Pamela Hupp

 

Pamela Marie Hupp (née Neumann; born October 10, 1958) is an American woman who in 2016 murdered Louis Gumpenberger in her home in O'Fallon, Missouri, a crime for which she is serving a life sentence. The O'Fallon Police Department believe Hupp murdered Gumpenberger as part of a plot to implicate Russ Faria in the 2011 murder of his wife, Betsy Faria, a crime for which he was convicted in 2013, in part due to testimony from Hupp, and subsequently exonerated in 2015 after evidence implicating Hupp as the perpetrator of the murder was permitted to be submitted. The murder of Betsy Faria has never been solved; the investigation was reopened in June 2019. Hupp has also been investigated in connection with the 2013 death of her mother, Shirley Neumann, which was originally judged to be an accident before being changed to "undetermined" in November 2017.

The Betsy Faria murder and the conviction of Russ Faria was extensively reported upon by the local St. Louis station Fox 2 KTVI, with reporter Chris Hayes attending every day of Russ Faria's first trial and producing more than half a dozen television reports before national media picked up on the story. The murder went on to be featured in five Dateline NBC episodes airing from 2014 to 2019, with NBC News Studios announcing plans for a scripted television series based on the case.

Early life

Born on October 10, 1958, Neumann grew up in Dellwood, Missouri, attending Riverview Gardens High School. Hupp held several jobs in the life insurance industry; on two occasions, she was fired for forging signatures. In 2001, Hupp and her husband began living in O'Fallon, Missouri, where she worked as an administrator for State Farm, as well as flipping houses as a side venture. By 2010, Hupp had stopped working and was claiming disability benefits for back, leg, and neck pain.

In 2011, Hupp and Betsy Faria reportedly collected money for a family impacted by cancer. Though never investigated by police, it was later found in a report by Fox 2 News that the family did not know about the collection. Fox 2 News reporter Chris Hayes took his findings in 2014 to Lincoln County authorities, but they did no further investigation. There was no evidence to suggest Betsy Faria knew the fundraiser was questionable, with her friends reporting Betsy saying she was excited to be helping a struggling family, even though she herself was dying. Betsy's friend Kathleen Meyer told Fox 2 News, "this was going to be a legacy for her to leave, something like this behind in her memory."

Criminal accusations and convictions

Investigation into the murder of Betsy Faria

Death of Betsy Faria

Elizabeth "Betsy" Kay Faria (1969–2011) was a coworker of Pam Hupp at State Farm. She lived in Troy, Missouri, with her husband, Russell "Russ" Scott Faria, and two daughters from a previous relationship. In 2010, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. In October 2011, she learned that the cancer had metastasized to her liver and was terminal.

On December 22, 2011, unbeknownst to her family, Betsy Faria changed the sole beneficiary of her $150,000 State Farm life insurance policy from her husband to Hupp. Hupp originally claimed that Betsy Faria had asked her to give the money to her daughters when they were older, before later claiming that Betsy Faria had wanted her to keep the money for herself. Betsy Faria's daughters launched a legal challenge against Hupp and her husband to attempt to claim the life insurance policy in 2014; it was dismissed in 2016, despite Hupp admitting that she had lied about what she intended to do with the life insurance proceeds Prosecutors speculated that her husband had been angered by her actions, giving him a motive for her murder. Russ Faria remained the beneficiary on a separate $100,000 policy.

On December 27, 2011, Betsy Faria underwent chemotherapy at the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center and then visited her mother's house, after which she was driven home by Hupp, making Hupp the last confirmed person to have seen her alive. Betsy Faria had originally been scheduled to be driven home by a family friend until Hupp had driven to her mother's house and insisted on driving her home. Hupp claimed that she had dropped Betsy Faria off at approximately 19:00. Russ Faria spent the evening at his friend Michael Corbin's home watching films until 21:00, then drove to an Arby's in Lake St. Louis before returning home. At 21:40 that evening, Russ Faria called 9-1-1 and reported that he had returned to his home to find his wife had committed suicide. Betsy Faria had been stabbed over 55 times with her arms almost entirely severed and the murder weapon, a serrated kitchen knife, left lodged in her neck. A second knife was found under a pillow on the couch she had been lying on. First responders arrived at 21:49 and concluded that Betsy Faria had been dead for at least one hour and likely longer.

Conviction of Russ Faria

Suspicion swiftly fell on Russ Faria, and he was arrested on the day following the murder. His initial assertion that Betsy Faria had killed herself was considered to be "ludicrous" by first responders who observed her body. A search of the house by police found a bloodstained pair of slippers in his closet. His volatile emotional state was regarded as "suspicious" by police. He ostensibly failed a polygraph test administered by police. When interviewed by police, Hupp claimed that Russ Faria had a "violent temper", that he was a heavy drinker, that he had threatened Betsy Faria, and that Betsy Faria had been considering leaving him. At the behest of Hupp, police searched Betsy Faria's laptop and found a document in which Betsy Faria purportedly expressed fears that her husband would murder her (it was later revealed that the document was written in Word 97, software that was not installed on the laptop, and was the only document on the laptop with "author unknown"). On January 4, 2012, the day after Betsy Faria's funeral, Russ Faria was charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action. As he was unable to meet the bail of $250,000, he was held in the Lincoln County jail until his trial began on November 18, 2013.

