeant in late November of nineteen sixty two, and his name was James Goodyear.

6:30 Now together they would have two children, when in nineteen sixty six she gave birth to a son named James Junior, and then the very next year, in nineteen sixty seven, she would give birth to a daughter she would name Kimberly. So at this point in Judy's life, everything at least on the exterior, appeared stable. They had children together, they had moved at this point to Orlando, Florida, and in the late nineteen sixties, James Goodyear gets called to service country in Vietnam. He returns in June of nineteen seventy one, and he was a war herobe right. And he had cheated more deaths in Vietnam and in the jungles of Vietnam than you can count. But he couldn't cheat death in the safety of his own home. So shortly upon his return back from Vietnam. As a matter of fact, within weeks, James starts experiencing severe diarrhea, vomiting, He had weakness in his arms and his legs, and he was hallucinating.

7:42 And these symptoms would grow worse over time. So it was a kind of like a death of a thousand cuts man. It just got worse and worse with each day, and eventually, on September thirteenth of nineteen seventy one, take it anymore and he says, I got to go to the hospital. And he gets hospitalized at the US Navy Hospital in Orlando, Florida. Just three days later, he dies. Now, typically if someone dies after prolonged symptoms like what James Goodyear had and you can't really figure out what is causing this stuff from a medical standpoint, there would be a lot of red flags. There, a lot of things that you may want to look into. But this guy had just returned from Vietnam. An agent orange was rampant in Vietnam, and a lot of guys were coming back from the Vietnam War and they were having problems with that and they were dying unexplainably. That's what his death was more or less attributed to and it was interesting that after her husband's death, Judy collected like thirty three one thousand dollars. She had multiple life insurance policies out on James Goodyear. She also collected about ninety five thousand dollars in military benefits. So all told, Judy collected about

9:15 one hundred and thirty thousand dollars after the death of her husband, which in today's money that's equal to about a half million dollars. But no road flags are raised, primarily because of the Vietnam connection. So Judy she didn't stay single for long. Shortly after James Goodyear's death, she starts dating a man by the name of Bobby Joe Morris, and they dated a good while, and in nineteen seventy seven, she actually moves with Bobby Joe Morris to Trinidad, Colorado. Everything seems cool in the household, no problems, cope esthetic right, But without Bobby Joe's knowledge, guess what Judy starts doing.

9:58 She starts taking out life insurance policies on Bobby Joe, and in early nineteen seventy eight, Bobby Joe Morris starts getting symptoms similar to those of her first husband. He goes to the hospital, but initially he is released. Now shortly after being released, however, he collapses at his home and he's readmitted to the hospital. Two days later, he dies. This is on June twenty third of nineteen seventy eight, and he was just thirty five years old now at the time of his death. That also wasn't deemed suspicious because they initially attributed this to natural causes and they just assumed he had a heart attack due to an undiagnosed issue. And again, at least financially, Judy would benefit.

10:54 She collected approximately thirty to forty thousand dollars on the policy she had taken out on Bobby Joe. So, following Bobby Joe Morris's death, she dates another guy. Now his name is Gerald Dosad. Very little is known about this particular guy, or really the relationship in general, outside of the fact that they dated very briefly. They weren't together very long at all. This was around nineteen eighty and she was back in Florida by this point, and he died while they were dating after exhibiting guess what, similar symptoms to that of Judy's last two relationships that ended in death. So that brings us to her first born son, Michael, And I'm going to backtrack a little bit and I'm going to tell you what happened to him. So, in nineteen seventy nine, Michael joins the army, and as soon as he joins the army, he starts exhibiting symptoms similar to all those prior deaths. It gets so bad from Michael, in fact, that he gets discharged from the army on medical grounds. And this guy is really messed up, y'all, so much so that he returns to live with his mother in Florida because he was practically paralyzed. He couldn't even walk by this point. Now, in early nineteen eighty,

12:25 when he comes back, Judy opens a hair salon and around that time she also takes out multiple life insurance policies on her son Michael. Then, on May thirteenth of nineteen eighty, Judy takes Michael and his younger brother his name was James Junior, on a canoeing trip. And they went on this canoe trip to what's known as the East Bay River. This is near Santa Rose County, Florida. Sadly, During this trip, the canoe capsizes and Michael he wore heavy braces on his legs like Forrest Gump style. Y'all.

13:07 Everybody gets knocked out of the boat because it capsized, and Judy and James Junior they're able to swim to the shore and they're unhorned. But because of these heavy leg braces, Michael is so wayed down he drowns. So initially his death is ruled an accidental drowning, and Judy again profits from this death. She collects over one hundred thousand dollars in life insurance. So at this point, it's nineteen eighty one, and you already have four deaths of people very close to Judy, all dying with close to the same symptoms. So let's recap that for a minute now.

