Guards then took her to a preparation room where she was asked if she had anything to say. She did. Velma wanted to apologize for all the hurt that she had caused and to thank everybody who had supported her for the past six years. She thanked her family for standing by her, and her lawyers and the prison department for their kindness.
She was then asked to lie down on an operating trolley (gurney) to which she was secured with straps and ankle and wrist restraints. A stethoscope and heart monitor were then taped to her chest.
North Carolina Execution Chamber
Needles connected to IV leads were inserted into her arms, and a saline drip was started before the guards wheeled Velma into the execution chamber shortly before 2.00 a.m.
Inside the confines of the prison walls, the other inmates began banging on the Plexiglas windows of their cells. Outside the prison walls, crowds gathered. Supporters of Velma’s and opponents of the death penalty held lighted candles while humming Velma’s best-loved hymn “Amazing Grace,” while those supporting the death penalty were in a jovial mood, waving their placards in the air that contained slogans such as, “Velma’s going to hell,” and, “Good-Bye Velma and good-riddance,” and they chanted against the gently, humming of “Amazing Grace:” “Die, die bitch, die, die bitch!”
Some of the protestors outside the prison
In the execution chamber, three syringes were attached to each of the IV lines into Velma, and these were operated by three volunteers. One of the IV lines was a dummy so that none of the three volunteers could claim he had actually killed her. Velma first received medication to make her sleep, followed by a poison, pancuronium bromide, to stop her heart.
As she lay on her death bed, she was asked to start counting backwards from one hundred. Velma obeyed until her voice sank slurring into muteness. On November 2nd, 1984, at 2:15 a.m., Velma Barfield was pronounced dead. Velma was the first woman to be executed in America since 1962 and the first woman to be executed since the re-introduction of the death penalty in 1976. She was also the first woman to be executed by lethal injection.
Following the execution, Velma’s body was taken away by a waiting ambulance for burial. She was buried next to her first husband and father of her children in the Parkton Cemetery, Parkton Robeson County, North Carolina. At the funeral, her son Ronnie broke down, cried, and begged her forgiveness for not having done more to save her.
CHRISTINE FALLING
Christine Falling was born on March 12, 1963 to a poor family in Perry, Florida. Her mother was just sixteen and her father sixty-five. Christine and her older sister Carol were put up for adoption and taken in by the Falling family. As a child, Christine was dull-witted and suffered from epileptic seizures and grew to be obese. The Fallings were unable to cope with Christine’s epilepsy and bouts of aggression and when Christine was nine, she and her sister were sent to a child’s refuge in Orlando.
Here, Christine took a perverse pleasure in testing a cat’s “nine lives’.” She would drop them from lethal heights and sometimes strangle them. The staff at the children's home described Christine as a compulsive thief, a habitual liar, and an attention seeker. Her relationships with the other children in the orphanage were poor.
At the age of twelve, Christine and her sister left the children's home to look for their birth mother who they found in Blountstown, Florida.
At the age of fourteen, Christine married a man several years older than her. The marriage lasted a mere six weeks due to the violent fights they would have. After the marriage ended, Christine became a hypochondriac and visited the hospital around fifty times in a matter of weeks. The doctors seldom found any treatable symptoms.
Christine found work babysitting for relatives and neighbors. On February 25, 1980 Christine was looking after Cassidy Johnson, who was two-years-old. The child became ill and was taken to the Tallahassee Hospital and diagnosed as suffering from encephalitis, acute inflammation of the brain. Cassidy died on February the 28th. An autopsy was performed which listed the cause of death as “blunt trauma to the skull.” Christine said Cassidy had fallen out of her crib. One doctor did not believe Christine’s story and wrote a note to the police advising them to run a check on Christine Falling. The note somehow got lost, and the case was closed.
Shortly after this, Christine moved to Lakeland, Florida. Here, she took a job baby-sitting Jeffrey Davis, who was four years old. In her care, he stopped breathing. An autopsy showed inflammation of the heart muscle myocarditis, a problem which is rarely fatal.
