World's Most Evil Killers - Season 6, Episode 14 - Judy Buenoano - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[suspenseful music] NARRATOR: June 25, 1983. Pensacola, Florida. 35-year-old John Gentry was leaving
a party in the downtown area. He'd promised his fiancee Judy Buenoano that he'd pick up some champagne and meet her at home.
GARY PRINTY: Starts the engine, turns on the lights, and boom. His car is blown to smithereens.
NARRATOR: Buenoano watched in horror as John escaped the burning wreckage alive.
FRANK GENTRY: She tried to kill my father. She didn't succeed. While he was in the hospital recovering,
she tried to kill him again. DEBBIE SALAMONE: She was every man's worst nightmare.
And if you met Judy, you should run for your life literally. NARRATOR: Three men already lay dead and buried.
Gentry should have been the fourth. GARY PRINTY: She was a great planner. And you just don't plan on somebody surviving a car bomb.
FRANK GENTRY: She would take insurance policies out and kill and collect. And that's why she was well off.
NARRATOR: Her victims were those who loved her the most. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: She doesn't want to have
to rely on other people. So she sees family as a means to an end rather than an end in itself.
Many people will work to live, work to support their family, but for her it's the other way around.
NARRATOR: Judy Buenoano lived a life full of lies and deceit. All of her victims loved and trusted her,
but she only saw them as money in the bank, making Judy Buenoano one of the world's most evil killers.
[music playing] 1961, Roswell, New Mexico. 19-year-old Anna Schultz had met and married
27-year-old James Goodyear. Anna was a nurse at Eastern New Mexico Medical Center.
After they married, Anna changed her name to Judy Goodyear and James adopted her two-year-old son, Michael.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: She developed a really good knowledge of medicine and of drugs.
She became an expert in her field, and she was able to use this to manipulate those around her.
And I think she found medicine quite an appealing field to go into because it's about science.
It's about things that are right, things that are wrong. It's very black and white.
It's very predictable. NARRATOR: 10 years later, a fit and healthy James became mysteriously ill and died at the age of 37.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: You wouldn't immediately say, oh, he's been poisoned. You'd say it was natural causes.
Tragedy, unexpected, but these things happen. But the thing about Judy Goodyear,
as she was then calling herself, is that of course she'd taken out a number of life insurance policies
on James Goodyear. It was to become her modus operandi. NARRATOR: After the death of James,
she reinvented herself once more, taking her new partner Bobby Joe's surname and becoming Judy Morris, he too would soon be dead.
DEBBIE SALAMONE: Bobby Joe was eventually buried even though Judy had requested he be cremated.
Bobby Joe's mother insisted that the body be brought back home to Alabama, where
he could be buried at home. NARRATOR: No man was safe, not even her own flesh and blood.
FRANK GENTRY: Could you imagine throwing your own son over the side of a boat and watching him drown?
I mean, how twisted you have to be to do that and live with yourself. Just incredible.
NARRATOR: She finally became Judy Buenoano and thought she was invincible. GARY PRINTY: I think she began to believe in her superiority
that she can actually get away with this. And that's why the plans always got a little more complex.
The insurance was always a little bit more building for that half million dollar policy
with John Gentry. She let her ego get the better of her. I think she had been really smart, brilliant,
cold blooded killer with the other ones because she never really went for the big prize.
NARRATOR: This killer story begins on April 4, 1943. Judy Buenoano was born Judias Anna Lou Welty
in the city of Quanah, Texas. Her father was a farm worker. And this family had a lot of misfortune fall on it.
When she was two, her mother passed away from tuberculosis. There were two remaining siblings,
Judy and her brother Robert. Now, her father sent them out to be adopted. So this is a real rejection.
It's a real abandonment. And they're living with another family for a while until their grandmother looks after them.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: Her father remarried and moved to Roswell, New Mexico, with his new wife and her two children
and reclaimed Judy and Robert from the grandmother. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: This certainly
wasn't a return to a nice, secure, stable family environment. This was out of the frying pan into the fire.
This was a household in which abuse and neglect were very much entrenched. And Judy and her brother suffered
the most horrendous abuse at the hands of her father and stepmother. NARRATOR: Judy was treated as a slave
and forced to carry out the household chores. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: She was told that she had to do the cleaning
and if she didn't do it particularly in the way that her father wanted it done, she'd
be forced to sit and watch the rest of the family eat their dinner while she went without.
