Probes of Ga. woman with dead spouses stay open
AP , Charlotte: Aug 7 2008
Made Popular Aug 7 2008
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Investigators in Ohio and Florida are still looking into the deaths of men with ties to a Georgia grandmother who has had five dead husbands, authorities said Thursday.

Earlier this week, Georgia police closed their re-examination of the death of Betty Neumar’s fifth husband. The 76-year-old woman is charged in North Carolina in the death of her fourth husband, and authorities in Florida and Ohio said their investigations of the deaths of her third husband and only son are still under way.

Investigators have previously said they were re-examining the death of her first husband, too.

The investigations began after authorities in North Carolina charged Neumar, 76, in the 1986 death of Harold Gentry. Authorities have said she tried to hire three different people to kill Gentry in the six weeks before his bullet-riddled body was found in his rural North Carolina home. She remains in Stanly County jail on a $500,000 bond.

Neumar’s attorney, Charles Parnell, said Thursday that prosecutors have been using the other deaths to unfairly paint his client as a black widow.

“They have used all this other stuff _ all this speculation _ to keep her bond high so they can keep her in jail,” he said. “I’m focusing on this case. That’s the only thing she’s charged with.”

He said he doubts “anything will come out of the other cases.”

Since Neumar’s arrest in May, police began to re-examine the deaths of her first child _ Gary Flynn _ and four of the five men she married.

“We are taking a second look at this,” Lake County, Ohio, Sheriff Daniel Dunlap said Thursday of the 1985 death of Neumar’s son. “It may be a long reach, but we ought to at least see if there was any motive for Neumar to harm her son.”

Monroe County, Fla., Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Becky Herrin said investigators were having a hard time locating records in the probe of Neumar’s third husband, Richard Sills, who died in 1965.

Medina County, Ohio, authorities have also said they were re-examining the 1950 death of Neumar’s first husband, Clarence Malone. Malone was the father of Flynn, who was later adopted by Neumar’s second husband.

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