Serial Killers: Judi Buenoano

 Born: April 4, 1943

Number of victims: 3   

Date of murders: 1971 - 1980 

Method of murder:  Poisoning / Drowning 

Location: Florida / Colorado, USA 



As a child, Judias Buenoano suffered severe physical abuse at the hands of her father and stepmother. When she eventually struck back, it resulted in her being sent to a girls’ reformatory. Overcoming these early difficulties, Judi qualified as a nurse and moved first to New Mexico and then to Florida, where she married Air Force pilot, James Goodyear. Shortly after the wedding Goodyear was shipped off to Vietnam. Three months after completing his tour of duty, he suddenly became ill and died, resulting in his widow receiving a substantial insurance payout. 

A year after Goodyear’s death, Judi moved with her new lover, Bobby Joe Morris, to Colorado. Bobby died in 1978, of symptoms remarkably similar to Judi’s first husband. After cashing in a large insurance policy, she returned to Pensacola, Florida and changed her name to Judi Buenoano.

But there was even more tragedy to come. Judi’s oldest son, Michael was struck down by a mystery ailment that left him partially paralyzed. Then in 1980, he drowned while canoeing on a river with his mother. Again, the insurance payout was substantial.

Still not satisfied, Buenoano attempted another murder on June 25, 1983, blowing up the car of her fiancee, John Gentry. Gentry was seriously injured but survived, and with clues leading to Buenoano, she was arrested and charged with attempted murder. The bodies of James Goodyear and Michael Buenoano were then exhumed and found to contain substantial amounts of arsenic, leading to murder charges being filed.

Buenoano was eventually convicted of murder and sentenced to death. She was executed by lethal injection on March 30, 1998.


Read the full, horrific story of Judy Buenoano, plus 49 more serial killer cases in  50 American Serial Killers You’ve Probably Never Heard of Vol. 1. Available now on Amazon  

   

 

Serial Killers: Robert Ben Rhoades

Born: November 22, 1945

Number of victims:  3+  

Date of murders: 1989 - 1990  

Method of murder:  Strangulation / Shooting  

Location: Texas / Illinois




A long haul trucker with a taste for sexual sadism, Robert Ben Rhoades toured the country with a fully equipped torture chamber in his rig. He first came to police attention after he was arrested while parked illegally beside a road in Arizona on April 1, 1990. As the State trooper approached his truck to write up the infraction, a naked woman suddenly jumped from the vehicle and ran towards him screaming for help. She said that Rhoades had held her prisoner over a period of two days, raping and torturing her.

Taken into custody, Rhoades insisted that the woman had agreed to the sex games and that he had done no wrong. However, as detectives began to look into his background, some startling facts began to emerge, linking Rhoades to several unsolved murders. Among those were the killings of 14-year-old Regina Kay Walters and her boyfriend, Ricky Lee Jones. Rhoades was also implicated in the murders of Douglas Scott Zyskowski, 25, and his wife Patricia Candace Walsh, 24. Another victim definitely linked to him was 24-year-old Candace Walsh, whose badly decomposed body was found by deer hunters 22 miles south of Fillmore in October 1990.

However, police believe that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Rhoades was known to boast that he’d been “doing this for years and getting away with it.”

Convicted eventually for the murder of Regina Kay Walters, Rhoades was sentenced to life in prison, with no possibility of parole.


Read the full, horrific story of Robert Ben Rhoades, plus 11 more serial killer cases in  American Monsters Volume 9.  Available now on Amazon  

   

 

Serial killers: Alonzo Robinson

Number of victims: 6   

Date of murders:  1926 - 1934

Method of murder: Stabbing / Shooting 

Location: Mississippi / Michigan 

Born in Cleveland, Mississippi, Robinson clocked his first arrest in 1918, for sending obscene letters to local women. However, he escaped from custody while been transported to to jail, making his getaway despite taking a bullet in the shoulder.

Eight years later, police in Michigan City, Michigan where investigating a strange case of serial murder. Several decapitated female corpses had been found, and investigations led the police to the home of a man named James Coyner (an alias being used by Robinson). There they found four severed heads, although there was no sign of the perpetrator. He had fled to Indiana, where he’d later serve time for grave-robbing. 

Paroled in July 1934, Robinson returned to Cleveland, Mississippi. Still using the alias “James Coyner,” he picked up his old habit of writing obscene letters. And it wasn’t long before he started killing again. In December 8, 1934, Aurelius Turner and his wife were shot to death in their Cleveland home. When the bodies were found it was apparent that chunks of flesh had been hacked from the woman and carried from the scene by her killer.

A month later after the double homicide, federal agents tracked “James Coyner” to a post box in Shaw, Mississippi, and arrested him. Later, when they searched his home, they found strips of human flesh, salted and cured like beef jerky.