13:54 In nineteen seventy one, her first husband James Goodyear, he died. In nineteen seventy eight, boyfriend Bobby Joe Morris dies. In nineteen eighty Michael hy noan O he dies, and in nineteen eighty also her boyfriend for just a very short stint, we don't know a whole lot about Gerald Docet he dies. And in three of those four cases, insurance policies were collected by Judy and also taken out by Jitdy. So that brings me to nineteen eighty one and Jitty meets a man by the name of John Gentry. Now Gentry.

14:40 He was described as a kind man, a trusting man. He was a businessman in the Pensacola area. And by August of nineteen eighty one, Judy, James Junior, and Kimberly they move in with Gentry in Pensacola, Florida. And Gentry he was super by all accounts of Judy, he was in love right. He would help her financially, especially with a beauty salon that she wanted to open in What's Nonna's Golf Breeze, Florida. He financed that and she would call that beauty salon Fingers and Faces. And it was really his money that enabled her to get that salon.

15:26 Even though and look, I tried to research us, I don't know what she did with all this money. That she had a lot of money herself from all of these life insurance policies that she was collecting on, but it seemed like she blew through her money pretty quick. Now, everything on the surface seemed great in this relationship, and this guy really loved her. However, in nineteen eighty two, friends would comment later that she would start fabricating stories about John Gentry. She would tell friends that he had a terminal illness, which he did not have any terminal imness, And looking back with hindsight, it seems like she was setting them up right. She was trying to almost form an alibi before anything happened. Now, unbeknownst to Gentry, Judy starts taking out life insurance policies on him, and by now you could probably guess where this one is headed.

16:22 Not only does she take out policies behind his back, but later the same year that she took out these policies, she actually increases them significantly tenfold, from fifty thousand dollars total to five hundred thousand dollars total. So, in mid nineteen eighty three, guess what old John Gentry. He starts getting ill with stomach cramps, he has muscle weaknesses, he has vomiting, and eventually he gets hospitalized, but he recovers and he sent home. And just a couple of months later, on June twenty fifth of nineteen eighty three, Judy goes up to John one day at the house and she basically says, I'm pregnant, very excited. John's in love, He's very excited, He's gonna have a kid. And he says, well, I'm going to go to the store and I'm going to pick up some champagne so we can celebrate. He gets in his car, he backs up to leave, and the freaking car explodes. The blast was so severe that it blasts out part of his stomach, his kidneys, in his intestines. Now, all I can say is by sheer miracle.

17:47 When police arrive on the scene, he's still alive, but he's transported to the hospital and he spends several days in a coma and police they start investigating, and police discover that what caused this explosion was five sticks of dynamite taped together in the trunk of Gentry's vehicle, and the dynamite was wired to the tail lights of the car, so when Gentry would back up and hit the brakes, boom. Police also interviewed Gentry in the hospital and they're like, man, we found dynamite in your car. Do you know anyone that would want to hurt you? Have you had anybody threaten you, etc. And John he's just taken aback by all this. He's like, Man, I don't know anybody that would want to hurt me. He said, Heck, I just got over an illness and I had to be hospitalized for that illness. I'm tired of being in the hospital.

18:50 And the police said, well, what were you sick from? And he mentioned that he had all these symptoms and that eventually Judy brought him to the hospital. And he also mentioned that Judy would give him vitamins and he said, I don't know, maybe my body just don't like the vitamins that she gives me. And that made police a little suspicious of Judy and they start digging into her background and they discover all of these previous deaths that I told you about. They also get a hold of those vitamins Judy was giving John Gentry, and they would have a lab test those vitamins, and those vitamins would come back positive for arsenic Now, in addition to that, they would also confirm that Judy was not pregnant, even though she told her husband she was pregnant. So it wasn't long before they figured out what the hell was going on. But they had another piece to that puzzle they were able to confirm as well, and that was they discovered those life insurance policies on Gentry that she had uped from fifty thousand to five hundred and ten thousand, and there was the motive that they were looking for.

20:07 And on July twenty seventh of nineteen eighty three, Judy gets arrested for the attempted murder of John Gentry. So, as I told you, police discovered all of these past deaths, a boyfriend's husband, Jeddy's son, and while she is awaiting trial on Gentry's attempted murder case, they also arrest her son, James Junior, who was eighteen at the time, for conspiracy of attempted murder in the John Gentry incident. And the reason that they arrested him was police were charging him with the fact that they believed he was hot well he was wiring the dynamite up to those tail lights.

20:56 They didn't think Judy would have any idea how to do that, they thought he did, so they charge him with conspiracy to commit attempted murder in that case. So he goes to jail to await trial and Also, while awaiting this trial, in the John Gentry case, police have the bodies of three particular people that died that were close to Judy. They had those bodies exhumed and those people were her son Michael, her husband James, and her boyfriend Bobby Joe. And they had those tested and guess what.

