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I'm Lester Holt. It's our most twisted mystery ever, unfolding for years on Dateline before becoming a podcast and a series starring Renee Zellweger in The Thing About Pam.
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What? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa.
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Tonight, a jaw-dropping new development and a key figure in the case finally sits down with us.
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There are some people who say that you have blood on your hands. Yeah, I know there are people that say that.
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He was pounding on the door, and once it flew open, that's when I shot him. And I just kept shooting him.
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Three people died suspiciously, and she's been the last person with them. How is this woman not a suspect?
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I would have never thought Pam would have kept going after other people. A lady in a black SUV picking people up, claiming to be with daylight.
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Just my gut told me something's not right with this lady. You can't believe anything that comes out of her mouth.
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The fact that nobody looked at Pam Hupp bought into everything she said, hook, line and sinker, is why we're still here today talking about this.
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You can't just prosecute someone just because you don't like them or because they do odd things.
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All this as this decade-long case gets turned upside down. I was beginning to think that it would never happen.
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Here's Keith Morrison with The Real Thing About Pam. What is the thing about Pam?
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Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Pamela Hupp, that is.
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Say hi to Kathy. Did anyone really know her? Her friends? Her enemies? Trying to pin Pam down is like trying to catch a fish with your hands.
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that you can't believe anything that comes out of her mouth. I said, who was this person that I knew?
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I call her evil incarnate. She's a monster who doesn't even deserve to walk the prison yard.
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But as much as this story is about Pam Hopp, new revelations about her and accusations and formal charges,
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it's also about this woman. I'm not a person that's going to sit in judgment of anybody else.
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Her name is Leah Askey. But I will put my morals and my ethics up against anyone.
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The woman whose prosecution of the wrong person brought the whole bizarre story to our attention in the first place.
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We've been wanting to talk to her for years. And now, finally, we have. They act like I have horns and I just came out after this guy.
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And that's not what occurred at all. In tonight's episode, Leah Askey will tell us her side of the story and why she says she was right all along.
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I did my job and I did it well. And had I not done it well, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
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But at the heart of it, what was that thing about Pam? It's Pam. Anything can happen.
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I had a sack of cash. Am I not clear? She loved me. I loved her. We had a special relationship.
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I had no idea things would get this crazy. No, not even on that first terrible night.
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December 27th, 2011, 9.40 p.m. In a quiet little town near St. Louis called Troy, Missouri,
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in a quiet little house, a man walked in, took one look, and called 911. 911, what is the location of your emergency?
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Okay, I need you to take a couple deep breaths so I can see what's going on. I just got home from a friend's house and my wife killed herself.
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The man so apparently distraught, so beside himself, was Ross Faria. Telling the dispatcher he'd arrived home to find his wife Betsy lying on the living room floor,
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a knife still embedded firmly in her neck. Russell, do you think that she's beyond help right now?
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I don't know, I think he's dead. Oh my God, he's gone. Officers arrived, looked around, and took Russ to the sheriff's office.
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No, no, no, no. A deep breath formed to Russ. And asked him, why did he say it was suicide?
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Does she want to hurt herself? I don't know if she just wanted to scare me or what, but she said she was going to kill herself.
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Betsy had tried it twice before, once with a knife, Russ told them. And she was on an antidepressant, and she had stage 4 cancer.
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It had started in her breast. But on her liver, no. She had her whole boob, one of them removed, and then went through chemo and radiation.
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and then we got scanned, she got scanned last February and there was no cancer. Okay.
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And in October there was cancer. Okay. And the doctor told us that we had three to five years.
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So it would not have surprised Russ if she had chosen to end her life, even though she had seemed upbeat over Christmas, her usual self happy and lively.
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Though maybe it was a front to hide her depression, something she was good at. And if this comes back that it's not a suicide,
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you don't have any idea who may have harmed Betsy? No. Everybody loved Betsy. She was a positive soul.
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She always brought smiles to people She made me smile all the time She made me so proud
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It's not typical for someone that's going to commit suicide to do it by the way that she done it.
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And that's what concerns us. Well, in fact, it was not even possible. Betsy had been stabbed many times
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in places she couldn't have reached, Some post-mortem. So suspicion had set in before they asked Russ,
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what did he and Betsy do day of the murder? And here's what he said. That afternoon, Betsy went to chemo treatment and later to her mom's place.
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He worked all afternoon at his home office. And after? I got cigarettes and dog food.
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And then I went over to my friend Mike's house. Mike's house, where he went for his regular Tuesday game night with friends, said he called Betsy on the way.
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I asked her if she needed a ride on my way home. And she said no, that her friend was going to bring her home.
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And I said, OK, well, I'll see you at home later. I love you. Then at nine, said Russ, he left Mike's place, stopped at Arby's,
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drove the half-hour home, opened the door just before 9.40. And there she was. And now, here he was,
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teetering between answering questions and weeping uncontrollably. It was that intensity that caught the prosecutor's attention.
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To her, it looked fake. He appeared to be sobbing and really hysterical whenever the detective would step out of the room.
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But never did he have any tears. Never did he need a Kleenex or wipe his nose. I would love to think I could cry and not need a Kleenex.
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Need some Kleenex or something, man? She must have missed this part of the interview.
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but Russ's hysteria made an impression on the detectives too that and his mistaken belief that Betsy killed herself
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because Betsy's daughter Mariah speaking to us for the first time said she heard one thing quite clearly
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through her haze of grief the detectives told my aunts that Russ is the main person of interest
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In part because someone was telling tales. Betsy Faria's sudden, savage death would be just the beginning of a painful and lethal
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odyssey. When we come back... It was just a shock. A lot of tears streaming down my face.
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As Mariah reels with grief, Pam reels off accusations against Russ. He makes comments about how much money he'll have after she's gone because he's got life
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insurance on her at work. Early the morning after Betsy's murder, there was a loud knock at the door of Betsy's mother,
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Janet. sergeants marched right in. One of them just looked right at me and said, Betsy's dead.
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That's the way it was announced? That's the way it was told to me. Wasn't like that. And then I said, what happened? Car accident? He said, no, it was a violent death.
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Mariah, the younger of Betsy's two daughters, was at her grandmother's house that day.
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It was just a lot of shock, just a lot of tears streaming down my face. I just really didn't know what to think.
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And that sense of sudden loss must be overpowering. I've never experienced loss before my mom.
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Worse, said Mariah, the police seemed to think Russ did it. Russ, the only father figure she'd ever known.
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She was three when he met Betsy. Did he feel like a dad, like a father? Oh, yeah.
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I've always called him dad from what I can remember. Police leaned hard on Russ.
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I do not stand my wife. I do not do it. Was Russ capable of such a thing? No, said Betsy's mother.
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That first day... Russ had been very good to me all these years. You were close to him.
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I was close to him. Like he was his son, in a way. But early on, investigators were also talking to...
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Hey, can you state your last name for us, please? H-U-P-P. Pam Hopp, the friend who drove Betsy home the night of the murder.
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The two women met a decade earlier when they both worked at the same insurance agency.
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Officers talked to Pam at her home the morning after it happened. Did you describe your friendship as best friends?
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Betsy had a lot of best friends. But yes, I saw her almost every day, every other day.
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They asked Russ about Pam. She's a good person. She's very friendly. You don't think she'd have anything bad to say about you?
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No. And later asked him who else they should be looking at. Who could have been over at the house during that time?
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The only person that would have been there would have been him. But I don't think him would do that.
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Of course, he didn't know what she was saying. He's verbally mean to her. He smokes in the house, even though she's been sick and doesn't care.
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Oh, he's very disrespectful. He makes comments about how much money he have after she gone because he got life insurance on her at work She got life insurance Just insensitive stuff which would upset her
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Got so bad, said Pam, that Betsy was secretly planning to divorce him. That's certainly not how Russ was describing his marriage to detectives.
