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Posted by: kwflatbed

ALBEMARLE, N.C. -- For two decades, Al Gentry begged investigators to take another look at the mystery of who killed his brother, Harold, and left his gunshot-ridden body sprawled on the floor of the home he shared with his wife.
He visited the sheriff's office dozens of times and made just as many phone calls. And when authorities finally listened, they wound up arresting the person Gentry had always suspected: his brother's now 76-year-old former wife, who was charged last month with hiring a hit man to gun him down.
"This is something I've been waiting for for a long time," Gentry said.
But Gentry's persistence may have led investigators to a far more chilling discovery about Betty Neumar. After arresting her, authorities realized that five times since the 1950s, she was married, and each union ended with the death of her husband.
Authorities say they've notified law enforcement officials where Neumar is believed to have lived with the men. So far, no one has said whether the deaths are suspicious, but some officials are reopening the cold cases.
Al Gentry had been showing up for years at the sheriff's office and talking to anyone who would listen about the case. His brother's body, with several gunshot wounds, was found inside the couple's home on July 14, 1986.
Neumar, who was out of town the day her husband was killed, showed no emotion when she got back, Al Gentry said. When she pulled up to the one-story brick house in a quiet neighborhood that was surrounded by flashing lights and filled with police officers, he recalled, she blurted out that she had been in Augusta, Ga., the previous night -- before he even said a word.
"If she had gotten out of that car with tears in her eyes and asked me why would anybody kill Harold, I would never have suspected her at all," he said. "That's where she slipped up."
Harold Gentry met Neumar -- who was then Betty Sills -- in Florida and they married on Jan. 19, 1968, in Charlton County, Ga., when he was 29 and she was 36. The couple moved to Norwood, about an hour east of Charlotte, in the late 1970s after he retired from the Army after 21 years of service.
Over the years, Al Gentry recalls, she told the family she had been a nurse and that her first husband died of cancer. She also said she was a beautician and had lived in Ohio, and had children from a previous marriage. At various times, she worked in a drug store, drove a school bus and waited tables while Harold Gentry worked long hours driving a delivery truck for the Royal Chemical Co.
At first pleasant, she grew to become "cold" to his brother and family, Al Gentry said. By 1986, the marriage was strained and Harold Gentry was living in a camper in the front yard.
"She was the type of person who liked fancy things -- jewelry and clothes. She had the means to live like that but that wasn't enough," Al Gentry recalled. "She always wanted more, more, more. And she found a way to get it."
After Harold Gentry was killed, Al Gentry and his brother, Richard, said Neumar collected at least $20,000 in life insurance, plus other benefits from the military and sold the couple's house and other items. But as recently as a few years ago, bankruptcy records indicate, Neumar had no income other than a small monthly Social Security check -- but had more than three dozen credit cards and hundreds of thousands in debt.
At a hearing earlier this month, prosecutors said she also had at least one overseas bank account.
The couple were married for about 14 years. They filed for bankruptcy in April 2000, and records show they owed $206,300 on 43 credit cards. They listed $14,355 in assets, including a 1996 Lincoln Town car, and had a combined monthly income of only about $1,800. The bankruptcy filing allowed the couple to wipe away the debts.
After Gentry's death, Neumar remarried two more times. Once was to 79-year-old John Neumar, who died in October. Authorities in Neumar's hometown of Augusta, Ga., are examining the death, and detectives went to her home two weeks ago and seized an urn with his ashes, said Richmond County, Ga., sheriff's investigator Lt. Scott Peebles.
His cause of death was listed as sepsis -- an illness caused by a bacterial infection of the body's blood and tissues -- and his body was cremated shortly after his death. Peebles said investigators would test the remains to see if there "were any other factors that contributed to his death," including whether he was poisoned by arsenic, which can cause sepsis-like symptoms.
"We're not going to rule anything out until we get the results back," he said.
Neumar was charged with a single count of solicitation of murder in Gentry's death and is being held on $500,000 bond. At her first court appearance, prosecutors said she tried to hire several people to kill her husband, offering one potential hit man cash and a pickup truck to do the job.
She does not yet have an attorney and a message from The Associated Press given to a jailer went unanswered. Her daughter with Harold Gentry, who also lives in Augusta, declined to comment about her mother's arrest.
The sheriff who reopened the case, Rick Burris, wasn't leading the department at the time Gentry was killed. Burris said he reviewed the thick case file and read transcripts of interviews conducted by the State Bureau of Investigation. He said they pointed to the likelihood that Neumar had hired someone to kill her husband, but police didn't collect enough evidence at the time to charge her. He assigned an investigator, who re-examined the evidence in the file and conducted new interviews.
"She was a suspect for a long time but we didn't have enough evidence. Now we do," Burris said.
Brothers Al and Richard Gentry said the pain of his death still lingers for the family. But after the arrest, the family visited their brother's grave, where Al Gentry said he delivered a simple message: "Brother, we got her."

