Pamela Hupp

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A cancer survivor's apparent suicide becomes a small-town nightmare.

What's going on there?

I just got home from a friend town.

They went around killed himself.

There was a knife sticking out of her neck.

But when police respond to the emergency call, they're in for a surprise.

She'd been stabbed like 50 times or 55 times.

It was a lot.

Nobody stabs themselves 50 some odd times, especially not in their back.

Investigators soon find themselves in a race to solve the case before a killer strikes again.

She's like, I'd like to offer you the opportunity to record a soundbite from Dayland.

There's someone breaking in my house.

Bill, Phil.

She has this, you're never gonna get me attitude.

She pulled the trigger and continued to pull the trigger.

The polygraph operator stated that his responses were indicative of deception.

The quest for the truth unmasks a killer driven by the deadliest of all the seven sins.

It surprised me that anyone could think you could get away with it.

The beer was always cocky and confident, and I have all the answers.

Well, don't they always say pride comes before a fall?

It's two days after Christmas 2011, and most residents in Troy, Missouri are just winding down for the night.

But one 911 operator is about to field a disturbing call.

About 9:40 p.m.

on December 27th, 911 gets a call.

Who am I speaking with?

My name is Russell Faria.

Russell, what's going on there?

I just got home from a friend house

and my wife, my wife killed herself.

He's on the phone.

He's sobbing on the phone.

He's kind of wailing.

He's obviously very upset.

It's heartbreaking.

It's

a man crying and wailing about finding his wife.

He's panicking.

The 911 operator is trying to calm him down.

I need you to take a self-deep breath so I can see what's going on.

Is she breathing at all?

No.

She is not breathing.

No, no, no,

Wrestled her on the way, hon, okay?

They'll be there shortly.

When officers arrive, Russ leads them to his living room, where his wife, 42-year-old Betsy Faria, lies motionless on the floor.

They can see as soon as they get in there that Betsy Faria has died.

When the first responders came, she was cold and she was stiff to some degree.

It wasn't very bloody, but the wounds were pretty grievous.

There was a knife sticking out of her neck.

They saw the horrific injuries and thought, how could anybody look at that and just think slashing the wrist suicide?

From the very beginning, Betsy Faria, born Elizabeth K.

Meyer, was a force of nature.

Betsy was one of those people that would come in the room and light it up.

She was just always high energy, exciting personality.

Betsy was a really friendly, fun-loving person.

She was in the insurance industry for a while.

She had a DJ business on the side, tons of friends.

Betsy loved being a DJ.

Music was her passion.

She did weddings.

She did pool parties.

She could get a party started anywhere she went.

The same infectious energy that made her DJ business a success drew the eye of Russell Faria.

Russ came from an Italian family.

Just like a fun, nice guy.

Guy you like to, you know, have a beer with.

He loved that she was outgoing.

He loved that she could start a party.

She was busy 24-7.

The girl never stopped.

She had been married once before.

She had two daughters from a prior relationship.

When Russ and Betsy married in early 2000, Russ became a father to Betsy's girls, Leah and Mariah.

He was a good dad to those girls.

He might not be their biological dad, but my God, you raised somebody from one and two or three years old, you're their dad.

And he loved them.

He really did.

Betsy and Russ made a great team.

She would always tell me stories about how good he was to her.

and how he was so supportive of everything she wanted to do.

And Betsy really wanted him to to go back to school.

And then he did.

He gotten his degree in computer science, gotten a good job with the enterprise.

They found this cute little house and even though it was a bit of a ways out, Betsy just fell in love with the house.

The home was an ideal fit for their family of four.

But as with any marriage, not everything was perfect.

They'd had some ups and downs.

They'd had some fights.

They'd broken up some.

Betsy was torn because she started really thinking hard about making her marriage work and they kind of reconnected.

She had told me how, my God, I'm falling in love with him all over again.

They had a slightly tumultuous marriage, but they were back together really wholeheartedly.

In January 2010, their renewed faith in each other faced the ultimate test.

Betsy was at my house and she's like, I got to go to the doctor.

I said, what's wrong?

Oh, I have a lump.

She went and she had to have a biopsy and then she was diagnosed.

Betsy was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Betsy's chemotherapy and round-the-clock care stretched Russ to the breaking point.

Luckily, the couple's family and friends rallied around them.