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We have a really good relationship, okay? No history of any kind of domestic violence between you or her.
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We argued quite a bit, quite a few years ago, about five years ago, six years ago.
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We separated because we couldn't get along. But there was no violence or anything involved.
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And then they joined a new church and fell in love again. We went and talked to Pastor Mike, and he gave us some counseling.
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You know, morning, sir. You know Mike? Yeah, I know Pastor Mike. Mike's a great guy.
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Meanwhile, this from Pam. He'd start playing this game of putting a pillow over her face
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to see what it would feel like. I don't know if she said, this is what it's going to feel like when you die or whatever,
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and then act like he was kidding. She was very upset. And as Pam accused, detectives confronted Russ.
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He never put a pillow over her face, no. You know, this is what, I'd still like to die.
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No. Why would her friend tell the police that she would done that and that she was scared of you?
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She has no reason to be scared of you. She's never been scared of you. But once police looked at the crime scene,
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Pam Hupp's version of things seemed to them more likely. They found Russ's slippers in his bedroom closet stained with Betsy's blood.
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And her blood on a light switch in the bedroom must have been Russ, they thought,
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with his bloody hands who put it there. There's blood on your clothes, in your residence, in your bedroom.
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I didn't even go to my bedroom. Off and on, they questioned him for 16 hours. Russ did not give them the confession they wanted.
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But maybe there was a way to get there. They hooked him up to a polygraph. Coming up,
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Betsy's daughter says investigators pushed the family hard to believe Russ was a killer.
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That's an amazing turn, isn't it? A person you had loved and suddenly, boom, the enemy.
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Yeah, it was just kind of them bullying and using their power to manipulate us. When Dateline continues.
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All right. How do you think you're doing? It was a trick question of sorts. Russ was operating on no sleep, grilled for many hours,
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told them he'd smoked weed at game night. Not the right conditions for a polygraph,
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but he didn't know that. And if the cops knew, well, maybe they didn't care. I had to pass. I told them you had to pass.
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Okay, I do this for a living. You were not 100% honest with me. I was, I was on it.
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Honestly, I don't even know if the thing was on or not. Then the investigator told him...
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I was stabbed over 25 times. Oh my God. No, 25 times. They're still counting. That's somebody who lost control of their emotions and couldn't stop.
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There's no way that I did it. There's no one else that has any kind of motive, monetary, or crime of passion.
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I can't tell you what I don't know. I don't know. After that polygraph, detectives had had enough of Russ's denials.
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All of the evidence points to you. And arrested him. We understand. Prosecutor Askey thought the crime screamed rage murder,
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especially when the pathologist ultimately counted 56 stab wounds. And Russ calling it in as a suicide, she said,
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was further proof he did it. But we wondered, do you think he would have called in and said she committed suicide
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when he would know that they would be there in about five minutes and they would look at her body and realize,
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this ain't a suicide, it's a homicide. Well, I think that the hope is that there's not going to be
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a whole lot of sophisticated law enforcement out in this area. Still, Leah Askey told the detectives she needed more than a polygraph,
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failed or not. Why didn't you charge him right then? because a polygraph isn't admissible.
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Admissible in court, that is. So, without charges, 24 hours after his arrest, they had to release him.
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Did you kill your wife? No comment. And in no time at all, the story was all over time
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that Russ was the prime and only suspect. I'd like to say get out of my face. And boy, this case has really been taking a lot of turns today.
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Yes, and more to come. because the Lincoln County detectives seemed convinced. They brought my mom's entire family into Lincoln County that week,
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and they told us, this is our guy. And you kind of felt that there was no option but to accept that.
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Right. That's an amazing turn, isn't it? Yeah. A person you had loved and laughed with and admired for a long time
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has suddenly, boom, the enemy. Yeah. Well, it took a lot of persuading for me, so it was just kind of them bullying and using their power to manipulate us.
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But the detectives needed more evidence, so a week after the murder, after family had been in
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and out, officers returned to the Faria house and sprayed the interior with luminol, that chemical
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that lights up when trace amounts of blood or cleaning chemicals are detected And voila they said they could see glowing spots leading to a kitchen towel drawer which they figured only someone who lived there would know how to find
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so Russ must have cleaned up the blood. They took pictures of it, but they didn't turn out.
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Camera malfunctioned, they said. Wouldn't you want to see the results of the test?
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Wouldn't you want to see the photographs? I mean, in the perfect world, they'd like to see all kinds of things.
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But it isn't television. People don't drop the gun down the drain and then find it in 10 minutes.
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That's not the way it works. And so Leah Askey took their word for it and filed a murder charge.
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Literally the day after the funeral, they came and got me from my mom's house and charged me with murder.
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They took Russ to the Lincoln County Jail. His cousin Mary went to visit him there.
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How's he taking it? Not good. I mean, I think he's confused. He's hurt. He never got to grieve his wife.
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How do you prove to somebody that without a doubt you did not do this? How indeed.
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Coming up, Russ's game night buddies provide what sounds like a slam dunk alibi.
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Once we heard the timeline, we knew that he could not have committed this crime.
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Impossible. A man cannot be in two places at the same time. But isn't that a pretty ironclad alibi?
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I didn't think so. As people turned against Russ Faria, now charged with murder, his cousin Mary got busy.
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As it happened, one of life's coincidences, Mary knew who to call. She was a legal secretary once, and her boss was Joel Schwartz.
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Joel's a very good attorney. He comes from a very good farm. He has a very good background.
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So, attorney Schwartz got busy, too. And as he dug in, he could see the case against Russ did not make sense.
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First, he discovered that the story about a bad marriage just wasn't true. The people who I've spoken to told me that the two of them had fallen back in love.
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Next, he checked Russ's alibi, which was a regular weekly game night with friends every Tuesday, 6 to 9,
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Mike Corbin's house. We were all within eight feet of each other the whole night.
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Did he act the same as usual? Oh, yeah. And then Russ left at 9, stopped at an Arby's drive-thru,
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and left with two junior cheddar belts and a receipt stamped 9.09 p.m. And then he drove 25 miles to his house, arriving just before 9.40.
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walked in, saw his wife on the floor, and called 911. Once we heard the timeline, we knew that he could not have committed this crime.
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Impossible. It's impossible. A man cannot be in two places at the same time. Schwartz thought the same thing.
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In fact, it was one of the best alibis he'd ever heard. But Leah Askey? Isn't that a pretty ironclad alibi?
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I didn't think so. I mean, how good does an alibi have to be to satisfy you? There were lots of things about it that gave me pause.
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All those four people might have been lying to protect him, to cover for the murder of his wife.
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Well, I don't know that it was never necessarily my thought process that they were covering for that.
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That, I thought, potentially, they thought he was off having a rendezvous with his girlfriend,
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which was a consistent thing that happened. Ridiculous, said Schwartz. And anyway, he'd quickly learned there was no girlfriend.
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And when he read reports from first responders who arrived 10 minutes after Russ called 911,
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Schwartz saw evidence Betsy was very likely killed while Russ was with his friends at game night.
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A fireman and an EMS supervisor stated that the body was stiff, that the body was cooling, and that the blood was pooling and drying.
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Which meant what? It meant that a couple hours had passed since the time she had been murdered.
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Puts the deaths around 7, 15 to 7.30 in my mind. Leah Askey had heard that too, but dismissed it.
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The way they checked for rigor mortis is with their, I mean it was cold, it was a cold night.
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They had the doors open in the house, and they had gloves on, they had full coats on,
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and they touched her forearm for a manner of about a second. As for all those stab wounds, Schwartz discovered that many of them were inflicted after Betsy was dead.
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And there was something odd about them. There was no irregularities in the wound, meaning no side-to-side movement of the knife.
