Guilty - Pam Hupp
This is one of the craziest true crime stories out there. Here is the WILD story of Pam Hupp...
In 2011 Hupp and Betsy Faria, a friend terminally ill with cancer, reportedly collected money for a family also impacted by cancer.
St. Louis station KTVI discovered several years later that the family did not know about the collection.
Information was presented to Lincoln County authorities in 2014 but was not investigated further.
There was no evidence to suggest Faria knew the fundraiser was questionable, with her friends recalling that she said she was excited to be helping a struggling family, even though she herself was dying.
One of them said "This was going to be a legacy for her to leave something like this behind in her memory."
Death of Betsy Faria
On December 22, 2011 just days before her death and not known to her family, Betsy changed the sole beneficiary of her $150,000 (equivalent to $203,000 in 2023) State Farm life insurance policy from her husband to Pam Hupp.
Hupp originally said that Betsy had asked her to give the money to her daughters when they were older.
Hupp later said that Betsy had wanted her to keep the money for herself.
Betsy's daughters launched a legal challenge against Hupp and her husband to attempt to claim the life insurance policy in 2014, which was dismissed in 2016.
Russ launched his own legal challenge against State Farm in 2016. Hupp admitted that she had lied about what she intended to do with the life insurance proceeds.
Prosecutors later speculated that Russ had been angered by Betsy's actions, giving him a motive to kill her. Russ remained the beneficiary on a separate $100,000 (equivalent to $135,000 in 2023) policy.
Five days later on December 27, 2011 Betsy underwent chemotherapy in St. Louis, then visited her mother's house.
Afterward she was driven home by Hupp, the last confirmed person to have seen her alive.
Betsy had originally been scheduled to be driven home by Russ or else stay with her mother.
That was until Hupp unexpectedly drove to her mother's house and insisted on driving her home.
Hupp claimed that she dropped Betsy off at home at approximately 7 p.m. At around 7:21 p.m. a call to Betsy from one of her daughters went unanswered.
Russ spent the evening at his friend Michael Corbin's home watching movies from 6 p.m. until 9 p.m. and then drove to an Arby's before returning home.
At 9:40 p.m. Russ called 9-1-1 saying that he had found that his wife had killed herself. Betsy was found on her right side on the floor in front of the couch. She had been stabbed over 55 times, with her wrists cut to the bone and a kitchen knife left lodged in her neck.
A second knife was found under a pillow on the couch she was lying on. First responders arrived within ten minutes and concluded that Betsy had been dead for at least an hour or longer. No blood evidence was found in any sink or shower. No blood trails were found exiting the home. Her time of death was later reported as being between 7:20 p.m. and 9:41 p.m.
Russ Faria Convicted
Russ was arrested the day after his wife's death. His initial guess that Betsy had killed herself was considered "ludicrous" by first responders who saw her body.
A police search of the house found a bloodstained pair of slippers in his closet. His agitated emotional state was regarded as "suspicious" by police and he failed a polygraph test.
When interviewed by police Hupp claimed that Russ had a "violent temper" and that he was a heavy drinker.
She also said that he had threatened Betsy who had considered leaving him. At Hupp's behest police searched Betsy's laptop and found a document in which she expressed fears that her husband would kill her.
It was later revealed that the document was written in Word 97, software that had not been installed on the laptop.
It was the only document on the laptop with an "unknown" author. On January 4, 2012, the day after Betsy's funeral Russ was charged with first-degree murder. Unable to make $250,000 bail he was held in the county jail until his trial began on November 18, 2013.
During his trial his defense attorney argued that the testimonies of the four friends he had visited, cellphone records evidencing his presence at his friend's house twenty miles away from the murder scene, and evidence of his making purchases from different stores over the course of the evening demonstrated that the timeline did not allow for him to commit the murder.
There were no traces of blood on his body or clothes. Prosecuting attorney Leah Askey countered that Russ' friends were providing a false alibi and had conspired with him to commit the murder.
This included holding onto his cellphone and posing as him to buy food at Arby's to falsify his whereabouts as an "ultimate role play".
