Gulf Coast Confidential: I’ll Do the Cooking

Hi, I’m Mollye Barrows, a long-time reporter in Florida’s Panhandle and welcome to my investigative series, Gulf Coast Confidential, where I explore the saltier stories that surface in Northwest Florida and all along the Gulf of Mexico.

Serial killers. They can live right next door to you. And Pensacola, Florida’s most notorious murderer and I lived in the same neighborhood, although not at the same time. After researching man-killer, Judy Buenoano, I’ve decided that if I hang out with a new friend or neighbor from now on…“I’ll Do the Cooking”

Like many who call the Pensacola home, convicted serial killer Judy Buenoano wasn’t originally from the historic, Florida Panhandle city, but it’s the Gulf Coast community where she chose to put down roots and at least two victims. If she hadn’t tried to blow up her last lover she might have gotten away with all of it. Instead, the bombing attempt, well it bombed, and the investigation that followed blew apart the collection of masks she had worn for years to hide her crimes: grieving widow, doting mother, impassioned lover. Here’s a look at how Judy Buenoano became known as the Black Widow and ended up on Florida’s death row.

She was born Judias Welty, in Quanah, Texas on April 4, 1943, the daughter of a farm laborer. She would later say her mother was a member of a Mesquite Apache tribe and that she was the great-great-granddaughter of Geronimo, the famous Indian chief also with ties to Pensacola (but that’s another story.)

Her childhood was an unhappy one. Her mother died when she was four years old from tuberculosis and she and her younger brother were raised by their grandparents, while her two older brothers were placed for adoption. She would eventually go to live with her father, his new wife and her sons in Roswell, New Mexico. She was allegedly abused by them, beaten, starved and forced to work like a servant. At the age of fourteen, she was incarcerated for two months for attacking her parents and scalding her stepbrothers with hot grease. She refused to go back home after finishing her sentence and instead chose to stay at a state-run reform school for girls where she graduated high school in 1959.

It wasn’t long before Judy became a mother. In 1961, she gave birth to a son, Michael Schultz. He was rumored to be the child of a pilot at the nearby U.S. Air Force base, but Judy would not confirm that. However, she had been working for more than a year at that point as a nurse’s assistant under the name Anna Schultz. She married U.S. Air Force officer, James Goodyear, the following year and he adopted Michael.

The First Man Down

Now Judy Goodyear, she and James had two children together, James, born in 1966, and daughter Kimberly born in 1967. By this time, the family was living in Orlando, Florida, where Judy’s husband was stationed. He helped support her first business, a childcare center. She ran the business and took care of their children while he spent a year serving in Vietnam. He returned from the conflict in June 1971, and although Judy would later say he came home sick and never recovered, reports say he passed a physical upon his return and didn’t start complaining of health problems until three months later. He saw a military doctor for stomach pains and chills on September 1. Two weeks later he was dead of apparent “natural causes.”

The mother of another man Judy dated, Lodell Morris, later testified about an alleged confession Judy made about Goodyear’s death. She said she didn’t report it sooner because she was “scared” of Judy.

She said Judy Buenoano told her that James Goodyear was no good, that "she had to work her butt off, and every time her back was turned, he was in bed with a 13-year-old, and he was no help to her, so she killed the son of a bitch, that he didn't deserve to live."

Her husband’s untimely passing resulted in a windfall of cash for Judy Goodyear. She received $95,000 from life insurance and veteran’s benefits. Not long after her husband’s death she collected another $90,000 from a house fire. In fact, the Goodyear’s Orlando home was recently up for sale and featured on a social media site called Died in House.

You can check out the listing with a link at the bottom of this post. It’s just one of many places online you can find niche information about high-profile crimes and killers. There’s even a market for items that belonged to infamous criminals, including Judy Buenoano’s artwork and letters, but more on that later.

The Second Man Down

Around 1972, Buenoano met and moved in with Bobby Joe Morris of Pensacola. She and her family settled into the area for the next five years, but according to murderpedia.org

, her new life was marred by her son Michael, who was disruptive at school and of low intelligence, and she placed him in foster care. In 1977, Bobby Joe moved to Colorado and Judy soon followed, but not before she fell “victim” to yet another house fire which brought another insurance check.

