Air Force Sgt. James Goodyear became ill shortly after returning home to Orlando, Fla., in 1971, following a tour of duty in South Vietnam. According to the Associated Press, he went to a naval hospital on September 13, 2013, after vomiting due to stomach pains.
His condition worsened, and he died three days later of cardiovascular collapse and renal failure, leaving his 28-year-old wife Judy, a mother of three children, widowed.
According to the Florida Sheriff’s Association, Judy, who later changed her last name to Buenoano, moved to Colorado with her boyfriend Bobby Joe Morris in 1977. However, Morris soon developed the same symptoms as Goodyear and died the following year, on January 28, 1978.
Another tragedy occurred soon after: Buenoano’s partially paralyzed son, Michael, drowned on May 13, 1980, when the canoe they were in capsized in Florida, CBS News reported.
Buenoano quickly found comfort in the arms of businessman John Gentry. Gentry’s health quickly deteriorated, and he was briefly hospitalized due to nausea and vomiting. He was hospitalized again in 1983 after a bomb planted in his car exploded outside a Pensacola restaurant, according to the Associated Press.
The bomb blast prompted an investigation into Buenoano, and authorities soon discovered she had previously attempted to poison Gentry with the disinfectant paraformaldehyde in order to collect a $500,000 life insurance policy, according to the Associated Press.
Other law enforcement agencies took note of the strange deaths associated with Buenoano, as well as the payouts she received following their deaths. She received approximately $28,000 from a life insurance policy and more than $80,000 from the veteran’s administration following Goodyear’s death in 1971, as well as $77,000 in insurance money after Morris’ death and more than $100,000 after Michael’s death in 1980, according to the Associated Press.
In 1984, authorities exhumed Goodyear’s body and discovered that he had died from lethal amounts of arsenic poison, according to the Associated Press.
Authorities also determined that Morris and Michael had been poisoned, and that he had been pushed out of the canoe. Buenoano was dubbed “The Black Widow” in the media after her case went public.
Buenoano received a 12-year prison sentence for Gentry’s attempted murder in 1984. CBS News reports that she was sentenced to life in prison for Michael’s murder the same year.
Buenoano received a death sentence in 1985 for Goodyear’s first-degree murder.
The 54-year-old grandmother, who once owned a salon, was executed by electric chair on March 30, 1998, making her the first woman executed in Florida since 1848, according to CBS News.
Buenoano’s grandson, Alex Hawkins, tells PEOPLE that she was cremated, and some of her ashes were scattered in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her remaining ashes were placed in an urn and buried beneath a gardenia bush where he later lived.
“When she was buried, we had a manufactured home on the property,” Hawkins tells me. “Then Hurricane Ivan struck, and we rebuilt our house. And when we rebuilt, the exact location of Judy’s urn was right underneath my bedroom. I had my grandmother with me, and she was always watching. She was basically reporting to me.”
Hawkins, 23, is currently working on a documentary about his grandmother’s case and encourages people to remain open-minded about her life and crimes.
“I am not trying to sugarcoat this documentary,” says the actor. “I am not trying to deny that she did all of these things. She did all of these terrible things while also helping the Pensacola community as a whole. Everyone in the community knew her as a very nice, philanthropic woman.
“I just want people to know that yes, she did what she did, but at the same time, also look at not just her being a killer, look at her and the people that have been directly affected by her.”
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