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Florida police say they've closed an investigation into the suspicious death of the third husband of a Georgia grandmother who has left a trail of five dead husbands in five states.
Patricia Dally of the Monroe County, Fla., Sheriff's Office said Wednesday the case is too old and the investigation would cost too much to continue. But documents obtained by The Associated Press reveal new questions about the case.
Nelos Sills' death was ruled a suicide in 1965, when he was married to Betty Neumar. Although Florida investigators discovered that no autopsy was performed, Navy records show Sills may have been shot twice – not once as Neumar told police.
Florida had opened its investigation in June after Neumar's arrest in Stanly County, 38 miles northeast of Charlotte, in the 1986 death of her fourth husband, Harold Gentry.
Since her arrest, police have also begun to re-examine the deaths of her first child – Gary Flynn, whose 1985 death in Ohio was ruled a suicide – and three of her other husbands, though she faces no charges in those cases.
In the Stanly County case, Neumar, 76, is charged with three counts of solicitation to commit first-degree murder. Authorities now say 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.
Her attorney, Charles Parnell, did not return messages left Wednesday. She was released last month after posting a $300,000 bond.
Neumar was working as a beautician in Jacksonville, Fla., in the mid-1960s when she met Sills, who was in the Navy.
On July 15, 1965, police found Sills' body in the bedroom of the couple's mobile home in Big Coppitt, Fla. Neumar told police they were alone, arguing, when he pulled out a gun and shot himself.
