The Murder of Betsy Faria: Part Five - CONCLUSION

0:00 Speaker 1: Warning. Kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and

0:04 Speaker 1: descriptions of violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and

0:07 Speaker 1: we recommend you stop listening now.

0:18 Speaker 2: True crime with a dash of the paranormal, the garish,

0:21 Speaker 2: the strange in the darkly comic. A podcast that's about

0:25 Speaker 2: more than just murder. It's my very own pocket dimension,

0:28 Speaker 2: home to a curated collection of bizarre and compelling stories,

0:32 Speaker 2: the unsolved, the unsettling, and the unbelievable. I cover it

0:37 Speaker 2: all just so long as it's kind of murdery. Hey, everybody,

0:41 Speaker 2: thank you so much for being here. You know, I

0:44 Speaker 2: owe you all a bit of an apology. I know

0:46 Speaker 2: it's been a few weeks since I've put out a

0:49 Speaker 2: new episode, and to make that worse, the new episode

0:52 Speaker 2: you've been waiting for is the final part, this part

0:57 Speaker 2: of a five part story we've been telling. So that's

1:00 Speaker 2: really kind of a crappy thing to do. I'm sorry

1:03 Speaker 2: about it.

1:04 Speaker 3: My life just got super busy the school year ended.

1:09 Speaker 3: My daughter, who I'm so proud of, starred as one

1:11 Speaker 3: of the Queen's Catherine Parr, in a junior version of

1:14 Speaker 3: the musical Six. She did an amazing job. My parents

1:18 Speaker 3: came and visited so that they could see that musical,

1:21 Speaker 3: and then immediately following that, the family traveled to Seattle

1:25 Speaker 3: for our cousins college graduation, and as soon as we

1:28 Speaker 3: got home, I had to get the girls off to

1:30 Speaker 3: summer camp. So anyway, my life just got a little

1:33 Speaker 3: nuts in a very compacted period, and I couldn't manage

1:37 Speaker 3: to get the podcast out. So I do apologize for

1:40 Speaker 3: the wait. I am still here, the show is still

1:43 Speaker 3: cranking along, and you have arrived at Part five, the

1:49 Speaker 3: final part of kind of Murdery's Investigation of the Murder

1:52 Speaker 3: of Betsy Faria. I am Zevan Odelberg. This is kind

1:56 Speaker 3: of Murdery. I am so thankful that you are here

1:58 Speaker 3: with me. And because this is part five, if you

2:01 Speaker 3: haven't heard parts one through four yet, go back and

2:04 Speaker 3: listen to them. I will save you a seat. But

2:06 Speaker 3: with no further ado, let's get down to business. Part five,

2:10 Speaker 3: the conclusion of kind of Murdery's investigation of the Murder

2:14 Speaker 3: of Betsy Faria, starts now. The conviction landed in the

2:28 Speaker 3: courtroom with the kind of quiet that doesn't feel quiet

2:31 Speaker 3: while you're sitting inside it. Russfaria had walked in, still

2:35 Speaker 3: insisting he did not kill his wife. By the time

2:37 Speaker 3: the jury came back, the state's version had beaten the

2:41 Speaker 3: room into shape husband sick, wife, knife, blood rage motive,

2:48 Speaker 3: a marriage prosecutors had said had been rotting underneath everything else.

2:53 Speaker 3: Joel Schwartz stood beside Russ when the verdict came down

2:56 Speaker 3: guilty first degree murder. Did not collapse. He did not

3:02 Speaker 3: shout over the judge. He stood there with the stunned,

3:05 Speaker 3: rigid look of a man hearing something impossible spoken in

3:08 Speaker 3: a room where impossible things still become official. The people

3:13 Speaker 3: who believed in him sat behind him with the same

3:16 Speaker 3: sickened stillness, looking at the jurybox, then at Russ, then

3:21 Speaker 3: at the lawyers who had already started thinking about what

3:24 Speaker 3: came next. Pam Hupp walked out of the first trial

3:27 Speaker 3: as one of the state's most important witnesses, and for

3:31 Speaker 3: a while the public version of the story held. She

3:34 Speaker 3: had told investigators that Betsy feared Russ. She had helped

3:37 Speaker 3: frame the emotional shape of the marriage. Prosecutors had used

3:41 Speaker 3: that shape to make the physical violence inside the house

3:45 Speaker 3: feel like it belonged to the husband. Russ went to

3:48 Speaker 3: prison with a life sentence attached to his name. Outside prison,

3:53 Speaker 3: the people who stood by him did not have the

3:55 Speaker 3: luxury of moving on. His friends from game night still

3:59 Speaker 3: had the same problem they had carried from the beginning.

4:02 Speaker 3: Their memories of that night did not fit the story

4:05 Speaker 3: the state had told the court. The jury had heard

4:08 Speaker 3: enough to convict him, but the people who sat with

4:10 Speaker 3: Russ that evening kept returning to the clock, the drive,

4:14 Speaker 3: the distance, and the narrow window prosecutors still said held

4:19 Speaker 3: a murder. Joel Schwartz did not treat the verdict like

4:22 Speaker 3: the end of the case. He treated it like the

4:25 Speaker 3: next room he had to walk into. The first trial

4:28 Speaker 3: had blocked him from putting Pam Hup at the center

4:31 Speaker 3: of the defense the way he wanted. He had been

4:33 Speaker 3: limited in what he could ask, limited in what he

4:35 Speaker 3: could tell the jury, limited in how directly he could

4:39 Speaker 3: point to the woman who had been made beneficiary of

4:42 Speaker 3: Betsy's life insurance policy days before the murder. After the conviction,

4:47 Speaker 3: those limits became part of the fight, Schwartz kept working

4:51 Speaker 3: through the file, not like a man polishing old arguments,

4:54 Speaker 3: but like somebody checking a locked door for a hinge

4:57 Speaker 3: that nobody else noticed. He went back to statements, back

5:01 Speaker 3: to timelines, back to what Pam said when she said it,

5:06 Speaker 3: and how often the details shifted. In prison, Russ lived

5:09 Speaker 3: inside the consequences of a story he said was false.