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This wasn't somebody madly slashing away. It certainly doesn't seem to be someone madly slashing away.
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It seems to be extremely methodical. As if somebody killed her and then afterwards went about the business of making it look as if somebody had been slashing her.
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Not as if. Somebody did that. A frame-up, in other words. Likewise, the slippers.
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Russ's slippers with Betsy's blood on them found in his closet where he said he never kept them.
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There was no imprint of a shoe in the blood, nor was there any footprint leading back to where the slippers were found.
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Somebody attempted to stage this. Dipped it in the blood? Dipped it in the blood.
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But when police examined Russ and the clothes he was wearing... There was not a speck of blood, and even the medical examiner said,
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yeah, you would expect to find blood all over somebody who committed this crime,
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or at least some blood on them. So, after his own initial investigation, Schwartz was puzzled. There seemed to be no real evidence against Russ.
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The investigators, I think, made a snap judgment that the husband killed the wife.
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I think that clouded their judgment in their investigation. And then it sorted a snowball from there.
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So Schwartz thought, if it wasn't Russ, who was it? Who else was with Betsy that day and night?
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The answer was Pam. Pam, who seemed almost to have been stalking Betsy. as she navigated chemo and a visit with her mom.
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She received a text from Pam Hupp. Pam wanted to join her at chemo. And she texted back to Pam saying,
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it's okay, I don't need a ride. My mother's friend is in town and she's going to take me.
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Dr. Mariah overheard all this. I just remember Pam Hupp wanting to come and my mom was just like,
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I really hope that Pam Hupp doesn't come and she told her not to come. and next thing we know she showed up at chemotherapy.
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And later seemed determined to give Betsy a ride home from her mom's place. Now this was approximately 30 minutes out of Miss Hupp's way.
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I don't know why she offered to do it because Betsy already had a ride home from Russell.
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They left Betsy's mother's house around 6.30 in the evening. Pam and Betsy arrived back in Troy at the Faria house just after 7.
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Schwartz picked up the trail with cell phone data. At 7.04, there's a call from Pam's phone to Pam's husband.
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And in that call, Betsy gets on the phone. Very much alive. But 17 minutes later...
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At 7.21, there's a call from Betsy's daughter, unanswered to Betsy. At 7.26, there's an unanswered call to Betsy.
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At 7.27, there's a call from Pam Hupp's cell phone to Betsy's cell phone. Also unanswered.
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That call, Pam told the detectives, was to let Betsy know she was home safe. Except, said Schwartz, that wasn't possible.
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If you called your husband at 7.04 and the next call is at 7.27, it's impossible for you to have been home at that time.
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It's at least a half an hour's drive and she said she went inside for 10 to 15 minutes.
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So she then said, well, I was almost home. But where actually was she based on the Saltara triangulation?
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at the very most, about three miles from the house, at the very least, she was still at the house.
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But then Pam quickly altered her story. I called her because she's afraid. I always get lost in Troy, and it's really dark.
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So actually, I was still in Troy. I either said, I'm on my way, or I'm home already.
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So she wouldn't worry. Schwartz read the transcripts. Her story kept changing. She didn't go into Betsy's house.
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She did go in. She stayed for a little bit. She didn't stay. When she left, Betsy was on the couch, or maybe not.
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She may have still been on the couch, but today it makes sense that she walked me to the door.
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Schwartz was convinced the wrong person had been arrested. Coming up, Betsy's family gets startling news about Pam and Betsy's life insurance payout.
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She came to show her condolences. That's when my aunts found out that she was the beneficiary.
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My aunts were just kind of like in shock about it. When Dateline continues. I think this crime scene was staged and it was staged to look like Russ Faria did it.
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The murder of Betsy Faria, Joel Schwartz came to believe, was a straight-out frame-up of Betsy's husband, Russ, carried out by Betsy's friend, Pam Hupp.
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But why? One word. Insurance. As Pam herself told the detectives. She said, I'm going to make you the beneficiary if you could, when my daughters are older, give them some money.
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I said, OK, well, how much is it for? $150,000. $150,000? It was just too convenient
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because Schwartz learned Pam became the beneficiary four days before the murder.
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And it was true that Betsy worried Russ might not be the best steward of money meant for her daughters,
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but the person she'd first asked to take care of the money was not Pam, but a friend named Rita Wolfe.
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What she told me was that she really felt that Russ would be so grief-strucken that he would blow the money on toys and fun and would not spend it on the girls and helping the
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girls start a life. And so she asked Rita, well, could you take care of it to make sure the money
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is there for the girls? This is Nate Swanson, Schwartz's co-counsel. Rita said, I'm not comfortable
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doing that. You need to make sure you have a trust set up, something that is legally binding to make
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sure that money is there. Don't just give it to someone, which just begs the question, why would
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Betsy, having heard this from Rita, turn around and do exactly that thing to someone else.
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What did you think about that? I immediately thought how weird it was. Weirder still, the way that change of beneficiary was made.
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She had me meet her at the library here in Winghaven. She was there already. She filled out the form, signed it.
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We went up to the girl at the counter, showed our IDs, and she witnessed it. Seemed fishy to Schwartz.
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He found that girl at the counter and she said it wasn't the way Pam described it at all.
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She said Pam was in charge. Pam did the talking. Betsy hung back. It was a change of beneficiary Russ knew nothing about nor did any of Betsy friends or family until Pam visited Betsy mom She came to show her condolences She gave my grandma a necklace but that when my aunts found
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out that she was the beneficiary. She just casually said it, and my aunts were just kind of like
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in shock about it. What? Yeah, and then one of my aunts said, well, you know that money's for the girls, right?
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And she's like, she just nods her head. Do you think Pam Hupp played your mom? Oh, yeah.
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Betsy was very gullible. She was a very trusting and loyal person. I think that she was manipulated,
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and I think she thought, okay, I'll just sign here because this is what my friend Pam is telling me.
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Then, four days after the beneficiary change, Pam drove Betsy home where she was stabbed to death.
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It seemed clear to Schwartz that Pam, that the motive means an opportunity. Her target weakened by chemo.
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But while Schwartz thought the whole insurance business helped his case, Askey thought it helped hers.
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She figured that Russ must have found out that he was being cut out of insurance money,
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must have flown into a rage and murdered Betsy. So, no, Pam didn't do it, said Leah Askey.
00:31:24
She helped solve it. She had been forthcoming. She had been helpful. She had been agreeable to doing whatever, looking through whatever.
00:31:33
And in fact, just a couple of weeks after Betsy was killed, the lead detective told the insurance company.
00:31:38
No, she's not a suspect at all. Go ahead. And she got the money. She got the money.
00:31:43
So, what did she do then? This is Pam's former friend and neighbor, Barbara Conte, who said Pam
00:31:50
Didn't talk about the murder and didn't talk about the money. But soon after the murder, her normally penny-pinching friend
00:31:58
Said she was going to go get a mini facelift, and did I want to go and get one too?
00:32:03
Wow. And in my mind, I said, I don't have $10,000 to put to a facelift. Apparently she did.
00:32:11
Apparently she did. What she did not do was the very thing Betsy had asked her to do.
00:32:18
Give the money to Mariah and her sister. That's a huge problem. But when lead detective Ryan McCarrick asked Pam about that, here's what she said.
00:32:28
To me, my world $150,000 is not that much. Still said McCarrick, it wouldn't look good if she didn't set up a trust for the girls before Russ went on trial for murder.
00:32:37
So you still intend on putting a trust together for her? Absolutely. Soon after that, McCarrick asked Betsy's daughters to hold off suing for the money that Pam hadn't given them,
00:32:47
because that wouldn't look good either. I remember Ryan McCarrick telling us the civil trial is not a good idea.
00:32:54
Because if your civil case went ahead first, it would make Pam Hupp look bad. Right.