And they'd also started beating up Robert, her brother, at this point in time. And she steps in to defend him.
She really attacks her stepmother and her father. And she ends up serving 60 days in a jail facility
for this attack on her parents. GEOFFREY WANSELL: At the end of the 60 days, she doesn't ask to return to her father and stepmother.
On the contrary, she says, no, I don't want to go home, not at all. I also don't want to see my younger brother Robert.
She said memorably at one point, I wouldn't spit down his throat if his guts were on fire.
NARRATOR: In 1959 at the age of 16, Judy graduated from Foothills High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: She decides that she will manipulate the system in every way she
possibly can to her advantage. She feels she's been badly let down by her father,
by her mother dying, by the fact of her childhood, by her stepmother. All the rest of his wells up inside her in which she becomes
convinced that she's going to get her own back. NARRATOR: Judy moved to Roswell to study
at Eastern New Mexico Medical Center and met a man called Schultz. She assumed his surname and became known as Anna Schultz.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Judy goes to nursing school and she is a high achiever there.
She achieves a PhD in biology, in psychology. Many people will take years and years to achieve a PhD,
to achieve this kind of position in a hospital. But she seemed to do it relatively
quickly because she didn't really have any distractions. This was all about her.
NARRATOR: At the age of 17, Judy, now known as Anna Schultz, became pregnant. And on the 30th of March 1961 gave birth to a boy,
Michael Arthur Schultz. Judy had a child out of wedlock. At the time, it would have been a difficult situation
to find herself in, a single mother trying to raise a child on her own. Judy seemed like a very normal person.
She wanted to raise her son well and provide for him. She just seemed like everybody else.
NARRATOR: Shortly after the birth of her son, Anna Schultz met James Goodyear, a United
States Air Force mechanic. GEOFFREY WANSELL: 10 years older than she is, in every sense an upright, sound individual.
And before too long, she becomes Judy Goodyear. They marry. NARRATOR: James Goodyear adopted Judy's son Michael.
And on the 16th of January 1966, Judy gave birth to their son, also called James.
DEBBIE SALAMONE: Judy and James had a very nice marriage for a while. They got along well.
They traveled. They went out to dinner. They did normal family things. NARRATOR: In 1967, the Goodyear family
moved to Orlando, Florida, and soon after, their daughter Kimberly was born. Judy wanted to protect her family
and made sure they were fully insured to cover any unforeseen events. DEBBIE SALAMONE: They got along well for a time,
but then they started fighting. And it wasn't long after that that James had to go to Vietnam.
During this time, it was very stressful for Judy, because now she's raising three children on her own.
After about a year, James came back from Vietnam and Judy and he really tried to make a go of things.
They tried to put all the fighting behind them and rekindle their marriage and provide for the three children.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And when she later talks about her relationship with James, she describes it as we were best friends.
She doesn't talk about love. She doesn't talk about attachment or affection. She talks about him as a friend, and that
is really interesting for me. GEOFFREY WANSELL: It's almost incredible. She decides that she's going to poison her husband very
carefully over a long-ish period of time so that no one will notice that in fact he's being poisoned.
So over a period of months, she feeds James Goodyear a concoction of pills including paraformaldehyde to effectively
obstruct his system. DEBBIE SALAMONE: After a few months, he started to become violently ill.
He was having hallucinations and convulsions. He felt really terrible. He was just in really, really bad shape.
Judy said that she knew how to take care of him, but things just kept getting worse.
NARRATOR: On September 16, 1971 at the age of 37, James Goodyear died at the US Naval Hospital
in Orlando, Florida. DEBBIE SALAMONE: James's death was just a mystery. Here he was young and fit, having
just come out of the military. It really just mystified everyone. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Judy puts a spin on it.
She says, I'm sure it's because of a chemical element that they were using on the military in Vietnam.
Surely it's something to do with that. So she's got this narrative that she's prepared in order
to actually explain his death. But when we kind of zoom out and we look at the bigger picture,
Judy and James have been together for around about a decade at this point. So you think, well, why would she kill him now?
Why now? NARRATOR: For Judy Goodyear, her husband James was worth more to her dead than alive.
September 20, 1971. Orlando, Florida. Five days after her husband's death, Judy Goodyear surrendered three life insurance
policies on James Goodyear. And then just to add a little piquancy, she sets fire to the house in Orlando
and claims the insurance policy on that. You have a woman whose greed knows few bounds.
