[car engine starts]
[explosion]
[theme music playing]
Welcome to Very Scary People. I'm Donnie Wahlberg.
Her name was Judy Buenoano,
and on the surface, it seemed like she lived a charmed life.
Judy was a nurse, a small business-owner,
a wife and mother.
But dig a little deeper,
and that facade of success fades away
to reveal a trail of tragedy.
In the course of ten years, Judy survived two house fires,
the loss of a husband, a boyfriend, and a child.
Was it just a string of incredibly bad fortune
or something far more sinister?
This is part one of "The Black Widow."
Northern Florida, the Panhandle,
is considered Old Florida.
[Russell Edgar] It's, uh, full of rich history.
Beautiful beaches, and beautiful rivers,
and lakes, and forest.
It's a great natural beauty.
[Jim Richbourg] Pensacola, up until recent times,
was a fairly quiet city.
There's always been plenty to do here in Pensacola,
tremendous amount of historical places
that you can go visit.
And then, of course, there's the sugar-white beaches
of Pensacola Beach.
A lot of folks that grew up here or were born here
don't wanna leave.
And it's a beautiful place to live.
[suspenseful music playing]
[car engine starts]
[explosion]
[Richbourg] I was on duty
and the radio report was put out
that there was an explosion of some kind
at Baylen and Garden Street.
We responded.
When we got there,
it was pretty much just unreal, what we saw.
There was just shattered glass completely covered
all over the Driftwood parking lot.
[Rick Steele] I was a detective
and I was out working one night,
following up on a robbery,
and I heard the bombing go out.
In my best recollection,
we had never had a car bombing of any type.
It was in a parking lot next to a restaurant
called the Driftwood.
I got there and I saw the car bombed out.
Police, fire, everybody was there.
Checked in with the first officer on the scene
and asked him what happened.
He told me who the victim was,
and that they had taken him to Sacred Heart.
[Jackson] Witnesses said that the victim managed
to stumble out of that smoke-filled car
before he collapsed.
[Ted Chamberlain] John Gentry was his name.
And he was in real bad shape.
And John Gentry was a man who was successful.
He had his own business, he was a wallpaper salesman.
[Jackson] John's family got the call
that something terrible had happened.
[Paula Gentry] I remember my mom coming in
and saying, "Hey, I need you to wake up, get dressed.
We gotta go to the hospital."
We asked what was going on,
and she said my uncle, he's been hurt.
We got up and got dressed and went out.
And we didn't know at the time
what was going on other than he was hurt.
He was in ICU.
We waited out in the waiting room with my grandmother.
Everybody was crying, they were panicking
'cause at that time we didn't know
if he was gonna make it or not.
They were trying to shield us kids
from knowing the brunt of everything.
But you could sense it, you could feel it.
You know, my grandmother didn't cry for anything.
But that day, she was in tears.
[Meghan Sacks] Now this beloved family man
was fighting for his life.
And investigators were scouring the scene,
trying to figure out how this happened,
why this happened.
[Richbourg] We started taking photographs of the scene.
We documented all of the cars
that were in the parking lot.
And then FBI and ATF
was called to the scene to assist, uh,
searching through some of the debris
and the collection of evidence.
There was foam, there was material
that the seats were made out of,
gaskets,
metal fragments, wire fragments,
just a whole array of different things
that we collected.
[Sacks] Investigators first looked to see
if this car explosion
could've been caused by some type of malfunction.
[Steele] We felt if there'd been something with the gas tank,
there would've been a fire,
but there was no fire.
[Richbourg] The gas tank had not exploded,
the battery had not exploded.
The condition and the shape of the car,
it was almost like a balloon
because the whole roof blew upward
quite a few inches
and made kind of a dome out of the roof.
[Steele] It was almost like a shaped charge.
It went straight from the back
right up to the front to the front seat.