00:33:00
And they didn't want that. Is that right? Yeah. And one more thing. Before Russ's trial began, Leah Askey filed a motion asking that Schwartz be prevented from mentioning Pam's insurance windfall or from pointing at her as an alternate suspect.
00:33:16
And the judge, who knew Askey from high school, agreed. A witness testifies. You can cross-examine the witness. That's a basic tenet of law.
00:33:25
Their bias, their interest, the fact that they are the last person with the victim,
00:33:32
the fact that they just recently were given the victim's insurance under who knows what pretenses.
00:33:39
All that was off the table. Didn't look so good for Russ now. I've never seen anything like it.
00:33:46
Coming up, Pam is the prosecution's star witness, but she's not convincing everyone.
00:33:53
She switched up her story multiple times. I'm just like, how is this woman not a suspect?
00:34:11
Ross Faria's first murder trial was also Prosecutor Leah Askey's first murder trial.
00:34:18
So, she asked the State Attorney General's office for help. All those people look at this stuff and they say, yeah, yeah, he killed her.
00:34:25
Every one of them. Wow. Wow. The state's star witness was Pam Hupp, supporting cast Betsy's family, including Mariah.
00:34:38
What was it like to testify in that trial? We were just basically his character testimonies.
00:34:46
Testimony that was mostly negative. They asked us questions about previous fights my parents had, not the good parts.
00:34:55
Good times. This surprised and deeply wounded Russ, who had been especially close to Mariah.
00:35:03
Askey also presented Russ's hysterical 911 call as fake. His initial claim that Betsy had killed herself as ridiculous.
00:35:11
said the luminol proved that he cleaned up and that Betsy's blood on his slippers and a light switch
00:35:18
confirmed he was the killer. Schwartz emphasized Russell's alibi. Surveillance video, the game night friends who said he was with them all evening,
00:35:28
the Arby's receipt stamped 9.09 p.m., the total lack of Betsy's blood on Russ or his clothes.
00:35:35
Forget about beyond a reasonable doubt. there's not one shred of proof that Russell did this
00:35:41
what remained was Leah Askey's theory presented in closing argument Russ, she said, planned the
00:35:49
murder with the help of his game night friends, it would be quote the ultimate game
00:35:55
very elaborate first he arranged to be on this store video just before 6pm then he drove to game night and dropped off his cell phone so it would ping there from 6 to 9
00:36:06
Well, he drove the half-hour home and stripped naked, which explained no blood on his clothes.
00:36:13
He had sex with Betsy, or as Askey put it, violates her one more time. Then he repeatedly stabbed her and then cleaned up and showered and put his clothes back on.
00:36:24
At nine o'clock, one of his game night buddies drove his phone back to his house, picking up the Arby's receipt for him on the way.
00:36:34
Really? That was her theory, in spite of the unanimous testimony of his game night friends.
00:36:42
Four people came forward to tell the truth about what happened that evening, and you called them liars, every one of them.
00:36:51
and not only called them liars, but you implied that they assisted in a murder. I implied, well, I told the jury that I did not believe their testimony.
00:37:06
Yeah. And I don't. And I didn't. And you still don't believe their testimony? Absolutely not.
00:37:12
There was no evidence whatsoever to indicate that Russ's friends were anything but truthful.
00:37:18
But in the end, Russ was convicted. It was devastating. I haven't lost sleep in a long time over something in this business,
00:37:28
and I lost sleep for a long time. The trial left Mariah confused about Pam. When they had her on the stand, and she switched up her story multiple times,
00:37:40
I'm just like, how is this woman not a suspect? And they just use their power to persuade us and say there's just no way she could have done it.
00:37:51
How persuasive? This is Betsy's mother shortly after the trial. If somebody were to come to you with evidence, strong evidence,
00:38:01
that it wasn't Russ, but it was some other person, is that something that you could accept?
00:38:08
I would still feel it's Russ, 100%. But remember that business about the insurance?
00:38:16
Pam told detectives she would give some of it to Betsy's daughters, But she didn't. She kept it all.
00:38:23
And that is how Pam Hopp's world began to unravel. Because Betsy's family did sue her.
00:38:31
And thus she sat for a deposition, in which she made this 180. Did she mention to you that she wanted the money to be used for her daughters?
00:38:44
Absolutely not. Pam also said that she had set up a trust for the girls before the trial,
00:38:50
as the lead detective pressured her to do. But after the trial, she revoked it, took it all back.
00:38:58
Well, when Schwartz heard that, he knew. That in and of itself is something that the Court of Appeals needed to hear about.
00:39:06
So against long odds, he filed an appeal of sorts in Missouri called the Mooney Motion
00:39:11
and won a special hearing to reconsider Russ's conviction. It's incredibly rare having happened only three times previously in the state of Missouri.
00:39:21
Ever. Ever. And then, just a week before that hearing, Pam went to see Leah Askey.
00:39:29
There'd be a different judge at this hearing, and Pam had a question. So what are our chances of making the judge believe us?
00:39:38
What are our chances of making the judge believe us? like you and she were on the same team.
00:39:43
Well, I mean, she was a state's witness in the original trial. Yeah. I mean, her position was pro, you know, Betsy.
00:39:54
How would anybody else be anti-Betsy? Well, I'm just saying that she was a state's witness,
00:39:58
so the prosecution's witnesses would say, well, how's it looking for us? Same as her family would phrase it that way.
00:40:06
Askey told Pam she wasn't worried, though. We got a good case. you know uh and i'm i'm a better lawyer today than i was three years ago and this was only happening
00:40:18
because joel schwartz had a bruised ego just because somebody's got their you know feelings
00:40:24
hurt because they lost right and you still believe that to be so he reacted because his feelings were
00:40:30
hurt i think that was certainly a driving force for him askey also complained about the unfairness
00:40:38
of it all. On fair to her, that is. In the normal world, when the prosecutor wins a murder case, everyone's like, yay.
00:40:46
Not in my world. I've lost plenty of sleep over this case, don't give me a lie. Oh.
00:40:50
But not because Russ Faria's in prison. On the appointed day, they all assembled.
00:40:56
And it didn't take very long. The new judge overturned Russ's conviction. He would get a new trial.
00:41:04
And it was one of the best moments of my life. finally something good in my favor.
00:41:13
But was it over? Oh, no. Pam was telling stories again. We just spent a whole lot of time together, you know.
00:41:23
I replaced what a husband would be. My, my. Coming up. Prosecutor Askey says new discoveries from the crime scene
00:41:34
have her feeling more confident than ever. There was evidence that I thought, wow, had I had this in the first trial, there may not have even been a trial.
00:41:43
Maybe it would have been a plea. When Dateline continues. Leah Askey county prosecutor was confident as she prepared to try Russ Faria for a second time Why did you decide to try him again
00:42:07
Because a woman had been brutally murdered in the county that I was elected to serve,
00:42:15
and the evidence that I had still pointed in the same direction. To help bolster the state's case, investigators re-interviewed witnesses, like Pam Hopp.
00:42:27
But her story is a moving target. Like her relationship with Betsy, just a friend before the first trial.
00:42:36
But before the second trial? Lovers. I replaced what a husband would be. It's honestly a relationship with two women who really aren't attracted to women.
00:42:47
I don't know how to explain that. It's not, I'm attracted to men, love everything about them, can't wait till Magic Mike XL comes out.
00:42:55
But she's the same way. It's not like she was a lesbian or anything. It wasn't like, it was such an evolution of emotional trauma for her.
00:43:06
And then that story evolved into a very colorful claim. That Russ... Pushed me up against the wall and he said,
00:43:14
You f***ing never come over here again. He's all red-faced. Kind of like a gritted teeth.
00:43:19
Oh, he's like, talk about this far away from the face. Yeah, he was right there.
