John Jefferson
Left: Carmen Hunt (Gwinnett County Police Department). Right: Ray Neal (photo provided by family).
Years after a funeral home employee reported several stab wounds on a Georgia man who was pronounced dead of natural causes, a suspect has been arrested in his alleged murder.
Ray Neal, 61, died in 2019 and was found by his sister in his home after he stopped answering phone calls. He was known to have several health issues leading up to his death, and his death was determined to be due to natural causes — even after his sister and police said blood was found in several rooms of his house. When the funeral home director saw the body as he was getting ready to transport him, he saw what he believed were several stab wounds on Neal’s neck. On Jan. 23, Gwinnett County Police announced that following an investigation, they had a suspect in custody for Neal’s murder.
In their original posting about Neal’s death on July 20, 2019, police said that they “noticed blood on the bed, on the walls of the bathroom, and upon the shower curtain,” but it was “not immediately clear if the blood was related to his medical condition or a crime.” The medical examiner’s office investigator who was on the scene, upon being informed of Neal’s various health issues, ruled the death was due to natural causes.
At the time of her brother’s death, Michelle Smalls told WSB, a local ABC affiliate, “There’s no way, it was just too much blood” near her brother’s body when she found him deceased on July 20, 2019. She recounted that an investigator took “all of 10 minutes” to make her determination that Neal’s was a natural death. When the funeral director arrived to claim Neal’s body, Smalls recalled to WSB that he said, “Whoa, this is something totally different than what they said.”
An autopsy finally revealed what had been suspected all along — Neal was the victim of a homicide. The investigator ultimately lost her job because of her initial ruling.
While the delay in getting the truth about Neal’s cause and manner of death resulted in a two-day setback in the police investigation, the case eventually went cold.
In 2024, the break finally came. Police stated that their Cold Case Unit received a tip from a family member that included a name — Carmen Marie Hunt, 50. A new homicide investigation into Neal’s death commenced, including a review of security video and fingerprints found at the original crime scene. New interviews were conducted, and police brought in Hunt, who was already in custody on a separate charge for allegedly stabbing someone in 2022, for questioning.
Based on what they found, police charged Hunt on Jan. 15 with felony murder and aggravated assault in connection to Neal’s death. Her relationship with Neal was not made public.
Hunt was scheduled to make her first court appearance on the new charge on Jan. 17, according to court records. She remains in custody at the Gwinnett County Jail.
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