[Sacks] Soon, Pensacola authorities discovered
orange and white wire fragments
that were not part of the car
and so they determined that it was not an accident.
And so they know this is intentional.
My uncle was larger than life.
[Paula] He was a good guy and he was very giving.
He was very giving.
He would give the shirt off of his back to anybody.
And we couldn't imagine anybody that wanted to hurt him.
You know, he was just not that guy.
The investigation determined it was two sticks of dynamite.
It was placed right behind the left side
of the rear back seat.
And then the orange and white wires
were wired to the tail light.
[Steele] He went out there
and turned on the car and turned on the lights
and it exploded.
[explosion]
This was done to kill this guy.
[Sacks] Now, their mission is to find out
who could have done this.
[Paula] We were all in shock.
Why would you try to kill our favorite uncle?
We worshipped this man.
He was our hero. We were mad.
-[car engine starts] -[explosion]
[siren wailing]
[Chamberlain] It was June 25th,
it was in '83, and it was in the evening
when the car blew up.
[Nancy Newland-Beverly] I had come into work
and someone said, "Hey, we had a car bombing today."
And I said, "A car bombing in Pensacola?"
I don't think we'd ever had a car bombing in Pensacola.
And they said it was down near the Driftwood restaurant around the corner.
And I said, "Who got bombed?" And they said,
"Guy named John Gentry."
And I said, "You're kidding." I said, "I know that guy."
[Paula] My uncle was amazing.
He really was...
He was funny.
He was always a jokester.
A happy person
and brought everybody else to a happy mood.
Just all-around good guy to me.
[Sacks] After high school,
John Gentry was in the service.
He did a tour in Vietnam.
He served as a marine
and he was awarded a Purple Heart.
The guy was a survivor.
[gunshots]
[Mike] He was in the Marine Corps.
I believe he told me he was recon.
Somebody in his fire team stepped on a landmine
and he took some shrapnel from it.
Purple Heart.
[Sacks] After he was discharged from the military
and recovered from his injuries,
John Gentry returned to Florida
to establish a new business.
He was the smart business mind of the family.
He owned wallpaper and carpeting stores.
He had one in Pensacola.
[Sacks] At the time of the car bombing,
John was engaged to another businesswoman, Judy Buenoano.
She also owned a successful business,
a nail salon called Fingers 'N Faces.
I spoke to Judy the night of the bombing
and I ask her the normal questions.
"Anything unusual happened? Any problem?"
And she said, "No."
The night when the bombing happened,
Judy had a party.
[Steele] It was a bunch of people from her work.
She loved to have nice parties.
She was lavish with the people that worked for her.
He wasn't even supposed to go to that dinner party.
But she invited him.
[Barrows] Judy had met John Gentry
when he had gone out to watch some mud wrestling.
And he sees her at the bar...
[Barrows] She starts paying attention to him,
and I think he felt special.
[Steele] He owned a wallpaper shop in Town & Country Plaza
in the same area that she owned the Fingers 'N Faces.
[Belvin Perry] They started dating.
He was smitten by her.
And from all indications,
he fell madly in love with her.
[Paula] I met her the first time
over at my Grandma Gentry's house.
It was Easter that we had gone there for.
And she was sweet. She was really super nice.
Kinda ritzy. She had money.
She had money and she wasn't afraid to throw it around.
[Pam Hill] We owned a party business.
We worked with a lot of people that were of means
and had big parties.
And that's when I met Judy.
Judy was very imposing.
She was tall
and she always wore her hair coiffed
like she had just had someone do it,
and she had real high cheekbones.
And she over-accentuated them with a lot of blush
and she always wore false eyelashes.
And wore Charlie,
that cologne that was popular in the '80s.
And she really wore it.
She overly wore it.
Judy told people that she was the heir
to the Goodyear throne.
[Paula] She liked the finest champagnes
and the biggest diamonds and the best clothes
and she had a house out in Gulf Breeze
which is, what we consider, rich town.