00:43:23
I could feel a spit. Nasty. And he said, you two muffed thumpers, something to that effect.
00:43:31
If I ever catch you together again, I'll bury you out in the backyard. At that point, you must have looked back and said, well, wait a minute.
00:43:38
This woman has been telling different stories for years, and she is the last person to see her alive.
00:43:44
Maybe we ought to change direction here. You didn't think that? Well, it's not my place to change the direction, but what I did do is say...
00:43:51
It is totally your place to change the direction. That's what you do. You're a prosecutor.
00:43:56
You decide who to charge and who not to charge. Based on what's brought to me. And what investigators brought to her before the second trial was good evidence, she said.
00:44:07
There was evidence that I thought, wow, had I had this in the first trial, there may not have even been a trial.
00:44:15
Maybe it would have been a plea. I don't know. What was the evidence you're talking about that made it so much better?
00:44:22
There was Betsy's blood on the towel in the bathroom that was never tested. There was blood on the bottom of Russ's feet that was never tested.
00:44:34
Mind you, it turned out to be a trace amount of Russ's blood, not Betsy's. So why was it evidence at all?
00:44:44
Well, we wondered. You can't use that as an argument that he somehow was walking around in her blood if there's no evidence that suggests that it was her blood.
00:44:54
You could swab the bottoms of my feet and I can guarantee you they're not going to test positive for blood.
00:44:59
So just because there's not a large enough sample to say whose blood it is, the fact that there's blood on the bottoms of his feet is not normal.
00:45:08
It's not a normal situation. It's not evidence unless you could show that it's Betsy's blood.
00:45:14
Well, that's not true. I mean, anything, any report that you send off and any result that you get.
00:45:21
It's speculation. Whether or not there's blood on the bottoms of your feet. Look, I've probably got some blood on the bottom of my foot right now.
00:45:29
You know, if you tested my foot now, you'd probably find a couple of alleles of blood.
00:45:33
But it wouldn't mean I killed somebody. No, I think it would be another brick in the layer of bricks.
00:45:39
Bricks of evidence, that is. one of the biggest of which turned up just days before the trial.
00:45:46
It was a letter found on Betsy's laptop addressed to Pam, but never sent. What did it say?
00:45:54
I'm scared to go home. I'm scared of Russ. He started putting a pillow over my face saying,
00:46:00
this is what it feels like when you die. I want to give you the insurance money.
00:46:05
Pam had mentioned this letter to detectives just after Betsy's murder. She was at tennis last week and she said she typed me an email.
00:46:16
Maybe if you guys can find that letter she was going to send me. It looked bad for Russ.
00:46:22
For a minute, until the defense called the computer expert who concluded the letter was written on a different computer
00:46:30
and then transferred onto Betsy's computer the day before Pam became the beneficiary of Betsy's insurance.
00:46:37
Ms. Hupp knew what computer it was in, where on the computer it was, as well as when it was created.
00:46:44
It had to be part of Pam's plan to frame Russ, said Schwartz. And one more discovery.
00:46:50
Remember how detectives said their camera malfunctioned when they tried to capture the luminol evidence showing Russ cleaned up blood?
00:46:58
Well, what do you know? Not long before the second trial, a delivery showed up at Schwartz's office.
00:47:05
We got a CD that had 132 photos, not one of which didn't develop. And not one of which supported the state's case.
00:47:14
Which is why we didn't see him in the first trial. But they certainly showed up in the second trial, which, by the way, was by judge alone, no jury.
00:47:24
And no Pam either. Neither side called her to testify. But Schwartz was able to present evidence to establish Pam as an alternate suspect.
00:47:32
when the time came for the judge to make his decision. I'm sure I was holding my breath, you know,
00:47:39
and just standing as straight as I could. It seemed like an eternity. And then the judge said,
00:47:44
I find you not guilty like a heavy weight lifted off my shoulders. The judge condemned the investigation as rather disturbing,
00:47:53
said it raised more questions than answers. Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! The possibility ever occurred to you that you have fallen hook, line and sinker for every dodge and every ruse that Pam has put out there to try to make it look like Russ committed that murder and not her.
00:48:13
That maybe it's you who are the dupe. I've been duped before over the last decade.
00:48:21
So, yeah, I wouldn't surprise me at all to think that I've been duped. All I can tell you is I can only base my decisions off of my training, my experience, my education, and my moral compass.
00:48:36
Shortly after Russ was acquitted, Betsy's daughters were back in court, fighting Pam for the proceeds of their mother's life insurance.
00:48:45
And on the stand, Pam was very Pam. What did I just say? I had a sack of cash. Am I not clear?
00:48:54
What was your answer? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What was your answer?
00:48:59
Whoa, whoa, whoa. It was very bizarre. They had her get on the stand, and she's just waving her arms, like, and the judge is letting her do all that.
00:49:12
But in the end, Mariah and her sister lost their case. The documentation supported Pam.
00:49:20
There it was. Yep. Had to be disappointing. Yeah, I wonder how the judge feels now.
00:49:27
Good question. Pam was all smiles as she left the courthouse and walked past our camera and said,
00:49:34
We're done. Say hi to Kathy. Say hi to Kathy? Kathy happened to be our Dateline producer.
00:49:41
We thought perhaps that was the last we'd see or hear from Pam. But no, it certainly was not.
00:49:50
Another murder was coming. Coming up... Hey, hello, there's someone breaking in my house. Help!
00:49:59
Pam Hupp reports an intruder. He was pounding on the door, and once it flew open, that's when I shot him.
00:50:06
And I just kept shooting him. 911, where's your emergency? It was August 2016. O'Fallon, Missouri.
00:50:26
Hey, hello. There's someone working in my house. Help. What's the address you're at?
00:50:31
Do you want me to get your wife? No, I'm not getting in the car with you. No, what's your address?
00:50:37
The woman on the phone was Pam Hupp. And moments later, the man you heard briefly in the background
00:50:43
was dead. And in short order, Pam was sitting with police trying to explain that she had no choice.
00:50:51
That man, whoever he was, attacked her while she sat in her own car in her own driveway.
00:50:57
And obviously he'd been brought here to kill her. I think I was like, who are you? Get out of my car, blah, blah, blah.
00:51:03
And he goes, bitch, you go, we're going to the bank, we're getting Russ's money.
00:51:06
Russ's money? That's when the man pulled out the knife, she said, held it to her throat, kept yelling.
00:51:13
Somehow, said Pam, she was able to knock the knife out of the man's hand. And then she jumped out of her car and ran into her house.
00:51:20
the man in hot pursuit. I ran in the bedroom from where I got my gun and I'd stand right there and he was pounding on the door
00:51:27
and once it flew open, that's when I shot him. And I just kept shooting him. How many times did you say you pulled the trigger?
00:51:35
I unloaded the whole gun. Clear as day, you can hear the gunshots on the 911 tape
00:51:42
as Pam killed the guy. As Pam told that story, the unidentified man was lying dead in her house.
00:51:51
But who brought him there, they asked. What was the most distinctive thing about the driver that you remember?
00:51:57
Dark hair. It was kind of like a buzz cut. And dark skin. Which sounded a lot like Russ Faria.
00:52:07
Lieutenant Brian Hilke of the O'Fallon PD took a good look at the crime scene. Immediately upon entering through the garage,
00:52:14
there's a garage door that leads into the house. That's where the gentleman was that had been shot, laying right there.
00:52:21
The man had no identification on him, but there was a note in his pocket. It said, get Hup in car, take to bank.
00:52:30
The note specifically said, get Russ's money. Should be $100,000 to $150,000. Take Hup back to house.
00:52:38
And then dispose of her. Make it look like Russ's wife. Make sure knife is sticking out of neck.
