More than five years after a Gwinnett County man was found dead with multiple stab wounds to his neck, a woman in jail on separate stabbing charges has been accused of killing him.
Carmen Marie Hunt, 50, was charged with felony murder and aggravated assault in connection with the July 2019 incident, Gwinnett police said Thursday. She is accused of stabbing 61-year-old Ray Neal, according to police.
Neal was found dead in his bedroom in Lawrenceville after his sister became concerned that he wasn’t answering his phone, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported at the time. Neal’s sister told police that he suffered from multiple medical conditions, and investigators were not initially clear if the man’s death was from a medical emergency. Investigators found blood on a bed, bathroom walls and a shower curtain at Neal’s house, but his body was eventually released to a funeral home.
Credit: Gwinnett County Police Department
Credit: Gwinnett County Police Department
Funeral home employees who prepared Neal’s body for transport found injuries on his neck, so the body was instead transferred to the Gwinnett Medical Examiner’s Office. An autopsy led investigators to conclude that Neal’s death was a homicide, but police did not have any suspects.
In 2024, police said one of Neal’s family members called their cold case unit. That person said they believed Neal had been killed by Hunt, who was already in jail on charges related to a 2022 stabbing. Police did not say if Hunt and Neal knew each other.
Cold case investigators began reexamining the case, police said, and were able to establish a clearer timeline of events and review fingerprints collected from the crime scene. Hunt was then brought in for questioning.
The results of the investigation led police to charge Hunt with aggravated assault and felony murder. She remains without bond in the Gwinnett jail, where she has been held since November 2022 on two counts of aggravated assault and one count of armed robbery, jail records show.
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