Betsy and Russ were especially grateful to Betsy's friend and co-worker, Pam Hubb.

Pam grew up in Delwood, which is a sort of inner-ring suburb of St.

Louis.

She went to Rittner High School and she started dating senior year, a really cute, smart boy who was athletic and who was just wonderful.

Right after graduation, Pam and her beau received life-changing news.

That summer, Pam found out she was pregnant.

So when all her friends went off to college, Pam was home straining beats for a new baby.

Pam and her high school sweetheart married soon after.

They had a little apartment, and eventually Pam got a job waitressing.

Later, Pam went to work for an insurance agency, and Betsy was in that office.

From the moment Pam and Betsy met, the two co-workers hit it off.

Pam and Betsy were pretty close when they worked together.

And then when Betsy got cancer, I think Pam kind of became more of a presence in her life.

Betsy was really bubbly.

Pam was breezy and confident, and she would listen listen to other people's problems.

She always liked to think of herself as able to figure people out.

Pam went to chemo with Betsy.

I knew she went to tennis occasionally with Betsy.

My very first impression was like, oh, she's super nice and what a great friend to have.

After months of treatment, Betsy's doctor determined her cancer was in remission.

Russ and Betsy booked a cruise to celebrate together.

Russ was over the top excited that she was in remission.

He couldn't wait to go on the celebratory cruise.

But in October 2011, just a month before setting sail, more bad news came.

After she was in remission, they did a scan, and that's how they found that she had it back in other parts of her body.

And then they got rediagnosed.

According to doctors, Betsy now had only three to five more years left to live.

I told her to slow down one time, and then I realized, no, don't slow down.

If this is, if you're going out, go out with the bang.

One of Betsy's dreams was to swim with the dolphins, and we talked about it a lot.

She was very excited.

Tragically, only a month after Betsy's dream trip, her husband Russ is reporting her gruesome death to police as a suicide.

Someone coming home sees their wife laying on the floor, wrists have been cut.

I suppose, you know, someone could believe that that's what had happened.

Officers transport Russ to the Lincoln County Sheriff's Headquarters and call for backup at the scene.

The Lincoln County Sheriff's Department did what's called a major case squad call-out.

You get a couple dozen police officers from all the departments in the area.

They saturate the case.

Coming up, a logical suspect emerges.

If you have the rage killing, traditionally that would be the husband.

And an alibi comes into question.

Why are you making all of these stops?

Why do you have all these receipts?

After Russ Faria reported his wife Betsy's death as a suicide, responding officers now question if her wounds were self-inflicted.

The EMT and the fire department officials are saying that she'd been dead for some time.

They think it's been a couple hours.

It seemed that rigor had set in and the blood looked like it had dried and set up.

Crime scene techs searched the rest of the house for evidence.

They find some blood on the light switch in the master bedroom.

They find a pair of slippers in the closet of the master bedroom with some blood on them.

There was no evidence that the home had been broken into.

There's no splintered door jamb or missing valuables.

Across town at the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office, detectives sit down with Russ Faria, who walks them through his wife Betsy's last hours.

He says Betsy had chemotherapy down in Lake St.

Louis near Betsy's mother's house.

She had stayed there the night before.

Do you know what time Betsy's chemo appointment was was yesterday?

Not sure of the exact time.

I don't know if it was in the afternoon.

Russ tells detectives he worked from home all day before leaving around 5 p.m.

for a weekly gathering with friends.

He had game night at his buddy's house clear across town, like, I don't know, 20, 30 minutes away.

He leaves his home in Troy, gets gas near home.

He gets cigarettes kind of midway down the way.

He gets dog food, gets tea, he goes to his friend's house.

Do you go to your friends often after yours?

We go over there on Tuesday nights, and usually we play games or watch movies and hang out.

Betsy went to her chemo session with her family friend, and then Betsy went back to her mom's, where she normally stayed after chemo.

Russ said, Betsy texted him that Pam Hup had insisted on taking her home that night.

He didn't have to pick her up.

Russ says he stayed at his friend Michael's house until about 9 p.m.

He then then leaves this game night, makes a couple stops on the way home.

Once he gets to the house, comes in, sees what at the time he believes his wife has committed suicide.

He's interviewed for hours.

And at some point during that conversation, they start talking about whether or not to suicide her.

Do you think she'd be capable of committing suicide?

I don't know.