5:13 Speaker 3: The outside world kept moving. Court filings moved slowly, appeals

5:18 Speaker 3: moved slower. Days in prison did not care whether a

5:21 Speaker 3: man said he was innocent. They started, ended, and started again,

5:26 Speaker 3: under the same rules as every other sentence being served

5:29 Speaker 3: around him. He still wore his wedding ring. He still

5:32 Speaker 3: said he loved Betsy. He still said he did not

5:36 Speaker 3: kill her. Those words did not open the prison gates.

5:40 Speaker 3: What mattered now was paper, motions, transcripts, arguments about what

5:44 Speaker 3: the first jury never heard. Schwartz and the defense team

5:48 Speaker 3: had to find a way to put the missing parts

5:50 Speaker 3: of the case back in front of a judge. Pam's

5:53 Speaker 3: insurance money, her shifting statements, the timeline that never stopped fighting.

5:58 Speaker 3: The prosecution's version of the night the first crack did

6:01 Speaker 3: not look like a movie twist. It looked like legal work, slow, dry,

6:07 Speaker 3: stubborn legal work. Motions filed, records, reviewed testimony compared against

6:12 Speaker 3: documents that had been sitting in the case file waiting

6:15 Speaker 3: for someone to refuse the easy version. The question was

6:19 Speaker 3: no longer whether Russ had received a fair trial. It

6:22 Speaker 3: was whether the first trial had kept the jury from

6:25 Speaker 3: hearing the parts of the case that made the state's

6:27 Speaker 3: version much less clean. Pam Hupp's name moved differently through

6:32 Speaker 3: the defense file, now not as background, not as the

6:36 Speaker 3: helpful friend, not as the woman who explained Betsy's fear. Instead,

6:40 Speaker 3: she was the person closest to the money, closest to

6:43 Speaker 3: the last ride home, and closest to the version of

6:46 Speaker 3: Betsy's marriage that helped send Russ Faria to prison. Joel

6:50 Speaker 3: Schwartz's fight for a new trial did not hinge on

6:53 Speaker 3: proving who killed Betsy. Not yet. The immediate battle was smaller,

6:58 Speaker 3: and in some ways more important. He needed to convince

7:01 Speaker 3: the court that the first jury had not been allowed

7:04 Speaker 3: to hear evidence that mattered. That argument pulled the case

7:08 Speaker 3: back into court. Transcripts from the original trial were spread

7:12 Speaker 3: across desks and conference tables while Schwartz's team worked through

7:15 Speaker 3: them line by line. The question kept returning to the

7:18 Speaker 3: same place, what happens when jurors hear only part of

7:23 Speaker 3: a story. The defense argued that the jury should have

7:26 Speaker 3: been allowed to hear more about Pam Hup, particularly her

7:29 Speaker 3: connection to the life insurance money and the extent to

7:32 Speaker 3: which she benefited financially. After Betsy's death, the conviction remained

7:36 Speaker 3: in place. Russ remained in prison, but for the first

7:40 Speaker 3: time since the verdict, the foundation beneath the conviction had

7:44 Speaker 3: started moving again. The insurance policy sat at the center

7:48 Speaker 3: of those arguments. Before Betsy's murder, the beneficiary designation on

7:52 Speaker 3: her one hundred and fifty thousand dollars life insurance policy

7:55 Speaker 3: had changed. The money was no longer going to Russ.

7:58 Speaker 3: It was going to Pam. That fact had always existed,

8:02 Speaker 3: it had never been hidden. What changed was the importance

8:05 Speaker 3: people assigned to it. At trial. Prosecutors viewed the policy

8:08 Speaker 3: largely through the lens of Betsy's alleged fears about Russ.

8:12 Speaker 3: The defense viewed it differently. To Schwartz, the policy represented

8:16 Speaker 3: something far more significant, a financial motive attached directly to

8:20 Speaker 3: a witness the jury had largely been encouraged to trust.

8:23 Speaker 3: The more he examined the surrounding circumstances, the more difficult

8:27 Speaker 3: it became to treat the policy as a minor detail.

8:30 Speaker 3: Pam had received money Russ had received a life sentence.

8:35 Speaker 3: Those two facts occupied the same case file. Outside the

8:38 Speaker 3: court room, support for Russ continued growing, not dramatically, gradually,

8:43 Speaker 3: people who had followed the case closely started reading deeper

8:47 Speaker 3: than headlines. Friends and family members organized records, compared court filings,

8:52 Speaker 3: and spent long evenings discussing the pieces of the prosecution's

8:56 Speaker 3: story that continued bothering them. The conviction itself had changed

9:00 Speaker 3: the emotional landscape. Before the verdict, people debated what might

9:04 Speaker 3: happen after the verdict. They had something concrete to examine,

9:08 Speaker 3: and some of what they found unsettled them. The timeline

9:12 Speaker 3: still felt compressed, Pam's role still felt unusually influential. The

9:17 Speaker 3: insurance money still seemed difficult to ignore. One supporter later

9:21 Speaker 3: described the experience as watching a puzzle become less clear

9:24 Speaker 3: the longer you looked at it. The state had presented certainty,

9:28 Speaker 3: the underlying details felt increasingly messy. That gap became impossible

9:33 Speaker 3: for some people to stop thinking about. As defense attorneys

9:37 Speaker 3: continued digging, another pattern started attracting attention. Pam often appeared

9:42 Speaker 3: at critical points throughout the story, not merely present central.

