It was an odd image: a woman so cold she’d been dubbed the “Black Widow,” who was connected to multiple murders — even convicted of killing her own son — but who was so shaky on her way to the electric chair that guards had to help her walk to her final fate. Judy Buenoano became the second woman executed in Florida, 150 years after the first woman was hanged. This time, it was execution by electric chair, a three-legged seat that was built in 1923 by incarcerated individuals. 

With a big personality, buffed and polished fingernails, and styled hair, Judy seemed like a woman in her 50s who enjoyed living life and telling over-the-top stories. At this point in her life, she owned a beauty salon, a Corvette, and enjoyed expensive jewelry. But Judy had a menacing past that trailed her and would eventually catch up with the murderer. It’s a poisonous path of breadcrumbs: a husband who died of mysterious symptoms; a boyfriend who died two days after returning home from being in the hospital for mysterious symptoms; and a son who had shown symptoms of poisoning and whose health became so bad that he couldn’t use his hands and couldn’t walk without the support of leg braces. On a canoeing trip with Judy, their boat overturned and the son drowned in his weighty braces. To cap off the suspicions, she had collected more than $240,000 over the years in life insurance policy payouts for these deaths. 

It was a boyfriend who fell sick after taking vitamins that Judy was giving him and who eventually survived a car explosion in Pensacola, FL who led to Judy’s downfall. When questioned by police, John Gentry explained that he had been sick without a cause and his girlfriend had been giving him vitamin pills. Those pills were tested and found to have been filled with paraformaldehyde, a chemical that’s often used in barbershops and beauty salons. Judy’s salon was searched and large quantities of the chemical were found. To cap it off, police determined she had also planted the car bomb, attempting a dramatic murder of Gentry. 

As the investigations continued, they exhumed the bodies of Judy’s husband and boyfriend who died of mysterious symptoms. They both tested positive for arsenic poisoning. While she received convictions for the killing of her son and the attempted murder of Gentry, it was the murder conviction for her husband that earned her the death penalty by electrocution. 

At trial, Judy was dubbed the “Black Widow” by Pensacola prosecutor Russell Edgar. Edgar is noted as saying, “She’s like a black widow – she feeds off her mates and her young. It does appear the motive was twisted greed.” 

This was not Judy’s first brush with the criminal legal system.  She was born Judias Wetley, and described her childhood as one fraught with extreme physical abuse at the hands of her father and stepmother. At 14, she attacked her stepbrothers, father, and stepmother, and was incarcerated for two months as a result of this incident. She would eventually legally change her last name to Buenoano, a Spanish take on the last name Goodyear, her late husband’s last name. 

She never showed any remorse for the crimes and maintained her innocence. In her last days on death row, Judy knitted baby blankets and concentrated on her religion. She was quoted as saying, “Seeing the face of Jesus, that’s what I think about. I’m ready to go home.”

Judy shared no final words before the electric shocks coursed through her body and ended her life on March 30, 1998.