The trial judge refused to allow Schwartz to present evidence implicating Hupp as an alternative suspect, including cellphone records showing she had been in the vicinity of the Faria house for up to thirty minutes after the time she claimed to have dropped Betsy off or that Betsy had made Hupp the sole beneficiary of the life insurance policy shortly before her death.
During the trial Detective Mike Merkel of the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office reported that a crime scene camera had broken and photographs had failed to develop.
Schwartz later obtained copies of the photographs in question. In a secret hearing during the trial Hupp claimed that she had put $100,000 of the insurance money in a trust for Betsy's daughters.
In a July 2014 civil deposition she admitted she had not done so.
On November 21, 2013 Russ was convicted on both counts. A month later he was sentenced to life plus thirty years imprisonment without possibility of parole.
Retrial and Acquittal
The decision not to investigate Hupp had been widely criticized.
A former employee of the prosecutor's office said "There were several of us that kept thinking, why are we not pursuing Pam Hupp? [...] They were just locked down on Russ."
In a 2021 interview Leah Chaney noted that she had believed Hupp would have been physically incapable of inflicting the wounds found on Betsy's body.
In a July 2021 interview Betsy's daughters stated that when they had asked about the possibility of Hupp having been the murderer they were told by former Lincoln County investigators "she physically could not do that".
In September 2019 federal district judge John Andrew Ross dismissed Russ' suit against Leah Wommack Chaney on the basis of prosecutorial immunity. In January 2018 attorneys acting for Russ deposed Hupp as part of his lawsuit against Lincoln County.
She declined to answer 92 questions relating to the killing of his wife. In response to the refusal, Russ attorneys sought a court order to force a response. In March 2020, Russ received a settlement in his civil rights case worth over $2,000,000.
Pam Hupp is charged
In June 2019 after Hupp entered an Alford plea to the murder of Louis Gumpenberger, Lincoln County prosecuting attorney Mike Wood announced that he would be reopening the Betsy Faria homicide investigation.
In October 2019 Wood requested a case review. In August 2020 newly elected Lincoln County Sheriff Rick Harrell said that the Faria case had inspired him to run for the job.
In February 2021 Wood stated that the COVID-19 pandemic had slowed the investigation but that he expected "significant announcements" in the summer or fall. On July 8, 2021 Hupp was interviewed in connection with the murder of Betsy for the first time.
On July 12, 2021 Wood charged Hupp with the first-degree murder of Betsy Faria and with armed criminal action. Court documents filed by Wood asserted that Hupp murdered Betsy for financial gain. Wood stated that he would seek the death penalty for Hupp due to the "heinousness and depravity" of the crime.
The prosecution alleged that Hupp repeatedly stabbed Betsy while she was asleep on her sofa and weakened from her chemotherapy treatment then removed her socks and used them to spread blood around the house to try to give the impression of domestic violence before replacing them on Betsy's feet.
The court documents noted the following points:
Hupp had been named the sole beneficiary on a $150,000 life insurance policy held by Betsy days before the murder; following her death, she did not give any of the money from the policy to Betsy's daughters despite her reported wishes.
Hupp insisted upon driving Betsy home from her chemotherapy treatment despite Betsy already having transportation arranged and despite Hupp claiming not to be familiar with the Troy area.
The position of Betsy's body suggested that she was murdered by someone she trusted.
Hupp texted "home" to Betsy's phone at 7:20 p.m. yet cellphone records showed that Hupp's cellphone was still in the vicinity of Faria's home at the time.
In July 2021 Hupp entered a "not guilty" plea. On September 8, 2021 the armed criminal action charge against Hupp was dismissed. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for February 2022, but was delayed indefinitely after Hupp's public defender died of a heart attack.
In August 2022 Hupp waived her right to a preliminary hearing. In October 2023 the Lincoln County Prosecutor's Office announced that it would refile the case to petition for a venue closer to St. Louis for logistical reasons. The Prosecutor's Office also stated that it expected the trial to take place in summer 2025 and to last around one month. In February 2024, Mike Wood filed a motion with the Lincoln County Circuit Court declaring the state's intention to pursue the death penalty due to "the statutory aggravating circumstance that the murder was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible, or inhumane in that it involved depravity of the mind". In March 2024 Hupp entered a "not guilty" plea to the refiled charges.
