"Very Scary People" on ID features Pensacola's Black Widow killer Judy Buenoano

Greed, seduction, and murder. That’s what investigators say they found when they started digging into the past of Judy Buenoano, Pensacola’s notorious serial killer who became known as The Black Widow. Her story will be featured this Sunday on the true crime documentary series, Very Scary People, with host Donnie Wahlberg.

Northwest Florida viewers may see some familiar faces in the two-hour episode. It includes interviews with several local people who knew or investigated Buenoano, including prosecutor Russ Edgar and retired Pensacola police detective, Ted Chamberlain.

Chamberlain first got involved in the case on June 25, 1983, when the car belonging to Buenoano’s boyfriend at the time, John Gentry, blew up outside the Driftwood Restaurant near Downtown Pensacola.

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Five sticks of dynamite had been placed inside the trunk and it exploded when he started his car. Gentry was seriously injured but survived and that’s when police began taking a closer look at Buenoano, especially when they learned so many people close to her had died and she had richly benefitted from it.

“We worked a lot of hours and we found out things about Judy, that she had been married before, that her husband had died, and it just went on, and on, and on from there, while we were still working the bombing case, too,” remembered Chamberlain. “Every time we’d look into something we’d say, ‘This is not right,’ and then we’d keep looking and find somebody else died. Then I found out about her son in Santa Rosa County and his accidental drowning. I knew there was a hell of a lot more to it than just the car bombing.”

Web of lies

Investigators found a trail of bodies and destruction in her past that included the poisoning deaths of her first husband, military veteran James Goodyear in 1971, and another lover, Bobby Joe Morris, in 1978. She is also suspected of poisoning her 19-year-old son Michael Goodyear, leaving him paralyzed before he “accidentally” drowned canoeing with his mother and brother on the East River, north of Navarre, in 1980.

Detectives said she collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in life insurance money for each of the deaths, plus insurance payouts from two mysterious house fires during those years.

Until Gentry’s car blew up in 1983, no one suspected the mother, widow, and seemingly successful face and nail salon owner was guilty of anything other than being flamboyant and wearing too much perfume.

Still, some who knew her saw another, darker side to Buenoano that instinctively made them suspicious. Pam Hill’s father was a long-time friend of Buenoano’s and their families spent time together.

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Hill talks about her experiences in the Very Scary People documentary on the Black Widow, including how her father often asked her to babysit Buenoano’s young daughter, Kim, as well as her son Michael, who was considered mentally slow. Growing up, his mother took him in and out of foster care.

A college student at the time, Hill said she was eventually too busy to babysit and Buenoano was furious when she quit.

“Her face turned from the lively party person that she was to where she just looked at me and if looks could kill, I would be dead,” remembered Pam Hill. “The next day there were three dead birds in my mailbox. They had little name tags, like on cardboard, and like twine around their necks and they said Pam, and Tricia and Sharon, for me and my two sisters. One for each of us, three dead birds.”

The day Michael Goodyear died in East River in Santa Rosa County, Hill got a call from her dad asking her to go with him to the scene. Michael's mother and younger brother, Jim, said he drowned when the boat accidentally flipped. The paralyzed 19-year-old was sitting in a lawn chair that had been wedged into the canoe. He was weighed down by heavy braces he wore on his arms and legs due to his deteriorated muscles.

Hill said she always believed something wasn’t right and she felt for both Michael and his younger sister, Kim.

“I cry when I think about what happened and it breaks my heart, mostly for Michael and Kim,” said Hill. “And I think about how close people can get to you and your family when they’re not honorable.”

Caught in her own web

In 1984, Judy Buenoano was tried and convicted of trying to murder John Gentry and sentenced to 12 years in prison. Her son, James Goodyear, 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 bombing case prompted investigators to take a closer look at the deaths of Judy’s son, Michael, and she was also convicted of his murder and sentenced to life in prison.

When police exhumed the remains of her husband, James Goodyear, Sr., and her boyfriend 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 them, as well as her son Michael, by dosing them in their food, drinks and “vitamins.”

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In 1985, Buenoano was convicted of killing her husband and sentenced to die in Florida’s electric chair, an execution that was carried out in 1998. She was the first woman executed in Florida since 1848.

Prosecutors in Colorado, where Morris died, 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.

Watch the Documentary

The Very Scary People episode on Buenoano’s case will air on Mother’s Day on Investigation Discovery, at 8 p.m. CST/9 p.m. EST.

Ted Chamberlain, now retired 20 years, thinks it will be especially interesting because people who haven’t previously talked about their involvement in the case, like prosecutor Russ Edgar as well as members of the victim’s families, will be included. He said it’s one of the biggest, if not the biggest case he investigated over his career.

“She thought she was smart, and the greed got to her,” said Chamberlain. “I didn’t think that she thought that anybody would ever look into her past or anything else and she started getting sloppy and making mistakes.”

Although the story is tragic, Hill said there are lessons to be learned from criminals like Buenoano and perhaps that’s why people are still so interested in her case.

“Trust your intuition and don’t take the path of least resistance,” said Hill. “It’s so incredulous that she functioned, and she thrived among us at the expense of many of us. People are still interested in her story because she did it for so long, unchecked. Nobody checked out her story until people had already died and she just kept going until she was finally caught.”

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Judy Buenoano: Very Scary People features Pensacola Florida murderer