Posted: 4/2/2020
Hello-hello, blog readers! My name is Spenser Andrade. I am a student employee for the UWF Historic Trust as an information aide. Additionally, I also have the privilege of working in the UWF Historic Trust’s archives as an assistant archivist for Mrs. Jacquelyn Wilson, the organization's full-time archivist. The archives are located on the second floor of Voices of Pensacola inside the Hilton-Green Research Room. Inside the archives, Mrs. Wilson is in charge of preserving a large collection of paper-based and two-dimensional items. These items include books, correspondence, family papers, maps, microfilm, military-related papers, newspapers, pictures, portraits, sheet music, vertical files sorted by subject, and much more! From time-to-time, I peruse through the collection to familiarize myself with it and to find interesting tidbits. During one of my digs, Mrs. Wilson directed me to a file about a woman named Judias “Judi” Buenoano and her peculiar story.
Inside the file, the story of Buenoano’s life is revealed through various newspaper clippings. Buenoano seemingly lived a life riddled with bad luck. Her series of unfortunate life events began with the sudden death of her husband in 1971. In 1978, her boyfriend unexpectedly died in Colorado. Then in 1980, her handicapped son drowned in the East River of Santa Rosa County after he fell out of a canoe. Finally, in 1983, her then fiancé, John W. Gentry of Gulf Breeze, survived a car bombing in downtown Pensacola . The car bombing entered the state media spotlight and gained significant police attention. Eventually, detectives linked the bombing and source of nearly every horrible event in Buenoano’s life back to her. Buenoano poisoned her husband and boyfriend, murdered her son, and conspired to murder her fiancé. All of her crimes were committed to collect life insurance money. If she had successfully killed her last victim, Gentry, and gotten away with it, she would have collected $500,000 from his life insurance policy.
Throughout 1984, Buenoano’s name became regularly-featured in the Pensacola News Journal (PNJ). The paper closely followed her after she was accused of murder by deliberately pushing her paraplegic son into the river to drown and planting the bomb in the attempted murder of Gentry. During the March 1984 trial, she was dubbed the “Black Widow'' after a prosecutor compared her murderous habits to the spider that feeds off their mates and offspring. Our file also includes handwritten correspondence from Buenoano to a reporter for the PNJ. Written in April 1984 shortly after a guilty verdict was reached, Buenoano said she had “been quite [sic] never said a word and it was used against me,” and that her silence was interpreted as a “direct admission of guilt.” Buenoano would later go on trial in October 1985 for the murder of her first husband. After being found guilty, she was sentenced to death.
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