I mean, I like to think that, but she's talked about it before.

Russ explains that Betsy had long struggled with depression.

He was very well aware of the depression.

Unfortunately, a couple times Betsy had tried to hurt herself and Russ wanted to get her help.

He wanted to make sure that she was okay all the time.

She had talked about suicide before.

Breast cancer isn't easy.

Getting a diagnosis that has spread is not easy.

And when he comes home, what he sees is her with a giant cut on her arm.

He says, my wife killed herself.

If this comes back as not a suicide, what do you think happened?

Any ideas?

I have no idea.

The hangout, and you probably know this as well as I do, is it's not typical for someone that's going to commit suicide

to do it by the way that she done it.

I would think so.

And that's what concerns us.

Detectives conclude the interview hoping the autopsy results will provide them with much-needed insights

the next day the medical examiner confirms what police already suspect she'd been stabbed like 50 times or 55 times it was a lot nobody stabs themselves 50 some odd times especially not in their back there were 55 stab wounds but most of them were concealed by her clothes

The medical examiners said that her heart stopped beating fairly early in that process.

Evidence showed that a lot of the stab wounds were post-mortem.

The number of times that Betsy was stabbed led the police to believe that this was a crime that was fueled by rage.

The assumption that any investigator would make is that if you have a rage killing, traditionally that would be the husband.

Obviously, that's the first person you would want to look to.

To complete their picture of Betsy's last day, investigators visit the O'Fallon, Missouri home of Pam Hupp, Betsy's friend and caregiver.

The officers arrive to interview Pam, and they are talking to her for some time, asking Pam all kinds of questions about where were you with Betsy.

Betsy was undergoing regular chemo treatments, and they left her feeling very weak.

She usually would try to get a ride to those.

Betsy had her chemo treatment.

She goes back to her mom's house, and then Pam drives her back to her house outside of Troy.

Pam says when she left Betsy's house, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Then, investigators ask Pam about Betsy and Russ's marriage.

Pam told the detectives that there was some conflict in the relationship between Betsy and Russ.

Investigators ask Pam if she thinks Russ would hurt Betsy.

Pam started out saying like, oh, you know, it couldn't be Russ, it couldn't be Russ.

And then she thinks, oh, well, there was that one time he did this.

She told the detectives that Betsy woke up with a pillow over her face and it was Russ.

And Russ said something like, you know, I wanted you to know what it felt like to die.

My brain started moving towards Russ a little bit.

The parts of me thinking Russ did it was the way it was done and the fact that

I thought that he came home early and did it.

After the interview with Pam, investigators look at everything in a new light, beginning with Russ's 911 call.

When he calls 911 and says, my wife committed suicide, and they look and they see someone who's been stabbed 55 times, it was only natural that they'd say, hold on a second.

Police departments, they thought the 911 call was faked.

It was forced.

And so I listened to it.

It's heartbreaking.

It's

there's nothing about it that strikes one as forced or faked.

Next, investigators put Russ's alibi under scrutiny.

They talked to his friends who were there at game night.

The police tried to break their alibis in various ways and were unable to do so.

They pulled surveillance tape from the various places he stopped.

He stopped a couple of convenience stores.

He got gas.

So they had a fairly good trail of his activities that night.

The police seemed to find it suspicious that Russ's alibi was so solid.

The police were like, Why are you making all of these stops?

Why do you have all these receipts?

On December 28th, 2011, Lincoln County detectives bring Russ Faria in for a second interview and ask him point blank if he killed his wife.

He's shocked that they're saying this to him.

He just keeps saying, no, I didn't.

When he's being questioned by the police, he's asked if he wants to take a polygraph and he says yes.

They took him in after an extended period of interrogation and took him for a polygraph.

The polygraph operator stated that Russ's responses were indicative of deception.

At some point, he's told he failed the poly, and Russ is arrested.

Coming up, will the testimony of a single witness decide Russ Faria's fate?

They claim they saw a trail of blood and evidence of cleaned-up blood on only one drawer where the towels were.

Only Russ knew where things were that well.

And an insurance payout shakes up the entire case.

She said, That's my money.

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Lincoln County detectives investigating Betsy Faria's murder have arrested her husband, Russ.

A growing pile of evidence and a failed polygraph test have convinced police that Russ stabbed his wife to death over 50 50 times.

Missouri law says you can be held for 24 hours before they charge you.