9:47 Speaker 3: She drove Betsy home from chemotherapy. She received the life

9:51 Speaker 3: insurance proceeds. She became one of the prosecution's most important

9:56 Speaker 3: emotional witnesses. She helped to find how investigators in jurors

10:00 Speaker 3: understood Betsy's relationship with Russ. Individually, none of those facts

10:04 Speaker 3: proved anything. Together, they created a concentration of significance that

10:09 Speaker 3: defense attorneys found increasingly difficult to dismiss. One investigator spent

10:13 Speaker 3: an afternoon mapping major events from the final months of

10:17 Speaker 3: Betsy's life onto a timeline covering the entire wall of

10:21 Speaker 3: the office. By the time he stepped back, Pam's name

10:24 Speaker 3: appeared repeatedly across the board, not because somebody forced it there,

10:29 Speaker 3: because it kept appearing in the underlying facts. Then came

10:33 Speaker 3: the ruling that changed everything. Judge Chris MacDonough reviewed the

10:37 Speaker 3: arguments surrounding the first trial and reached a conclusion that

10:40 Speaker 3: sent a shock through the case. The defense had been

10:43 Speaker 3: improperly restricted from presenting evidence concerning Pam hup and the

10:47 Speaker 3: insurance money. The jury had not been allowed to hear

10:50 Speaker 3: information that could have materially affected how they viewed the case.

10:54 Speaker 3: Russfarrea's conviction was overturned. The ruling did not declare him innocent.

10:59 Speaker 3: It did something almost as important. It reopened the door.

11:04 Speaker 3: After years behind bars, Russ walked out of prison while

11:07 Speaker 3: prosecutors prepared for a second trial. Cameras gathered outside, reporters

11:12 Speaker 3: crowded the scene, family and supporters waited near by. For

11:17 Speaker 3: the first time since the guilty verdict, Russ was no

11:20 Speaker 3: longer fighting from inside a prison cell, and for the

11:23 Speaker 3: first time, Pam Hub's role in the case was moving

11:27 Speaker 3: from the margins toward the center of the story. The

11:30 Speaker 3: second trial felt different before it even started. The first

11:34 Speaker 3: case had moved forward with the momentum of a story

11:37 Speaker 3: people thought they understood. By the time Russ sat through

11:41 Speaker 3: the second prosecution, that certainty no longer existed. Too many

11:45 Speaker 3: questions had survived the years between trials. Too many people

11:49 Speaker 3: had spent too much time examining the cracks. Most importantly,

11:53 Speaker 3: the jury was going to hear things that the first

11:56 Speaker 3: jury never did. The life insurance money, pam Hub's roll

12:00 Speaker 3: the beneficiary change. The defense no longer had to fight

12:03 Speaker 3: with one hand tied behind its back. Joel Schwartz understood

12:07 Speaker 3: that better than anyone in the court room. The case

12:10 Speaker 3: was still difficult Russ was still accused of murdering his wife,

12:14 Speaker 3: but the battlefield itself had changed, and once a jury

12:17 Speaker 3: hears a different story, it becomes much harder to pretend

12:20 Speaker 3: the first story was the only one available. This time,

12:24 Speaker 3: Pam Hupp did not occupy the same protected space she

12:28 Speaker 3: had during the first trial. The defense put her under

12:31 Speaker 3: a brighter light, not as an alternate suspect, necessarily, but

12:35 Speaker 3: as a person whose actions, finances, and influence deserved scrutiny.

12:40 Speaker 3: Jurors heard about the insurance policy, they heard about the money,

12:44 Speaker 3: They heard details that had been largely absent from the

12:47 Speaker 3: first proceeding. The effect was subtle, but powerful. Pam stopped

12:51 Speaker 3: feeling like background. She stopped feeling like scenery. Every murder

12:56 Speaker 3: case contains people the audience naturally looks past because they

12:59 Speaker 3: seem familiar enough to trust. During the second trial, the

13:03 Speaker 3: defense worked carefully to prevent that from happening. Jurors were

13:07 Speaker 3: encouraged to examine everybody, not just Russ. That shift alone

13:11 Speaker 3: altered the emotional balance inside the courtroom. The prosecution still

13:15 Speaker 3: had a case, but the defense now had room to breathe.

13:20 Speaker 3: As testimony unfolded, the prosecution's timeline faced a problem. It

13:24 Speaker 3: had never fully escaped the game night alibi. Years earlier,

13:29 Speaker 3: detectives had believed the timeline worked. Now the defense forced

13:32 Speaker 3: everybody back into it again. Witnesses described the evening travel

13:37 Speaker 3: times were examined. The narrowness of the state's theory became

13:40 Speaker 3: harder to ignore once jurors spent enough time inside the details.

13:45 Speaker 3: The defense did not need to prove exactly what happened

13:48 Speaker 3: inside Betsy's house. They needed to create reasonable doubt, and

13:53 Speaker 3: reasonable doubt grows most easily in tight spaces. The timeline

13:56 Speaker 3: remained one of those spaces. Jurors listened, attorney's argued, witnesses

14:01 Speaker 3: answered questions. The certainty that once carried the case forward

14:04 Speaker 3: no longer moved as smoothly through the court room. For

14:07 Speaker 3: the first time, the prosecution found itself having to defend

14:11 Speaker 3: assumptions it previously treated as settled facts. Outside court, attention

14:16 Speaker 3: around Pam continued increasing. Reporters noticed it, observers noticed it.

14:21 Speaker 3: People following the case noticed it. Questions that barely existed

14:25 Speaker 3: during the first trial now surfaced regularly in discussions surrounding

14:29 Speaker 3: the murder. Why had she received the money, how much

14:33 Speaker 3: influence had her statements exerted over investigators. Why had the

14:37 Speaker 3: first jury heard so little about her? The shift wasn't dramatic,

14:41 Speaker 3: it was cumulative. Each question made the next one easier

14:44 Speaker 3: to ask. Each answer generated another conversation. Pam still publicly

14:50 Speaker 3: occupied the role of friend and witness, but the unquestioned

14:53 Speaker 3: trust surrounding that role had started eroding. The case was

14:57 Speaker 3: no longer organized around a single suspect standing alone in

15:01 Speaker 3: the spotlight. The spotlight itself had begun moving. Then came

15:05 Speaker 3: the outcome that had once seemed impossible. Russ Feria was acquitted.