http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/national/BO80443/

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Posted by: kwflatbed

North Carolina Police May Have Been Warned Before Killing

The Associated Press



CHARLOTTE, N.C. --
North Carolina authorities say they are are investigating whether police were warned that a woman with five dead spouses was trying to hire a hit man to kill one of her husbands.
Authorities reopened the cold case last year, and last month, charged 76-year-old Betty Neumar with one count of solicitation of murder in the July 1986 death of Al Gentry.
Detectives say Neumar tried to hire several people to kill Gentry. Lead detective Scott Williams says that police are looking into the possibility that one of those would-be hit men went to police before Gentry's death, but no one took him seriously.
Neumar has been married five times since the 1950s, but each union ended with the death of her husband. Investigators are urging police elsewhere to look into those deaths.


Wire Service

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Posted by: kwflatbed

Ex-cop says N.C. police we warned of husband's killing


By Mitch Weiss
The Associated Press

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A man walked into the Stanly County sheriff's office with a wild tale: A woman had just offered him money to kill her husband. The officer on duty took down the information and passed it on to his superiors.
"They never did anything with it," that officer, Donnie Mullis, told The Associated Press on Friday. "They just brushed it off."
A few weeks later, Harold Gentry was dead.
Authorities charged Betty Neumar last month with one count of solicitation of murder in the July 1986 death of Harold Gentry, the fourth of five husbands she has buried in her 76 years. The case has drawn national attention because investigators want authorities elsewhere to look into the deaths of the other four, including one who was shot in the head and another who died of an infection that could indicate he was poisoned.
Mullis said an informant talked to him a few weeks before Gentry was killed, saying the then-Betty Gentry offered him money to do the job. Mullis also said the informant told him Neumar wanted the names of other potential hit men in case he turned her down.
"I thought the information was very credible and that's why I passed it along," said Mullis, who left law enforcement in 1994 and operates a helicopter company in Charleston, S.C.
He said the supervisors he told are dead. Both were later the lead investigators in the Gentry murder investigation.
"When I told them, they made a (derogatory) comment about the informant," Mullis said. He declined to elaborate, but said the informant was a former Albemarle police officer who left the department under "questionable circumstances."
He also said former Stanly County sheriff Ralph McSwain, who was in office when Gentry was killed, also knew about the tip.
McSwain has said he is recovering from a stroke and doesn't remember much about the case.
Harold Gentry's brother had begged investigators for two decades to take another look at the case, but his requests were ignored. It was finally reopened last year after Al Gentry asked newly elected Sheriff Rick Burris to look into it.
Detective Scott Williams has said his office is looking into why no one took the informant's information seriously.
Neumar, who lives in Augusta, Ga., is being held on $500,000 bond in the Stanly County jail. A telephone message left for her attorney, Charles Parnell, was not returned Friday. Her daughter with Harold Gentry, who also lives in Augusta, has declined to comment.
Detectives believe Harold Gentry was 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. At the time, police said his death was the result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. But police say Neumar was the only person in the room when he died.
After his death, Neumar met Gentry in Florida. The couple married in the late 1960s in Georgia after he retired from the Army and moved to the town of Norwood, about an hour east of Charlotte.
Gentry was found shot to death inside the couple's home on July 14, 1986. Three years later, she married her fifth husband, John Neumar. He died in October, and authorities in Georgia 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.
Authorities are still working to uncover as much as they can about Neumar's first two husbands, both of whom were from Ohio. One died in 1952, the other in 1955.
Mullis said he knew the Gentrys and regrets not following up on the case. He said it was a trying period in his life: His father was dying of cancer. But he's surprised she wasn't charged with solicitation of murder in 1986.
"We had enough evidence then," Mullis said. "My part in this case is minimal. But I wish it would have been more. I wish it would have turned out differently."

Information From: AP Wire Service

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Posted by: kwflatbed


AP/Augusta Police Dept.


CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Jeff Carstensen was spooked when he learned his grandmother planned to buy him a $100,000 life insurance policy — and name herself the beneficiary.