You know, that's money on there.
[Sacks] Together, Judy and John
really enjoyed the finer things of life.
And they were very generous.
[Mike] She was always nice.
They kinda complemented each other, you know, pretty well.
[Barrows] She was very generous with gifts,
as was he.
So he had thought he had found his soulmate,
a woman that was a good match,
a good pair that blended well with his family.
McDonald's used to make these calendars
that you would color in.
And across the bottom were coupons
so you could get a free ice cream
or free French fries or something.
And they brought each one of us one of those.
And it was the best thing we had ever gotten that Christmas.
[ship horn blaring]
[Newland-Beverly] I met John on a cruise
paid for it by Judy Buenoano.
Judy was the life of the party.
She was boisterous, she was loud,
she was freely spending money.
She bought drinks,
she had champagne and we all had champagne.
[Barrows] Everybody thought they were a good couple.
She was successful, he was successful.
She was attentive to him, he loved the attention.
He would tell his friends and co-workers
how lucky he was to have a woman that was so good to him.
[Paula] They were always just all over each other,
holding hands, giving hugs, kisses.
You know, "That's my girl,"
"That's my guy," "That's my..."
They were like two teenagers in...
In puppy love.
They really were.
[equipment beeping]
[Chamberlain] He was at the hospital in critical condition.
He had shrap metal in his back, he got trouble with his kidneys.
He was in pretty tough shape.
[newswoman] Gentry was badly burned
and suffered internal injuries from a car bomb.
[Barrows] It happened at a restaurant called the Driftwood
and this was a nice, classy, high-end place.
It's where everybody went for a special occasion.
They were out celebrating.
He was gonna go home
and she was gonna stay behind and celebrate some more.
-He turned on the car... -[car engine starts]
...and he pulled on the headlights.
It blew.
[distant explosion]
There were a few other people that were there from the restaurant.
They all said, "Nothing unusual happened that night,"
that he had left, like, five minutes before they did
and they heard it, they were still in the restaurant
when they heard the explosion.
[explosion]
And, uh, that's all they could really tell me.
[Sacks] The wreckage of the car
was being scoured by authorities
who were finding remnants of dynamite and wiring
and then they discovered how it was set to explode.
[Steele] We figured out how they put the dynamite, set it off with the lights.
Back then we had to turn the lights on.
Nowadays most lights just come on in a car.
He drove the car during the day.
He had bought some speakers.
He took the car over that morning to have the speakers put in.
He drove from Judy's house that afternoon
back to his house, his mother's house,
and from her house to the Driftwood
without lights on. That time of the year
it didn't get dark till 6:30, 7:00 at night,
almost 8:00 at night, so he didn't have to turn the lights on.
He didn't have to turn those lights on
till he got back in the car.
Whoever did this really didn't know what they were doing.
It was not a professional job.
Where the dynamite was placed wasn't in the right place.
[Richbourg] He was pretty tall, so he leaned forward
to turn on the ignition and pull the light switch.
So, a lot of the really bad force of the explosion
and the fragments went up,
went out through the sunroof and just missed John.
That was a stroke of luck.
Had the bomb been placed better,
it probably would have killed him.
[Chamberlain] If they really wanted to wreck this guy,
they would put it underneath the seat
or put it right on the gas tank
so the whole car would have gone.
That would have killed him.
So, we're not looking at a professional hitman.
[Richbourg] I lifted prints on the left rear fender
right at the edge of the rear of the trunk
and it did not overlap onto the trunk itself.
Which showed that the trunk lid was open
when that print was placed there,
which would have been perfect
if you were leaning over into the back of the car
to do one of two things. Either plant the dynamite
or fix the wire to the tail light, either one.
There was nothing else anywhere
on the exterior of the car.
[Paula] It was shock.
Who would do that to him? Why would they do that to him?
And what did he do?
