Woman has five dead husbands

ALBERMARLE, N.C. -- The pleas of a murdered man’s brother led authorities to re-open an investigation which had been closed for 20 years, Stanly County Sheriff Rick Burris said Monday.

Betty Neumar, 76, is accused of hiring a gunman to kill her then-husband in a 1986 shooting.

She is being held at a Georgia jail after her arrest on a charge of solicitation of murder.

Thomas Harold Gentry was found shot to death inside the Norwood home in July 1986.

Burris, who was elected Sheriff in 2006, said he was contacted by Gentry’s brother shortly after taking office and was persuaded to review the case.

The file contained transcripts of several interviews conducted by the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation.

The interviews pointed to the likelihood that Neumar had hired someone to kill Gentry, Burris said, but investigators apparently never pursued criminal charges.

“Some of the folks that were players back then, a lot of them are deceased and you don’t know what reason there was,” Burris told WCNC.

Burris said he reviewed the case with the Stanly County District Attorney and moved to arrest Neumar.

Investigators found Neumar living in Augusta, Ga.

Her most recent husband, John Neumar, died last October.

Stanly County detectives traveled to Georgia last week and joined investigators with the Richmond County, Ga., Sheriff’s Office in searching Neumar’s home.

Richmond County Sheriff’s Lt. Scott Peebles said investigators seized an urn containing the ashes of John Neumar and will submit the remains to a laboratory for analysis.

The lab will test for the presence of arsenic.

Detectives have no reason to suspect foul play in Neumar’s death, but are testing the remains as a precaution, Peebles said.

In addition to the spouses in North Carolina and Georgia, authorities said Neumar had previously married three other men in Ohio and Florida.

They’re also deceased.

The oldest deaths date back to the 1950s. They were not considered suspicious, investigators said Monday.

Neumar is scheduled to be extradited back to North Carolina by the end this week.