News 12 at 6 o'clock, May 29, 2008

AUGUSTA, Ga --- Not one, not two, but three of Betty Neumar's five dead husbands were shot to death. Now investigators across the country are taking a closer look.

Could a 76-year-old grandmother have gotten away with murder for 22 years? North Carolina investigators say yes. But could she have gotten away with even more? It's a question investigators in four states are now asking.

"We're at a loss for words," said John Neumar, Jr., son of Betty's fifth wife. "I really am. I don't understand why they didn't come up with something before now." John now thinks his father may have also died at the hands of this alleged black widow. "Longer my father stayed with her, it was like we didn't exist no more, and none of his friends neither."

John and Betty Neumar were married 14 years. News 12 interviewed them in 1997. Ten years later, John died of what seemed at the time to be natural causes. Now, Richmond County investigators admit they aren't so sure.

"You just want it checked out when you find out her past," John said. "It seems more and more they are coming up with more stuff every day."

So far, Richmond County investigators have confirmed Betty Neumar was married at least five times. The first two husbands died in Ohio in the 1950's. Her first husband died in 1952, his death ruled suspicious. Then, two years later, her second husband was shot to death.

Then Betty married and moved to Florida, where husband number three was shot to death in 1965.

Fast forward two decades to North Carolina; husband number four, Harold Gentry, was found shot to death in 1986.

Betty then married her fifth husband John Neumar, and two more decades later, he was also dead.

"That just makes my suspicions even stronger and makes me want them to dig deeper into why my father passed away," John said.

John says he and his sister were not told of their father's death and didn't find out about it until they read about it in the paper. John says that when they called, Betty told them she had him cremated. The children find suspicious because their father had bought a plot next to their mother, John Sr.'s first wife.