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The House of Prayer has been known over the years as a place of worship, a refuge for religious followers, a cult, and a house of severe abuse and death. From 1983-1992, the House of Prayer was based in a compound in Micanopy, Florida. “Mother Anna” ran the house with a strict observation of Old Testament practices. The followers wore long robes, attended religious services three times a day, and performed household chores to Anna Young’s specifications. When members, including children, did not measure up, Mother Anna lost the nurturing side one would ascribe to the maternal name, and inflicted beatings, or “discipline” as she called it, often doling out lashes in the specific quantity of 33; the age Jesus was when he died.
Today, Anna Young has been named a cult leader and a murderer. But, it took many years before any justice was served and it was her own biological daughter, Joy Fluker, who sought out the authorities more than two decades after the House of Prayer closed.
Several young mothers fell into the House of Prayer – it offered a place to live, childcare so they could work, and support that some of these mothers did not have at the time. When children arrived at the Micanopy home, they were separated from their parents. Mother Anna became their caregiver and eventually and tragically their abuser. Katonya Jackson and John Neal were just 2 and 6, respectively, when their mother moved them all into the compound. As a child born “out-of-wedlock”, Young described two-year-old Katonya as born in sin and possessed with demons. As recounted by her brother, Katonya was forced to run around to rid her body of these devils. When she stopped running, Young would beat her. Soon after these abuses began, Katonya started having seizures and was prescribed medication. Young continued her cruel and disturbing treatment of the toddler and it’s believed she withheld her seizure medicine. The two-year-old died in 1983 and her death certificate listed the cause of death as a seizure condition; her abuse was not brought forward to police for many years.
Another young woman, Sabrina Hamburg, moved into the House of Prayer with her son, Marcos who was between one and two at the time. Per the home’s rules, Hamburg was separated from her son. He suffered starvation, beatings, and another common mistreatment at the House – being locked in a closet for days without food or water. Marcos was half Puerto-Rican and Young decided Hamburg must go to Puerto Rico and leave her son there. When he was about four years old, his mother left him on a bench outside of a church in San Juan. Years later, when she left the House, Hamburg searched extensively for Marcos but, sadly, she passed without locating him.
Terribly, the House of Prayer story continued to unfurl with additional cruelty. Moses was a year old when his teen mother brought him to the House of Prayer where Young immediately changed his name from Emon Harper to one with biblical significance. During this time, Young lost her husband in an accident, and then is when her daughter, Fluker, says she became extremely abusive to Moses. Years later, Fluker began recalling repressed memories of the beatings, particularly finding starved Moses dead in the closet. These memories eventually led her to call Alachua County Sheriff’s Office in 2016. It is believed Emon’s body was taken outside and burned after he was found dead in 1988.
Looking to escape a child abuse charge, Young closed up her House of Prayer operations and went on the run in 1992. She eventually was apprehended and served a mere six months for bathing a 12-year-old girl in bleach, requiring other members to hold the young girl, Nikki Nickelson, in the tub filled with chemicals. This torture and the resulting severe skin burns and physical disabilities led to a difficult and troubled life for Nickelson who died of health issues at 36.
It was not just children who received this heinous treatment; adults were locked in small compartments, required to attack others, and bombarded day and night with scripture. Anna Young was arrested in 2017 for second-degree murder of Emon Harper and a manslaughter charge for Katonya Jackson. In February 2021, Young pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Less than two months later, on March 31, Young died at 79, likely from COVID-19.
During a recent tour of the 120-year-old house, decades after its followers experienced unspeakable horrors, one could still find a sticker reading – “Jesus loves you”.
The podcast “The Followers: House of Prayer” was used in the research and writing of this blog post.
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.
The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick, written by Mallory O’Meara, centers on a unique world of film artistry and special effects that many of us are intrigued by but have not experienced firsthand. Unfortunately, the book details a second world that women around the world are all too familiar with: misogyny and sexism.
Underwater scenes in the movie Creature From the Black Lagoon were filmed at Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park, located about 14 miles outside of Tallahassee. If you’ve talked to any of the employees or taken a ride on their boat tours, then you’ve surely heard about the park’s claim to fame.
This 1950’s monster horror film was a favorite of O’Meara’s. She’s now an indie film producer who grew up fascinated with the horror film genre and particularly with the Creature From the Black Lagoon. As a teenager, scrolling through internet research, O’Meara stumbled upon a photograph of Milicent Patrick painting the mask of the Creature. The caption stated that Patrick was an animator and creature designer and O’Meara was immediately entranced. The chance of finding a woman in the design department of a film set in the 1950s was slim to none. It might surprise you to know that in the 21st century there hasn’t been a great leap forward in representation of women in the film industry.
The introductory chapter from O’Meara was especially striking. She provided stat after stat that showed the lack of female work.
And we must also acknowledge the privilege Patrick held as a white woman. For women of color, the reality is more stark with even less representation.
Up until recently, Patrick went uncredited for her work as the artist who designed the Creature. A jealous man grasped and took the credit for her talent and brilliance. Universal sent Patrick on a press tour to promote the film and her work in imagining the Creature. But, the head of the makeup department, Bud Westmore, was stewing in anger and resentment. He wanted the attention for himself. Patrick was not credited in the film for the Creature, Westmore was. By the time Patrick returned from her tour, Westmore had removed her from all film projects and she found herself without a job.
She was one of the first female animators who was employed at the Walt Disney Studios, and her work appeared in the film Fantasia. She also took on several acting roles and worked as a makeup artist in the film industry. After the Creature of the Black Lagoon, she never again created another monster for film. She instead put her artistic talents toward designing her own outfits and making portrait sketches of others.
This is a story we’re all too familiar with — one where a woman’s talents are suffocated for the ego of a man. O’Meara’s book works to somewhat right this wrong by giving Patrick’s name her overdue credit. It follows O’Meara on her search to learn about Patrick, her life, her work, and to posthumously pull her name out of the lagoon of obscurity.
Check out this independent Florida bookstore, if you’re interested in purchasing The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick.
Twisted Florida 