But of course, she always plans an escape route. NARRATOR: In 1972, Judy moved with her three children
from Orlando to Pensacola, Florida to live with the new man in her life, Bobby Joe Morris.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: She meets him in the same year that James Goodyear is murdered.
And this perhaps suggests to me there may have been a little bit of an overlap here.
She may have had her sights set on this guy before she killed her first husband.
So there is no such thing as coincidence when it comes to serial killers. So perhaps there was a plan rolling out in the background
here. DEBBIE SALAMONE: Bobby Joe and Judy had a really fun time together. They traveled, they had nice dinners out.
They were a couple that seemed to really hit it off. But then things started to deteriorate
and Bobby Joe decided he didn't want to be with Judy anymore. And he moved out to Colorado, leaving her behind in Florida.
After Bobby Joe went to Colorado, Judy followed and Bobby Joe couldn't say no to Judy.
They reconciled and they began trying to repair their relationship and live happy together.
NARRATOR: In July 1977, before Judy and her children joined Bobby Joe in Colorado, another mysterious fire
engulfed their Pensacola home. Judy claimed the insurance money. TED CHAMBERLAIN: So they're up there
and she's going by the name of Morris. They figured they lived together for long enough
that she gave the last name Morris. Nobody knew any difference. Of course, she was getting insurance
policies all the time on Bobby Joe up there, which he never saw. NARRATOR: It wasn't long before Bobby Joe started to fall ill.
GARY PRINTY: He was a heavy drinker, so no one's going to suspect that his health is going bad.
And that was very critical to her plan because obviously if very healthy people are just
suddenly dying, that's going to cause more problems than if someone who has a history of seeming to be sickly,
not in good health, drinking problem. You're not going to look as hard into that as to a possible
was there foul play involved. DEBBIE SALAMONE: He ended up in the hospital where Judy was working as a nurse's aide.
So she took care of him and looked after him the entire time he was in the hospital.
Bobby Joe was incredibly ill. He was hallucinating. He had all kinds of pain. And he just was mysteriously ill.
Doctors were having a hard time figuring out what was wrong with Bobby Joe. TED CHAMBERLAIN: She puts it off, tells everybody
that Bobby Joe is an alcoholic. And he drinks to excess. He drinks two bottles of vodka a day.
He drinks a case of beer a day. He does all these things. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And the physicians at
the hospital will be of the view, well, why would she lie about this? Here's somebody who knows what she's on
about, who knows the patient. So she's filling in the details for us. And that is a position that she really
abused that position of power, that position of influence. She was basically saying this guy's just a bit
of a washed up old alcoholic and these things happen. DEBBIE SALAMONE: Bobby Joe got a little bit better
for a short period of time, but then he got a lot worse and he deteriorated in an agonizing way
and eventually he died. TED CHAMBERLAIN: Bobby Joe's mother wanted Bobby Joe to come
home and Judy says, no, no, no. No, we're going to cremate him. And [inaudible] his mother said, no you're not.
You're going to send him home. So Bobby Joe did get sent home. Judy didn't attend the funeral.
But she had of course insured his life and once again collected a number of life insurance policies.
NARRATOR: On May 3, 1978, the widow Judy Morris changed her family name to Buenoano,
the Spanish equivalent of Goodyear. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: This is her way of having a bit of a laugh.
She's taking the name of the first person that she kills and she's using that in one of her new identities.
So I think this does show that real dark side of her sense of humor here. She's literally dangling a victim in front of everybody.
NARRATOR: In June 1978, the newly named Buenoano family left Colorado. Judy bought a house in Gulf Breeze, Pensacola, Florida,
and set up home with her three children. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Michael Buenoano Goodyear
was Judy's son, and he was her first child, and he was a child that was born out of wedlock.
So he would have created an awful lot of stigma for Judy. TED CHAMBERLAIN: Michael loved his mother Judy,
but she didn't care for him at all. She didn't like him. If people came over to the house when he was younger where she
was living, she would hide him in another room or have a babysitter take him out.
She was ashamed of him. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And he was always doing things to try and get her attention,
to try and make her proud. And it was a really sad situation. NARRATOR: In 1979, 18-year-old Michael Buenoano
enlisted in the US Army. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: I think this is very much a way of trying
to get his mother's approval, because of course his stepfather, James Goodyear, was a military man.