In custody, Robinson freely admitted to the murders and to eating the flesh of his victims. History does not record the outcome of the case but given the nature of the crimes it is likely that Alonzo Robinson saw out his days in a lunatic asylum. 


Read the full, horrific story of Alonzo Robinson, plus 49 more serial killer cases in  50 American Serial Killers You’ve Probably Never Heard of Vol. 4. Available now on Amazon  

 

Serial Killers: Gwendolyn Graham & Kathy Wood

Number of victims: 5    

Date of murders: 1987 

Method of murder: Suffocation  

Location: Kent County, Michigan


Lesbian lovers Gwendolyn Graham and Catherine Wood were co-workers at the Alpine Manor Nursing Home in Walker, Michigan. Eager for a thrill to spice up their lovemaking, the dominant Graham suggested that they should murder the elderly patients under their care. When Wood agreed, it sparked a murder spree which would claim the lives of five elderly women, in the space of just three months between January and April 1987. The depraved pair would smother their helpless victims during the night shift, then make love in the same room as the corpse.

Because of the advanced ages of the victims, all of the deaths were originally deemed to be from natural causes. Graham and Wood might well have continued killing indefinitely had their relationship not fallen apart. Thereafter, Graham moved to Texas, where she found work at a pediatric hospital. Fearful that Graham might start killing children, Wood told her ex-husband about the Alpine Manor murders. He in turn went to the police.

Graham and Wood were arrested and charged with murder, with Wood agreeing to testify against her ex-lover. She said that it was Graham who had committed all of the murders, while she had only acted as a lookout.

Found guilty on all counts Gwendolyn Graham was sentenced to life without the possibility for parole. Cathy Wood received a sentence of 20 to 40 years.


Read the full, horrific story of Gwendolyn Graham & Kathy Wood, plus 29 more serial killer cases in Human Monsters Volume 2. Available now on Amazon  

   

 

Serial Killer Video: Bianchi and Buono - The Hillside Stranglers

A deadly pair of miscreants who raped, tortured and murdered ten female victims in Los Angeles during a four month period between late 1977 and early 1978.  

Serial Killers: Saeed Hanaei

Born: 1962

Number of victims: 19   

Date of murders: 2000 - 2001 

Method of murder:  Strangulation 

Location: Iran



A rare Iranian serial killer, Saeed Hanaei, murdered 16 women in the holy city of Mashhad between 2000 and 2001. His targets were prostitutes who he believed had corrupted the neighborhood where he lived. Working as a construction worker by day, Hanaei would take to the streets at night, posing as a taxi driver. After picking up a woman, he’d drive her to an isolated spot, where he would strangle her to death with her own head scarf before dumping the body in a sewer.

The murders caused fierce debate in Iran with many supporting the killer, saying that he was doing God’s work. However, the police had to act and their enquiries eventually led them to Hanaei, who had been dubbed “The Spider Killer” by the Iranian press, due to the ruthlessness of his methodology.

At trial Hanaei claimed that he had committed the murders in the name of Allah, but once he admitted that he’d had sex with many of his victims, support quickly fell away. He was found guilty of murder and hanged at Mashhad Prison on April 8, 2002.


Read the full, horrific story of Saeed Hanaei, plus 29 more serial killer cases in  Human Monsters Volume 1. Available now on Amazon  

 

 

Serial Killers: Dorothy Williams

Born: December 24, 1954

Number of victims:  3  

Date of murders: 1987 - 1989 

Method of murder: Strangulation / Stabbing  

Location: Illinois



An unusual female serial killer, Dorothy Williams beat, stabbed and throttled three elderly victims to death between 1987 and 1989 in Cook County, Illinois.

The first to die was 79-year-old Lonnie Laws, strangled to death with a belt on December 5, 1987, his apartment ransacked by his killer. Almost a year to the day later, on December 6, 1988, police officers were summoned to an apartment building for the aged, where they found the decomposed body of 64-year-old Caesar Zuell. An autopsy would later reveal that he’d suffered three stab wounds to the chest, which had lacerated his lungs.

This time crime scene investigators were able to lift fingerprints from the scene. But the police were no closer to making an arrest when 97-year-old Mary Harris was murdered on July 25, 1989. She’d been severely beaten, then throttled to death with her own headscarf.  The apartment had also been ransacked and several items, including a stereo, were missing.

Detectives eventually made an arrest on September 6, 1989, thanks to a tip-off from one of Mrs. Harris’ neighbors. Faced with overwhelming evidence against her, Williams admitted to the killings, although, absurdly, she tried to claim self defense. 

Williams was found guilty of murder on April 18, 1991, and sentenced to die by lethal injection. In 2003, Illinois governor, George Ryan, commuted her sentence to life without parole.
 

Read the full, horrific story of Dorothy Williams, plus 49 more serial killer cases in   50 American Serial Killers You’ve Probably Never Heard of Vol.4. Available now on Amazon