MITCH WEISS
Associated Press Writer

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) ó A man said Wednesday he’s renewing his push for Florida authorities to reopen an investigation into the suspicious death of his father, who was the third husband of a Georgia grandmother who has five dead husbands in five states.

Michael Sills, 57, of Oakland, Maine, said he will visit his father’s grave Thursday in Ocala, Fla., for the first time and press authorities “to do more.”

“It seems like nobody wants to hear what I have to say,” he told The Associated Press about the death of his father, Nelos Richard Sills, who was in the Navy. “But I’m going to be a thorn in their side. I going to make sure we find out what happened.”

The Monroe County, Fla., Sheriff’s Office closed the case in November, saying it was too old and the investigation would cost too much to continue.

Richard Sills’ death was ruled a suicide in 1965, when he was married to Betty Neumar. Florida investigators reopened the investigation in June after Neumar’s arrest in North Carolina in the 1986 death of her fourth husband, Harold Gentry.

Since her arrest, police have also begun to re-examine the deaths of her son ó 34-year-old Gary Flynn, whose 1985 death in Ohio was ruled a suicide ó and three of her other husbands, though she faces no charges in those cases.

In the North Carolina case, Neumar, 76, is charged with three counts of solicitation to commit first-degree murder. Authorities 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. A trial date is pending.

Her attorney, Charles Parnell, did not return messages left Wednesday seeking comment. She was released nearly three months ago after posting a $300,000 bond and is staying at her Augusta, Ga., home until the trial.

Sills said he didn’t know anything about the Florida investigation into his father’s death until his family was contacted two months ago by the AP.

Since then, he asked several police agencies to re-examine the case, including the Monore County sheriff’s office, the Florida attorney general’s office and even the Naval Criminal Investigative Service’s cold case squad. But each time, he said he was told “it was too old.”

“I’ve been making phone call after phone call. Writing letters. You would think they would want to do something. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that something went terribly wrong,” he said.

The Florida attorney general’s office said they would try to find someone to talk about the case, but did not return repeated follow-up calls. Joel Rogish, an NCIS investigator, said he spoke to Sills, but couldn’t comment on the case without permission from supervisors. Telephone messages left for the Monroe County sheriff’s office were not returned.

Neumar was working as a beautician in Jacksonville, Fla., in the mid-1960s when she met Richard Sills, who was divorced from his first wife and had four children.

On July 15, 1965, police found his body in the bedroom of the couple’s mobile home in Big Coppitt, Fla. Neumar told police they were alone and arguing, when he pulled out a gun and shot himself.

When Monroe County investigators couldn’t find records of the original case, they contacted NCIS.

The NCIS documents obtained by The AP revealed that Richard Sills may have been shot twice ó not once as Neumar told police. One bullet from the .22-caliber pistol pierced his heart, while a second may have sliced his liver.

According to a Monroe County Sheriff’s Office investigative report, the medical examiner said that without an autopsy, he would be unable determine if Richard Sills was shot once or twice. No autopsy was performed when he died. And without knowing the number of gunshot wounds, there’s no way to know if his death was a suicide or homicide, according to the report.

They planned to exhume Richard Sills’ body from an Ocala, Fla., cemetery for an autopsy, but then discovered that a statute of limitations applied to the case, the records said.Investigators have said that in premeditated murder ó or first-degree murder ó there was no statute of limitations. But Florida law sets a time limit on cases involving other categories of homicide, including involuntary manslaughter. And in Sills’ case, time had run out so they closed the case.

But Sills said his family believes that’s just an excuse.

“For all these years, we thought my father killed himself. That had a profound effect on my family,” he said, his voice cracking. “I didn’t know where he was buried. I didn’t want to know. Now I want to visit his grave to say: ‘I’m going to keep fighting,'” he said.

Georgia authorities recently closed their re-examination of the death of Neumar’s fifth husband, John Neumar, saying they have no evidence she was involved. His family has criticized the police finding.

Authorities in Ohio have also said they were re-examining the 1970 shooting death of Neumar’s first husband, Clarence Malone. Malone was the father of Flynn, who was later adopted by Neumar’s second husband, James A. Flynn.

It’s unclear when Neumar met or married James Flynn. She told investigators he “died on a pier” somewhere in New York in the mid-1950s. She and Flynn had a daughter, Peggy, and his death is the only one officials are not reinvestigating.