An Augusta grandmother who is charged in the death of her fourth husband is still awaiting her day in court.
A year ago today, Betty Neumar, then 76, was indicted in Stanly County, N.C., where authorities say she might have hired someone to kill husband Harold Gentry in 1986. Ms. Neumar was arrested in Augusta in May 2008 on charges of solicitation to commit murder, then extradited to North Carolina.
She is now out on bond and believed to be living in Augusta again. A date has not been set for her trial.
"It's a pending matter, and that's all I can tell you," Ginger Efrid, of the Stanly County District Attorney's Office, said earlier this week.
The fact that no date has been set is not unusual for a trial of that type, according to local attorneys.
Richmond County District Attorney Ashley Wright said it's common for serious, violent felony cases, especially high-profile ones, to take longer to get to a jury because of factors such as the complexity of lab testing.
She said when a case has received a large amount of media attention, as Ms. Neumar's has, it's sometimes best to wait until there has been a "lull" in the press coverage before selecting jurors. That way, they will not be tainted by outside information.
"Twelve to 18 months seems normal, even if it's not the best-case scenario," Ms. Wright said.
Strom Thurmond Jr., the solicitor for South Carolina's 2nd Judicial Circuit, agreed.
He said compiling evidence and documents for a murder case is always a lengthy process.
"Each case is of course unique, but I would say from indictment to trial it would at the very least be a year and, depending on the complexity, a lot longer than that," Mr. Thurmond said.
The bullet-riddled body of Mr. Gentry, Ms. Neumar's fourth husband, was found in 1986 in their rural North Carolina home about 45 miles east of Charlotte.
The indictment alleges that she sought out a former police officer and her neighbor to kill her husband in the months before his death.
She needed cash and was trying to collect on her husband's $20,000 life insurance, the indictment said.
The case was reopened last year after two decades of pleading from Al Gentry, her dead husband's brother.
After her arrest, authorities in Ohio, Florida and Augusta re-examined the deaths of her first child and four other husbands.
Richmond County investigators seized the ashes of her fifth husband, John Neumar, from their home in Augusta. They had the ashes examined for traces of arsenic, which authorities believed could have been a factor in Mr. Neumar's death. The test results were negative.
Reach Adam Folk at (706) 823-3339 or adam.folk@augustachronicle.com.
TIMELINE OF EVENTS
Harold Gentry, Betty Neumar's fourth husband, was found shot to death in their Norwood, N.C., home in July 1986. Nearly 22 years later, Ms. Neumar was charged with three counts of solicitation to commit first-degree murder in Mr. Gentry's death and came under scrutiny in the deaths of her first child and four other husbands. A look at the events of the past year:
MAY 2008: Richmond County sheriff's deputies take Ms. Neumar into custody. Later, they return to her Cambridge Court home in west Augusta to serve a search warrant and seize several items, including an urn containing the ashes of her fifth husband, John Neumar.
JUNE 2008: Ms. Neumar is extradited to Stanly County, N.C. More information surfaces about her previous husbands and their deaths, three of which were violent.
JULY 2008: Authorities indict Ms. Neumar on three counts of solicitation to commit first-degree murder.
OCTOBER 2008: Ms. Neumar is released from the Stanly County Jail after posting a $300,000 bond.
FEBRUARY 2009: A BBC documentary crew arrives in Augusta and travels to North Carolina and Florida as part of a documentary on Ms. Neumar. She conducts her first interview with the press for their program.
JUNE 2009: Her attorneys are reviewing nearly 9,000 pages of discovery related to her case. A trial date has not been set.
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Nothing new here...when the trial does happen, her age will be concered and possibly health issues, which will only effect an immediate release with a monitoring device. Again, nothing new here.