During Russ Faria's trial, his defense attorney, Joel Schwartz, argued that the testimonies of the four friends he had been visiting and evidence of him making purchases from multiple different stores over the course of the evening demonstrated that the timeline did not allow for him to commit the murder, particularly given there were no traces of blood on his body or clothes. The prosecuting attorney, Leah Askey, countered by arguing that Russ Faria's friends were providing a false alibi and that they had colluded with him to carry out the murder. The trial judge, Chris Mennemeyer, refused to allow Schwartz to present evidence implicating Hupp as an alternative suspect, including cellphone records showing that Hupp had been in the vicinity of the Faria house for up to 30 minutes after the time she had claimed to drop her off at or the fact of Hupp being named as sole beneficiary of the life insurance policy shortly before the murder. On November 21, 2013, Russ Faria was convicted on both counts. On December 22, 2013 he was sentenced to life plus 30 years imprisonment and sent to the Jefferson City Correctional Center. Although a central premise of the prosecution's case was that Russ Faria's four friends had been complicit in the murder, no charges were ever brought against them; the four men were not aware they had been accused in prosecuting attorney Leah Askey's closing arguments until Fox 2 KTVI reporter Chris Hayes informed them.

Acquittal of Russ Faria and reopening of investigation

In January 2014, Fox 2 KTVI partnered with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to explore the case. In February 2014, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an exposé into the case. The exposé revealed that the $150,000 received by Hupp had been kept by her rather than put into a trust for Betsy Faria's daughters and that Hupp had made many contradictory statements during her interviews with police, initially claiming she had not entered the Faria house after driving her home and then revising this account twice. TV/newspaper joint investigative reports featured an interview with the 9-1-1 operator who had taken Russ Faria's call, who stated that she believed his hysterical state upon making the call was genuine. The exposé also claimed that prosecuting attorney Leah Askey had been in a relationship with Mike Lang, the then-captain of investigations for the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office and one of the investigating officers in the Betsy Faria murder case, who testified against Russ Faria in his trial. Two members of the jury in Russ Faria's trial approached the media to flag concerns that this information had been withheld.

Schwartz appealed the verdict. In February 2015, the Missouri Court of Appeals sent the case back to the 45th Circuit Court for a hearing on a retrial. After judge Chris Mennemeyer recused herself from the case, in June 2015, 22nd Circuit Court judge Steven Ohmer granted a motion by Schwartz for a new bench trial based on the evidence that had emerged, with Russ Faria released on bond pending the trial. During the retrial, Schwartz was allowed to introduce evidence implicating Hupp as the perpetrator. CSI agent Amy Buettner, who had examined the crime scene, stated that she believed the bloodied slippers found in Russ Faria's closet had not stepped in blood. During the trial, police officers disclosed that Hupp - who was not called to testify in the trial - had claimed in interviews conducted in June that she and Betsy Faria had been in a sexual relationship. Hupp also stated to police that she had "remembered" seeing Russ Faria and another man in a car parked in a side street outside the Faria home as she drove Betsy Faria home. On November 7, 2015, Faria's conviction was overturned; he had been imprisoned for slightly under four years.

In July 2016, Russ Faria lodged a civil rights lawsuit against Leah Askey and three officers of the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office on the basis that they had "fabricated evidence, ignored exonerating evidence and failed to investigate the other obvious suspect." Meanwhile, Fox 2 KTVI began finding other problematic cases involving the judge in the Faria case, reporting on other questionable rulings in 2014 and again in 2016. In January 2017, Judge Chris Mennemeyer was suspended by the Supreme Court of Missouri for misconduct unrelated to the Faria case. In August 2018, both Mennemeyer and Leah Chaney (formerly Leah Askey) were voted out of office, with the handling of the murder case and subsequent trial cited as a major contributor. The decision not to investigate Pam Hupp as the potential perpetrator of the murder had been widely criticized; a former employee of the Lincoln County Prosecutor's Office stated in November 2016, "There were several of us that kept thinking, why are we not pursuing Pam Hupp? [...] They were just locked down on Russ." In September 2019, federal judge for the Eastern District of Missouri John Andrew Ross dismissed Chaney from the lawsuit on the basis of prosecutorial immunity.