They don't charge him within that 24 hours.

They release him.

Russ's failed polygraph is damning, but it's not proof.

Obviously, polygraphs aren't able to be presented as evidence in court.

The prosecutor decides they need more evidence.

Evidence initially taken from Betsy and Russ's home had tested inconclusive.

There was a pair of Russ's slippers that had blood on on it, and there was also blood on a light switch.

If you test for DNA on a light switch, you're going to find DNA from every person who's touched it.

There was no like bloody fingerprint on the knife or anything like that leading back to a certain person.

The search for definitive proof brings investigators back to the crime scene.

Lincoln Townsend Sheriff's Department gets a warrant to go search the house to look for evidence of blood that's been cleaned up.

There was some evidence brought out with a kind of aluminol type of compound.

They saw it glowing when it was applied, and this was days after the crime.

They saw a trail of blood and evidence of cleaned up blood on only one drawer where the towels were.

And so the chain of reasoning went: only someone who knew exactly where the towels were could have gotten the towel and cleaned that up without leaving evidence of blood elsewhere.

Only Russ knew where things were that well, therefore it must have been Russ.

The new blood evidence convinces a Lincoln County grand jury.

On January 4th, 2012, Russ is indicted.

Russ was arrested for first-degree murder, and his bail was set at $250,000, which he could not make.

When Russ's trial begins more than a year later, on November 18th, 2013, his attorneys believe they have a good chance of an acquittal.

We have a very

strong alibi.

This man, when he was arrested, said that he stopped for gas, stopped for cigarettes, stopped for dog food, stopped for tea.

Every single one of those things is documented and backed up.

He says he went to the house with four friends.

Every one of them says he was there.

This was a man we truly believed to be innocent who had been wrongfully accused.

Russ's alibi becomes the prosecution's first target.

The state argued that they weren't credible witnesses, that they were either a part of it or had covered it up.

The prosecution's theory was that Mr.

Faria had left from his game night, made these multiple stops that were irregular for him, and then once he got home, murdered his wife, cleaned himself up, staged the scene, and then contacted 911.

Seasoned courtroom observers and friends agree the state's case seems flimsy at best.

All they had was a bunch of circumstantial nothing.

Then the prosecution's secret weapon takes the stand.

Pam Hup was a major witness.

She talked about the relationship.

She talked about the insurance.

Pam tells them that Betsy had a couple of life insurance policies and that she was really concerned that Russ would blow the money.

The change of life insurance form was signed four days before the death.

Betsy signed over the insurance from Russ to Pam.

One of their theories to explain a possible motive for Russ would be that Betsy had told him, hey, I changed this in policy out of your name, and he got mad.

Pam testified that he had held the pillow over Betsy's face and said, this is how it feels to die.

No one was ever able to validate the supposed pillow incident.

In the aftermath of Pam's testimony, the case is turned over to the jury on November 21st, 2013.

The jury was up for four hours.

At the end of it, they returned guilty verdicts.

The verdict troubles many of Betsy's supporters, including her two daughters.

Leah and Mariah both, I think, questioned if he did it the whole time.

And they told me that.

I'm like, oh my God, I feel like they put the wrong person in prison.

Occasionally, you'll have cases where sometimes they were nagging questions.

It just felt like something was off.

You couldn't explain it.

I had a certain level of shock.

This is not how the system is supposed to work.

I couldn't see how anyone could possibly think that this case had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

In the months following Russ's conviction, Betsy's daughters, Mariah and Leah, become increasingly frustrated with their mother's friend, Pam Hupp.

Pam Hupp had said that $100,000 had been put into a trust fund for the girls.

She told me all they had to do was ask.

They asked, and she didn't turn the money over.

She set up a revocable trust, and she canceled it as soon as that was all over in trial.

She never planned to give that money to the girls.

Betsy's daughters were appalled and immediately filed suit for that money.

During the civil trial, Pam said that Betsy wanted her to have the money and she could do whatever she wanted to with it.

That was a complete reversal from what she had testified to at Russ's trial.

Pam says that the only reason she put the money into a trust for the daughters was because she had been asked to by the prosecutors.

And she said, that's my money.

Under oath, Pam shows the same swagger as she did as star witness in Russ's murder trial.

Pam's very arrogant, in my opinion.

It came out during the life insurance trial.

She has this, you're never gonna get me attitude.

