The Pensacola Police Historic Society

THE PENSACOLA POLICE HISTORY SOCIETY

An Invitation to a Study in Serial Killing

What started as the 1983 attempted murder of her boyfriend in downtown Pensacola turned into an investigation into what was eventually known as the “Black Widow Murders.”

Four Days Away! January 6, 2025, at 6:00 PM

The Mission Anglican Church, 609 N. Alcaniz Street

NO CHARGE FOR ADMISSION!

What motivates a serial killer? The motive for males differs from that of females.

Ted Chamberlain and Rick Steele were the detectives assigned to investigate the first case, which was what took them down the dark road of Judy Buenoano…

At our next meeting, we will talk with Ted and see what raised his suspicions, and what he did to uncover one of the most evil murder plots in the history of West Florida.

Ted was featured in a book called “Bodies of Evidence” written by Chris Anderson and Sharon McGehee about the Buenoano murders.

Here is an overview of the book as listed on Amazon:

They thought they knew her well, the men who loved her…

It was a fatal assumption.

She was born Judias Anna Lou Welty to impoverished parents in Quana, Hardeman County, Texas in 1943.
To her first husband she was Ann Schultz of Rosalind, New Mexico– a nineteen year-old nursing student with a six month-old illegitimate son. The husband died under mysterious medical circumstances four months after returning home from a tour of duty in Vietnam in 1971.
To her common-law husband, she was Judy Goodyear– a veteran’s well pensioned widow, and mother of three from Orlando, Florida. He died of unexplained medical complications in 1978.

To her first-born son, she was the mother he could never please. Partially paralyzed by unexplained toxic exposure while home on leave from the Army, he drowned at the age of nineteen during a family canoe outing with his mother in 1980.

To her fiancé, she was Dr. Judias Buenoano– a wealthy Gulf Breeze, Florida beauty salon owner who enjoyed expensive clothes, fancy restaurants, and Caribbean cruises. On a June night in 1983, he left her dinner party early, and barely survived when his car mysteriously exploded…

To a shrewd Pensacola, Florida police detective, she was a serial killer who profited from the painful deaths of her insured “loved ones”. It took over two years of intensive local, state, and federal investigation and the exhumed bodies of her long-buried victims to prove it…

In March, 1984, a Santa Rosa County, Florida jury convicted Judias Buenoano of drowning her nineteen year-old crippled son and grand theft insurance fraud.
In October, 1984, a Pensicola, Florida jury convicted her of the attempted murder of her fiance’ by bombing.
In November, 1985, she was found guilty by an Orlando, Florida jury of the murder of her first husband by arsenic poisoning, and sentenced to the death penalty.
In March 1998, after 13 years on Florida’s death row, Judias Buenoano became the first and last woman to be executed in Florida’s electric chair.

BODIES OF EVIDENCE chronicles the true but incredible detective mystery from crime scene, to investigation, through trials and final execution in a chilling portrayal of one of America’s most notorious female serial killers…

See you there!

Mike Simmons