Judias Buenano received her sinister nickname Black Widow for a number of crimes she committed over the course of several years. Since slave times, she was the first woman to be sentenced to death in the US state of Florida. She was accused of poisoning her husband and killing her son, as well as an attempt to blow up her lover and a number of other crimes.
Execution Statistics
Buenano Judias was born on April 4, 1943 in the small Texas town of Quana (USA). This already elderly lady became the first woman in the United States to be executed by electric chair, and the third since 1976, when this type of punishment was resumed here.
One of her predecessors was Celia, a black slave who killed her master and hanged in 1848, the other was Ronda Belle Martin, a waitress from Alabama who admitted to poisoning her mother, three children and two husbands with poison poison . The latter was electrocuted in October 1957.
Poisoning husband and son
Buenano Judias was recognized as the most cold-blooded and cynical killer in the history of Florida. The first victim of this woman was her husband, James Goodyear, who returned from the Vietnam War in 1971. He was a US Air Force sergeant. According to the prosecutor, literally every dish served to him by his wife was generously seasoned with arsenic. When the man died, she received rather substantial insurance for him at 85 thousand dollars.
It is safe to say that impunity inspired Buenano for new crimes, since in 1980 she also ruthlessly dealt with her 19-year-old disabled son. Michael Goodyear suddenly became seriously ill a year before his death. Among the symptoms of his disease was paraplegia, characterized by paralysis of the limbs. A post-mortem examination was carried out, during which it turned out that he was also poisoned by arsenic. It was this poison that provoked his disability.
Mother carefully thought out the whole plan of the murder: she invited the guy on a canoe river trip, and when the boat was above the deepest place, she pushed the unfortunate, whose legs were weighed by supporting brackets, into the water. For this, the "inconsolable mother" again received insurance, but already in the amount of 125 thousand dollars.
Other crimes
The third time, luck finally turned its back on Judas Buenano (a photo of the Black Widow is presented to your attention in the article). Her lover John Gentry was to become her next victim. To kill him, she put explosives in his car, but the man noticed a strange bundle and immediately turned to the police.
I must say that the investigation in this case put forward many versions of the assassination attempt and only last but not least remembered the "harmless" widow. The fact is that John Gentry at one of the interrogations said that Buenano Judias regularly gave him some multivitamins, which made him feel worse. After the examination was carried out, it turned out that the capsules of the drug were filled with a deadly filling - arsenic.
Arrest and Sentence
So, thanks to the testimony of her lover, the Black Widow was arrested in 1983. At first, she was only suspected of committing one crime - an attempted murder. However, as the investigation progressed in this case, the police managed to find out that five years earlier she had poisoned another lover in Colorado. It was Bobby Joe Morris. I must say that by the time this crime was uncovered, Judias had already been sentenced to death for the murder of James Goodyear. Therefore, the just discovered atrocity was simply absorbed by a previously issued decision.
In addition, Judias was suspected of the murder of another of her lovers - Gerald Dosset, which occurred in 1980. After her arrest, the police exhumed the body of a man. It was carefully examined for signs of arsenic poisoning. Apparently, the suspicions were not confirmed, because the woman was never charged in this case. Instead, she was found guilty of several arsons that were committed in order to obtain monetary compensation, as well as insurance fraud.
Before execution
It is worth noting that Buenano Judis herself, sitting in a prison cell specially designed for female suicide bombers and painted pink, fought hard for her long life for 13 years. She sent pardons to various authorities, but the Florida Supreme Court decided to leave the sentence unchanged.
It is known that the Black Widow spent the last day of her life in the company of her relatives - already adult children and grandchildren. In addition, her lawyers and even spiritual teachers came to say goodbye to her. She spent the evening reading a female novel and watching TV.
On the eve of the execution, the woman was woken up at 9 in the morning for the last breakfast, which consisted of broccoli with asparagus, a cup of black tea and strawberries. At that time, a rally was organized outside the walls of the prison, organized by a group of Democrats who protested against the death penalty.
It is said that the Black Widow was surprisingly calm. Judas Buenano, who was executed on March 30, 1998, refused the opportunity to give her the last word. She only managed to tiredly close her eyes until the moment when an electric discharge passed through her body. By that time she was 54 years old.