15:10 Speaker 3: The man who had gone to prison for murdering his

15:12 Speaker 3: wife walked out of court, no longer convicted of the crime.

15:16 Speaker 3: Supporters cried, family members embraced years of pressure released all

15:20 Speaker 3: at once inside Hallway's parking lots and court house steps.

15:24 Speaker 3: But the acquittal did something larger than just free Russ.

15:27 Speaker 3: It created a vacuum. Betsy Ferria was still dead, The

15:31 Speaker 3: murder had not disappeared, The crime scene remained real, the

15:35 Speaker 3: killer remained unidentified. The story that had once answered that

15:40 Speaker 3: question had collapsed under its own weight. And whenever one

15:44 Speaker 3: explanation collapses, investigators are forced to confront the same question

15:49 Speaker 3: all over again. If Russ didn't kill Betsy Forria, then

15:53 Speaker 3: who did? Somewhere else in Missouri, Pam Hump was still

15:57 Speaker 3: living her life for the first time since Betsy's murder.

16:00 Speaker 3: Investigators would soon begin looking in her direction for reasons

16:05 Speaker 3: that had nothing to do with helping the prosecution. For years, investigators, prosecutors, reporters,

16:11 Speaker 3: and much of the public had operated inside a framework

16:14 Speaker 3: where the central question seemed answered. Once that answer collapsed,

16:19 Speaker 3: the case suddenly looked different. The same evidence existed, the

16:22 Speaker 3: same witnesses existed, the same murder sat at the center

16:26 Speaker 3: of everything, but now people were looking at the story

16:29 Speaker 3: from the opposite direction. Instead of asking why Russ killed Betsy,

16:34 Speaker 3: investigators had to confront a more uncomfortable possibility. What if

16:38 Speaker 3: they had spent years looking at the wrong person. The

16:41 Speaker 3: question carried consequences far beyond one overturned conviction, because every

16:46 Speaker 3: conclusion built on top of the original theory had to

16:50 Speaker 3: be re examined too. The renewed attention did not immediately

16:54 Speaker 3: transform Pam Hup into a suspect. At first, it simply

16:58 Speaker 3: transformed her into a subject of interest. That distinction matter

17:03 Speaker 3: investigators revisiting the case began examining portions of Pam's story

17:07 Speaker 3: that had once been accepted with little resistance, not because

17:11 Speaker 3: they had evidence she committed murder, but because they needed

17:14 Speaker 3: to understand whether earlier assumptions had prevented other possibilities from

17:18 Speaker 3: being fully explored. Old interviews and summaries came back out,

17:23 Speaker 3: timelines were reconstructed, financial records received fresh scrutiny. People who

17:28 Speaker 3: had once been interviewed primarily about Russ now found investigators

17:32 Speaker 3: asking questions that circled back toward Pam instead. The center

17:36 Speaker 3: of gravity inside the case had shifted, not dramatically gradually,

17:41 Speaker 3: but unmistakably. One issue kept resurfacing, the insurance money. The

17:47 Speaker 3: policy itself had never disappeared from the case. What changed

17:51 Speaker 3: was the perspective from which people viewed it. When Russ

17:54 Speaker 3: was the defendant, the insurance policy often appeared as supporting

17:58 Speaker 3: context surrounding Betsy's fears and the state's theory of the marriage.

18:02 Speaker 3: After the acquittal, the policy stood on its own. A

18:05 Speaker 3: woman had been murdered, a friend received one hundred and

18:08 Speaker 3: fifty thousand dollars. Investigators now had to ask questions that

18:13 Speaker 3: once sat largely in the background what conversations occurred before

18:17 Speaker 3: the beneficiary change, How involved was Pam in those discussions,

18:22 Speaker 3: what happened to the money afterward. The questions were not proof,

18:25 Speaker 3: but they were legitimate, and, unlike before, investigators no longer

18:29 Speaker 3: had a competing prosecution consuming all of their attention. As

18:34 Speaker 3: investigators worked back through the case, another pattern became difficult

18:37 Speaker 3: to ignore. Pam seemed unusually successful at influencing how people

18:42 Speaker 3: understood Betsy. Friends described Betsy, family described Betsy, co workers

18:48 Speaker 3: described Betsy. But Pam often described Betsy in ways that

18:52 Speaker 3: directly reinforced major themes inside the prosecution's former theory fear, distrust,

18:59 Speaker 3: financial conscer, marital tension. Investigators began comparing those descriptions more

19:04 Speaker 3: carefully against statements from other people who knew Betsy. They

19:08 Speaker 3: weren't searching for dramatic contradiction. They were looking for proportion,

19:12 Speaker 3: looking for balance, looking for whether one voice had shaped

19:16 Speaker 3: the narrative more than it should have. The exercise revealed

19:19 Speaker 3: something subtle but important. Pam had not merely participated in

19:23 Speaker 3: the stories surrounding Betsy's death. She had helped define it. Meanwhile,

19:28 Speaker 3: Pam continued living publicly as she had for years. The

19:31 Speaker 3: murder investigation no longer dominated headlines the way it once had.

19:36 Speaker 3: Most people were not studying court filings or visiting old testimony.

19:40 Speaker 3: Outside the circle of people deeply connected to the case,

19:43 Speaker 3: life moved forward. That normalcy created its own kind of danger.