Not long after she arrived in Colorado, Morris started getting sick. Although they weren’t married, she changed her name to Judias Morris. Bobby Joe Morris was admitted to a local hospital on January 4, 1978, but doctors were unable to diagnose his illness and sent him home. He collapsed two days after being discharged and was taken back to the hospital where he died. Buenoano cashed in on the three life insurance policies she had taken out on him.

Unsolved Murder

During her years with Morris, Judy and Bobby Joe were suspected of killing another man in Morris’ hometown of Brewton, Alabama. According to badmarriages.net

, in 1974 police responded to an anonymous tip that sent them to a motel. There they found Ben J. Sherrod, of Miami, Florida, dead and tied to a chair. His throat was cut and he had been shot. There was no bullet or fingerprints at the crime scene and the case has never been solved.

Bobby Joe Morris is said to have confessed to his part in the crime on his deathbed and his mother, Lodell Morris, said Judy confessed to her about that crime, too.

“The son of a bitch shouldn’t have come up here in the first place,” Morris said Buenoano told her. “He knew if he came up here he was gonna die.”

Michael Sherrod, who says he is Ben Sherrod’s son, commented last year on the story about Judy Buenoano on the website, badmarriages.net. He had this to say about their alleged involvement in his dad’s death:

“My father, Ben Sherrod, was the man Morris and Buenoano killed in Brewton, Alabama in 1974,” Michael Sherrod wrote on April 11, 2021. “It was the only murder there that year. His case was never officially ‘solved’ but I know she was guilty. My father was tied to a chair before he was stabbed numerous times and shot in the head. Personally, I’m glad Morris died a horrible death and I can only hope that Buenoano was absolutely terrified before she rode the lightning. She got what she deserved.”

The Third Man Down

Several months after Morris’ death in 1978, Judy moved back to Pensacola and changed her name to Buenoano, which is “good year” in Spanish. She bought a house in the Whisper Bay neighborhood of Gulf Breeze. I lived in the same neighborhood and often walked past her house, which was a pretty, two-story, New England cottage style home, and thought about what went on in there.

In 1979, Michael Goodyear, dropped out of school and joined the U.S. Army, but soon he was too sick for basic training. Military doctors reportedly diagnosed him with arsenic poisoning.

The poison destroyed Michael’s muscles and left him paralyzed. He was unable to walk or use his hands and he wore heavy arm and leg braces. The 19-year-old was discharged into the care of his mother and one day after his release she took him and his older brother, James, Jr., on a canoe on the East River, north of Navarre.

Michael was reportedly looking forward to the boat ride after his extended hospital stay.

He sat in a lawn chair his mother had wedged into the canoe. During the ride, the canoe flipped and Michael, paralyzed and weighted down by heavy braces, drowned. His mother and brother swam to shore. Judy said it was an accident and gave multiple stories about how it happened including that the canoe hit a log and a snake dropped out of a tree into the boat and they scrambled to get it out.

Pensacola Police detective and author, Ted Chamberlain, would later say, “She put that boy through a lot before she killed him. She poisoned him to make him paraplegic. And the guy ain’t home from the hospital for 24 hours before she drowns him.”

Buenoano received $125,000 in life insurance payouts for her son’s death, one from the military and two civilian policies. The following year she opened a beauty salon, Fingers and Faces, with part of the money. The parlor was a popular place to get pampered in Pensacola and the tall, imposing woman was well-known for her Corvette, overpowering perfume and long, flashy fingernails. She also dated regularly, sometimes with wealthier paramours.

The Last Man Standing

John Gentry II, a wallpaper salesman, was one of the men she was seeing. They met at a mud wrestling match. She was feminine and attentive and told him she was a senior nurse and business owner. Gentry was smitten and in 1982, the two took out life insurance policies on each other for $50,000. Without his knowledge, she later increased the amount to $500,000.