[Chamberlain] We talked to Judy
and she was giving us all these tips
about, "Oh, there's people in Mobile"
and she thinks that this lady
was the one that had something to do with the bombing.
[Richbourg] They had had some disagreements.
That was who Judy pointed her finger at right at the very beginning,
and then they started looking at more and more things.
Something was wrong.
[waves splashing]
[Sacks] It was late June, 1983
when local businessman, John Gentry was fighting for his life
after surviving a car bombing.
[Jackson] It was apparent to investigators
that dynamite was wired into his car lights
with the intent to kill him.
[Steele] He was a very lucky individual.
Two sticks of dynamite in a very small, enclosed space like this,
it was a miracle that he didn't die.
It was a real miracle.
He was in intensive care, so we couldn't talk to him.
[Sacks] While detectives were waiting to speak to John,
they continued to talk with his fiancee, Judy Buenoano.
[Jackson] Judy took the detectives
through the events of that fateful night,
a celebration that ended in horror.
[Barrows] She had special news she wanted to tell John Gentry.
Judy is 40 years old by this time
and she shares with John, "I'm pregnant."
Well, he's thrilled. He has found his dream woman
and they're gonna build this life together
and it's just all happening for him
and she is seeing his excitement, his enthusiasm
and she's like, "Well, go get some champagne."
So, he gets in the car, he's gonna get some champagne
to celebrate this exciting, momentous, happy occasion,
and it explodes.
[explosion]
[Sacks] The detectives continued to talk with Judy
and learned that this was not the first tragedy that Judy had endured.
[Jackson] And despite Judy's affluent appearance,
she had a difficult life beginning from when she was a child.
Judy Buenoano's childhood was wasted.
I was there and I know.
[Sacks] Judy was born in 1943 in Quanah, Texas,
which is a small town I believe about 200 miles north of Dallas.
She had a lot of trauma, a lot of abuse.
According to her, she grew up in an abusive family.
Her mom died when she was young.
She was about four years old.
Her dad remarried to a woman
who had several sons of her own
and she's claimed that they all mistreated her.
[Sacks] There was, reportedly, abuse in the home
and in response to some of the violence
that was put on her at age 14,
she apparently attacked her step-brothers
with scalding grease, burning them.
[Barrows] She got into trouble for attacking her family
and was put into a juvenile facility.
And, in fact, when her time was served,
she didn't even wanna go back home.
She graduated high school from the state facility in 1959.
She was a very strong personality.
A woman who was smart.
She seemed like, because of her background,
that she perhaps was angry, angry and hurt,
and she hid that,
but she was determined to make it
regardless of where she'd come from.
[Sacks] After Judy had finished at the reformatory school,
at a young age, she went into nursing. At about 17.
[Barrows] And then she got pregnant out of wedlock.
Had a son, Michael, and then not long after he was born,
she met her future husband, James Goodyear.
[Steele] James Goodyear was in the Air Force.
[Chamberlain] When she met him,
they got married, he adopted Mike,
and then they moved down to Florida.
[Bob Kealing] Judy and her husband James lived in Orlando.
Orlando is a lot more than Disney,
although it's the city's largest employer
and tourism is a huge part of the economy.
But a lot had happened prior to Walt Disney
dropping anchor here in 1971.
Orlando was a small, sleepy little town, less than 60,000 people.
Sergeant Goodyear was stationed
at what was known as McCoy Air Force Base
which is now the home of Orlando International Airport.
[Sacks] James adopted Michael
and then they added two more children to their family.
[Perry] Sergeant Goodyear was loving.
He loved his wife, he loved his children
and he was a caring man.
[Barrows] When he married her, he was in it for the long haul.
Then Vietnam came, he was sent off to war.
[President Lyndon] Some weeks ago, to help meet the enemy's new offence
we sent to Vietnam about 11,000 additional marine
and airborne troops.
[Sacks] After a year of serving in Vietnam,
James returned to his family in May of 1971.
