8. 76-year-old lady who is suspected of murdering four of her five husbands.
Jeff Carstensen was spooked when he learned his grandmother planned to buy him a $100,000 life insurance policy — and name herself the beneficiary. As he and many others who came into Betty Neumar’s orbit have learned, bad things tend to happen to the people around her.
The 76-year-old Georgia woman is in a North Carolina jail, accused of hiring a hit man to kill her fourth husband Harold Gentry. Authorities are re-examining the deaths of her first child and four of the five men she married, including Gentry. No motive has been discussed, but records and interviews with relatives and police officials paint Neumar as a domineering matriarch consumed by money. She collected at least $20,000 in 1986 when Harold Gentry was shot to death in his home. A year earlier, she had collected $10,000 in life insurance when her son died. She also had a life insurance policy on husband No. 5, John Neumar, who died in 2008. The official cause of death was listed as sepsis, but authorities are investigating whether he was poisoned.
To the outside world, family members said, she was Bee — a friendly woman who operated beauty shops, attended church and raised money for charity. But Carstensen saw another side: fist fights at family functions, use of obscenities and belittling of relatives, how she would act “one way in public — especially church — and another behind closed doors.” Police in Ohio are looking into the death of Carstensen’s stepfather, Neumar’s son Gary Flynn, who was found shot to death in his apartment in November 1985. It was ruled a suicide, but his family has questions. (www.oddee.com).
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