Judias "Judy" Buenoano (born
Judias
Welty, also known as
Judias Goodyear,
also known as
Judias Morris) (
April 4,
1943 -
March 30,
1998), was a
convicted
murderer who was
executed for the 1971 murder of her
husband James Goodyear. She was also convicted for the 1980 murder
of her son Michael Goodyear, and of the 1983 attempted murder of
her fiancé John Gentry. She is also acknowledged to have been
responsible for the 1978 death of her boyfriend Bobby Joe Morris in
Colorado; however, by the time authorities made the connection
between Buenoano and Morris, she had already been sentenced to
death in the state of Florida. She is also believed to have been
involved in a 1974 murder in Alabama; on her deathbed, Morris
confessed to having participated in that murder, but police were
unable to find enough evidence to press charges. She was also
suspected in the 1980 death of her boyfriend Gerald Dossett. After
her arrest, Dossett's body was exhumed and analysed for signs of
arsenic poisoning. No charges were laid in that case.
Buenoano
was the first woman to be executed in Florida since 1848 (when a
slave named Celia was hanged for killing her master), and was only
the third woman to be executed in America
since the
reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976. Nationally, she was
the first woman executed in the electric
chair since 1957, when Rhonda
Belle Martin was electrocuted in Alabama
.
Crimes
In 1971, she was married to James Goodyear (1934-1971), a sergeant
in the
USAF. According to prosecutors, she was
motivated by
insurance money &
she
poisoned him with lethal doses of
arsenic. However, his death was initially
believed to be due to natural causes.
In 1973, she moved in with Bobby Joe Morris (?-1978); in January
1978, he succumbed to arsenic poisoning. Later that year, she
legally changed her name to "Buenoano" (
Spanish
for "good year").
Buenoano's son Michael Goodyear (1961-1980) became severely ill in
1979, his symptoms including
paraplegia;
post-mortem examination indicated that he had been the victim of
severe arsenic poisoning, which caused his disability. In 1980,
Buenoano took Michael out in a
canoe; the
canoe rolled, and Michael, weighed down by his arm and leg braces,
drowned.
In 1983, Buenoano was engaged to John Gentry. Gentry was severely
injured when his car exploded. While he was recovering from his
injuries, police began to find several discrepancies in Buenoano's
background; further investigation revealed that, in November 1982,
she had begun telling her friends that Gentry was suffering from a
terminal illness. Upon learning this, Gentry provided police with
the "vitamin pills" which Buenoano had been giving him; these were
found to contain arsenic and
formaldehyde. This led to the
exhumations of Michael Goodyear, James Goodyear,
and Bobby Joe Morris, and to the discovery that each man had been
the victim of arsenic poisoning.
In 1984, Buenoano was convicted for the murders of Michael and
James Goodyear, and in 1985 she was convicted for the attempted
murder of John Gentry. She received a twelve-year sentence for the
Gentry case, a life sentence for the Michael Goodyear case, and a
death sentence for the James Goodyear case. She was convicted of
multiple counts of grand theft (for
insurance fraud), and is thought to have
committed multiple acts of
arson (again, for
purposes of insurance fraud).
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