He came back and returned to Orlando,
home to his loving wife, three children.
He came home perfectly healthy.
And within days of his arrival,
Sergeant Goodyear got sick.
All of a sudden, he starts getting real sick.
[Perry] He started having hallucinations,
vomiting, disoriented...
Sudden onslaught of illness.
And the mysterious part about the whole thing
was he was perfectly healthy before.
[Sacks] He had passed a physical exam on the base,
and that was around June,
but by September, he started getting really ill
and no one really could identify why.
[Perry] He's just suffering.
He was beyond the point of return.
[Barrows] He goes to the doctor, he feels sick,
and within a couple of weeks,
he's dead.
[Sacks] Just after a couple of months of being home, he died.
He succumbed to this illness, this mysterious illness.
Authorities ruled his death due to natural causes.
[Newland-Beverly] He came home from Vietnam having escaped death
as a soldier and ended up dying in Orlando.
[Chamberlain] The doctors didn't know what happened.
There was no suspicion of any foul play.
Welcome back to Very Scary People.
Judy Buenoano was a respected Florida businesswoman.
She lived in an upscale home,
had three children, and a thriving nail salon.
But despite all the trappings of success,
her life was far from idyllic.
Terrible things seemed to happen to those closest to her.
It all started in 1971 with the mysterious death of her husband,
Air Force Sergeant, James Goodyear.
[Steele] James Goodyear was in the Air Force.
He came back from Vietnam healthy,
and within three months, he was dead.
[newswoman] James Goodyear died in 1971.
His death certificate claiming kidney and heart failure.
[Steele] The doctors never could figure out what was wrong with him
and they couldn't explain his death.
[Newland-Beverly] Judy said her husband died
and they think it was of cancer, but nobody could prove it.
[Chamberlain] She blames it on the Air Force,
that he died of all those chemicals that were over there.
[Sacks] Lot of people did get sick in Vietnam
due to the chemicals they were exposed to.
[Steele] And I was really surprised
that the Air Force didn't do more
to try to determine how James Goodyear had died.
[Sacks] Even though the cause of death
for James Goodyear was unknown,
Judy and her children were entitled to collect
his insurance and death benefits.
The amount was more than $100,000,
money that they would soon need
because their house in Orlando caught on fire.
[Jackson] Judy collected, on her home insurance, a reported $90,000
and then took her kids and they went to start a new life in Pensacola.
Pensacola has strong military ties
and a deep, deep history.
[Barrows] Pensacola is the cradle of naval aviation.
And the Blue Angels, this is their home during the winter.
[Steele] We actually had an aircraft carrier here that did aircraft training.
Up until probably 20 years ago, every flight student,
everybody that flew a plane for the Navy or the Marine Corps
came through Pensacola.
Shortly after her husband died, Judy met Bobby Joe Morris.
Bobby Joe Morris was a very successful person in Pensacola.
Bobby met Judy and fell in love with her.
Bobby Joe Morris was originally from the Brewton,
Alabama area.
[Chamberlain] Bobby Joe was a real nice guy.
He was a construction worker, he worked hard.
[Barrows] She and Bobby Joe Morris, they never did marry.
They lived here in Pensacola for a couple of years,
but it seemed that the two of them
had a very volatile relationship
and Bobby Joe Morris moved out of state to Colorado.
[Perry] At some point, Bobby, he left and went to Trinidad, Colorado
to run, I guess, the utility company.
[Sacks] Now it was also possibly rumored
that he was thinking this would be a way
to get out of the relationship with Judy was well.
But if that was his goal, well, he was unsuccessful
because, unfortunately and unbelievably,
Judy's home burned in some inexplicable fire.
This is her second fire.
-[sirens wailing] -[Richbourg] I got there
and the fire was contained pretty much to one corner
of the garage.
It was attached to the house.
There were very little damage
and it didn't look like any smoke or anything
had gone up into the main house.
