'Black widow' grandmother, 79, who outlived five husbands, will go on trial for 'trying to hire a hitman to kill fourth partner'

This 79-year-old grandmother has left a trail of five dead husbands in five different states over the last 56 years.



Now the ‘black widow’ is due to go on trial for hiring a hitman to kill her fourth partner.

Betty Neumar, of Georgia, tried three times to find someone to kill Harold Gentry in the six weeks before his bullet-riddled body was found in 1986, authorities say.

Charged: Police say Betty Neumar tried to hire a hitman three times to kill fourth husband Harold Gentry in the six weeks before his body was found in 1986

The Augusta widow’s trial for three counts of solicitation to commit first-degree murder has been delayed to give a new prosecutor more time to prepare a case.

Mr Gentry’s brother Al said his health is failing and he is running out of time to see the trial happen over the July 1986 death.

‘I can't do it much longer,’ the 65-year-old, of Rockwell, said. ‘But I know I have to stay strong and speak for my brother. He doesn't have a voice.’

He has been trying to get investigators to re-open the case into his brother’s death for two decades, before Neumar was arrested in 2008 and then released in 2009.

Neumar, whose trial was expected to have started on February 7, has been married five times since the 1950s and each union ended with her husband's death, authorities discovered.

Investigators in three states reopened several of the cases but have since closed them, and she has only been charged in the death of retired soldier Harold Gentry, of Norwood, North Carolina.

'Black widow': Betty Neuma, pictured with her daughters Peggy and Kelly, has been charged three counts of solicitation to commit first-degree murder

‘This has taken too long. It shouldn't have taken this long,’ Al Gentry said. ‘I want her to know I'm there for Harold. I'm not going away.

‘What bothers me is she's out there, at her home, taking it easy. And my brother's dead. I'm still living this and fighting to make sure no one forgets what happened.’



BETTY NEUMAN : A timeline of her five dead husbands

Clarence Malone, Ohio, 1970, shot to death James Flynn, New York, 1955, died 'on a pier' Richard Sills, Florida, 1967, allegedly shot himself Harold Gentry, N Carolina, 1986, shot to death John Neumar, Georgia, 2007, natural causes

He has been in hospital several times over the last year for kidney failure, congestive heart failure and pneumonia - and has lost 60lbs.



Michael Sills, whose father Richard was Neumar’s third husband, wants police to reopen his father's death in 1967, which was ruled a suicide.

‘I know what Al is going through,’ he said.

Neumar met Richard Sills in the 1960s in Jacksonville, Florida, but his body was later found in the bedroom of their Big Coppitt Key mobile home in April 1967.



Neumar said he pulled out a gun and shot himself after they had an argument, but after she was charged in North Carolina, Florida authorities took another look at his death.

They found that he may have been shot twice, not once as Neumar had told police, but no autopsy was performed at the time so there is no way to know if the death was suicide or homicide.

Death location: This is the house in North Carolina where Thomas Gentry died in 1986. Neumar has been charged with trying to hire a hitman to kill him

Georgia authorities closed their re-examination of the death of her fifth husband, John Neumar, after saying they have no evidence she was involved.

Ohio investigators also closed their investigation of the 1970 shooting death of her first husband, Clarence Malone.



But details about her second husband, James Flynn, are sketchier after she told investigators he 'died on a New York pier' in the mid-1950s.

Betty's two daughters Peggy and Kelly told the BBC in 2009 they are convinced of their mother's innocence.



'She has been a caring, loving mother, and she's a loving, caring grandmother. I think that she was dealt a bad hand,' Peggy said.

