R.J. Parker: The Serial Killer Compendium

Emma had returned and they bought a big house that they called, Maplecroft, and Lizie took to calling her herself Lizbeth instead of Lizzie.

Lizzie Borden died at Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1927, and was buried next to her father and stepmother.

“They certainly didn’t have the technology back a hundred years ago to ascertain the certainty whether Lizzie Borden really did kill Andrew and Abby Borden. I guess it will remain a mystery.”

Judias Buenoano

Judy Welty was born on April 4, 1943, in Quanah, Texas, the daughter of a wandering farm worker. She hardly knew her mother but in later years would describe her as a full-blooded member of the Mesquite Apache tribe, which never existed. Judias was named after her mother who had died of tuberculosis when her young daughter was barely two years old. The family was split up and Judias and her baby brother, Robert, were sent to live with their grandparents while the two older siblings were placed for adoption.

Welty had re-united with her father and had been the target of abuse by both parents (her father had remarried). She was burned, beaten, sometimes starved, and demanded to work as a slave in the house. When she was fourteen years old she spent sixty days in the local lockup after scalding two of her stepbrothers with grease and attacking both parents with fists and thrown objects. While in jail, she was held with adult prostitutes, and when asked if she wanted to go home by the Judge, she instead chose to go to reform school. She despised her family and stayed away from them.

Working under the name of Anna Schultz, Judy returned to Roswell and worked as a nurse’s aide. A year later, she gave birth to an illegitimate son, Michael. In 1962, she married James Goodyear, an air force officer, and four years later they had a son, James Junior. They moved to Orlando Florida and shortly thereafter her husband left on a tour of duty in Vietnam.

Three months after returning from his tour, Goodyear suddenly grew sick and died from an identified illness. Five days later, Judy cashed in three life insurance policies on her husband. Two months later, their home burned down and she was awarded $90,000 in insurance. Shortly after, she moved her kids to Pensacola, Florida, and met up with Bobby Morris. He moved to Colorado in 1977 and took Judy and her kids with her. Prior to leaving Pensacola, however, she had another fire in her second home, and again collected insurance. On January 4, 1978, Bobby Joe Morris was admitted to San Rafael Hospital. Doctors could find no cause for his sudden illness and he was released to Judy’s care two weeks later. Just two days after being released from hospital, he collapsed at the dinner table and was rushed back to the hospital where he died on January 28. His death certificate officially declared that he’d had a cardiac arrest and metabolic acidosis.

Authors Note: Is it just me, or is did Judy have the worst luck? hmmm.

In early February, Judy cashed in three more life insurance policies, this time for the death of Morris, and her bank account was doing quite well. Backing up a few years, in 1974, Bobby and Judy had visited his hometown of Brewton in Alabama. At the time, a male resident was found dead in a motel after being shot in the chest and having his throat cut. Bobby’s mother had overheard Judy telling him that, “The son of a bitch shouldn’t have come up here in the first place. He knew if he came up here he was gonna die.” So when Bobby’s family heard that he’d suddenly died, they suspected murder right away.

Just three months after Bobby Morris had died, Judy legally changed her last name and that of her children to Buenoano, an apparent tribute to her late husband and imaginary Apache mother. A month after that she moved her family back in Pensacola, settling into a home in Gulf Breeze.

Michael Jr. continued his pattern of academic failure, dropping out of high school in his sophomore year. He joined the army in June of 1979, drawing an assignment to Fort Benning in Georgia, after basic training. En route to his new post, he stopped off to visit his mother in Florida, and that was the beginning of the end. When he reached Fort Benning on November 6, he was already showing symptoms of base metal poisoning. Army physicians found seven times the normal level of arsenic in Michael’s body, and there was little they could do to reverse its critical action. After six weeks of care, the muscles of his arms and lower legs had withered to the point where Michael could neither walk nor use his hands. He left the hospital wearing braces and a prosthetic device on one arm.

In another turn of events, this one fatal yet again, in May of 1980, Michael, his younger brother, and mother, were canoeing near Milton, Florida, when their boat upturned. James and Judy made it safely to shore; however, Michael was not so lucky and drowned. Judy, in press reports of the incident, referred to herself as Dr. Judias Buenoano, a physician in Fort Walton. The local authorities acknowledged her explanation of the accident and closed their files.

However, the army investigators were unrelenting, launching their own investigation for verification on May 27, 1980. Just four months later, Michael’s military life insurance was paid, amounting to $20,000. Upon discovering that there were two other private life insurance policies outside of the military, the sheriff’s officers began to look at the case more closely. While doing so, and after consulting with handwriting experts, they revealed that the two civilian policies on Michael’s life might have been forged. They proceeded to investigate without Judy’s knowledge at this point.

Meanwhile, Judy did not waste time in searching for another victim, er, man. She met up with John Gentry II, a businessman in Pensacola, Florida. She told him that she had a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and another Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Alabama. It was all BS, however. But Gentry accepted it and indulged her with expensive gifts and cruises.

John and Judias (she liked to be called Judias as she was a doctor and all), bought private life insurance policies on each other in October of 1982 which was supposed to be $50,000 coverage each. However, without John knowing, Judias later increased the payout amount to $500,000, and paid the premiums herself.

Judias started poisoning Gentry just two months later, giving him victim, er, vitamin pills, which caused him to become ill; subsequently, he was admitted to hospital for twelve days. Gentry noticed that his symptoms subsided after he stopped taking vitamins, but had no reason to be suspicious of his wife. For whatever reason, she decided that poisoning him was not going to work.

Well, there is more than one way to skin a cat. John Gentry was at a party on June 25, 1983, and left early to celebrate, as Judias had told him that she was pregnant. Gentry left the party and planned to pick up champagne to take home with him. However, when he turned the key in the ignition of his car, a bomb exploded. Luckily for him, not so lucky for her, his life was saved by the O.R. surgeons.

Due to the nature of a car bombing, an obvious attempt at murder, the police began investigating and, upon questioning John Gentry on June 29, learned that the insurance policy which he claimed was for $50,000 was actually for $500,000. During their investigation, the police also learned – after conducting a background check on Judias – that she was not a doctor; nor did she have any Ph.D’s; and on top of that she’d been surgically sterilized way back in 1975. John was shocked to discover all of the lies she had told him, and he had had enough.