So he knows that these are the kind of qualities in a man that his mother admires,
or so he thinks. TED CHAMBERLAIN: And when Michael got into the army, he went to this purification school, water purification.
In water purification, they use arsenic. GARY PRINTY: He came home for Thanksgiving
to be with the family and took ill, very ill. Because he was in the military, he
was sent up to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, DC, which is our Army hospital, very renowned place.
And they were treating him and they saved his life. But he lost basically muscular control of his arms and legs.
So he became essentially a paraplegic. TED CHAMBERLAIN: She was blaming the army where he was working,
water purification school that he had got into the arsenic and he probably ate some of it.
So that's the way it went. DEBBIE SALAMONE: Because of his loss of mobility, he was not able to return to his career in the military.
And for Michael, this was just very depressing. Here he is now unable to pursue his career, unable to move,
and he's a young man with the rest of his life in front of him. It was very, very sad.
GARY PRINTY: Judy contacted the military and said, they're going to have to honorably discharge him.
And so if you would discharge him to me, we will retrofit our house to take care of him
in his disabled condition. TED CHAMBERLAIN: Michael ended up wearing braces on his legs,
a brace, he had robin wings. All the weights that Michael had on him so we could try and walk a little bit with canes
and all this, it was a little over 50 pounds. NARRATOR: The military agreed to discharge
Michael into his mother's care. GARY PRINTY: She drove down to Tampa, picked him up at the airport, drove back to Pensacola.
And by that afternoon, they were out on a canoe trip. NARRATOR: Buenoano left her daughter Kimberly fishing
on the riverbank and prepared the canoe for herself, James, and Michael. TED CHAMBERLAIN: And she puts them
in the middle of a canoe with the weights on his legs, the weights on his arm, and he's sitting
in a lawn chair, a small lawn chair, beach lawn chair. And she puts the lawn chair in the canoe
and puts him on the lawn chair. DEBBIE SALAMONE: It was a beautiful day, and Judy wanted to treat her family to a nice time.
So they canoed out onto this lake and all of a sudden, something happened and the canoe tipped over.
And now both Michael and James are in the water. And Judy tried to hurry to get over to grab
young James to save him. But she said she didn't have time to get to Michael, who drowned because of his heavy braces.
He went right down to the bottom of the water. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Simply a natural tragedy.
Who is going to suspect for a second that Judy might have organized the drowning?
GARY PRINTY: The army came and investigated it because Michael had been in the military.
And they investigated. I believe she told them a snake had fallen into the canoe from an overhanging tree
and in the excitement, it capsized. GEOFFREY WANSELL: I mean, imagine that. You have deliberately tipped up a canoe in the middle
of a river knowing that your son, your son, cannot swim to the shore, whereas you can and your other son can.
It is the most callous, dramatic, ugly way of killing anybody. NARRATOR: Judy Buenoano had got away with her third murder.
For now. May 13, 1980. Pensacola, Florida. 18-year-old Michael Buenoano had drowned in what appeared
to be a tragic accident. But it wasn't long before his mother Judy cashed in. GEOFFREY WANSELL: The relentless nature
of the killings, one on top of the other, of people to whom she should have been grateful,
that makes it exceptional. There was no reason for these three people to lose their lives.
And of course, Michael was insured by the military as well as by Judy. GARY PRINTY: There had been about six insurance policies
that she had taken out. These were kind of small policies, $15,000, $20,000 policies.
There was one that was taken out when he was a child. Well, she had contacted the insurance company
and because it had lapsed, and so she reactivated the policy by paying some premiums.
And so there was I believe about $120,000 in life insurance benefits that she received from that one.
She had to believe that in her mind no one is ever going to figure this out. I have totally fooled all these idiots.
I mean, she must have had contempt for the investigators, because I am telling you this stuff
and you're believing everything I say. DEBBIE SALAMONE: Judy spent the money on vacations, cars,
opening a beauty salon called Fingers and Faces and basically just lived a really nice life.
NARRATOR: In February 1981, nine months after the death of her son, Judy Buenoano
met 35-year-old Army veteran and local business owner John Gentry. John had two sons from a former marriage.
FRANK GENTRY: He was very tall. I think he was like 6' 2'' or 6' 3''. Handsome, broad shoulders, easygoing.
The kind of person that when you met him, you knew to respect him. I'd never seen him get out of line
or get angry or raise his voice. He was just that kind of person. When you looked at him, he commanded respect.