Now, the second-floor window on the same end of the house
where the garage was attached,
there were two sheets tied together, hanging out the window
like it might've been used to escape the fire.
But I saw no evidence whatsoever
that any fire or smoke got to the main house.
[Edgar] The circumstances were suspicious.
It doesn't make any sense.
What she did, she collected all the insurance money
and was able to move her and the kids up to Colorado.
She shows up there where Bobby Joe is.
And then Bobby got sick.
[Sacks] He starts experiencing all of these symptoms
that Judy's first husband experienced.
[Chamberlain] Sick to the stomach, throwing up all the time,
loss of weight,
delirious, you'll see things.
He goes to the hospital.
[Sacks] Doctors weren't sure why this was happening to an overall healthy man.
[Chamberlain] But Judy was telling everybody
that he drank a fifth of vodka
and almost two cases of beer a day.
So, they blamed it on him being an alcoholic.
He's in the hospital about a week or so, he starts getting better.
[Sacks] Bobby Joe was feeling better in the hospital.
He was actually recuperating.
But as soon as he went home with Judy,
it was a different story.
[Sacks] Just two days after Bobby Joe was released from the hospital,
he collapsed.
He was rushed to the hospital, but couldn't be saved.
He was just 35 years old.
[Chamberlain] After talking to a couple of the doctors up there,
they felt there was something wrong.
They felt there was something wrong with this case.
[Sacks] It was January of 1978
and Judy Buenoano had just suffered the loss of her boyfriend,
Bobby Joe Morris, in Colorado.
Bobby Joe Morris,
he starts getting real sick,
he goes to the hospital,
he starts getting better.
He comes out and he's fine.
When he got home, he got sicker,
and sicker,
and just slowly wasted away.
It's just sad, it's just sad.
[Sacks] The official cause of death was heart failure.
But the true cause of his death or his demise was unknown.
[Steele] Judy, she actually was taking care of him
when he was in the hospital and he was sick.
[Chamberlain] Judy, she was like a student nurse.
A couple of the nurses would see her in there.
Judy's giving him juice with a straw.
[Steele] When he died at home,
she pushed people to call it a natural death
and actually had him embalmed before they could do an autopsy on him.
[Chamberlain] Judy, after Bobby Joe had died,
Judy wanted the body cremated.
And Bobby's mother, Ladelle, said, "Oh, no. No, no."
And then had him packed up, flown to Alabama
and buried in the cemetery there.
[Edgar] It was difficult because she tried to draw so little attention
to the whole tragic episode of his death.
[Sacks] It turned out that Bobby Joe Morris had life insurance policies
and the beneficiary was Judy Buenoano.
I believe she received about a $30,000-payout from his insurance.
Just enough to relocate back to Pensacola, Florida with her children.
It was a new start with a new home
in a well-to-do area of Pensacola.
[Barrows] Judy had a house in Whisper Bay,
which is in a nice part of northwest Florida,
a well-to-do community.
So, on outward appearances, she looked like she had it all together.
Always talking about how important she was.
She carried herself like a queen.
She carried herself like she was someone
and presented herself as someone.
But there was something wrong.
I'd gone up to her house many times, in Whisper Bay,
to set up for parties.
And I had gone in her home many times.
And when I'd gone in, I would see Michael sitting over by the fireplace.
He's unimposing, just sitting over there.
Michael Goodyear was a child that was born out of wedlock.
[Barrows] This was her firstborn.
By all accounts, he was very nice.
He was loving, he maintained a sweet spirit about him.
But Michael was never her favorite.
She did not like that child.
And I bet that was a source of shame for Judy, who valued appearances.
Michael, all his life, she would tell people that's her step-son.
[Hill] He wasn't physically strong.
Emotionally, he was not advanced
or even at the level of his chronological age.
[Barrows] Apparently, he had low IQ, he was disruptive in school.
