In the summer of 1971, U.S. Air Force Sergeant James Goodyear, a decorated 37-year-old Male veteran, returned to his home in Orlando, Florida, after a tour of duty in Vietnam. He looked forward to reuniting with his wife, Judias, and their children. James had married Judias in 1962 and adopted her son, Michael. Together, they had two more children, a son and a daughter. But the homecoming James dreamed of would soon turn into a nightmare.
Within weeks of his return, the healthy sergeant began to suffer from a mysterious and debilitating illness.
Beginning in June 1971, James was plagued by persistent nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. His condition baffled doctors. On September 13, he was admitted to the U.S. Naval Hospital in Orlando, telling physicians he had been sick for about two weeks. His health declined rapidly, and despite doctors' efforts to stabilize him, James Goodyear died on September 16, 1971. His death was attributed to cardiovascular collapse and renal failure. At the time, with no reason to suspect foul play, no toxicological tests were performed. His wife, who would later become known as "The Black Widow," collected on his life insurance policies.
For more than a decade, the true cause of James Goodyear's death remained a dark secret. His wife, who legally changed her last name to Buenoano—a Spanish approximation of "good year"—continued a pattern of violence masked by tragedy. In 1978, a boyfriend, Bobby Joe Morris, died in Colorado with symptoms similar to James's. In 1980, her 19-year-old son, Michael Goodyear, drowned during a canoe trip. Before the incident, Michael, a U.S. Army veteran, had become mysteriously paralyzed and was forced to wear heavy metal leg braces after being poisoned with arsenic by his mother.
The web of deceit began to unravel in 1983. Judias Buenoano was living in Pensacola with her fiancé, John Gentry. After she persuaded him to take out a large life insurance policy, Gentry's car exploded when he turned the ignition. He miraculously survived and told police that Buenoano had been giving him "vitamin" capsules that made him severely ill. The pills were found to contain arsenic and formaldehyde. The shocking attempt on Gentry's life finally cast suspicion on the series of deaths that had followed Buenoano.
The investigation into the car bombing prompted authorities to reopen the cases of James and Michael Goodyear. In 1984, James Goodyear's body was exhumed, 13 years after his burial. An autopsy revealed lethal amounts of arsenic, confirming he had been slowly and methodically poisoned over an extended period. The body of her son Michael was also exhumed and found to contain arsenic. Investigators determined that Buenoano's motive for the killings was greed; she collected more than $240,000 in insurance money from the deaths of her husband, son, and a boyfriend.
During her trial for the murder of James Goodyear, two of Buenoano's former associates testified that she had confessed to killing him. A jury found Judias Buenoano guilty of first-degree murder. She was also convicted of the murder of her son Michael, receiving a life sentence, and the attempted murder of John Gentry, for which she received a 12-year sentence. For the slow and cruel poisoning of her husband, the decorated veteran who had survived a war only to be murdered in his own home, she was sentenced to death.
Prosecutors nicknamed her the "Black Widow," a predator who fed on her mates and her young for financial gain. Despite the overwhelming evidence, Buenoano maintained her innocence to the end. On March 30, 1998, Judias Buenoano was executed in Florida's electric chair, becoming the first woman executed in the state since 1848. The case of James Goodyear stands as a chilling reminder of betrayal and the cold-blooded nature of a serial killer who hid in plain sight for years.