The verdict only bolsters Pam's confidence.

The judges ultimately decided that Pam's name was the only name on the life insurance policy and the money was hers.

Despite the judgment, Russ's defense team seizes on an opportunity.

The civil case against Pam brought out the evidence that she'd only set up the trust for the girls to get the prosecution off her bag.

We asked the Court of Appeals to grant us a new trial based on new evidence, and they did.

June 2015, the judge orders a new trial.

And after three and a half years behind bars, Russ is released.

The judge also reduced the bond, and that bond was posted.

Russ was released from jail at that point.

Russ's 2013 conviction failed to rule out an alternate suspect.

Pam Hup's the last person to see Betsy Forea alive.

She was the recipient of insurance money and was never looked into, was never really thoroughly investigated as a suspect.

On November 2nd, 2015, Russ's retrial begins.

This time, Russ's defense team files for a bench trial.

A sole presiding judge will decide Russ's fate.

After going to the second trial, the prosecution appears to have realized that Pam's stories are too contradictory, that her credibility is shot.

So they elect not to bring her to the stand.

Russ's attorneys relentlessly attack the state's physical evidence.

There was blood on top of the slippers and on the bottom of the slippers.

What there wasn't anywhere in the house was a bloody footprint.

It appeared as though the blood may have been dipped on the slippers and then placed somewhere.

And for the first time, a new suspect's name is read into the record.

We were allowed to introduce the evidence that someone else committed the crime.

And so we were introducing evidence that we felt suggested that Pam had been the one to do it.

That Pam had been the last person to see Betsy alive.

That Pam had gotten the life insurance policy.

That the life insurance policy had been changed days before the murder.

After a four-day trial, Judge Stephen Omer retires to consider his verdict.

The judge was out for about two hours.

and when he came back, he read a statement, and he stated that the investigation, unfortunately, raised more questions than I had answered because Freya was not guilty.

Toss, it was always clear he was not guilty.

I was super happy for him, but it made me sick because now the real killer is still out there.

Coming up, a familiar voice cries out for help.

There's someone breaking in my house.

Bill, help me.

And a strange encounter helps investigators tie up some loose ends.

Should I get a car?

No, I'll look at that.

It's gotta be connected.

Lightning doesn't strike twice.

In November of 2015, Russ Faria's second trial fully exonerated him in the murder of his wife, Betsy.

We managed to get the wrongful conviction overturned.

We think that's the end of it.

Nine months later, on August 16th, 2016, emergency dispatchers in O'Fallon, Missouri receive an urgent call.

911, where's your emergency?

Hey, hello, there's someone breaking in my house.

Help.

What's your name?

My name's Pam.

The caller is none other than Pam Huff.

The dispatch officer is trying to get some more detail.

Then you hear the voice of a male.

What are you getting here?

Woman did your wife?

No, I'm not getting in the car, but you help right away.

We couldn't really understand what the communication between the two of them was all about.

Then you hear some commotion.

She continues to repeat herself.

Help.

Help.

Help.

Ma'am, can you hear me?

Help!

A few seconds later, you hear five gunshots.

What's the address we're at?

The commotion stops.

A few seconds later, you hear the smoke detectors go off.

Are you there?

Yes, I am.

Where are you at?

Moments later, O'Fallon police arrive at the home of Pam Hupp.

Most of us were familiar with the name Pam Hup from another case in the area.

Pam directs the officers inside where they find a man lying dead from multiple gunshot wounds.

The uniformed officers established an initial crime scene, protected the scene.

When I first made contact with her, the medics were checking her out and making sure she was okay.

We asked her if she'd be willing to come up to the station, and she agreed to come with us.

While Pam's transported to the station, investigators process the scene.

The body was found just outside her bedroom door and hallway.

They searched his body.

He was wearing some shorts.

Inside one of his pockets, they found a Ziploc bag, and inside the Ziploc bag contained a note, $900 in cash, and a ballpoint pen.

The note said, more or less, go to Pam's house.

Get Russ's money.

Take Pam back to woodpile behind Russ's house.

Was this a murder for hire gone bizarrely wrong?

Nothing on the body reveals the would-be hitman's name.

There was no identification on him, phone.

That just added to the confusion.

Had no idea how this person ended up in her home and how he ended up dead.

O'Fallon detectives turn to their only witness, Pam Hupp.