He wasn't good as her other kids.
He wasn't perfect and he wasn't bright.
And I believe that Judy resented that.
Michael seemed to be in the way.
[Sacks] For much of his childhood,
Michael was sent away to school.
For what Judy said was to deal
with the emotional issues that he had and his learning disabilities.
But even when Michael was home, reports were that
he wasn't really treated as part of the family.
[Chamberlain] When they lived in Colorado, Michael lived in a cellar.
He lived down there.
Gulf Breeze, when they came back here.
If she had a party or something like that, Michael would be gone.
Michael was never seen by anybody.
She was basically ashamed of him.
[Hill] She never introduced me to him.
Didn't even reference him.
I'm a pretty outgoing person, so I went up to him
and I was like, "Hi, I'm Pam."
And he would just, kind of, smile.
But she wouldn't have even acknowledged he was there
if I hadn't said something.
He was considered an embarrassment to her.
[Perry] Michael was not as smart as the other kids,
but he was smart enough to enter the military.
[Sacks] Michael chose to enlist in the service,
which was probably a nod to his father, to James Goodyear.
It was probably to honor him and to follow in his footsteps.
And maybe even, he thought, that would make his mother proud.
[Chamberlain] Michael, he gets into the Army,
he gets out of the basic training
and he goes home for two weeks
and of the sudden, he starts getting real sick.
Next thing you know, he's in the hospital
and he's in real tough shape.
[Sacks] His symptoms, at first, mimicked the symptoms
of the other men in Judy's life.
He's experiencing the nausea, the headaches, the vomiting.
And nobody could understand why.
But unfortunately for Michael, his symptoms got much worse.
He got medical care in the military
that determined he was poisoned by arsenic.
Arsenic affects many different areas in the body.
[Dr. Holstege reading]
And as time goes on,
your white blood cell count and other blood cell counts may start to drop.
Your liver function test and renal function tests may start to go off.
It can cause weakness in my muscles
to the point where I may become paralyzed.
They did determine he was suffering from arsenic poisoning.
This might have raised red flags,
but Michael had been working in a water-purification lab
and he would've been exposed to arsenic.
Michael goes to this school where they use arsenic in water purification.
He went into water purification
because of Bobby Joe Morris.
Bobby Joe Morris also worked in a water purification lab
and both of them were exposed to these elements.
It was just happening in the course of their work.
[Chamberlain] It was considered then maybe an accident.
And they had no reason to suspect anything other than the bad luck.
[Barrows] Michael Goodyear, just breaks my heart.
He tried to make his own life by joining the military.
And then pretty quickly into his service,
he started having these health problems.
[Dr. Holstege] Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea,
neuropathies where you can't feel things well
or you have a kind of pain in your hands and feet.
[Barrows] And the Army discovered
that he had been poisoned with arsenic.
People thought that what happened to Michael was a work-type thing.
[Chamberlain] They use arsenic in water purification.
Michael was in water purification
and he was around arsenic.
The thing with arsenic, it can kill you
if you get enough of it at one time.
[Newland-Beverly] But that didn't kill him, and instead, it paralyzed him.
[newswoman] The paraplegic boy was disabled
because of the effects of the arsenic poisoning.
[Newland-Beverly] He had braces on both legs and he couldn't walk well,
and he couldn't use his arms well.
Eventually, he couldn't be in the Army.
[Barrows] By the time he is discharged,
he goes immediately back to live with his mom.
And sadly, he didn't ever get a chance to recover.
Just three years after her son's illness,
Judy's fiance, John Gentry, was fighting for his life.
John Gentry was blown up in a car in Pensacola, Florida.
[explosion]
[Sacks] And the fact that he didn't die is really a miracle.
It took about two days before we could actually
get in contact with Mr. Gentry.
He'd been through quite a bit.
[Chamberlain] We started talking to him,
the first thing the investigator wants to know
is, "Who would want you blown up dead? Who'd want to kill you?"