19:48 Speaker 3: People often assume investigations, and when attention fades, some of

19:52 Speaker 3: the most important developments happen After the camera's leave. Investigators

19:57 Speaker 3: worked quietly, defense attorneys continue asking questions. Reporters who stayed

20:02 Speaker 3: interested kept pulling at loose threads, and little by little,

20:06 Speaker 3: the distance between Pam Hump and the center of the

20:09 Speaker 3: investigation began shrinking. Nobody knew where that road ultimately led,

20:14 Speaker 3: but for the first time since Betsy Farria was murdered,

20:17 Speaker 3: it was Pam, not Russ, who increasingly found herself at

20:21 Speaker 3: the end of investigator's questions. The shift toward Pam did

20:24 Speaker 3: not happen because investigators suddenly discovered a hidden confession or

20:28 Speaker 3: a piece of evidence that solved everything overnight. The movement

20:32 Speaker 3: was slower than that, more frustrating, more realistic people started

20:36 Speaker 3: noticing that the closer they looked at Pam, the more

20:39 Speaker 3: unusual her behavior seemed. Not necessarily on the day Betsy died,

20:43 Speaker 3: but afterward, most witnesses drift away from the center of

20:47 Speaker 3: a homicide investigation as time passes, Pam did the opposite.

20:51 Speaker 3: She remained woven through the story, interviews, media coverage, insurance decisions,

20:57 Speaker 3: conversations about Betsy's fears, stations about Russ. The more investigators

21:02 Speaker 3: revisited the years surrounding the case, the harder it became

21:06 Speaker 3: to separate Pam from the narrative that had sent Russ

21:09 Speaker 3: to prison. That realization did not make her a suspect,

21:13 Speaker 3: but it made her impossible to ignore. Meanwhile, the people

21:17 Speaker 3: who had spent years fighting for Russ's freedom found themselves

21:20 Speaker 3: in a strange position. For a long time, their goal

21:23 Speaker 3: had been singular, prove Russ did not kill Betsy. Now

21:26 Speaker 3: Russ was free, the conviction was gone, but Betsy was

21:29 Speaker 3: still dead. The emotional relief surrounding the acquittal slowly gave

21:33 Speaker 3: way to another question, entirely, what happens if the wrong

21:37 Speaker 3: man spent years in prison while the real killer remained untouched.

21:41 Speaker 3: Friends who once spent their energy defending Russ began paying

21:44 Speaker 3: closer attention to the broader mystery itself. Some revisited old interviews,

21:49 Speaker 3: others followed reporting connected to Pam. Still others simply watched,

21:54 Speaker 3: waiting to see whether investigators would finally follow the same

21:57 Speaker 3: trail defense attorneys had been pulling on for us years.

22:00 Speaker 3: The story had changed shape. It was no longer about

22:03 Speaker 3: proving Rust innocent. It was becoming about identifying whoever benefited

22:08 Speaker 3: from his conviction. Then something else started attracting attention money,

22:13 Speaker 3: not just the insurance policy itself, but what happened afterward.

22:17 Speaker 3: Investigators and reporters examining Pam's finances noticed a pattern that

22:22 Speaker 3: kept surfacing whenever discussions turned to the life insurance proceeds.

22:26 Speaker 3: The money had not simply sat untouched after Betsy's death.

22:30 Speaker 3: Questions emerged regarding where portions of it had gone and

22:33 Speaker 3: how it had been used. Those questions did not immediately

22:36 Speaker 3: establish criminal behavior, but they expanded the scope of interest

22:40 Speaker 3: surrounding Pam. The insurance policy at once felt like a

22:44 Speaker 3: supporting detail inside somebody else's murder case. Now it increasingly

22:48 Speaker 3: felt like a thread connecting multiple parts of the story together.

22:52 Speaker 3: One reporter later described the experience as pulling on a

22:56 Speaker 3: loose string and discovering it ran through far more of

22:59 Speaker 3: the sweater than expected. The deeper people dug, the more

23:02 Speaker 3: frequently that thread led back to Pam. At the same time,

23:06 Speaker 3: prosecutors and investigators found themselves confronting an uncomfortable institutional reality.

23:12 Speaker 3: The original case against Russ had not merely failed. It

23:15 Speaker 3: had succeeded. A jury convicted him, a judge sentenced him,

23:20 Speaker 3: years passed before the conviction collapsed. That meant the mistakes

23:24 Speaker 3: surrounding the investigation were larger than a simple wrong turn.

23:28 Speaker 3: An entire system had accepted the wrong answer. Nobody liked

23:32 Speaker 3: discussing that part openly, but it lingered beneath nearly every

23:36 Speaker 3: conversation surrounding the reopened case. Because if investigators had become

23:41 Speaker 3: so convinced of Russ's guilt that alternative possibilities received insufficient attention,

23:47 Speaker 3: then understanding how that happened became almost as important as

23:51 Speaker 3: solving the murder itself. And sitting at the center of

23:54 Speaker 3: that question was Pam hup not because she had been accused,

23:59 Speaker 3: because she had been trusted. Then came a development nobody

24:03 Speaker 3: connected to the Faria case expected. Not a new witness,

24:07 Speaker 3: not a forgotten piece of evidence, not a surprise courtroom filing,

24:10 Speaker 3: a completely different crime, A man named Lewis Gumpenberger answered

24:15 Speaker 3: an opportunity that seemed harmless enough on the surface. He

24:19 Speaker 3: was vulnerable, struggling looking for work, the sort of person

24:23 Speaker 3: who often goes unnoticed by the wider world. His path

24:27 Speaker 3: was about to intersect with Pam Humps. At first, nobody

24:31 Speaker 3: connected that future encounter to Betsy Faria. Nobody imagined that

24:35 Speaker 3: the event would eventually force investigators to re evaluate everything

24:40 Speaker 3: they thought they knew about Pam. But sometimes a murder

24:43 Speaker 3: case does not break open because detectives solve the original crime.