"She told me that people of our stature have insurance policies on each other," he said. "That way, if something happens to you, you take care of me, and if something happens to me, I take care of you. It was all too suspicious. So I got out of there any way I could, as soon as I could."
As he and everyone else who came into Betty Neumar's orbit have learned, he apparently had good reason.
The 76-year-old Georgia woman sits in a North Carolina jail, accused of hiring a hit man to kill fourth husband Harold Gentry. Authorities are re-examining the deaths of her first child and four of the five men she married, including Gentry.
No motive has been discussed, but records and interviews with relatives and police officials paint Neumar as a domineering matriarch consumed by money.
Said Al Gentry, who pressed North Carolina authorities for 22 years to reopen their investigation of his brother's death: "You can't trust her. You can't believe a word she says."
She collected at least $20,000 in 1986 when Harold Gentry was shot to death in his home. A year earlier, she had collected $10,000 in life insurance when her son died.
She also had a life insurance policy on husband No. 5, John Neumar, who died in October. The official cause of death was listed as sepsis, but authorities are investigating whether he was poisoned.
Betty Neumar is being held in a North Carolina jail on $500,000 bond, and is scheduled to appear in court Monday. Her attorney has declined requests for comment.
To the outside world, family members said, she was Bee — a friendly woman who operated beauty shops, attended church and raised money for charity.
But Carstensen saw another side: fist fights at family functions, use of obscenities and belittling of relatives, how she would act "one way in public — especially church — and another behind closed doors."
Police in Ohio are looking into the death of Carstensen's stepfather, Neumar's son Gary Flynn, who was found shot to death in his apartment in November 1985. It was ruled a suicide, but his family has questions. A decision on whether to formally reopen the case is pending.
Law enforcement authorities told The Associated Press they have struggled to piece together details of Betty Neumar's life because her story keeps changing. But interviews, documents and court records provide an outline of her history in North Carolina, Ohio, Florida and Georgia, the states where she was married.
She was born Betty Johnson in 1931 in Ironton, a hardscrabble southeastern Ohio town along the West Virginia border. She graduated from high school in 1949 and married Clarence Malone in November 1950. She was 18, he was 19.
In December 1951, she claimed in court papers that Malone abused her. It's unclear what happened to that complaint or when the marriage broke up. Their son, Gary, was born March 13, 1952.
Malone remarried twice. He was shot once in the back of the head outside his auto shop in a small town southwest of Cleveland in November 1970. His death was ruled a homicide, although police said there were no signs of robbery.
Gary was eventually adopted by Betty Neumar's second husband, James A. Flynn, although it's unclear when she met or married him. She told investigators that he "died on a pier" somewhere in New York in the mid-1950s. She and Flynn had a daughter, Peggy, and his death is the only one officials are not reinvestigating.
Records from Florida show she was living in Jacksonville when she enrolled in beauty college in 1960 under the name Betty Flynn. At some point, she met her third husband, Richard Sills, who was found dead in his apartment in the Florida Keys in 1965. Neumar told police they were alone in a room arguing when he pulled out a gun and shot himself. Authorities who ruled it a suicide are now reinvestigating.
Three years later, Neumar married Gentry. Five years after he died, she married John Neumar.
It was while living with him in Augusta, Ga., in the mid-1990s that, former friends and family members said, she persuaded more than 200 people to invest in a get-rich-quick scheme.
She told them they would receive up to $100,000 for every $100 they put toward the legal expenses of a rich European family that had died with no heirs.
Word spread, and people brought money to her beauty shop near Belvedere, S.C., near the Georgia border. Her husband's son, John K. Neumar, invested $1,000.
Months later, more than 200 antsy investors met with Betty Neumar at the Augusta Civic Center. She said lawyers in Europe needed more time and their money was safe. It wasn't true. Seven ringleaders in the scam pleaded guilty in 1997, but Neumar was never charged.
"We were rather stupid. I know," said Mary Miller, an investor who lost $500. "But we believed her. We trusted her."
It appears they weren't the only ones.
John Neumar was worth more than $300,000 when he and Betty married in 1991. But nearly 10 years later, they filed for bankruptcy and listed more than $206,000 in debts on 43 credit cards. It's unclear where the money went.
"Before he met her, he always saved his money," said John K. Neumar. "That's what he taught us. So it was a big surprise when I found out he was having financial trouble. It wasn't like he bought anything. She just took all his money."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,381623,00.html

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Posted by: kwflatbed

Georgia Police Close Case Of Woman With 5 Dead Spouses

AUGUSTA, Ga. --
Authorities in Georgia say they're closing their investigation into whether a 76-year-old grandmother with five dead spouses killed her fifth husband.
Betty Neumar faces three counts of solicitation to commit first-degree murder in North Carolina in the death of husband No. 4, Harold Gentry. After her arrest, police in three states began to re-examine the deaths of Neumar's first child and four of the five men she married.
Police in Augusta, Ga., were looking into the October death of John Neumar. His cause of death was listed as sepsis, although detectives were concerned he might have been poisoned.
John Neumar, the son of the man who died in October, told The Associated Press that Richmond County sheriff's Detective James Kelly told him late Wednesday afternoon the case in Georgia was closed.

Story From: wsbtv.com

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