[Barrows] Why in the world would somebody wanna kill a wallpaper salesman?
Why in the world would somebody wanna put dynamite
in his trunk and blow him up
in this conspicuous spot,
this restaurant that's popular,
right in the middle of the community?
[Chamberlain] And he said, "I can't think of anybody."
Okay, well, who'd benefit from your death?
And he said, "Well, my mother would get some of the business."
Okay.
"And then Judy. We have a policy out, insurance policy."
And I said, "How much are you looking at?"
She had gotten a $500,000 insurance policy on him.
We asked about their relationship
and how they were going, and he said,
"We seem to be going fine."
And they asked if there's any problems, he said,
well, he had been having some health problems
and she convinced him that he needed to take some vitamins to be better.
She had told him that she was a medical doctor,
but she decided to step out of it
and open this Fingers 'N Faces nail salon
and she was just kind of taking a break from being a doctor.
So, she starts giving him these pills a couple of times a day.
After a couple of days, it made him really sick.
And he got so sick that he had to go to the hospital.
He said, "While he was in the hospital," he got better
and the doctors never could figure out what was wrong with him.
He got out and she insisted he start taking these pills again.
So, he did and he started getting sick again.
Well, we knew something was wrong right there.
[Sacks] The police are now taking a closer look into Judy.
[Chamberlain] That's when I wanted to dig into her background.
Something was wrong.
I'm just wondering, "What's going on with this woman?"
[Barrows] As they start digging into all the unusual circumstances
and trying to figure out who would want to do this to John Gentry,
all roads slowly kept leading back to Judy.
One person after the other had something terrible happen to them.
Her son Michael was paralyzed.
Her previous lover Bobby Joe Morris died in Colorado.
Oh, and by the way, her first husband also died.
And Judy's the woman standing there, grieving,
but also financially benefiting.
[Newland-Beverly] "This poor woman,
what tragedy she's gone through."
But it does take the police mind to say,
"Nah, coincidences don't work like that."
Even though doctors, hospitals, clinics at the time
thought it was something else,
what these men have presented,
what her son presented,
what her fiance presented, what her husband presented,
the indications were that they were poisoned.
[Sacks] If you're not looking for poison, it's not obvious.
So, you do have to actively go and look for it.
Maybe she was the one that was behind it all, to begin with.
[Barrows] I think that's when John Gentry, according to police,
started to say, "Oh, my gosh."
It was just the ultimate betrayal.
He has found his dream woman and they're gonna build this life together.
And the woman that he was making all these plans with
had plans of her own.
And they included him being in the ground.
[Paula] She was Aunt Judy.
Everything shifted from, you know, "There's no way she could've done this"
to "You bitch."
No one saw what was happening.
There was, like, a trail of death that seemed to follow her.
[man 1] There was a body in the river.
I was thinking, "It's a tragedy," but I had questions.
[Perry] She was like a cold.
Quiet, quick, but deadly.
[Barrows] She drove a nice car, she had nice clothes.
The successful, attractive businesswoman.
She was very calculating.
[Newland-Beverly] Judy was smart, she was brazen.
She was certainly cunning.
I found out real fast everything was for her benefit.
For Judy, crime paid.
[Perry] There was one consistent pattern.
Life insurance money,
Cadillac,
vacation.
And then when the money got low,
another victim.
It didn't matter who you were.
If she wanted you dead, she was gonna get you.
And that's just chilling.
[man 2] It's just so evil.
And the bottom line of all of it, it seemed, was money.
Investigators suspected that Judy Buenoano
was behind the attempted murder of her fiance John Gentry
and other possible tragedies that seemed to follow in her path.
But believing something is one thing,
proving it is another.
Could this businesswoman/ mom of three
be a cold, calculating killer?
In part two of The Black Widow.
I'm Donnie Wahlberg, thanks for watching. Good night.