We went in the interview room and just started working through the details of what occurred.

The story was basically that she had just come home from running some errands and she saw a car pull up around the corner and pull in right behind her, slam on the brakes.

A male jumped out of the car, jumped inside her car, held her at knife point.

He was talking about how they need to go to get Russ's money.

And she described how he kept looking over her shoulder and she took that opportunity to knock the knife out of his hand with her arm.

And then she got out of the car and ran into the house.

She called 911.

He pursues her.

She retreats into her bedroom, grabs a handgun, and ends up shooting.

She continued to pull the trigger until it just stopped firing.

Detectives ask Pam if she knows what motivated his attack.

She told us that the money that he was talking about was likely this life insurance money was paid out on behalf of another incident.

The guy was saying we were going to the bank to get Russ's money.

She did admit that she believed it was probably Russ Faria.

I think everybody had this moment of, you've got to be kidding me.

It's got to be connected.

Lightning doesn't strike twice.

Eventually, she told Detective Mountain that her husband had brought a lawyer, and we never kind of went back at her because they wanted to go.

So she left.

Back at the crime scene, police take the next step towards unraveling the mystery.

Our county crime scene unit rolled us fingerprints and we were able to get a positive identification on who this was and it ended up being Lewis Gumpenberger.

33 year old Lewis Gumpenberger was a father who lived in the O'Fallon, Missouri area most of his life.

He was loving, caring.

Lewis was always

attached to me.

Lewis was always a mama's boy, always.

He was very funny.

He would do anything to get a laugh out of you.

By 2006, Lewis and his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Shannon had two children together, a daughter and a son.

Whenever I first found out I was pregnant and let him know, he was in disbelief.

But it did not take long for him to be absolutely excited.

He just wanted to be a father.

Though Lewis and Shannon ended things romantically, the two remained friends and co-parents.

He was very, very interested in being a part of the kids' lives no matter what was going on with our relationship.

But now, investigators are trying to figure out what led him to the home of Pam Hupp.

We were trying to figure out where he lived.

We were trying to make notification to his family, obviously before this hit the news.

The following day, police learned that Lewis's family is already worried about him.

We got notification that Lewis's mother had just reported him missing.

Once we had that information, we contacted Lewis's mother.

A short while later, detectives arrive at the home of Margaret Birch.

There's a police officer.

He goes, excuse me, are you Mrs.

Birch?

And I'm like, yeah.

And he said, my son's name.

I says, yes.

I says, that's my son.

And I got excited.

I'm I'm like, oh, that's quick.

I says, did you find my son?

I can't remember if they told me he was dead or killed.

I think it's because of the shock.

Detectives tactfully question Lewis's mother about her son's death.

Detectives tell her the circumstances, and

that's when the story begins to unravel.

My son, Lewis, there's no way in hell.

He could break into anyone's house.

He can't even use his right side.

He can barely hold a spoon.

She told us he was in a car accident years ago.

He had a traumatic brain injury.

He was not physically capable of pulling off what Pam Hup said that he did.

She was not the victim of an intruder.

She is now the suspect.

As investigators plot their next move, they're contacted by by counterparts in the neighboring county.

We got big break number two, and that was we got a call from a St.

Charles County police officer.

The officer tells O'Fallon detectives that they need to interview a local woman named Carol Alford about an incident that took place the previous week.

She agrees to come back to our station and give us a good, long, extended interview.

Carol tells police she was sitting on her porch when a passing vehicle slowed down and unrolled a window.

Black SUE comes to her car.

Blonde lady with short hair, she just waves, I wave hi.

The woman pulls into her driveway.

She introduces herself as a producer for Dateline NBC.

She's like, I'd like to offer you the opportunity to record a soundbite for Dateline for $1,000.

Cash.

Sure, they haven't got the car.

No, I'll admit that.

She gets in the car and they're driving to presumably to the location where they're going to do this reenactment.

She got cold feet and didn't feel quite comfortable with it.

I said, crap.

I said, I forgot my shoes that I wanted to get.

And she's like, oh, well, you don't need your shoes.

I was like, lady, I left my door unlocked.

I got to go lock my door.

The supposed producer waited outside in her SUV.

She's sitting in my driveway.

I wanted to make sure I got her license, but her vehicle fully on my security cameras because I'm, oh, somebody's going to kidnap.