On the day of Jeffrey's funeral, Christine babysat Jeffrey's cousin, Joseph Spring, who was two years old. He died in his cot while sleeping. An autopsy detected a viral infection that may have caused his death.
Christine then moved to Perry. In July of 1981, Christine took a job as a housekeeper to 77-year-old Wilbur Swindle. On her first day at work, Wilbur died in his kitchen. Due to his old age and his deteriorating health, no suspicions were aroused.
In 1981, a short while after Wilbur’s death, Christine was out with her stepsister, Betty Jean Daniels and her 8-month-old daughter Jennifer Daniels. Betty Jean stopped the car outside a super-market and asked Christine to watch Jennifer while she went to buy some groceries.
When Betty Jean returned to the car, the baby had turned blue; Jennifer was dead. Christine said she just suddenly "stopped breathing." Jennifer’s death was thought by doctors to be caused by infant death syndrome, otherwise known as 'Crib Death'.
A year later, in July of 1982, when Christine was seventeen, she babysat Travis Coleman, a ten-week-old baby, who died in his crib. At first doctors thought it was a “crib death.” An autopsy was performed which showed severe internal ruptures and other signs that suggested the baby had been suffocated.
The police were called who brought Christine in for questioning. Christine admitted to killing three of the babies by what she called "smotheration," when she would place a blanket or pillow over their faces. She denied all knowledge of any other deaths.
Christine was placed in a psychiatric hospital to be assessed. While there, she was asked why she killed the babies.
She said, "I don't know why I done what I done,
I did it like, you know, simple, but it weren't simple.
I pulled a blanket over the face.
A voice would say to me, 'Kill the baby,' over and over.
Then I would come to and realize what happened.
Although it was acknowledged that Christine suffered from mental illnesses, she was not classified as legally insane. The prosecution charged Christine with the murders of Cassidy Johnson, Jennifer Daniels, and Travis Coleman. The DA’s office decided it would be too difficult to prove that the other deaths were her fault.
Based on Christine’s confession, in December of 1982 she was given a term of life imprisonment with no parole for the first 25 years. Only her confession prevented the death penalty.
Christine is serving her sentence in Homestrad Prison (Miami-Dade County, Florida). So far, her parole attempts have been unsuccessful. Considering the heinous nature of her crimes, and a history of disciplinary problems, the parole board made the decision that it would be better to keep her safely tucked up behind bars, far away from other people’s children.
In 2006, the Florida Parole Commission set a presumptive parole date of 2252 and said that Christine Falling could seek a review of that date in 2011.
SHIRLEY ALLEN
In 1982, Black Widow Shirley Allen introduced anti-freeze into the poisoner’s arsenal. Shirley was born in 1941 in St Louis and by the time of her arrest for the murder of her husband, Lloyd Allen, had been married six times.
Four other previous husbands had divorced her. Her first husband, Joe Sinclair, whom she married in October of 1968, divorced her after eight months of marriage. He had become suspicious about the strange taste in his food and drinks and had even made complaints to the police. Despite suffering internal injuries, he failed to press charges. Instead, he filed for divorce
.
In 1977, Shirley married John Gregg. Upon her suggestion, John took out a life insurance policy and made Shirley the beneficiary of the policy. A year after their marriage, John Gregg unexpectedly collapsed and died. Unbeknownst to Shirley, shortly before his death, he had removed her name as beneficiary on his life insurance policy. This left Shirley with nothing. Had John perhaps begun to be suspicious of his wife and odd tasting foods and drinks?
In 1981, Shirley married Lloyd Allen. Following the marriage, Shirley convinced Lloyd to take out a life insurance policy. Shortly after this, Shirley began slowly poisoning him. Frequently, he would comment on his coffee tasting odd but was happy to believe Shirley as she explained the taste away by saying it was a vitamin supplement for his health.
