In the years after her first husband’s death, Judias "Judy" Buenoano began a new chapter with a man named Bobby Joe Morris. A male of unknown age, he became her live-in boyfriend, and in 1977, their life together took them from Pensacola, Florida, to the small city of Trinidad, Colorado. Judy and her children followed Morris there, setting up a home that, from the outside, may have seemed unremarkable.
But within a year, a familiar and sinister pattern began to emerge, one that had ended in death before and would do so again.
In early January 1978, Bobby Joe fell gravely ill. He suffered from debilitating symptoms that included intense nausea, vomiting, fever, and hallucinations. Doctors in Trinidad were mystified by his condition and admitted him to a local hospital on January 4. Unable to pinpoint a cause, they eventually discharged him. Back at home, his health took a dramatic turn for the worse. He collapsed just two days after his release and was rushed back to the hospital, where he died on January 21, 1978. At the time, his death was not considered a homicide, and Judy, who had presented herself as his wife, collected on three separate life insurance policies she had taken out on him, totaling approximately $23,000.
For more than five years, the true cause of Bobby Joe Morris's death remained a secret, buried with him. The truth only began to surface in 1983, after Judy Buenoano’s then-fiancé, John Gentry, miraculously survived a car bombing in Pensacola. As investigators delved into Judy’s past, they uncovered a disturbing history of men close to her dying from mysterious illnesses, each death resulting in a significant insurance payout for her. This pattern of "bad luck" prompted authorities to re-examine the deaths of her first husband, U.S. Air Force Sergeant James Goodyear, her paraplegic son, Michael Goodyear, and her Colorado boyfriend, Bobby Joe Morris.
In February 1984, investigators traveled to Trinidad and exhumed Bobby Joe's remains. A forensic analysis revealed what his doctors had missed years earlier: he had died from acute arsenic poisoning. The same poison was found in the exhumed bodies of James Goodyear and Michael Goodyear. The discovery confirmed that Bobby Joe was a victim of Judias Buenoano, a serial killer who poisoned, drowned, and bombed those closest to her for financial gain. Prosecutors dubbed her "The Black Widow" for feeding off her mates.
Judias Buenoano, born Judias Welty, was a master of deception. She told her next fiancé, John Gentry, that Bobby Joe Morris had died of alcoholism. In reality, she had systematically poisoned him, just as she had poisoned her husband before him and would later poison her own son. Her motive was cold, calculated greed. Over the years, she collected an estimated $240,000 in insurance money from the deaths of the men in her life.
Buenoano was arrested in 1983 and ultimately faced justice in Florida. In 1984, she was convicted of the murder of her son Michael and sentenced to life in prison. The following year, she was tried for the murder of James Goodyear, found guilty, and sentenced to death. She also received a 12-year sentence for the attempted murder of John Gentry.
Although investigators had definitively proven that Buenoano murdered Bobby Joe Morris, authorities in Colorado declined to file charges or extradite her for trial. With a death sentence already secured in Florida, they decided another prosecution was unnecessary. Judias Buenoano never faced a jury for the murder of Bobby Joe Morris.
After more than a decade on death row and numerous failed appeals, Judias Buenoano was executed in Florida's electric chair on March 30, 1998. She maintained her innocence to the end, offering no final statement. Her execution marked the end of a reign of terror that spanned more than a decade and crossed multiple states, leaving a trail of poisoned and murdered loved ones whose deaths were callously traded for insurance checks.