''I was going to get drunk, raise some hell and go down and see the mud wrestling,'' said John Gentry, quoted in a 1985 Chicago Tribune article. ''Judi was standing at the bar, all dressed in black. She wore black quite a lot. In fact, psychologically, I think that says a lot about her.''

By 1983, the seemingly happy couple were in love, or so Gentry thought. Buenoano was right there to give him “vitamins” when Gentry complained of a cold. However they made him dizzy and nauseous and when he complained Judy told him to “double the dose.” Gentry became so sick he checked himself into a hospital and after he recovered refused to take any more “vitamins.”

On June 25, 1983, Buenoano, then 40, told Gentry she was pregnant. They had met for dinner at the Driftwood Restaurant near Downtown Pensacola and he left to get champagne to celebrate. Only Judy wasn’t actually pregnant, and Gentry wasn’t going anywhere. When he started his car, it exploded. Police say she had placed five sticks of dynamite in the trunk.

Gentry was seriously injured but survived and police began taking a closer look at Judy Buenoano, especially when they learned so many people close to her had died and she had richly benefitted from it.

"Somebody said her son got killed, then somebody said her boyfriend got killed, then somebody said her husband got killed,” said former assistant prosecutor at the time, Russ Edgar. "Things just got curiouser and curiouser."

Gentry had kept two of the fake vitamins and when authorities tested them, they found paraformaldehyde. Buenoano was arrested and tried for Gentry’s attempted murder. She was convicted and sentenced to twelve years. Her son, James, Jr., was charged as an accomplice. The state contended he wired Gentry's car, but in a separate trial the then 18-year-old was acquitted.

The Trials

The bombing case prompted investigators to take a closer look at the deaths of Judy’s son, Michael, her husband, James, and boyfriend Bobby Joe Morris. Buenoano was later tried and convicted of Michael’s death and received a life sentence. Police also exhumed the bodies of James Goodyear and Bobby Joe Morris. Tests revealed arsenic in Goodyear’s remains and massive amounts of Thorazine in Morris’ body, a drug used to immobilize horses and large circus animals. Police believe she poisoned all three, dosing them in their food, drinks, and “vitamins.”

She was tried and convicted of Goodyear’s murder and received the death penalty. Prosecutors in Colorado decided not to pursue a case against her for Morris’ murder, since she was already on death row in Florida. She never once admitted fault in any of her trials and always maintained her innocence. She was on death row for almost thirteen years and during that time wrote numerous letters to friends, family, and fans and sent some drawings. Her signed pictures and letters are selling for $1500 and $800 dollars each on websites that sell murder memorabilia.

Judy Buenoano was 54-years-old when she was executed in Starke, Florida, on March 30, 1998, via the electric chair. She did not make a statement before her death. It was Florida’s first execution of a woman since 1848, when a freed slave was hanged for killing her former master. It was also Florida’s first execution with female guards escorting an inmate to their execution.

Over her life, Judy Buenoano presented many masks, but to the victims she hurt and their families she was simply a greedy con-artist. It’s why the prosecution nicknamed her ''The Black Widow,'' because like the spider, they say she feds off her mates and her young.

''I think I`m the only man who ever got close to Judy and lived to tell about it,'' James Gentry said after she was convicted of trying to kill him. ''In fact, I`m sure of it.''

Revisiting the crimes of serial killers is both compelling and heartbreaking. My heart hurts for the people who died, the victims’ loved ones who grieve their loss, as well as for the friends and family members who care for the accused, believe in their innocence, or even worse accept their guilt and live with a range of devastating and conflicting emotions. Then there are the crimes themselves, the intrigue, the horror, the who-done-it and how-did-they-get-away-with-it-for-so-long details that keep you guessing and second-guessing. I feel all of that researching Judy Buenoano and all at once see the abused girl, the independent businesswoman, and the cunning, entitled killer.

Thank you for joining me for I’ll Do the Cooking on Gulf Coast Confidential. You can follow this story and others in the series on Spotify and YouTube.