24:47 Speaker 3: Sometimes it breaks open because the person responsible cannot stop

24:52 Speaker 3: creating new problems. And in the years after Russ Feria

24:56 Speaker 3: walked free, Pam Hupp was about to create a problem

25:00 Speaker 3: that investigators could not ignore. Years after Betsy Feria's murder,

25:05 Speaker 3: Louis Gumpenberger was living a life that had already been

25:08 Speaker 3: marked by hardship. He lived with physical and cognitive limitations

25:12 Speaker 3: stemming from a serious car accident years earlier. Friends and

25:16 Speaker 3: family described him as trusting, polite, and vulnerable to people

25:20 Speaker 3: who presented themselves as helpful. He spent much of his

25:23 Speaker 3: time looking for opportunities to supplement his income and maintain

25:27 Speaker 3: some independence that made him exactly the kind of person

25:31 Speaker 3: who responds when an unexpected opportunity appears. In August twenty sixteen,

25:36 Speaker 3: Louis answered what appeared to be a job opportunity. Somebody

25:40 Speaker 3: offered work, somebody offered money, somebody arranged a meeting. Louis

25:45 Speaker 3: had no way of knowing that the person behind that

25:47 Speaker 3: meeting was Pam Hump or that the encounter would end

25:51 Speaker 3: with him dead. At the time, nobody connected the arrangement

25:55 Speaker 3: to Betsy Foraria, not publicly, not yet, according to investigators,

26:00 Speaker 3: Pam spent weeks constructing the scenario. She allegedly used disguises,

26:04 Speaker 3: burner phones, false identities. She contacted Lewis and convinced him

26:09 Speaker 3: to come to her home under the pretense of participating

26:11 Speaker 3: in work connected to a television production. The details varied

26:15 Speaker 3: depending on the version being presented, but the central point

26:18 Speaker 3: remained the same. Lewis believed he was showing up for

26:21 Speaker 3: an opportunity. Pam knew exactly why he was coming. When

26:25 Speaker 3: Lewis arrived at Pam's O'Fallon home, events unfolded rapidly. Pam

26:30 Speaker 3: later claimed that Lewis forced his way inside, carrying a

26:33 Speaker 3: knife and a list of instructions connected to a bizarre

26:37 Speaker 3: murder for Higher plot. According to her story, she acted

26:40 Speaker 3: in self defense and shot him. The explanation immediately attracted attention,

26:45 Speaker 3: not because investigators had already solved it, but because it

26:49 Speaker 3: sounded strange, very strange. The details seemed to multiply rather

26:54 Speaker 3: than clarify. Investigators responded to the scene and encountered a

26:59 Speaker 3: situation that fe eelk dramatically different from the original narrative

27:02 Speaker 3: surrounding Betsy Faria. This time, Pam was not simply a witness.

27:07 Speaker 3: She was the surviving participant. She was the person who

27:10 Speaker 3: fired the weapon. She was the person explaining what happened,

27:13 Speaker 3: and the explanation raised questions almost immediately. The alleged murder

27:18 Speaker 3: for Higher plot involved a sprawling story in which Lewis

27:22 Speaker 3: supposedly arrived carrying instructions to kill Pam and then stage

27:26 Speaker 3: her death as a suicide. According to Pam, the conspiracy

27:30 Speaker 3: ultimately traced back to Russ Faria. There was one enormous problem.

27:35 Speaker 3: Russ had an alibi, a documented one. He was more

27:38 Speaker 3: than a thousand miles away at the time. The story

27:41 Speaker 3: collapsed almost as quickly as it appeared investigators who might

27:45 Speaker 3: have accepted Pam's explanations found themselves confronting a version of

27:49 Speaker 3: events that was increasingly difficult to believe. As detectives dug

27:54 Speaker 3: deeper into Lewis Gumpenberger's death, the case against Pam started

27:59 Speaker 3: forming in ways that the Betsy for Rea investigation never had.

28:03 Speaker 3: The focus wasn't on emotional narratives. It wasn't on interpretations

28:07 Speaker 3: of a marriage. It wasn't on who said they feared whom.

28:10 Speaker 3: It was concrete phone records, preparations, contacts, movements, planning. Investigators

28:17 Speaker 3: increasingly believed Lewis had been selected because he was vulnerable

28:21 Speaker 3: and unlikely to understand what was happening until it was

28:25 Speaker 3: too late. The theory that emerged was chilling in its simplicity.

28:29 Speaker 3: Pam needed a victim, Pam needed a story. Pam needed

28:33 Speaker 3: somebody she could connect back to Russ, and Louis became

28:37 Speaker 3: the person placed inside that plan. For investigators revisiting Betsy's

28:42 Speaker 3: murder at the time, the implications were impossible to ignore.

28:46 Speaker 3: The woman who had helped send Russ to prison now

28:48 Speaker 3: stood accused of creating an entirely different crime built around

28:53 Speaker 3: the same target. The Lewis Gumpenberger case changed everything, not

28:58 Speaker 3: because it immediately solved Betsy Feria's murder, but because it

29:02 Speaker 3: fundamentally changed how investigators viewed Pam Huck. For years, questions

29:07 Speaker 3: surrounding Pam had existed mostly in the margins. Defense attorneys

29:11 Speaker 3: asked them. Russ's supporters asked them. A handful of reporters

29:15 Speaker 3: asked them. Now law enforcement was asking them too, and

29:19 Speaker 3: they were asking them while investigating a homicide that placed

29:22 Speaker 3: Pam at the center of the planning. The protective assumption

29:26 Speaker 3: surrounding her began disappearing. The credibility she once enjoyed eroded.

29:31 Speaker 3: The trust investigators once extended became skepticism. As detectives assembled

29:36 Speaker 3: the Lewis Gumpenberger case, another question sat quietly behind every interview,

29:42 Speaker 3: every document review, and every conversation involving Pam Huck. If

29:47 Speaker 3: investigators now believed she was capable of orchestrating one murder,

29:51 Speaker 3: what did that mean for the woman who had died

29:53 Speaker 3: in Troy years earlier. Betsy Feria's name had entered the

29:57 Speaker 3: room again, and this time it wasn't Russ's shadow hanging

30:02 Speaker 3: over it. It was Pam's. The investigation into Lewis Gumpenberger's

30:06 Speaker 3: death did more than expose weaknesses in Pam Hupp's story.

30:10 Speaker 3: It gave investigators something they had never truly possessed during

30:14 Speaker 3: the original for Rea investigation, a chance to observe Pam

30:18 Speaker 3: is the central figure in a case instead of a

30:20 Speaker 3: witness standing beside one. That distinction changed everything. Detectives working

30:25 Speaker 3: on the Gumpenberger case weren't inheriting assumptions from another investigation.