In August 2016, the Lincoln County prosecuting attorney and Lincoln County Sheriff's Office issued a press release stating that they were cooperating with the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri in a review of the Betsy Faria murder case. In January 2018, attorneys acting for Russ Faria depositioned Hupp as part of Faria's lawsuit against Lincoln County, asking her 92 questions relating to the murder of Betsy Faria. Hupp declined to answer the questions. In response to the refusal, Faria's attorneys sought a court order to force a response. In June 2018, 11th Circuit Court judge Jon Cunningham ruled that prosecutors in the trial of Hupp for the murder of Louis Gumpenberger could present evidence relating to Faria's murder. In June 2019, following Hupp's entering of an Alford guilty plea to the murder of Gumpenberger, Lincoln County prosecuting attorney Mike Wood announced that he would be reopening the Betsy Faria murder investigation. In October 2019, Wood requested a case review by the Major Case Squad. In March 2020, Russ Faria received a settlement worth over $2 million. In August 2020, Rick Harrell - the new sheriff of Lincoln County, Missouri - stated that the Betsy Faria murder case had inspired him to run for sheriff.

Investigation into the death of Shirley Neumann

Shirley Mae Neumann (née Russell; 1935–2013) was the mother of Pam Hupp and three other children. She graduated from St. Louis Community College–Florissant Valley and the University of Missouri–St. Louis, subsequently working as a teacher in Jennings and Ferguson, Missouri. Predeceased by her husband in 2000, by 2013 she was living alone in a third-floor apartment in the Lakeview Park Independent Senior Living Community in Fenton, Missouri and suffering from dementia and arthritis.

Neumann spent the night of October 29, 2013, with Hupp following a hospital visit. At approximately 17:00 on October 30, Hupp dropped her 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 14:30 on October 31, 2013. The aluminum balcony railing was broken. Following a police investigation, assistant medical examiner Raj Nanduri concluded that she had died from blunt trauma to the chest resulting from an accidental fall. An autopsy found that she had .84 micrograms of the sedative Zolpidem in her blood; over eight times the expected concentration for someone having taken a normal dose.

In November 2013, the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office received an anonymous note that suggested Hupp had murdered her mother to receive life insurance. Hupp was the last person known to have seen her mother alive. Hupp and her siblings each received approximately $120,000 of investments held by Neumann, as well as sharing a $10,000 life insurance payout. Earlier that year, prior to her mother's death, Hupp had been videotaped saying "my mom's worth half a million that I get when she dies [...] if I really wanted money, there was an easier way than trying to combat somebody that's physically stronger than me". The police reopened their investigation but after interviewing the housekeeper who had found Neumann's body and Neumann's son Michael - both of whom stated that Neumann was "unsteady" - again concluded that her death was accidental. They did not interview Hupp. In January 2014, Fox 2 KTVI journalist Chris Hayes interviewed Hupp about the death of her mother (and the murder of Betsy Faria).

In 2016, after Hupp was charged with the murder of Louis Gumpenberger, the St. Louis County Police Department police reopened the investigation. Neumann's son Michael reiterated that he believed his mother's death to have been accidental. Detective Matthew Levy attempted to get a subpoena for the location of Hupp's cellphone at the time of her mother's death but was unsuccessful. Levy also attempted to organize forensic tests on the balcony railing at the Missouri University of Science and Technology but the Lakeview Park Independent Senior Living Community refused to provide a railing for testing. Fox 2 journalists Chris Hayes and Dave Sharp worked with engineers to conduct tests on railings similar to those on the balcony.

In November 2017, Mary Case, the chief medical examiner for St. Louis County, changed the manner of Neumann's death from "accidental" to "undetermined". Case stated, "since [Neumann's] death, many things have happened that involved the daughter. And so all of that investigation, including the one in Lincoln County and the one in St. Charles, became pertinent information [...] I was no longer willing to say it could be an accident." The investigation into Neumann's death was not reopened.

In May 2018, St. Charles County Circuit Judge Jon Cunningham ruled that prosecutors in Hupp's trial for the murder of Louis Gumpenberger could not present evidence relating to Neumann's death.

Murder of Louis Gumpenberger

Louis Royse Gumpenberger (1983–2016) was a resident of St. Charles, Missouri. Following a car crash in 2005, he suffered from severe mental and physical impairments.

On August 16, 2016, Gumpenberger died after being shot five times by Hupp in her home in O'Fallon, Missouri. A note was found on his body 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. Make it look like Russ' wife. Make sure knife sticking out of neck." in return for a reward of $10,000. As Hupp had called 9-1-1 shortly before shooting Gumpenberger, the audio of the incident was recorded.

Immediately after shooting Gumpenberger, Hupp voluntarily went to the headquarters of the O'Fallon Police Department. Her first words in the recorded police 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 that Gumpenberger, armed with a knife, had jumped out of a car (driven by another person) into her driveway, accosted her while she sat in her sport utility vehicle in her garage, and demanded she drive them to a bank to retrieve "Russ' money". Hupp claimed that she had knocked the knife out of Gumpenberger's hand and then fled into her house, shooting Gumpenberger in self-defense with a Ruger LCR she kept on her nightstand after he pursued her.

