On a quiet evening in June of 1983, Pensacola businessman John Gentry walked to his car near the abandoned San Carlos Hotel.  He was coming from a party at the Driftwood Restaurant, a popular eatery located on the first floor of the Blount Building across the street.

Unknown to Gentry, someone had concealed two sticks of dynamite in the trunk of his car and attached wires to his headlights. Gentry started the engine and reached for the lights, detonating the dynamite and engulfing the car in flames. Citizens heard the blast for miles, from as far away as NAS Pensacola. The car was reduced to a heap of metal and debris. Miraculously, Gentry survived.

Initially, authorities suspected that the bombing was related to organized crime, perhaps narcotics trafficking. But, as they say, truth can be stranger than fiction.

The first clue came when Gentry informed police that his girlfriend, a local by the name of Judy Buenoano, recently started providing him with “vitamins.” He believed that they were making him sick. A toxicology report on Gentry revealed high levels of arsenic and formaldehyde in his system. Turns out, Buenoano was poisoning him.

The motive, you ask?  The second oldest: money. Investigators discovered that Judy Buenoano had recently taken out a $500,000 life insurance policy on Gentry. With this information, they exhumed the body of three individuals: Buenoano’s first husband, her former boyfriend, and her son, Michael. Tests confirmed that all three had toxic levels of arsenic in their systems. In the case of Michael, pathologists concluded that the arsenic poisoning first led to the disability that necessitated his wearing arm and leg braces. It was the added weight of these braces that led to his drowning death in 1980 while on a canoe trip with his mother in Pensacola’s East Bay.

The State of Florida prosecuted Buenoano for the attempted murder of Gentry and the murder of Michael. Prosecutors argued Buenoano purposefully pushed Michael from their canoe. Convicted on both counts, Buenoano was sentenced to death, and the state carried out the punishment in 1998.

Pensacola’s “Black Widow” nearly got away with multiple murders, but in the end her own greed led to her downfall.

Credits and Sources:

Pensacola News Journal