30:30 Speaker 3: They were building their own. They watched Pam's explanations evolve.

30:34 Speaker 3: They compared statements against evidence. They examined preparation, planning, and

30:39 Speaker 3: behavior before and after the shooting. The result was a

30:43 Speaker 3: picture that looked dramatically different from the image many people

30:46 Speaker 3: had accepted during the years after Betsy's murder. For the

30:50 Speaker 3: first time, investigators weren't asking whether Pam was credible. They

30:53 Speaker 3: were asking whether she was truthful, and those are very

30:57 Speaker 3: different questions. As the case against Pam strengthened, people connected

31:02 Speaker 3: to Betsy's murder found themselves watching events unfold with a

31:05 Speaker 3: mixture of vindication and disbelief. Russ Joel Schwartz friends from

31:11 Speaker 3: Game Night supporters who had spent years insisting something was wrong.

31:15 Speaker 3: None of them had predicted Louis Gumpenberger, none of them

31:18 Speaker 3: could have. Yet here they were watching investigators build a

31:22 Speaker 3: homicide case around the same woman whose statements had helped

31:26 Speaker 3: secure Russ's conviction years earlier. The emotional reaction wasn't celebration.

31:30 Speaker 3: It was closer to shock, because every new allegation involving

31:35 Speaker 3: Pam forced people to revisit old assumptions surrounding Betsy's death.

31:40 Speaker 3: Conversations that once sounded speculative suddenly felt less speculative. Questions

31:45 Speaker 3: that once seemed unreasonable no longer sounded unreasonable at all.

31:49 Speaker 3: The ground beneath the original case continued shifting, and it

31:53 Speaker 3: wasn't shifting in Russ's direction. Eventually, prosecutors charged Pam Hup

31:58 Speaker 3: with the murder of Louis Gumpenberger. The charge itself carried

32:01 Speaker 3: enormous weight, not because Lewis's case and Betsy's case were identical,

32:06 Speaker 3: certainly not, but because the allegations revealed a pattern investigators

32:10 Speaker 3: believed they could prove. According to prosecutors, Pam selected a

32:14 Speaker 3: vulnerable victim, constructed a false narrative, positioned herself as the target,

32:20 Speaker 3: and attempted to direct suspicion towards some one else. Those

32:24 Speaker 3: allegations immediately attracted attention from people who had spent years

32:28 Speaker 3: studying the Farria case. The parallels were impossible to ignore. Again,

32:32 Speaker 3: investigators believed Pam had shaped a story again, another person

32:37 Speaker 3: ended up dead. Again. Initial suspicion pointed where Pam wanted

32:41 Speaker 3: it pointed. The similarities didn't prove what happened to Betsy,

32:45 Speaker 3: but they forced people to ask questions that had once

32:48 Speaker 3: seemed much easier to dismiss. While the Gumpenberger prosecution moved forward,

32:53 Speaker 3: the investigations surrounding Betsy's murder continued evolving. Behind the scenes.

32:58 Speaker 3: Detectives revisited whichness revealed older materials compared information gathered years apart.

33:05 Speaker 3: What made this stage different from earlier phases of the

33:08 Speaker 3: case was perspective. Investigators were no longer evaluating Pam through

33:12 Speaker 3: a lens of trust. They were evaluating her through a

33:15 Speaker 3: lens of scrutiny. Details that once seemed ordinary received a

33:19 Speaker 3: second look. Statements received a second look, Timelines received a

33:23 Speaker 3: second look. The process wasn't dramatic. Most breakthroughs aren't. They

33:27 Speaker 3: emerged from patient comparison and accumulated doubt. By then, years

33:32 Speaker 3: had passed since Betsy's murder, yet her case had become

33:36 Speaker 3: more active, rather than less. The questions surrounding her death

33:40 Speaker 3: were no longer fading with time, they were multiplying. Then

33:44 Speaker 3: came one of the most significant developments in the entire saga.

33:49 Speaker 3: Pam Houp pleaded guilty to the murder of Lewis Gumpenberger.

33:54 Speaker 3: The plea removed any lingering ambiguity about how investigators viewed

33:58 Speaker 3: her conduct. In that case. She would spend the rest

34:01 Speaker 3: of her life in prison for Louis's murder. But even

34:04 Speaker 3: that wasn't the end, because Louis's death had never been

34:07 Speaker 3: the question drawing the most attention. The larger question remained

34:11 Speaker 3: waiting Betsy for Rea, the woman whose murder launched everything

34:15 Speaker 3: that followed, the woman whose husband lost years of his

34:18 Speaker 3: life to a conviction that ultimately collapsed, The womans whose

34:22 Speaker 3: case had been overshadowed repeatedly by court room battles, appeals,

34:26 Speaker 3: and competing narratives. Now investigators had a convicted killer sitting

34:31 Speaker 3: in prison, a killer whose actions had forced them to

34:34 Speaker 3: reconsider years of assumptions and increasingly all roads were leading

34:39 Speaker 3: back toward the same house in Troy, Missouri, back to

34:42 Speaker 3: the same December night, back to Betsy Foria, the charge

34:47 Speaker 3: every one had been waiting for finally arrived. In twenty

34:50 Speaker 3: twenty one, Pam Hump was charged with Betsy Foreria's murder.

34:55 Speaker 3: Nearly a decade had passed since the night Betsy was

34:58 Speaker 3: found dead beside the couch in her home. Nearly a

35:01 Speaker 3: decade had passed since investigators built a case against Russ.

35:05 Speaker 3: Nearly a decade had passed since jurors convicted him, sent

35:09 Speaker 3: him to prison, and accepted a version of events that

35:12 Speaker 3: ultimately collapsed. Now the focus rested where many people believed

35:17 Speaker 3: it should have rested years earlier. Pam The announcement landed

35:22 Speaker 3: differently than Russ's arrest had. Russ's arrest felt like a conclusion.