I guess that's the best way to put it. NARRATOR: John's business specialized in carpet and flooring tiles.
FRANK GENTRY: He had a huge store in Pensacola. It was really successful. He had several people working on the under him.
He looked really good in a uniform. And one time he told us that he was in Vietnam,
so he would joke about it, and he was in Vietnam for three days because he stepped on a landmine
and he was actually blown up in Vietnam. And of course, he recovered from that. The only injuries he sustained was he
lost hearing in one ear and a bunch of scars. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And they seem to have
quite a good relationship. Judy really did like living the high life at this particular point in time.
So they went on cruises, they ate out at expensive restaurants. She really liked it when he bought her expensive clothes.
So this appears to be quite a successful relationship. NARRATOR: In August 1981, John moved
into the house in Gulf Breeze to live with Buenoano and her two children. The first time we met Judy, we were excited to meet her,
obviously. He spoke a lot about her being beautiful, intelligent, well off. I liked her.
I liked her. She was nice. She took us to Disney. She was attractive. She had a great personality.
It seemed like she was rich. She had a nice house. She had a boat, car, exclusive community.
She was generous. Also the house was very clean, nicely decorated. They were affectionate, but they weren't
into kissy feely public show of affection kind of thing. I don't know what they were like when we were not around.
But as far as a couple, they would sit together, hold hands, hug, kiss, but not constantly all over each other.
We were children, so maybe they were behaving. GARY PRINTY: Meanwhile Judy had been spreading various rumors
about Mr. Gentry to her friends that, well, he seems to be involved with some shady characters,
maybe some organized crime connections, or on the other hand, he has bad health.
And he did appear to have bad health because Judy had been slipping him some capsules containing
paraformaldehyde and arsenic. These weren't enough to kill him, but it was causing him to always feel sick all the time.
FRANK GENTRY: As far as I know, he knew there was an insurance policy on him, but he was under the impression that she had for some reason
or another canceled the policy. But it turns out that she didn't cancel the policy.
It was still active. But my father was unaware that she still had the policy on him.
NARRATOR: After less than two years together, 40-year-old Buenoano had some news for John.
GARY PRINTY: Judy announced to him that she was pregnant. And so, oh, now they are going to get married.
Well, unbeknownst to Mr. Gentry, Judy had previously had a tubal ligation and was not capable of getting pregnant.
But he did not know that. So he thought, wow, great, I'm going to be a father. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: On the 25th of June, 1983,
Judy had arranged a party because one of her members of staff was leaving. She had a whole range of beauty salons in the local area.
And she'd arranged for this meal as a leaving do for one of her staff members at the restaurant.
Now, she wanted John to go along to the restaurant to help set up the party. TED CHAMBERLAIN: She told him where to put
his vehicle in a parking lot. She said this is where you need to park your vehicle, right here.
He said OK. So he parked it right there in that lot where she said. NARRATOR: Buenoano arrived at the restaurant
some time after John. She's driving a brand new Corvette. She parks it two blocks away in front of this motel.
NARRATOR: As the party wrapped up, Buenoano encouraged John to leave without her.
TED CHAMBERLAIN: She walked him to the door and she told Gentry, she said, look, I'm going to stay
here for a little while longer. What I want you to do is get a bottle of champagne
and go on home and wait for me there and we'll celebrate, her having a baby and all this other stuff, she said.
DEBBIE SALAMONE: John walks out to his car, gets in, starts the automobile, and kaboom.
The whole thing explodes. Here's this car bomb in sleepy Pensacola, Florida. This is not an ordinary event.
TED CHAMBERLAIN: When the thing explodes, Judy comes out of the restaurant and the people follow her.
And she sees the car blown up, so she goes into having a fit and falls on the ground and pretends
she's having a seizure. NARRATOR: Judy Buenoano had just made a fatal mistake. June 25, 1983.
Pensacola, Florida. John Gentry had been catapulted out of his vehicle by a homemade bomb primed to explode
as he turned on his headlights. GARY PRINTY: He's blown out of the car. I always saw one of the great things in this explosion
was his shoes remained on the floorboard of the car. He was literally blown out of his shoes.
But he survives. TED CHAMBERLAIN: Of course, all the agencies was called. ATF was there.
