CHARLOTTE, N.C. --- Police might have ignored a warning years ago that a woman with five dead spouses was trying to hire a hit man to kill one of the men, investigators in North Carolina said Monday.
Authorities charged 76-year-old Betty Neumar last month with solicitation of murder in the July 1986 death of Harold Gentry. Mr. Gentry's brother had begged investigators for two decades to take another look at the case.
Stanly County sheriff's investigators believe Mrs. Neumar tried to hire several people to kill Mr. Gentry. Lead detective Scott Williams said Monday his office is looking into the possibility that one of those would-be hit men went to authorities before Mr. Gentry's death, but no one took him seriously.
Former Stanly County Sheriff Ralph McSwain, who was in office when Mr. Gentry was killed, is recovering from a stroke and said he doesn't remember much about the case.
He said the sheriff's detective who handled the investigation of the case is dead.
MRS. NEUMAR HAS BEEN MARRIED five times since the 1950s, but each union ended with the death of her husband. Investigators want authorities elsewhere to look into the deaths. Detective Williams said investigators have uncovered a common link among the victims: They all had military experience.
Mrs. Neumar is being held on $500,000 bond in the Stanly County jail. A clerk in the county clerk of courts office said Monday that she does not yet have an attorney.
Her daughter with Harold Gentry, who lives in Augusta, has declined to comment.
Detective Williams said detectives believe Harold Gentry was Mrs. Neumar's fourth husband. She and her third husband, Richard "Dick" Sills, were living in the Florida Keys when he was shot to death in 1965, Detective Williams said. At the time, police said his death was the result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. But Detective Williams said Mrs. Neumar was the only person in the room when he died.
After his death, Mrs. Neumar met Mr. Gentry in Florida. The couple married in the late 1960s in Georgia after he retired from the Army and moved to Norwood, about an hour east of Charlotte.
Mr. Gentry was found shot to death inside the couple's home July 14, 1986. Three years later, she married her fifth husband, John Neumar.
He died in October, and authorities in Augusta are investigating whether his death -- officially listed as listed as sepsis, bacterial infection of the body's blood and tissues -- might have another cause, such as arsenic poisoning.
DETECTIVE WILLIAMS SAID MRS. NEUMAR would wedge herself between family members and her victims to isolate them. She was cold to Mr. Gentry's brothers, who spent two decades trying to get the sheriff's department to reopen the case, they said. He was so isolated that his sons say they didn't know he had died until they read his obituary in the newspaper.
"It's heartbreaking," Detective Williams said. "These people were very close and she moved in and stopped him from seeing them. It was really a hard story to hear."
The Augusta Chronicle ©2010. All Rights Reserved.
Any friends of hers out there? What was she like?
This is a perfect example of a "black widow"....
This woman is so familiar to me....does anyone know if she was a hairdresser in North Augusta years ago.....a young man used to cut my grass his name was John Neumar..his dad was also John and likewise his grandfather was named John...she spoke of her upcoming marriage to the grandfather.....are these the same people?
I believe she poisoned my neighbor's cat. Like a viper she was, but must have ahd some beguiling charm to snare 5 different husbands.
She did work as a hairdresser.
She owned Great Expectations, Belevedere. Next door to the old wallymart. She went by Bea back then. I worked for her, was at the wedding when she married John. The whole thing has kinda been freakin me out.
Yes !!! I knew it ...she used to cut my hair.......I thought so! I recall how she loved to talk and gossip and she was rather amusing...wow.
I think if this woman owns anything it should be sold. Any money that she has or will ever have should be taken and used to investigate her. House, car etc. take it all and investigate her to the fullest.
With all this computer technology available...state law enforcement areas need to be trying to share information better so things like this do not go undetected for years and years.
I have to agree with you there toppergem. Maybe then certain drug-traffickers in Richmond County would go to jail and stay there instead of getting off over and over, destroying countless lives and ruining the quality of life in neighborhoods that are scourged by their friends and co-dependents. Maybe we would have fewer recidivists if they got the sentences they should be getting or the help they needed before they got middle-aged and so messed up less likely to be rehabilitated and may not even have the mental faculties to be repentant.