00:52:45
Also in the man's pocket. Nine $100 bills. Had Pam Hopp on that steamy suburban afternoon
00:52:53
foiled a crude homicidal plot by Russ Faria? An attempt to get back Betsy's insurance money
00:53:01
and then kill Pam? Cops reached out to Russ. It was a different police force this time.
00:53:09
Did they ask you some pointed questions? They did. He gave handwriting samples, DNA, fingerprints.
00:53:16
Mr. Faria was very cooperative. He gave us a statement. We were able to establish and confirm his alibi.
00:53:23
They thanked Russ and let him go. Investigators who'd been searching Pam's house
00:53:28
found some cash in her bedroom, including a $100 bill linked by serial numbers to some of the cash in the dead man's pocket.
00:53:37
As if somebody went to the bank, got a whole bunch of $100 bills, and they were all in sequence.
00:53:42
Yes. The chances of that happening in a vacuum, if you will, are astronomical. But the urgent question, who was the guy Pam shot to death?
00:53:54
Since there was no ID on him they sent his prints out for a database comparison and discovered that his name was Lewis Gumpenberger He was 33 years old lived with his mother in an apartment complex 13 miles from Pam house
00:54:11
The suspect had been in an automobile accident, had a traumatic brain injury. This person was incapable of functioning at a level to do what was being purported that he had done.
00:54:24
Not only did he not have the mental capacity to perform a ransom, kidnapping, murder for hire, but he was also physically unable to do even basic things such as running.
00:54:38
No way Pam's story could be true. But how did these two come into contact? How did Lewis wind up at Pam Hupp's house?
00:54:47
A scheme low and cruel, it turned out, and so devious it caught us completely off guard.
00:54:57
Coming up, Chronicle of a Death Foretold. I believe you see him in the passenger seat going to his death.
00:55:05
He's a ghost-like figure in the passenger seat of her vehicle before he becomes an actual ghost.
00:55:11
When Dateline continues. Murder investigations are so often achingly slow and take months, years.
00:55:31
But not after the shooting at Pam Hupp's house. That was different. Tim Lomar is the St. Charles County prosecuting attorney.
00:55:39
Each and every day, a new lead developed. This was going very quickly. Very quickly.
00:55:45
And very early on... We received a call from St. Charles County Police that they had some very important and valuable information for us.
00:55:54
Oh, yes, they certainly did. Six days before Lewis was shot, they got a call from this woman.
00:56:03
Hi, yes, my name is Carol. Her name is Carol McAfee, and her story is just one more thing you couldn't make up.
00:56:10
So, of course, they brought Carol in. Do you want to have a seat right there? It happened right outside her house, she said.
00:56:17
She was with her dog, and this woman pulled up in an SUV, and this was bizarre. She's like, well, I'm from Dateline.
00:56:26
The woman also claimed to be from Chicago, said Carol. And then later she added, the woman said her name was Kathy, just like the producer of this very story.
00:56:37
She's like, I'd like to offer you the opportunity to record a soundbite for Dateline for $1,000.
00:56:40
cash, no taxes, so there's no paper trail on Uncle Sam. I said, really? She says, yeah.
00:56:48
Just an aside, by the way, we don't pay for soundbites or interviews. We just don't.
00:56:53
Carol said she figured that, and while she's naturally a skeptical person, she told us, she was also curious.
00:57:00
So she agreed. Got in the car. And then the woman started driving in a direction that just didn't seem right.
00:57:09
And that's when I was like, okay, I probably ought to get out of this car. So they returned.
00:57:14
She hopped out and told the woman, sorry, count me out. Carol gave the police a description.
00:57:20
She was short, chunky. The look on her face, she had a permanent, like, grin, smile.
00:57:26
Like, it was just weird. Smirk. Yeah. And when detectives showed Carol a photo lineup, she was confident.
00:57:37
Okay, yeah. Fascinating tale. Except, as you may have noticed, Carol had cameras on her house.
00:57:47
And one of them got a good look at the woman's license plate. Pam Hopp's license plate.
00:57:52
Now they were getting somewhere. It was pretty obvious Pam was using our identity to troll for a victim.
00:58:00
She must have used the very same ruse to pick up the vulnerable Louis Gumpenberger.
00:58:05
But to prove that, it was going to take more than speculation. So Detective McLean submitted an emergency search warrant to Google,
00:58:13
requesting a location history for Pam's phone. And I get the data, and I pull it into Google Earth to plot it.
00:58:23
And up popped dozens of tiny pins. I can see when she left the house, I can see everywhere she went.
00:58:31
And as I scroll in and scroll in, I stopped. There's a pin on his apartment complex.
00:58:41
Wow. There's your proof. Clear evidence that Pam's phone was at Lewis Gumbetberger's apartment,
00:58:48
meaning Pam herself must have been there too, but they had to know for sure. We just flooded the entire route for any possible camera footage.
00:58:58
And if Google said she was there and there was a camera, she was there. But one particular bit told the tale.
00:59:06
A camera on a bakery on the route from Lewis's apartment to Pam's house. And they had video. It's very grainy. It's tough to see.
00:59:15
But there in Pam's car was Lewis Gumpenberger. At least it sure looked like it to them.
00:59:22
I believe you see him in the passenger seat going to his death. It's eerie. He's a ghost-like figure in the passenger seat of her vehicle before he becomes an actual ghost.
00:59:34
With all that evidence... I think it's time to take her into custody. A week after Pam shot Louis Gumbinberger to death, they slapped on the cuffs, put her in their car, and told her she was under arrest for murder.
00:59:49
When we were explaining to her what was transpiring that you being arrested for murder we have a mountain of evidence and you not getting away with this Her only statement to me was I a little cold Could you turn down the AC
01:00:06
So cold, said Prosecutor Lomar, Pam carefully, deliberately stalked, lied to, and then killed Lewis Gumpenberger, all to implicate Russ.
01:00:18
I think the whole point was to point the figure back at him, to show that, hey, I'm right after all.
01:00:26
I had nothing to do with that case, and look how bad he wants me to go down for it.
01:00:31
Bad enough to hire somebody to kill me. That's what it was all about. Right after detectives arrested Pam, they sat down to begin their formal interview with her, and she quickly asked for her lawyer.
01:00:43
I'd like him to be called now. But then she did something completely unexpected.
01:00:48
After the detectives left the room to make arrangements, Pam spotted a pen behind her water bottle,
01:00:54
then reached for the bottle, pulled it with the pen, palmed it, tucked it into her pants, and asked to go to the bathroom.
01:01:04
It was a moment before they realized she was stabbing herself. You never want anyone to die on your watch, and especially knowing that there was a press conference in about 30 minutes.
01:01:19
I really didn't want to lead into the press conference with, oh, and by the way, Pam Huff killed herself.
01:01:24
Indeed. Oh, indeed. Coming up, Pam in the slammer. Will it humble her? She tried to put inmates against each other.
01:01:35
She would say, did you hear what so-and-so said about you? It was like a mind game every day for her.
01:01:40
Pam Huff did not manage to kill herself with the big pen she sneaked from that police interview room when she was charged with murder.
01:02:00
Did she really want to kill herself? I don't think she did. I think she's too much of a coward for that.
01:02:05
We came to find out later that the injuries were mostly superficial. So, Prosecutor Lomar proceeded with his press conference, announcing the charges.
01:02:14
This time I'd like to briefly outline the facts. Pam's former neighbor, Barbara, watched in disbelief.
01:02:23
I said, who was this person that I knew? Because she wasn't like that. Why would she do such a thing?
01:02:32
Pam's incident with the pen landed her in the suicide watch unit of the St. Charles County Jail.
01:02:39
And that is where a corrections officer, who asked to remain anonymous, got to know her.
01:02:45
I remember just seeing her sit in her cell and with just kind of a blank stare on her face.
01:02:52
No crying, no remorse, just kind of cold. That is, cold at first, but when other inmates arrived?