Shirley Neumann
Shirley Mae Neumann, Hupp's mother, a widow since 2000, was living alone in a third-floor apartment in the Lakeview Park Independent Senior Living Community suffering from dementia and arthritis.
She spent the night of October 29, 2013 with Hupp following a hospital visit. At approximately 5 p.m. on October 30, Hupp dropped Neumann off at her apartment, instructing staff not to expect her for dinner that evening or breakfast the following day.
A housekeeper found Neumann dead beneath the balcony of her home at 2:30 p.m. the next day. The aluminum balcony railing was broken. Following a police investigation, assistant medical examiner Raj Nanduri concluded that Neumann had died from blunt trauma to the chest resulting from an accidental fall. An autopsy found that she had .84 mcg of the sedative Zolpidem in her blood which is over eight times the expected concentration for someone having taken a normal dose.
Louis Gumpenberger
Louis Gumpenberger was 33 years old at the time of his death. He had mental and physical disabilities after a car crash in 2005.
Shortly after noon on August 16, 2016 Louis Gumpenberger died after Hupp shot him five times in the hallway of her home. $900 was found on Gumpenberger's body along with a note bearing instructions to "kidnap Hupp, get Russ's money from Hupp at her bank, and kill Hupp" and to, "Take Hupp back to house and get rid of her.
Immediately after the shooting Hupp voluntarily went to the O'Fallon Police Department. Her first words in the recorded interview were, "Is this going to be filmed? Because I always appear on the news with Chris Hayes." She went on to say she blamed Hayes reporting for attracting threatening people.
Hupp claimed Gumpenberger had jumped out of a car which was driven by another person and brandished a knife while she sat in her SUV in her garage and demanded she drive to a bank to retrieve "Russ' money".
Hupp also claimed she had knocked the knife out of Gumpenberger's hand with a "karate chop" and then fled into her house shooting Gumpenberger in self-defense.
After investigating Hupp's claims St. Charles County prosecuting attorney and the O'Fallon chief of police theorized Hupp had lured Gumpenberger to her home by presenting herself as "Cathy" a producer for the television program Dateline NBC.
Hupp then was believed to have offered Gumpenberger money to reenact a 9-1-1 call, then shot him in order to implicate Russ in an attempt on her life. Gumpenberger was believed to have been selected at random. Several pieces of evidence were identified:
Cellphone records showed Hupp had been in Gumpenberger's neighborhood "right at the supposed attacker’s front door" less than one hour before the shooting, casting doubt on her claim that she had never met him before.
On August 10, 2016 a police report had been filed with the St. Charles County police stating a woman matching Hupp's description had approached O'Fallon resident Carol Alford.
Police investigators found nine one-hundred-dollar bills in Gumpenberger's pocket.
Guilty
On August 23, 2016 Hupp was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action.
Upon being arrested she asked to visit a bathroom where she used a ballpoint pen to stab her neck and wrists in an apparent suicide attempt.
St. Charles County assistant prosecutor Phil Groenweghe described the act as "consciousness of guilt". Bail for Hupp was set at $2,000,000.
On December 16 a grand jury indicted Hupp on the charges. She appeared in court on January 31, 2017 pleading not guilty.
In March 2017 prosecutors stated that they would seek the death penalty due to the arbitrary choice of Gumpenberger as the victim. In May 2018 11th Circuit Court judge Jon Cunningham ruled that prosecutors could not present evidence relating to the death of Hupp's mother.
The following month Cunningham ruled that prosecutors could present evidence relating to the killing of Betsy Faria.
In September 2020 Hupp's husband Mark filed for divorce describing their marriage as "irretrievably broken”.
By March 2022 the couple was divorced.
In September 2020 Hupp filed a motion to vacate her conviction, claiming she was pressured to take a plea.
It was denied the following March as untimely.
What an evil woman.
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