Investigators believe woman could be "serial" widow
Former North Florida resident buried five husbands
Investigators believe woman could be "serial" widow
Former North Florida resident buried five husbands
A former Jacksonville hairdresser is under a police microscope after investigators re-examine the shooting death of one man, after learning he was the third of five husbands to a serial widow charged in the death of one of them.
"We're absolutely going to look into this," Monroe County, Fla., Sheriff's Lt. Nancy Alvarez told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "Anytime you get someone that might be a black widow or that might have that in their background, you always want to look at the possibilities. We want to make sure she wasn't involved in his death."
Betty Neumar, now 76, was charged last month in North Carolina with solicitation of murder in the July 1986 death of her fourth husband, Harold Gentry.
Neumar had already buried two husbands before moving to Jacksonville, in the early 1960s where she began cutting hair. On her cosmetology license from 1961, she used the name Betty Flynn. She worked in local beauty shops before marrying Richard Sills and moving to Big Coppitt outside of Key West.
When Richard Sills was found dead in his apartment in 1965, Betty told police they were arguing when he pulled out a gun and shot himself in the head. Authorities quickly closed the case, saying he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
After Sills' death, Neumar met Gentry in Florida. The couple married in the late 1960s in Georgia, and after he retired from the Army, they moved to the town of Norwood, about an hour east of Charlotte, North Carolina.
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.
Florida investigators plan to look at medical records and other evidence.