01:03:01
She kind of acted as though she was in charge. She often tried to put inmates against each other.
01:03:07
She would say, did you hear what so-and-so said about you earlier? And it wasn't true, but she was always trying to stir the pot.
01:03:17
To what end? She kind of lived for that. It was like a mind game every day for her with the officers and the inmates.
01:03:25
This officer watched over Pam's unit for three years. Got to know her pretty well.
01:03:32
A master manipulator. Very narcissistic and just cold. There was no sign of empathy or anything for her family or other inmates.
01:03:46
Prosecutor Tim Lomar decided to seek the death penalty in Pam's case. Her trial was both highly anticipated and delayed.
01:03:55
Delayed and delayed. Which gave Pam plenty of time to think about things. So, when the prosecutor dangled a possible deal,
01:04:05
Pam called her husband Mark to talk it over. All calls are recorded, of course. Hello.
01:04:12
Hello. Hey, what are you doing? Pam told Mark she was convinced she couldn't get a fair trial.
01:04:18
There was just too much out there about her. I had been dealing with that for years.
01:04:22
in the paper, constantly, in magazines, date writing. We go out there and pick a jury.
01:04:29
They already know. I'm going to be sitting there going, yeah, this cycle. You know that.
01:04:34
I would probably think that. Though she said she shot Lewis Gumpenberger in self-defense,
01:04:39
she was thinking maybe she should take that deal. Mark wasn't so sure. Kind of in a no-win situation, you know?
01:04:48
Well, I don't know how it's not a win situation if you did what you did for the right reason.
01:04:57
Right. And I did. I don't know how you can be held accountable for that, if it was me.
01:05:07
I would not admit something I didn't do. And in the end, she didn't admit to anything.
01:05:13
She took what they call an Alford plea, meaning she agreed to plead guilty because the state had enough evidence to convict her,
01:05:22
but not because she admitted to it. It's not kind of a half-hearted victory? It leaves a bad taste in some people's mouths, sure.
01:05:31
I would love to have her stand up there and explain in great detail what she was doing and why she did it and how she feels about it now.
01:05:38
But Prosecutor Lomar had come to believe Pam would never do that. And with the extraordinary cost of a death penalty case,
01:05:46
Lomar reasoned that saving the money and putting Pam away for life anyway made sense.
01:05:52
Russ and his cousin Mary were in the courtroom to witness the plea And they barely recognized Pam The best description of her I could come up with was the old hag that gave Snow White the apple
01:06:05
She looks a bit like that now. She still had that grin on her face. She still had that arrogance about her.
01:06:11
Two months later, the judge gave her the mandatory sentence for murder. Life in prison, without the possibility of parole.
01:06:19
Plus, 30 years for armed criminal action. the same charges that I got charged with.
01:06:27
I always wanted her to get the same sentence that I did. Around town, the blame wasn't put only on Pam.
01:06:35
People wondered. Do you think that had Lincoln County done an adequate job, a Lewis Gumpensberger would still be alive today?
01:06:43
I think that's a... goes without saying. Easy? Easy answer. Do they have blood on their hands?
01:06:50
Same easy answer. Of course. What would Leah Askey have to say about that? Coming up, we're about to find out.
01:07:02
There are some people who say that Lewis Kumpenberger would be alive today had you concentrated on Pam Hupp and not on Russ Freer.
01:07:10
One has nothing to do with the other. When Dateline continues. Lewis Gumpenberger was purely collateral damage in Pam's scheme.
01:07:30
So did that finally change Leah Askey's mind about Pam Hupp? No, it made me think that's a terrible tragedy, and she obviously lost her marbles.
01:07:44
She snapped. She's definitely gone off the deep end. I think that probably a lot of people would agree that there is some stuff about Pam, which is not entirely normal. But the fact that she would kill that person and try to frame the man who was acquitted of the murder of his wife, that must have made you change your mind about this case.
01:08:08
It definitely made me think, you know, wow, she's capable of more than I would have given her credit for.
01:08:20
There are some people who even to this day say that you have blood on your hands, that Lewis Kumpenberger would be alive today had you concentrated on Pam Hupp and not on Russ Freer.
01:08:32
I don't have any culpability and anything to do with Lewis Kumpenberger. It is a terrible tragedy. But I was elected to do a job and I did my job and a jury convicted him.
01:08:49
One has nothing to do with the other. It was never my job to seek out a suspect.
01:08:57
And so I couldn't have done anything more than what I did other than not prosecute, which I would have not prosecuted had I not believed that the person we were prosecuting was correct at the time.
01:09:14
But Russ Faria, who'd spent three and a half years behind bars for a murder he didn't commit, begged to disagree.
01:09:22
We filed a lawsuit that they trampled all over my human rights. He sued Lincoln County, as well as the three main investigators, and Prosecutor Leah Askey.
01:09:33
But Lincoln County and Askey were eventually excused from the lawsuit. Why couldn't you go after her?
01:09:40
Prosecutorial immunity, which basically lets prosecutors do whatever they want. They can ruin people's lives, send you to prison for life.
01:09:49
In the end, it was a little like Pam's plea. The insurance company covering the detectives paid Russ $2 million.
01:09:56
But no one admitted any wrongdoing. At the end of the day, they paid us, so you can take from that what you will.
01:10:04
In 2018, the judge in Ross Faria's first trial and prosecutor Leah Askey were both voted out of office.
01:10:13
The man who beat the prosecutor is Mike Wood. He won in a landslide. During his campaign, he posted videos like this one, promising to reopen the Betsy Faria murder case.
01:10:27
Certainly we want to seek justice. We want answers for the family. And that's my job to try to seek those.
01:10:34
The Gumpenberger case, with Pam's apparent aim to frame Russ again, provided the prosecutor with some ammunition.
01:10:41
If you're willing to stage a killing of someone in order to attempt to deflect or cover up issues that were in a neighboring county,
01:10:51
it ought to lead you to believe that if you're willing to kill somebody here, potentially you're willing to kill somebody somewhere else.
01:11:00
A reasonable assumption, perhaps, subject to investigation. But some believe there could be a third victim.
01:11:08
It is Pam Hupp who was the last one with her. We know what she's capable of. Joel Schwartz was talking about Pam's own mother, Shirley Newman.
01:11:17
Halloween Day, 2013. Shirley was found dead on the ground below her third floor unit at a senior living facility in suburban St. Louis.
01:11:27
It appeared she might have tripped and fallen through the railings on her balcony.
01:11:32
Oddly enough, 16 months earlier, when Pam was talking to the lead detective building a murder case against Russ Faria,
01:11:39
She said Betsy's $150,000 of life insurance was too paltry to be any kind of motive for murder for her.
01:11:48
If I really hate to say it, wanted money, my mom's worth a half a million that I get when she dies.
01:11:54
If I really wanted money, there was an easier way than trying to combat. that's physically stronger than me, I'm just saying.
01:12:02
My mom's worth half a million? Pam was the last known person with her mom, and as she left the retirement home, she told the staff
01:12:12
her mom would not be coming down for dinner or breakfast in the morning. They found Shirley's body the next afternoon.
01:12:20
Of course, the police came, they took pictures, there was an autopsy, but it was ruled an accident.
01:12:27
Three years later in 2016, we did some poking around, and this was curious. That autopsy revealed that Shirley had about 14 times the recommended dose for a woman her age of Ambien, or its equivalent in her system.
01:12:43
So we have six spindles. What's more, we talked to a structural engineer named Justin Hall,
01:12:49
who said it was impossible for a person to have fallen and broken through the railing like that.
01:12:53
and after performing his own demonstration, Hall figured it would take at least 2,000 pounds of force
01:13:00
to bend or break the spindles of the railing. Could that possibly have been an accident?
