People Magazine Investigates TV - Toronto Sun online - True Crime Recaps: The Notorious Pam Hupp 2022 -
An incredible saga in a small town continues to grab national headlines. People Magazine Investigates s6e12: Infamous Pam Hupp, ID 2023
Betsy [Faria] goes to her weekly chemo session like normal … After her chemo treatment Betsy would go to my mom’s house for a short visit … Her friend Pam Hupp would take her home. ibid.
She [Betsy] had been stabbed multiple times and there was a black-handled kitchen knife sticking out of the left side of her neck … Definitely a homicide … 55 stab wounds. ibid. rozzer
Russ Faria was convicted of murdering his wife Betsy. ibid.
This time [retrial] the judge sides with the defense. ibid.
Then detectives learned the identity of the female 911 caller [shot home invader Russ Faria]: Pam Hupp. ibid.
Detectives decide to re-examine all the evidence. ibid.
Police say Hupp lured victim into scheme to divert attention in Faria case. ibid. newspaper headline
Hupp stabs herself repeatedly while in custody. ibid.
Police haven’t charged Pam in her mother’s suspicious death. ibid.
Russ went on trial November 18, 2013, and three days later was convicted and sentenced to life in prison — plus 30 years.
Overseeing this gross miscarriage of justice was the lead prosecutor and her boyfriend, the lead investigator.
At Faria’s trial, Schwartz was barred from introducing Pam Hupp as the possible killer. One of the prosecution’s main pieces of evidence was Betsy’s computer that, Schwartz said, had clearly been tampered with.
‘She was claiming to be home, when we asked what she wearing on the stand, she couldn’t confirm what she was wearing that day,’ Schwartz said, adding that his frustration with the whole sham reached a boiling point.
He blurted out in court: ‘I don’t know if I should strip naked, tear my hair out or just ram my head into the bench to get your attention.’
A higher court agreed and in 2015, Faria was released from prison and exonerated at a second trial later that year. He went on to sue the disgraced police and prosecutors and ‘was awarded millions of dollars’.
There was really only one suspect: Pam Hupp.
‘They jumped to conclusions, and they wouldn’t take all the steps necessary to get to the truth, they didn’t even give Russ a polygraph … and when their narrative began falling apart they doubled down. They were prejudging from the start,’ Schwartz said, adding that the prosecutor was politically ambitious.
And Hupp was not content to rest on her murderous laurels: In 2016, she accepted an Alford plea (the accused admits there is enough evidence to convict) in the brutal murder of disabled man Louis Gumpenberger.
She even tried to frame Russ Faria for the murder by leaving his phone number. It didn’t work, and she was sentenced to life in prison.
One friend of Hupp’s said: ‘When it comes to money, she short-circuits.’
Hupp was also a suspect in the 2013 death of her mother, Shirley Neumann. She has now been charged with capital murder in the death of Betsy Faria and the prosecution is asking for the death penalty.
‘The court needs to be fair … there was no offer of proof and the judge refused to allow me cross-examine Pam,’ Schwartz said.
‘I still can’t get over this.’ Toronto Sun online article 13th March 2022, ‘Miscarriage of Justice in Missouri: The Thing About Pam’
Pam Hupp: On the outside she looks like your typical middle-class Karen, but in reality she’s much worse than that: cold blooded, cutthroat, calculating … This is a woman you don’t want to be alone with. True Crime Recaps: The Notorious Pam Hupp, Youtube 26.31, 2022
At 9.40 Russ came home and found his wife with a knife from their kitchen still stuck in her neck. His first thought – she killed herself. But autopsy reports would later show she’d been stabbed at least 55 times. ibid.
It’s all about the insurance money. Four days earlier, Betsy changed the beneficiary of her 150,000 life insurance policy from her husband to Pam. ibid.
Less than a month later Russ was arrested … She [Pam] was the star witness against Russ. ibid.
This murder trial was turning into a soap opera. ibid.
Phone records put Russ nowhere near the scene of the crime. ibid.