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gwen
 Posted:
Tue Jun 17, 2008 10:38 am |
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Police in NC may have been warned before killing
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- Police may 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 one count of solicitation of murder in the July 1986 death of Harold Gentry. Gentry's brother had begged investigators for two decades to take another look at the case.
Stanly County sheriff's investigators believe Neumar tried to hire several people to kill 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 Gentry's death, but no one took him seriously.
"That's another aspect we're looking into," Williams said, declining to elaborate.
Former Stanly County sheriff Ralph McSwain, who was in office when 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.
"This was a long time ago," McSwain said. "Could someone have come forward with information before it happened? Sure. I just don't know."
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. Williams said investigators have uncovered a common link among the victims: They all had military experience.
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 Neumar does not yet have an attorney. Her daughter with Harold Gentry, who also lives in Augusta, has declined to comment.
Williams said that 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, Williams said. At the time, police said his death was the result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. But Williams said 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 Augusta, Ga., 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.
Williams said Neumar would wedge herself between family members and her victims to isolate them. She was cold to 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," 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."
Williams said he's still working to uncover as much as he can about Neumar's first two husbands, both of whom he said were from Ohio. One died in 1952, the other in 1955. He's also trying to piece together her life between her second husband's death and when she married Sills.
"Keep in mind that it appears that after each husband, she moved on. So she could just tell any story she wanted to tell," Williams said. "That's just what happened. She would come up with some pretty wild stories that she told about herself or what happened to her husbands."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WIFE_COLD_CASES?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US
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AKA Gagal_05
Joined: 24 Feb 2007
Posts: 15244
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| LISA
Posted:
Mon Jul 14, 2008 7:04 am |
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Family: Woman with 5 dead spouses obsessed by cash
Monday, July 14, 2008
By MITCH WEISS, Associated Press Writer
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."
___
The AP News Research Center in New York contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2008Jul14/0,4670,WifeColdCases,00.html
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Joined: 13 Apr 2006
Posts: 1758
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| LISA
Posted:
Mon Jul 14, 2008 7:13 am |
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Family of 'Black Widow' Investigated in Deaths of 4 Husbands Wants Son's Apparent Suicide Re-Examined
Friday, July 11, 2008
Associated Press
CHARLOTTE, N.C. —
The grandson of a 76-year-old woman who is being investigated in the deaths of four of her five husbands wants Ohio police to take another look at the apparent suicide of his stepfather: her first-born son.
"I've had questions about my father's death for years. I was always suspicious," Jeff Carstensen said Thursday from his home in Michigan. "But knowing what I know now about my grandmother, I think the police need to re-examine this case."
Police in Perry, Ohio, are searching for records related to Gary Flynn, who was found shot to death in his apartment in November 1985. It was ruled a suicide. A decision on whether to formally reopen the case is pending.
Flynn's mother, Betty Neumar, was charged last month in North Carolina with solicitation of murder in the July 1986 shooting death of her fourth husband, Harold Gentry. She's being held in jail on $500,000 bond. Her attorney has declined repeated requests for comment about his client.
Since her arrest, authorities in Georgia, Ohio and Florida reopened investigations into the deaths of three more of her five husbands. John Neumar, her most recent husband, died from an infection in October in Augusta, Ga., where authorities are trying to determine if he was poisoned.
Carstensen and his mother, Cecelia Flynn of Monroe, Mich., said Neumar received at least $10,000 in insurance when Gary Flynn died.
"Who takes out a life insurance policy on a 30-something-year-old son with three kids? Tell me who does that?"' Carstensen said.
Carstensen said police told his family that Flynn shot himself once in the chest with a sawed-off shotgun: A theory they always believed suspicious because police said he landed on top of the gun.
Ronald Scott, a ballistics expert who served for 25 years with the Massachusetts State Police, said it's unlikely that Flynn's body would have ended up in that position.
"A shotgun gives one hell of a kick. When any gun fires, there's energy in both directions," Scott said. "When you're talking about someone putting a sawed-off shotgun to their chest, I don't see any reasonable way you're going to be able to control the energy that's coming out of the gun."
On the day her husband died, Cecelia Flynn said, she called the nuclear plant where he worked and was told that he had been involved in an accident. Authorities told her he was dead, but wouldn't give details because Neumar had already called and told them Flynn wasn't married.
Cecelia said she had to take her marriage license to the police station to prove she was Flynn's next-of-kin. "To this day, I don't know why she did that," she said. "And I don't know how she found out first."
Gary Flynn was born in 1952, the son of Neumar and her first husband, Clarence Malone. It's not clear when she left Malone or met her second husband, James A. Flynn, who adopted Gary.
Neumar has told investigators that James Flynn died on a pier somewhere in New York in the mid-1950s, but authorities have not been able to determine where and how he died. Malone remarried twice but was shot once in the back of the head outside his auto shop near Cleveland in November 1970. His death was ruled a homicide and was never solved.
Her third husband, Richard Sills, 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 in the side. Cecelia Flynn said Gary Flynn and his sister were in the apartment when Sills died.
"They heard them arguing in another room. Then a shot ran out. Gary told me he ran into the room and saw the body. There was blood all over. ... That image just stayed with him," she said.
Gary Flynn married Cecelia in 1974. She said her husband didn't like to talk about his past, except to say his mother moved them around a lot when he was a child and that Sills used to beat him.
"She was just not a nice person," Cecelia Flynn said. "Every time Gary would talk to his mother on the telephone, he would get very upset and cry. And I would always say to him 'Why do you talk to her? Why do you talk to her?' He loved her so much and probably knew more than he wanted to know."
AP/Augusta Police Dept.
June 10: Betty Johnson Neumar is shown at her booking in Augusta, Ga.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,380601,00.html
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