Lloyd Allen died on November 1, 1982. Initially, the cause of death was of indeterminate causes. The insurance company was not happy with this explanation as Shirley was to receive $25,000 and requested an autopsy.
The autopsy found Lloyd Allen’s body tissue contained a lethal amount of ethyl glycol (anti-freeze).
On November 6, 1982, in Phelps County Missouri, Shirley Allen was arrested for the murder of Lloyd Allen, her husband. At the four-day trial, the main prosecution witness was Shirley’s own daughter who testified that she observed her mother spiking Lloyd’s drinks.
Shirley Allen was found guilty and sentenced on July 6, 1984 to a sentence of life in prison.
JUDIAS "JUDY" BUENOANO
The Black Widow
Judy Buenoano was born as Judias Welty on April 4th 1943, in Quanah, a small town two-hundred miles northwest of Dallas, Texas. Her father was an itinerant farm worker and her mother, after whom she was named, died of TB when she was just two-years-old. Following the tragic death of her mother, the family disintegrated. Her two older siblings were adopted, and Judy and her baby brother Robert spent their early years with various relatives and foster families in Oklahoma and Texas.
Many years later, Judy told a federal judge that she was physically abused in some homes and sexually abused in others. At the age of ten, she returned home to her father in Roswell, New Mexico and his new wife. Life with her father and new wife was hard. She claimed that they beat her, burned her with cigarettes, used her for slave labor around the house, and starved her.
In 1957, at the age of fourteen, her anger at her treatment exploded. She threw burning hot oil on two of her stepbrothers, badly scalded them, and physically attacked her father and stepmother with any object she could put her hands on.
She was sent to prison for sixty days. At the end of the sixty days rather than return home, she instead chose a girl’s reformatory school in Albuquerque. Here, she stayed until her graduation in 1959, at the age of sixteen.
In 1960, she was living back in Roswell using the name Anna Schultz and found work as a nursing assistant. In March of 1961, when she was seventeen, she became pregnant and had an illegitimate son she named Michael.
A few months later, she met James Goodyear, an air force sergeant. They married on January 21st, 1962, and James formally adopted Michael. Four years after the wedding, on January 16th, 1966, they had a son James, Jr. Their first daughter, Kimberly, was born in 1967. By this time, the family had moved to Orlando, Florida. Here, Judias opened a Child Care Center called Conway Acres. James, as an air force officer, was often away from home. This included a year long stint in Vietnam. Judias had taken out three life insurance policies out on James in the event of anything happening to him. On his return from Vietnam, James became ill and was taken to the Orlando U.S. Naval Hospital. He passed away on September 15th, 1971 from symptoms doctors never quite identified. Judias waited for five days before cashing in his life insurance policies.
Later on in the year, their family home in Orlando caught fire, and Judias received $90,000 in fire insurance. Following the fire, Judias moved the family to the historic beach city of Pensacola in northwest Florida. Here, the 5ft 7in tall, hazel-eyed and brown haired widow began dating Bobby Joe Morris.
Her first-born son Michael began to be a problem. At school, he scored low in school IQ tests and was troublesome. Judias had him fostered.
Bobby Joe was originally from Trinidad, Colorado, and moved back there in 1977 inviting Judias and her children to live there with him. Shortly before she moved to Trinidad to be with Bobby Joe, her home in Pensacola caught fire. She collected the fire insurance money and moved the family to Colorado in time for Christmas, after having removed Michael from foster care.
Judias, Michael, James, and Kimberly settled into Bobby Joe’s house. On January 4th, 1978, Bobby Joe suddenly became ill and was taken to San Rafael Hospital. The doctors at the hospital were unable to explain his sudden, inexplicable illness, and he was released home on January 21st. On January 23rd, during a family meal, Bobby Joe collapsed at the dinner table and an ambulance was called which rushed him back to the San Rafael Hospital. He passed away on January 28th. The doctors attributed his death to metabolic acidosis and cardiac arrest.
In February of 1978, Judias cashed in three life insurance policies on Bobby Joe.
