Betty Neumar was a Georgia woman who, in May 2008, was charged in Stanly County, North Carolina, over the death of her fourth husband in 1986. She faced three counts of solicitation to commit first-degree murder, the allegation being that she had tried to arrange his killing. The trial was postponed repeatedly and she died in June 2011, at 79, before it began. She was never tried and never convicted of any offense.
Her marriages drew wider attention because of how many of her husbands died. Agencies in Ohio, Florida and Georgia looked at several of those deaths after the North Carolina charge. No charge was brought in any of them, and the reviews were closed.
Betty Neumar was born Betty Johnson in 1931 in Ohio. She married five times, beginning in the 1950s. Investigators later traced a series of marriages in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina and Georgia, and several of the husbands had died.
Her fourth husband lived in rural North Carolina. He died in July 1986, and the Stanly County sheriff's office investigated the death. No one was charged for more than twenty years.
The victim's brother pressed for years for the case to be looked at again. In January 2008 a newly elected Stanly County sheriff agreed to reopen it. Stanly County investigators believed that she had tried to hire several people to kill her husband in the weeks before his death. The people she was said to have approached were never identified, and no one else was charged.
In May 2008 she was arrested and charged with three counts of solicitation to commit first-degree murder. She was held on a $500,000 bond and was later released on $300,000 bond. Her attorney said the case had been blown out of proportion.
After the 2008 charge, police in other states reviewed the deaths of several of her husbands. Authorities in Augusta, Georgia, examined the death of her fifth husband; they closed the review in 2009 after finding no evidence that she was involved. In Florida, the Monroe County Sheriff's Department and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service cold case unit looked again at the 1967 death of her third husband. None of these examinations produced a charge against her, and the agencies later closed the cases.
The Stanly County case was postponed many times after her arrest. A trial set for February 2011 was pushed back so that a newly elected prosecutor could prepare. On June 13, 2011, she died in Louisiana. The Stanly County case ended without a trial.
The charge was never tested in court: there was no verdict and no finding about any of the other husbands' deaths. The identity of any person she was said to have approached is unknown.
1931: Born in Ohio.
1950s: The first of her five marriages.
1967: Her third husband dies in Florida; the death is later reviewed by Monroe County and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
July 1986: Her fourth husband dies in North Carolina.
January 2008: Stanly County sheriff reopens the case.
May 2008: Charged in Stanly County with three counts of solicitation to commit first-degree murder.
2009: Georgia authorities close their review of her fifth husband's death.
February 2011: Trial date postponed.
June 13, 2011: She dies, aged 79; the case ends without trial.