When Carol re-emerged, she tried to bow out.

It's like, I'm sorry, I really can't help you.

My son just called me.

She leans out of the car a little bit and she's talking talking to me.

She says, you have cameras and jerks her head back in the car.

I said, yes, I have a knife.

You know how to dial number one, you need to leave.

And I walked to my house and she didn't waste no time leaving.

She's crazy.

Carol eagerly hands her home security recording over to police.

Our guys were able to look at the video and the camera was positioned such that the video picked up the license plate.

And the license plate came back to a company that was owned by Pam Hup and her husband.

You can visibly see Pam Hup's face, so it's clear that was her.

Coming up, a cornered suspect commits a final act of desperation.

She reached over by his notebook and she took a pen.

She stuffed the pen away inside her clothing so that it was concealed.

And a killer's arrogance is exposed.

She has the ego to believe that she could pull this off start to finish and we wouldn't find out.

August 2016.

Police and prosecutors in St.

Charles County, Missouri have a sworn statement from Carol Alford describing an unusual kidnapping attempt by Pamela Hubb.

All the evidence indicates that she was just trolling St.

Charles County looking for somebody that was gullible enough to get in her car.

Just six days later, Pam shot and killed Louis Gumpenberger, a disabled man she claimed attacked her.

We began to piece it together and say, okay,

this is how Mr.

Gumpenberger ended up in her home.

He was a part of a script.

He was somebody somebody that she approached just like she approached this first person, and she did it with the incentive of cash.

If she used the same ruse on Lewis, who didn't figure it out like

that lady did, that explains how she got him there.

It's pretty clear that she murdered this guy.

It's pretty clear that somehow she convinced him to get in her car, drive with her all the way to her house.

A thread connecting both murder cases is the audacity behind them.

Surprised me that anyone could think you could get away with it.

But that's Pam.

Talky and confident and a little combative, Pamela Hub has the ego to believe that she can hold off from start to finish, and we wouldn't find out.

On August 23rd, 2016, police arrive at Pam's home.

They arrest her early in the morning.

It goes

fine, goes flawlessly.

She doesn't fight.

She doesn't run.

She gets brought back to one of our interview rooms.

Two detectives went in there to talk to her.

She was Miranda.

She wanted to speak to her attorney.

So when we attempted to find her attorney, they stepped out.

She reached over and she took a pen.

She stuffed the pen away, you know, inside her clothing so that it was concealed.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, let me

have a female officer escort.

She was escorted to the bathroom.

An officer stood outside.

She went in the bathroom, used that bulletpoint pen to stab herself

on both sides of the neck and her wrists multiple, multiple times.

Moments later, the escorting officer finds Pam covered in blood.

Arriving paramedics successfully stabilize her.

Her trying to kill herself, herself, in my opinion, is not the act of an innocent person.

Lewis Gumpenberger's murder, the state says, was a deliberate act intended to frame Russ Faria.

The St.

Charles County DA will seek the death penalty.

The acquittal of Russ Faria, in my mind, is the reason that she went to kill Louis Gumpenberger.

But that was the moment that she knew, I've got to do something.

I've got to cover this up.

St.

Charles prosecutors described it as sloppy.

At the 11th hour in June 2019, Pam Hubb agrees to an Alford plea deal that will save her life.

So an Alford plea is a special type of plea in which a person does not admit they committed the crime, but the person admits that the state's evidence would be enough to convict them.

She's sitting in the witness chair at her plea hearing, and she knows she's going to spend the rest of her life in prison.

She's sort of just bantering with the judge.

She's sort of smug in her answers with the judge.

I don't think Pam Hup was able to admit any type of guilt in open court because of her arrogance, because of her narcissism.

Don't they always say pride comes before a fall?

On August 12th, 2019, Pam Hupp is sentenced to life without parole for for the murder of Lewis Gumpenberger.

As much as it's important that we finally get to take some time

and share who Lewis was

and celebrate his life,

it's also just as important that nobody forgets that whoever killed Betsy Faria hasn't been charged.

Obviously, the community sentiment is that Pam Hupp is who the killer is.

We can't come in making that assumption.

We want to make sure that it's a thorough investigation that's done by the book.

Betsy was my greatest friend, who, if somebody was going to go out of this world with the biggest mystery and the biggest bang, it was going to be her.

For more information on Snapped, go to oxygen.com.

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