The St. Charles County prosecuting attorney and the O'Fallon chief of police theorized that Hupp had lured Gumpenberger to her home by presenting herself as "Cathy", a producer for the television program Dateline NBC, and offering to pay him to reenact a 9-1-1 call, then shot him in order to implicate Russ Faria in an attempt on her life (and "take heat off her"), planting the knife and the note on his body.[56] Several pieces of evidence were identified:

Cellphone records showed that Hupp had been in Gumpenberger's neighborhood less than one hour before the shooting, contradicting 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 that a woman matching Hupp's description had approached O'Fallon resident Carol Alford posing as a Dateline NBC producer and offering her $1,000 to reenact a 9-1-1 call; security camera footage showed that the woman in question had been driving Hupp's car. A second witness, Brent Charlton, informed police that Hupp had approached him with a similar proposition.

Police investigators found nine $100 bills in Gumpenberger's pocket; a tenth $100 bill found on Hupp's dresser had a sequential serial number to four of the nine bills.

Police investigators suggested that the knife had been purchased at the Dollar Tree in O'Fallon alongside several other items found in Hupp's house.

The knife found in Hupp's car was found wedged between the passenger seat and the central console. Knives in Hupp's kitchen were similarly stored wedged between the stove and counter.

A carpet swatch found by police appeared to have been positioned to protect a rug in Hupp's home from Gumpenberger's blood.

Police investigators were skeptical that Gumpenberger's severe physical and mental impairments following his accident would have allowed him to carry out the acts Hupp described him doing.

Conviction and imprisonment

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 million. On December 16, 2016, a grand jury indicted Hupp for first-degree murder and armed criminal action. Hupp appeared in court on January 31, 2017, pleading not guilty to the charges. In March 2017, prosecutors stated that they would seek the death penalty due to the apparently arbitrary choice of Gumpenberger as the victim. In August 2018, Hupp's trial date was set for June 2019.

On June 19, 2019, Hupp entered an Alford guilty plea to the charges of first-degree murder and armed criminal action, waiving her right to a jury trial. As a condition of a deal struck with prosecutors, Hupp did not face the death penalty. She was sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole on August 12, 2019. She is serving her sentence at the Chillicothe Correctional Center in Chillicothe, Missouri. In a phonecall to her husband, Hupp claimed that she had pled guilty so her family would not have to "witness an ugly trial".

In October 2019, Gumpenberger's mother Margaret Burch filed a lawsuit for wrongful death, fraud, and misrepresentation against the incarcerated Hupp, seeking "a sum in excess of the jurisdictional limits of this court". In July 2020, Burch was awarded a wrongful death judgment of US$3 million. Burch's attorney Gary Burger subsequently filed to garnish Hupp's prison trust account, into which her $1,200 COVID-19 CARES Act relief stimulus was paid.

In September 2020, Hupp filed a motion to vacate her conviction, claiming she was pressured to take a plea. An initial hearing was scheduled for January 2021, but was postponed after it was revealed that Hupp's attorney was no longer a public defender.

In October 2020, Hupp's husband Mark Hupp filed for divorce, describing their marriage as "irretrievably broken".

Media coverage

The local St. Louis station Fox 2 KTVI broke the story, reporting continuously on the Betsy Faria murder case from December 28, 2011 to the present, generating more than 50 reports and investigations since December 2011. Fox 2 reporter Chris Hayes was the only reporter to attend Russ Faria's first trial in November 2013 and was the first to report questions about Pam Hupp that same month; upon his release from prison, Russ Faria thanked Hayes for his coverage.

The murder of Betsy Faria was the subject of five Dateline NBC episodes: "The House on Sumac Drive" (2014), "Game Night" (2015), "Return to Game Night" (2016), "Stranger Than Fiction" (2016), and "The Thing About Pam" (2019). Faria's murder has received more coverage from Dateline NBC than any other subject aside from O. J. Simpson and JonBenét Ramsey.

In July 2019, filmmaker Daniel Blake Smith announced that he was writing and producing a feature film based on the stories of Russ Faria and his defense attorney Joel Schwartz, "PROOF".

In September 2019, the murder of Louis Gumpenberger was the subject of the inaugural Dateline NBC true crime podcast. The podcast spent several weeks as one of the most popular Apple podcasts.

In October 2019, the Riverfront Times dubbed Hupp St Louis' "best local girl gone bad" of 2019, stating "few stories are quite so made-for-TV" and "the tale of Pam Hupp screams for serialization".

In May 2020, NBC News Studios and Blumhouse Television announced that they were co-producing a new scripted television series based on the murder of Betsy Faria.