Widow investigated after deaths of five husbands

NORTH Carolina police apparently ignored an informant who told them a woman with five dead husbands had hired him to kill one of them.

Authorities charged 76-year-old Betty Neumar last month with one count of solicitation of murder over the death of Harold Gentry, in 1986. Mr 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 Mr Gentry.

Neumar had been married five times since the 1950s, but each union ended with the death of her husband.

Detective Scott Williams said police believe Harold Gentry was Neumar's fourth husband. She and third husband, Richard Sills, were living in the Florida Keys when Mr Sills was shot dead in 1965.

After his death, Neumar met Mr Gentry. The couple married in the late 1970s. He was found shot dead inside the couple's home on 14 July, 1986.

Three years later, she married John Neumar. He died in October, and authorities in Augusta, Georgia, are investigating whether his death – officially listed as sepsis, a bacterial blood infection – might have another cause, such as poisoning.