Pensacola PD was there and everything. And it was a real mess at the time. They did what they could because at that time of night,
we really couldn't get too much. Mr. Gentry, he was sent to the hospital. The vehicle was eventually moved to the Pensacola PD.
It was put in the lot. And actually the next morning is when everything really got started.
DEBBIE SALAMONE: The fact that John survived must have really come as quite a shock to Judy
and probably shook her deeply. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Judy has failed to kill her victim in this case.
And I think she feels incredibly frustrated about this, because the person that she's tried to murder has survived.
And not only has he survived, he is now a piece of evidence. He has lots of information that he's
able to share with the police. GARY PRINTY: I'm sure her world must have just been in a panic
to find out that all the stories that she'd been telling about him, the lies about her being able to have children,
that she was pregnant with his child, all that was going to come to roost like, well, what happened to our child that's
going to be born in six or seven months or whatever? Because she was a great planner, and you just don't plan on
somebody surviving a car bomb. FRANK GENTRY: My uncle called us and explained what happened
and we were in shock. And he was in his recovery in the hospital. I mean, it's like something you hear out of a movie.
I mean, to put a bomb in his car, who does that? TED CHAMBERLAIN: He had a lot of damage done to him.
So we knew it would be another couple of days or a day or so before we could get to him.
At the very beginning, she was telling us that Mr. Gentry was getting these notes that were threatening
notes that were left on the windshield of his car. He was getting these phone calls and hang ups
and threatening him. And so we checked in all to that and that turned out to be nothing.
And then talking to her friends, before the car blew up, she told everybody that Gentry had cancer
and he was dying of cancer. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: I think that Judy thought she was really smart.
I don't think she believed that anybody would ever join up the dots. And she did quite a good job of wiping
the slate clean as she moved from one life into the next one. So I think she honestly did feel like she was being
reborn time and time again when she was building these new lives. GEOFFREY WANSELL: It's fair to say that if she had been
able to contain herself, she might never ever have faced justice. But greed overcame her.
If she had not decided to blow up Gentry, it's entirely possible that the authorities would never
have looked back at the killings of Bobby Joe Morris, the killing of Michael, or the killing of James Goodyear.
They were to some extent in the past, defined as accidents, tragic nevertheless, but still accidents.
It was only her decision to blow up Gentry that was eventually to bring her to the attention
of the authorities. Because Gentry recovering from his injuries starts to tell them about the pills,
about the other things that have happened. TED CHAMBERLAIN: He said, I don't know,
he said that Judy was giving me these pills and it was a vitamin pill. And she said for me to take them every day
and it would help me out and I'd feel a lot better. So I was taking these pills.
He said, then I quit taking them. And after I quit taking them, I didn't get sick anymore.
I was fine. And he said, then I took him again and he said I got sick again. I said, where are they?
And he said they was at his office. So we went down and picked up those capsules
that we got from him. And we sent them off to the lab. And sure enough, what was happening,
the Vicon-C capsules, somebody had taken them apart and put paraformaldehyde inside them
and put them back together here. GEOFFREY WANSELL: There's no question that Judy chose
her poison very carefully. Paraformaldehyde causes deterioration of the organs but doesn't do it quickly.
TED CHAMBERLAIN: So when it came back, yes, paraformaldehyde, well boom, that was class III poison.
That hit us right off the bat. That was enough to go ahead and get a warrant. Because we could place Judy with the pills
at her house for the search warrant. We've got Gentry saying she physically gave him the pills.
He knows that. That was a big plus. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: I think in the beginning when John is finding out all of these details
about what Judy has been doing, there's this incredulity there. He can't believe this.
This is the woman that he's in an intimate relationship with. But I think as the evidence becomes more and more
compelling, it does dawn on him that this woman meant him serious harm. NARRATOR: John was then informed that the life
insurance policy he thought Buenoano had canceled was still active. GARY PRINTY: And that's where this whole thing came
unraveled, because she had her half million dollar insurance policy that she was going to cash in on.
She had already booked a 180 day around the world cruise for her and her two kids but not for John
Gentry, her husband to be. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: That completely blows open all of Judy's life, all of her previous offending,
all of the times when she's killed other people before. And I think had that murder not failed,
she could have gone on for quite some time afterwards. But I think she was getting quite
close to being caught at this stage, because she was becoming quite careless. She was trying to mix things up.
She was trying to be too clever, and that's what led to her downfall. GARY PRINTY: They began exhuming bodies.
