5-time widow's first mate died long after split

Details emerge in other spouses' deaths

ALBEMARLE -- North Carolina investigators said a woman with five dead spouses had long been separated from her first husband when he was killed: Betty Neumar's first spouse was fatally shot in 1970, not in 1952 as they originally thought.

Stanly County Sheriff's Detective Scott Williams said Friday that another man by the same name died in 1952 in the Ohio town where the couple lived.

But investigators' work and additional public records show the Clarence Malone who was married to Neumar was fatally shot 18 years later in Medina, Ohio. The case remains unsolved. At the time, Neumar was married to her fourth husband, Harold Gentry.

"She told us that her first husband died of cancer in 1952. We know that's not true," Williams said.

Neumar was charged last month with solicitation of murder in the 1986 shooting death of Gentry. She's being held in lieu of $500,000 bail in the Stanly County jail.

North Carolina investigators have urged authorities elsewhere to investigate deaths of the other spouses, including her fifth: He died last year of an infection that could indicate he was poisoned.

Police are still trying to piece together Neumar's life in Ohio, Florida and Georgia.

Records discovered by The Associated Press on Friday show her first marriage was rocky.

Shortly after their wedding on Nov. 25, 1950, the couple moved in with her parents in Ironton. She was 18, he was 19 and working for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad.

But on Dec. 15, 1951, she filed a court complaint claiming her husband had abused her. It's unclear when the marriage broke up.

Family members of Gentry and John Neumar -- husband No. 5 -- said she told them she was married only once and that her first husband died of cancer.

"She said she nursed him the whole time," said Al Gentry, Harold Gentry's brother.

After Clarence Malone and Betty Neumar split, he remarried twice and opened a body shop. He was shot in the back of the head outside his shop Nov. 27, 1970. His death was ruled a homicide. Police said there were no signs of robbery.

Neumar later married John Flynn, who died in 1954. Her third husband, Richard Sills, was found dead in his apartment in 1965. Neumar told police they were alone, arguing, when he pulled out a gun and shot himself. Authorities are reinvestigating the case, which concluded Sills committed suicide.

Gentry, the fourth husband, was found shot to death inside their home in 1986. Three years later, she married John Neumar. He died in October, and authorities in Augusta, Ga., are investigating whether his death -- listed as listed as sepsis -- might have another cause, such as arsenic poisoning.

Neumar's attorney, Charles Parnell, did not return calls Friday.