35:27 Speaker 3: Pam's felt like a reckoning. For Betsy's family, the moment

35:32 Speaker 3: carried relief, frustration, grief, and exhaustion all at once. The

35:36 Speaker 3: murder that had shattered their lives in twenty eleven still

35:40 Speaker 3: remained unresolved. In the most important sense, a charge was

35:44 Speaker 3: not a conviction, a theory was not a verdict, But

35:47 Speaker 3: after years of watching the case travel down the wrong road.

35:51 Speaker 3: Investigators were finally walking in a different direction. As prosecutors

35:56 Speaker 3: prepared the case against Pam, the broader shape of the

35:59 Speaker 3: story because came impossible to ignore. Betsy Farria was murdered.

36:03 Speaker 3: Pam Hupp received the insurance money. Pam became one of

36:07 Speaker 3: the most influential voices shaping investigators understanding of Betsy's marriage.

36:12 Speaker 3: Russfaria was convicted, Russfaria was exonerated. Louis Gumpenberger was killed.

36:18 Speaker 3: Pam Hupp pleaded guilty to that murder. The sequence stretched

36:22 Speaker 3: across years and multiple court rooms, but when viewed together,

36:26 Speaker 3: it formed a pattern that was difficult to dismiss. The

36:29 Speaker 3: woman who once stood near the edge of the story

36:32 Speaker 3: had gradually moved toward the center, until there was nowhere

36:35 Speaker 3: left to hide from the attention. Reporters who had covered

36:39 Speaker 3: the case for years found themselves returning to old notebooks

36:42 Speaker 3: and archived footage. Detectives who worked different phases of the

36:46 Speaker 3: investigation re visited events that once seemed settled. Family Members

36:51 Speaker 3: who had spent years grieving found themselves answering the same

36:54 Speaker 3: questions again, only now the names attached to those questions

36:58 Speaker 3: had changed. The case had come full circle, but it

37:02 Speaker 3: did not feel complete yet. Then another unexpected development arrived.

37:07 Speaker 3: In twenty twenty three, Pam Hupp entered an offered plea

37:10 Speaker 3: in Betsy Foraria's murder case. The plea allowed Pam to

37:14 Speaker 3: maintain her innocence while acknowledging that prosecutors possessed enough evidence

37:20 Speaker 3: to likely secure a conviction at trial. The result ended

37:24 Speaker 3: the long path toward a murder trial that many people

37:27 Speaker 3: expected would finally produce a definitive court room answer. Instead,

37:31 Speaker 3: the case concluded in a way that mirrored much of

37:33 Speaker 3: its history. Complicated, unsatisfying to some, relieving to others. Pam

37:39 Speaker 3: received a life sentence. There would be no dramatic cross

37:43 Speaker 3: examination revealing every answer, no final witness unexpectedly tying together

37:49 Speaker 3: every loose thread, no single court room moment capable of

37:53 Speaker 3: erasing the years Betsy's family endured or the year's Russ

37:57 Speaker 3: spent in prison. Real life rarely offers that kind of ending.

38:01 Speaker 3: The legal system reached its conclusion, the emotional questions remained

38:05 Speaker 3: harder for Russ. The ending looked different than many people

38:09 Speaker 3: imagine when they hear the word exoneration, walking free, did

38:12 Speaker 3: not restore the lost years and did not give Betsy back.

38:16 Speaker 3: It did not erase prison It did not erase being

38:19 Speaker 3: publicly labeled a murderer. The acquittal mattered, the overturned conviction mattered.

38:25 Speaker 3: The recognition that investigators got it wrong mattered, But none

38:29 Speaker 3: of those things reversed time. Russ spent years fighting to

38:33 Speaker 3: prove something that he knew from the beginning, that he

38:35 Speaker 3: did not kill his wife. The people who stood beside

38:38 Speaker 3: him during the fight carried their own scars from the experience.

38:42 Speaker 3: Friends who never stopped believing him, family members who endured

38:46 Speaker 3: years of uncertainty, attorneys who refused to abandon a case

38:50 Speaker 3: that many others viewed as finished. Their victory was real,

38:53 Speaker 3: but so was the cost. In the end, the story

38:56 Speaker 3: of Betsy Freea became something larger than a murder inventstigation.

39:00 Speaker 3: It became a story about certainty, about what happens when

39:04 Speaker 3: investigators become convinced before every question is asked, about how

39:09 Speaker 3: a compelling narrative can overpower inconvenient facts, and how difficult

39:14 Speaker 3: it is to reverse course once institutions commit themselves to

39:18 Speaker 3: the wrong answer. And it became a story about persistence.

39:22 Speaker 3: Because the truth did not emerge through sudden revelation. It

39:26 Speaker 3: emerged because people kept asking questions long after they were

39:30 Speaker 3: told the case was solved. A defense attorney who refused

39:33 Speaker 3: to stop digging, friends who refused to abandon what they remembered,

39:37 Speaker 3: reporters who refused to let the story disappear, Investigators who

39:42 Speaker 3: eventually looked again. At the center of everything stood Betsy Faria,

39:47 Speaker 3: a wife, a mother, a woman whose murder launched more

39:51 Speaker 3: than a decade of court battles, false conclusions, shattered lives,

39:54 Speaker 3: and relentless questions. The case that began with a husband

39:58 Speaker 3: accused of killing his wife ended with a different woman

40:01 Speaker 3: serving life in prison, and the road between those two

40:04 Speaker 3: points remains one of the most extraordinary failures and eventual

40:09 Speaker 3: corrections in modern American criminal justice. I'm Zevan Oldelberg and

40:14 Speaker 3: this has been kind of Murdery.

40:19 Speaker 1: If you like the show, please subscribe, review and tell

40:21 Speaker 1: your friends. You can find us on social media at

40:24 Speaker 1: Kindomurdery or email at kinomurderyat gmail dot com.