Further reading for Black Widow Judy Buenoano/ Aileen Wuornos
Bodies of Evidence: The True Story of Judias Buenoano Florida’s Serial Murderess
Dear Dawn: Aileen Wuornos in Her Own Words
Black Widow, Judy Buenoano, born in Texas was raised with her two older siblings and younger brother losing her other at the age of four, she and her younger brother were sent to live with their grandparents. After her father remarried, they then moved to New Mexico to live with their dad and his new wife.
As early as the age of 14 Judy was sent to prison for 14 months after having attacked her father, stepmother and two stepbrother, Judy claimed that she did this due to abuse suffered at their hands, that they starved her and forced her to work as their slave. After release she attended reform school and began a carrier as a nursing assistant. Not long after she became a single mother, giving birth to her first son Michael.
Judy got married for the first time in 1962, the lucky man was named James Goodyear, and he took his wife and her son to live in Orlando Fl, here they had a son and daughter and James legally adopted Michael. James was an Air Force officer and would go out in tours of duty, after one tour in Vietnam he came home and started suffering from a mysterious illness, shortly after being admitted to the hospital James passed away and Judy quickly collected his life insurance money. Later that year, the families house caught fire, and again Judy collected another chunk of insurance money.
A quick year later, Judy was on to her next man, Bobby Joe Morris, when he moved to Colorardo she packed up her kids and moved with him. Ironically just a few months after the move Bobby Joe began to suffer from a mysterious illness and was admitted to the hospital, as soon as he was released he collapsed at home dying two days later, guess who collected all his insurance money?
Once he came of age, Michael, Judy’s oldest son, joined the Army and on his way to Georgia where he was stationed, he stopped by his mothers house to visit. A few weeks after the visit Michael began to suffer atrophy in his arms and legs requiring him to have metal braces on his legs in order to walk. He was discharged from the army and went to live with his mother, at this point there is a bizarre story of how Judy took her son who could barely move his arms or legs and wore heavy braces on a canoe trip….sadly the canoe flipped and Michael drowned. But guess how yet again got some insurance money????
After Michael’s death Judy opened her own beauty salon and began dating a business man, John Gentry, they quickly engaged and Judy got him to agree to take out life insurance policies on each other (he obviously had no idea who he was dealing with) she also got him to agree to take special vitamins and as can only be imagined, soon fell ill and was hospitalized. Being away from Judy and her vitamins, Gentry started feeling much better and decided to not take them. In 1983, on the way to the liquor store, John Gentry’s car mysteriously exploded killing him.
This was death that finally had police thinking something was amiss, during the investigation into this accident things didn’t add up with Judy in the eyes of the police and they found that the special vitamins that she had been giving Gentry were laced with arsenic this raised suspicion and the remains of her son, first husband, boyfriend and ex-boyfriend were all exhumed.
In 1984 Judy was convicted of the murders of her son Michael and attempted murder of John Gentry, she was suspected of having a hand in several other deaths and became known as the “Black Widow” she was the first woman executed in Florida since 1848.
How about a massive heavy hitter?
Aileen Wuornos was a prostitute who murdered seven men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. She claimed that her victims had raped or attempted to rape her while soliciting sex from her. She was sentenced to death for all of the murders and was executed by lethal injection in 2002.
Episode 96
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