Judias, following Bobby Joe’s funeral, changed her and the children’s surnames to Buenoano, which in Spanish means Goodyear. She then moved the family back to Pensacola settling into the suburb of Gulf Breeze, one of the most popular areas in Pensacola which is surrounded by water on three sides.
Michael continued to be a problem for Judias. In his sophomore year, he dropped out of high school and then in June of 1979 joined the army. Michael underwent basic training and was then assigned to Ft. Benning, Georgia.
After Michael’s basic training was finished, he went to stay with his mother before going to Fort Benning on November 6th. When he arrived at Fort Benning, at the age of nineteen, he was found shortly after arrival to be showing signs of base metal poisoning. The military doctors found seven times the normal amount of arsenic in Michael’s body. Doctors were at a loss to explain the presence of arsenic nor were they able to undo its destructive action.
He was sent to Walter Reed Hospital for three months for physical therapy treatment and then sent to a Veterans' Hospital in Tampa for occupational rehabilitation and physical therapy. A degeneration of nerves had left Michael with no muscle or nerve function below his elbows and knees. Michael could neither use his hands nor walk.
On May 12, 1980, Michael was transferred to his mother’s care to continue his treatment in Pensacola. His doctor, Dr. Barry, warned Judias and Michael that he might never regain proper function of his legs and arms. Judias and Michael were also warned that if he were to go boating safety provisions should be put in place, as he would be unable to save himself if an accident occurred.
Michael left the hospital wearing leg braces that weighed 3 1/2 pounds each and to enable him to hold onto objects, a Robbins hook was placed on his right arm weighing two pounds.
The day after Michael’s home coming, Judias took her fourteen-year-old son James and Michael out on a canoe on the East River in Santa Rosa County. In the middle of the canoe, Judias had placed a folding camp chair for Michel to sit wearing his leg braces, Robbins hook, and leather shoes. The canoe capsized. In a statement, Judias claimed that a snake had fallen into the canoe and while she was trying to deal with the snake, the canoe overturned. In the overturning of the canoe, James hit his head and became unconscious. Judias managed to rescue James from under the over-turned canoe but was unable to rescue Michael as his body, with the weight of the braces, was too heavy.
A fisherman, Ricky Hicks, who phoned the sheriff’s office, rescued Judias and James from the river. The sheriff and recue divers arrived on the scene and eventually recovered Michael’s brace-laden body.
Judias received $20,000 from her son’s army life insurance and two other amounts from other life insurance policies she had taken out on Michael.
Following Michael’s funeral, Judias opened a beauty parlor in Gulf Breeze. She also began dating a businessman, John Gentry. In October of 1982, Joh
n and Judias became engaged and at Judias insistence took out $50,000 life insurance policies on one another. Without John’s knowledge, Judias upped John’s policy to the much higher value of $500,000. In December of 1982, Judias began giving John vitamin pills. On December 16th, John was admitted to the hospital suffering from dizziness and vomiting. He remained in the hospital for twelve days.
The following June, Judias told John she was expecting his child. She asked him to drive to the liquor store to buy some champagne so they could celebrate the good news. John never made it to the liquor store. John got into his car, turned the ignition key, and a bomb exploded.
Ambulances rushed the seriously injured John to the hospital where surgeons succeeded in saving his life.
The police began investigating the car bombing. During their investigation, they learned about the life insurance policies. They also learned that Judias had been telling friends since November of 1982 that John had a terminal illness, that she had recently booked a world cruise for her two children and herself, and that she was not pregnant.
When doctors finally allowed the police to question John, they informed him of these things. John was horrified to discover these truths, and it made him think of the vitamin pills Judias had been feeding to him the previous December. He told the police about the pills, and they had them analyzed. They were found to contain arsenic.
The police obtained a search warrant and searched Judias’ house. Here, they found the tape and wire that matched what remained of the bomb found in John's car. Judias was arrested for the attempted murder of John Gentry. Her lawyer managed to get her out on bail while awaiting trial.
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