21:36 All three of those bodies showed arsenic poisoning, and in the case of her husband James, tests revealed enough arsenic was present to have killed thirteen people, unbelievable. So armed with all of this, guess what, Judy picks up murder charges in those cases as well, and she's in a bond. So at this point she's got the attempted murder trial in John Gentry's case, and then she's got a trial coming for her son Michael, her husband James, and her boyfriend Bobby Jay. Well, the murder trial for Michael starts first, and that occurs on March twenty second of nineteen eighty four, and it was a lengthy trial. I mean, it was a nine day trial. But at the end of it, Judy gets found guilty and she is sentenced to life without parole in the death of her own son, and then the attempted martyr. In the trial for John Gentry that starts, that's on October sixteenth of nineteen ninety four, and the result of that trial is also guilty. But and this was very strange to me her sentence for that.

22:56 And this was a horrific car bombing right that, it was a miracle he lived through. She only gets twelve years in prison for that. Don't know why, but that's it is what it is. Nowadays, you get convicted of attempted murder, you could spend life in prison. Now, our son, James Junior, as I told you, he was tried separately, and prosecutors contended that he helped wire the dynamite in the trunk of Gentry's car, so he was tried as an accomplice. However, he was acquitted on all charges in that case. They just didn't believe the prosecutor's case, I guess, and thought that he had nothing to do with wiring that car. Now, the next trial for gd that occurred on October twenty second of nineteen eighty five, and that was for the poisoning of her husband James. And in November of nineteen eighty five, she gets found guilty and in that case she is sentenced to death. So that was it for the trials for Genie. Now all told, she received twelve years plus life in prison plus the death penalty. And she was never charged in the deaths of Gerald Docett. That was due primarily to a lack of evidence. And in the Bobby Joe Morris case, she was charged as told you, but it never went to trial.

24:27 And I suspect that's because she already had a death penalty she was facing, and I guess they figured we'll save the money. Nonetheless, with that death sentence that she already had in the death of James, her first husband, she is reminded to the Broward Correctional Institute. This is in Pembroke Pines, Florida. Of course, she had appeals and all those appeals get exhausted and they are all rejected. In on March thirtieth, nineteen ninety eight, at florid or to State Prison, she becomes the first female in the United States to be executed via the electric chair. And you may be curious what her last meal was, Well it was broccoli, asparagus, strawberries, tomatoes, and hot tea. I mean really asparagus for a last meal. That blew my mind.

25:21 Broccoli for a last meal. I like broccoli, but I don't know if I'm having it for a last meal, y'all. Her last words were no, sir. And I think the reason those were her last words was because they said, do you have any last words? And she said, no, sir. And she requested her body be cremated, which it was. And I want to tell you a little bit about what she was like in prison that I was able to dig up now. She was in Florida's Brower Correctional Institute for thirteen years on death row, and during her incarceration, she maintained her innocence. Throughout. She would describe herself as a good mother, and she would express a strong religious faith, including a belief that she would go to heaven upon death.

26:13 Now as a devout Roman Catholic, she taught Bible study classes to fellow inmates and referred to her small group of death row companions, which were two other women that she would exercise with, as the Three Friends. She also engaged in creative activities like croche and knitting blankets. She would knit baby clothes and other items, and her daughter would sell those outside of prison. She also wrote a lot of letters during her time in prison, and she largely avoided media attention. She didn't grant any notable interviews from death row, and I searched everywhere. There are none that except that I am aware of. I was really hoping to find one that I could add some clips to this podcast, but just couldn't find it. Outside of court proceedings, it was like virtual silence with her. Now.

27:11 In the hearings, she would share those details I told you about regarding her difficult childhood, you know, losing her mother so young, the physical abuse that she went through, and she would describe the prison environment that she lived in as drab with gray walls, and she once expressed a preference for death over spending the rest of her life confined. There were no major disciplinary incidents or behavior issues that were publicly reported during her imprisonment and in her final days before she was executed after being transferred to Florida State Prison, where the death chamber is, she appeared upbeat, talkative. At times, she would be with her children, relatives, legal advisors, spiritual counselors, a lot of those she would even receive communion, watch television and she would even eat chocolates.

28:11 And as I told you March thirtieth of nineteen ninety eight, she would be executed. Now. Throughout her stint in prison and even up to her execution, she was known as the Black Widow of Florida. And that wraps up another edition of Fatal Fortune. I want to thank again all of you for listening supporting the podcast. Look check out the Patreon Active city over there on the Patreon page. I've been posting a bunch of shit this past month or so and you were missing out if you were not a Patreon celebrity. Supporters to go check it out files, bonus episodes, early commercial free releases, and even quarterly gifts for our top tier Patreons. That's Patreon dot com slash Exposed podcast Files once again. Happy twenty twenty six. I hope everybody has some goals they want to achieve this year, and until next time for exposed scandalous files of the Elite, I'm your host, Jim Chapman. Much love,