They exhumed James Goodyear's body. Lethal dose of arsenic in the system. She wanted to make sure that she did
the job right with her husband, James Goodyear. And so the amount of arsenic in his system
when he was examined after they exhumed the body was enough to kill 15 people. We had investigators from Colorado come down to here.
Bobby Joe was buried in a cemetery in Alabama. And we had that body exhumed. We did tests on him and he had enough
in him for about 10 people, to kill 10 people, arsenic. GARY PRINTY: They exhumed the body of Michael Goodyear,
find out that there's lethal doses of arsenic in his system. It was the arsenic poisoning that crippled
him but did not kill him. And with that, they began mounting the cases. NARRATOR: On July 27, 1983, Judy Buenoano
was arrested and charged with the attempted murder of her third partner, John Gentry.
After being released on bail, she was arrested once more in January 1984, this time for grand theft
and the murder of her son, Michael. Buenoano claimed to be innocent of all charges.
The trial on her son, the drowning, she was very vocal. She even took the stand.
She really thought that she could get away with it. She really did. She really thought that she would be able to talk
her way out of these things. NARRATOR: The jury didn't believe Buenoano's lies, and she was found guilty on all counts.
She was sentenced to life without parole. DEBBIE SALAMONE: It was a standout case
because it was almost unbelievable that a person could do this to their loved ones, particularly a child
that she gave birth to. It's just unfathomable. NARRATOR: Later that same year, Buenoano found herself
back on trial, charged with the attempted murder of John Gentry. On October the 18, 1984, she was found guilty
and sentenced to a further 12 years behind bars. FRANK GENTRY: Maybe my father would have died
and maybe she would have married again and killed again. I mean, with the number of people that she killed,
she was obviously didn't have a conscience and would probably have done it again.
NARRATOR: Despite the sentences already handed out to her, Buenoano would have to face a third trial, this time
for the first degree murder of her original partner, James Goodyear. Once again, she was found guilty and her punishment
was even more severe. On November the 26th, 1985, Judy Buenoano was sentenced to death.
Judy's crimes were cold, calculated, and premeditated. Those are the kinds of murders in the state of Florida
that cry out for the death penalty. The death penalty is designed for people like Judy.
NARRATOR: On March 30, 1998, Judy Buenoano was executed via the electric chair in Florida State Prison.
She was 54 years old. DEBBIE SALAMONE: At the time of Judy's execution, it was quite a big event in the state of Florida
because it had been decades since a woman was sentenced to death. GARY PRINTY: She died without ever saying anything at all,
apologizing, or admitting anything. She took it all with her. And I can't imagine what she was even thinking at the end.
Why are they doing this to me? I didn't do anything wrong. She really got what she deserved.
I knew they were trying to say when she was in jail that she had found this religion and that religion that she was helping
and she'd gone to school and got a degree in this and degree in that. That's all fine and good, but you
got to look back at what she did, especially to her own son. NARRATOR: Judy Buenoano was a cold, calculating killer
who planned her murders meticulously for years. She ruthlessly destroyed the lives
of those who loved and trusted her for her own selfish financial gain, making Judy Buenoano one of the world's most evil killers.
[music playing]

The story of a killer so evil that not even her own son could escape her clutches. She became the first woman to be executed in Florida since 1848.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers. New episodes including Lee Ford, Pawel Relowicz, John Shaw, John Allen Muhammad, Derrick Todd Lee and more.

Brief Summary

Judy Buenoano, a serial killer, was executed for murdering her partners and son for insurance money after a failed car bomb attempt on John Gentry.

Key points

The Car Bombing of John Gentry. John Gentry survives a car bomb orchestrated by his fiancée, Judy Buenoano.
Judy's Dark Manipulations. Judy Buenoano's victims were those who loved her the most, revealing her twisted nature.
The Mysterious Death of James Goodyear. James Goodyear dies under suspicious circumstances after Judy poisons him over time.
The Tragic Drowning of Michael. Judy's son Michael drowns in what appears to be an accident, but is it?
Judy's Insurance Schemes. Judy cashes in on multiple life insurance policies after the deaths of her loved ones.
The Car Bomb Incident. Judy Buenoano's attempt to kill John Gentry with a car bomb fails spectacularly.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Could you imagine throwing your own son over the side of a boat?

Frank Gentry on Judy's actions

3:54WatchAug 10, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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