01:13:05
No. No way? No way. That's what we've proven right here. Pam has denied she had anything to do with her mother's death.
01:13:15
The estate was divided among Pam and her siblings and she received about $120,000,
01:13:21
not the half million she boasted she'd get. At this point now, she's been around a minimum of three people who died suspiciously,
01:13:29
and she's been the last person with them. But another shoe was about to drop. A reopened investigation was closing in on Pam.
01:13:40
Coming up, a dramatic new development of the case of Betsy Faria, and then outrage from Prosecutor Askey.
01:13:49
What were you thinking as you watched it? I was thinking I've been duped. The End
01:14:24
Finally. I'm pleased to announce that we have some significant information to give
01:14:31
in the investigation into the death of Betsy Faria. Significant indeed. Russ was there, and Cousin Mary, Joel Schwartz too, eager to hear the news.
01:14:43
We have filed murder charges in the first degree against Pamela Hupp in the stabbing death of Betsy Faria.
01:14:51
There it was. Pam Hupp charged with murdering her good friend Betsy. Prosecutor Wood said most of the facts were available all along
01:15:01
and make a strong circumstantial case. Pamela Hupp was the last person to see Betsy alive Cell phone records indicate that she was at or near the home at the time of the death She lied about her whereabouts She lied about the details
01:15:15
And lastly, she murdered an innocent man in cold blood to prevent herself from being considered a suspect.
01:15:21
But the charge against Pam Hupp wasn't the only revelation to come out of the press conference.
01:15:26
Prosecutor Wood also reviewed the initial investigation, and he said this. This was one of the poorest examples of investigative work that I, as well as my team, have ever encountered,
01:15:37
driven largely by ego, working toward an agenda rather than truth. And so, said Wood, he'd launch an investigation into possible prosecutorial and police misconduct,
01:15:49
not just for mistakes, he said. Worse than that. Information came to my attention from three separate and independent sources.
01:15:58
that witnesses were asked to lie on the stand by the prosecutor in that case. Those witnesses who came forward are law enforcement who worked on the investigation.
01:16:10
They believed that the prosecutor was asking them to testify a certain way in order to support theories that the state had
01:16:17
that investigators did not believe conformed with the facts of their findings. So let me understand. Leah Askey, her involvement would be directing the investigation towards the alleged guilt of Russ Faria and away from Pam Hopp.
01:16:33
Absolutely. I could say that 100 percent. Leah Askey, the ex-prosecutor, did not attend her successor's press conference in person, but she certainly saw it.
01:16:44
What were you thinking as you watched it? I was thinking I've been duped. By? By Mike Wood.
01:16:52
No possibility anything he was saying was true? Absolutely no possibility that anything he was saying with regard to me was true.
01:17:00
Did you ask anyone to lie? Absolutely not. Not on this case, not on any case. I wouldn't, and I haven't.
01:17:09
And the allegation that the investigation and prosecution were botched? Blatantly not true.
01:17:16
All politics? Politics and lack of integrity is what I would say. You still believe he's guilty, don't you?
01:17:26
I have never been presented with any information that suggests that someone else committed this crime.
01:17:39
I mean, I just haven't. So there it was. The one-time prosecutor has not changed her mind.
01:17:47
But about one thing in particular, she has. It's the thing that cannot change. If only I had never run for prosecuting attorney.
01:17:57
Life would be very different today. The experience in general has been taxing. It's been difficult for me, for my family.
01:18:09
But life goes on. She remarried goes by Leah Chaney now and opened her own law practice And business is great i always believe god has us right where we supposed to be and this is where I supposed to be and I thankful that it worked out this way
01:18:30
Some of Betsy's family feel misled. They believed what Askey and the detectives told them,
01:18:36
and for years, Betsy's mother, Janet, remained convinced Russ killed her daughter.
01:18:41
But after Pam Hupp was charged, Joel Schwartz received a phone call from Janet. She was crying, and she made me promise to tell Russ Faria that she was sorry.
01:18:56
And she used expletives from Miss Askey as well as Ryan McCarrick, and she couldn't believe that they convinced her and brainwashed her into the fact
01:19:06
that Russ Faria, her son-in-law, who she did love, had committed this horrific crime.
01:19:11
By the way, we tried to contact Detective Ryan McCarrick, but he did not respond.
01:19:19
Betsy's daughter, Mariah, who was a teenager, gave in to pressure, she said, to testify against Russ twice.
01:19:26
He's hoping the real killer will finally be brought to justice. Do you think you'll want to attend that trial?
01:19:32
I'm going to for my mom. Mariah is a mom of two. Since we interviewed her, she gave birth to a daughter named her Elizabeth Kay after her mother.
01:19:43
They're calling her Libby. If you could speak to Pam Hupp right now, do you know what you would say to her?
01:19:52
I don't know what I'd say to her, but I know what I'd say to Lincoln County. Which is what?
01:19:58
Well, Pam Hupp might have took my mom, but Lincoln County took my dad away from me and ruined our relationship.
01:20:12
That hurts, doesn't it? Yeah. I was a daddy's girl, and my sister was a mommy's girl, so...
01:20:23
It's a bit hard. Do you think there's a chance that this can be repaired? I hope one day.
01:20:37
I think he feels betrayed, which I don't blame him, but a lot of it was out of my control.
01:20:47
You still feel pretty betrayed by that, huh? Some cuts go very deep, yes. I mean, I raised them from a very young age, so it was really disheartening to see and hear the things that they said and did.
01:21:04
And, you know, it still hurts sometimes. Last summer, a shackled and now divorced Pam Hupp was led into the Lincoln County Justice Center and inside the courtroom sat in the appointed place.
01:21:19
We're on the record and we'll call the case of State of Missouri v. Pamela Hupp.
01:21:23
The judge read the charge murder in the first degree Her not guilty plea was entered though she herself said not a word The state is seeking the death penalty
01:21:35
A case this gruesome, this heinous, was as bad as it could possibly get, and that the
01:21:42
penalty associated with something that horrible needed to justify that. Oh, and by the way, Prosecutor Wood's new investigation has recently been expanded to
01:21:54
include the death of Pam Hupp's mother. There's no trial date yet in Betsy's case, but Russ is,
01:22:02
well, let him say it. I am excited to take the stand and put the truth out there in open court
01:22:12
and do my part to help punish those responsible for what had happened. These days, Russ works at a motorcycle shop
01:22:22
Lives a quiet and modest life I never thought that my life would be interesting enough
01:22:28
To make a movie, let alone a miniseries about Yet it was An NBC's limited series starring Renee Zellweger
01:22:37
And one more thing Russ didn't expect Remember Carol, the woman Pam Hopp tried to lure into her car?
01:22:46
How did you two meet? And, well, that kind of goes back to the person we've all been talking about, Pam Hope.
01:22:54
Carol just so happened to live across the street from one of Russ's game night friends.
01:22:59
And after Louis Gumpenberger's murder, police were over at Carol's house. My friend informed me why that police detail was there.
01:23:07
And so I knew that this person was involved in the case. And eventually, my friend introduced us.
01:23:15
We literally hung out every day for about two years after that, before we started dating.
01:23:22
Do you two have news to share? Well, a little bit. Back in October, we kind of got engaged.
01:23:35
But the two are in no rush because... He has unfinished business that he has to take care of for himself.
01:23:44
and I'll stand beside him as I always have through that. That unfinished business, of course,
01:23:50
is convicting the person responsible for killing Betsy. All this time, Russ has kept a small urn,
01:23:58
some of Betsy's ashes. So, in a way, she'll still be with him. Because this is all about her.
01:24:06
It's not about me. It's not about Pam Hupp. It's not about crooked police. It's about getting justice for her.
01:24:13
at long last, getting justice for Betsy. That's all for this edition of Dateline.
01:24:23
We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News.
01:24:30
I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.