Pam Hupp

Pamela Marie Hupp (née Neumann; born October 10, 1958) is an American convicted murderer serving a life sentence in Missouri's Chillicothe Correctional Center for the 2016 shooting of Louis Gumpenberger in her home in O'Fallon, Missouri. Hupp's claim that she had shot Gumpenberger (who had mental and physical disabilities) in self-defense after he pursued her into her home wielding a knife was not accepted by law enforcement. She ultimately entered an Alford plea before charges of first-degree murder and armed criminal action could go to trial.

Testimony from Hupp had played a key role in the 2013 conviction of Russ Faria for the murder of his wife, Betsy Faria, who was stabbed to death in her home in Troy, Missouri, in 2011. After a successful appeal and second trial in 2015, Russ was exonerated after his defense attorney was permitted to introduce evidence that had been withheld from the original trial jury, some of which implicated Hupp – the beneficiary of a life insurance policy held by Betsy – as the killer. Law enforcement have theorized that Hupp tricked Gumpenberger into entering her home and then murdered him in a failed attempt to frame Russ. In July 2021, Hupp was charged with the first-degree murder of Betsy Faria; a trial is scheduled for August 2026.

Hupp has also been investigated in connection with the death of her mother, Shirley Neumann, who died in 2013 from injuries sustained in a fall from the balcony of her third-floor apartment in Fenton, Missouri. A tip-off to police accused Hupp of killing Neumann for financial gain. Neumann's death was initially ruled an accident, but in November 2017 the chief medical examiner for St. Louis County, Missouri changed the cause of death to "undetermined", referencing the events in O'Fallon and Troy. An investigation into Neumann's death by the St. Louis County Police Department was inconclusive.

The killings of Betsy Faria and Louis Gumpenberger have been the subject of significant media coverage, including extensive reporting from the local Fox affiliate station KTVI in St. Louis and six Dateline NBC episodes airing from 2014 to 2022, as well as a Dateline NBC true crime podcast. A scripted television series featuring actress Renée Zellweger as Hupp, The Thing About Pam, aired on NBC in 2022.

Prior life

Pamela Marie Neumann ("Pam") was born on October 10, 1958. She grew up in Dellwood, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, where she attended Riverview Gardens High School. In her young adulthood, Hupp held several jobs in the life insurance industry; on two occasions, she was fired for forging signatures. In 2001, Hupp and her husband settled in O'Fallon, Missouri, where she worked as an administrator for State Farm and flipped houses on the side via a company called H2 Partners LLC. By 2010, Hupp had stopped working and was claiming disability benefits for back, leg and neck pain.

In 2011, Hupp and Betsy Faria, a friend terminally ill with cancer, reportedly collected money for a family also impacted by cancer. St. Louis station KTVI discovered several years later that the family did not know about the collection; information was presented to Lincoln County authorities in 2014, but was not investigated further. There was no evidence to suggest Betsy knew the fundraiser was questionable, with her friends recalling that she said she was excited to be helping a struggling family, even though she herself was dying. One of them, Kathleen Meyer, said, "This was going to be a legacy for her, to leave something like this behind in her memory."

Death of Betsy Faria

Elizabeth Kay Meyer Faria ("Betsy"; 1969-2011) was one of Hupp's coworkers at State Farm. She lived on Sumac Drive in Troy, Missouri, with her husband, Russell Scott Faria ("Russ"), and two daughters from a previous relationship. In 2010, Betsy was diagnosed with breast cancer. In October 2011 she learned the cancer had metastasized to her liver and was terminal.

On December 22, 2011, days before her death and unbeknownst to her family, Betsy changed the sole beneficiary of her $150,000 (equivalent to $215,000 in 2025) State Farm life insurance policy from her husband to Hupp, who originally said that Betsy had asked her to give the money to her daughters when they were older. Hupp later said that Betsy had wanted her to keep the money for herself. Betsy's daughters launched a legal challenge against Hupp and her husband to attempt to claim the life insurance policy in 2014, which was dismissed in 2016; Russ launched his own legal challenge against State Farm in 2016. Hupp admitted that she had lied about what she intended to do with the proceeds. Prosecutors later speculated that Russ had been angered by Betsy's actions, giving him a motive to kill her. Russ remained the beneficiary on a separate $100,000 (equivalent to $143,000 in 2025) policy.

Five days later, on December 27, Betsy underwent chemotherapy at the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center in St. Louis, then visited her mother's home. Afterward she was driven home by Hupp, the last confirmed person to have seen her alive. Betsy had originally been scheduled to be driven home by Russ, or else stay with her mother, until Hupp unexpectedly drove to her mother's house and insisted on driving Betsy home. Hupp claimed that she dropped Betsy off at her residence at approximately 7 p.m. At approximately 7:21 p.m., a call to Betsy from one of her daughters went unanswered.

Russ spent the evening at the home of his friend Michael Corbin, watching movies from 6 p.m. until 9 p.m., then drove to an Arby's in Lake St. Louis before returning home. At 9:40 p.m., Russ called 9-1-1, saying that he had found that his wife had killed herself. Betsy was found on the floor in front of her couch, laying on her right side. She had been stabbed over 55 times, with her wrists cut to the bone and a serrated kitchen knife left lodged in her neck. A second knife was found under a pillow on the couch she was lying on. First responders arrived within ten minutes and concluded that Betsy had been dead for at least an hour or longer. No blood evidence was found in any sink or shower. No blood trails were found exiting the home. Betsy's time of death was later reported as being between 7:20 p.m. and 9:41 p.m.

Conviction of Russ Faria

Russ was arrested the day after his wife's death. His initial assertion that Betsy had killed herself was considered "ludicrous" by first responders who saw her body. A police search of the house unearthed a bloodstained pair of slippers in his closet. Russ' agitated emotional state was regarded as "suspicious" by police, and he ostensibly failed a polygraph test. When interviewed by police, Hupp claimed that Russ had a "violent temper"; that he was a heavy drinker; and that he had threatened Betsy, who had considered leaving him. At Hupp's behest, police searched Betsy's laptop and found a document in which she purportedly expressed fears that her husband would kill her. It was later revealed that the document was written in Microsoft Word 97, software that had not been installed on the laptop; it was the only document on the laptop with an "unknown" author. On January 4, 2012, the day after Betsy's funeral, Russ was charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action. Unable to make $250,000 bail (equivalent to $351,000 in 2025), he was held in Lincoln County jail until his trial began on November 18, 2013.

During Russ' trial, his defense attorney, Joel Schwartz, argued that the testimonies of the four friends he had visited, cellphone records evidencing his presence at Corbin's house twenty miles away from the murder scene and evidence of his making purchases from different stores over the course of the evening demonstrated that the timeline did not allow for him to commit the murder. There were no traces of blood on his body or clothes. Prosecuting attorney Leah Askey countered that Russ' friends were providing a false alibi and had conspired with him to perpetrate the murder – including holding onto his cellphone and posing as him to buy food at Arby's to falsify his whereabouts – as an "ultimate role play." The trial judge, Christina Mennemeyer, refused to allow Schwartz to present evidence implicating Hupp as an alternative suspect, including cellphone records showing she had been in the vicinity of the Faria house for up to thirty minutes after the time she claimed to have dropped Betsy off or that Betsy had made Hupp the sole beneficiary of her life insurance policy shortly before her death.

During the trial, Detective Mike Merkel of the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office reported that a crime scene camera had broken and photographs had failed to develop; Schwartz later obtained copies of the photographs in question. In a secret hearing during the trial, Hupp claimed that she had put $100,000 of the insurance money in a trust for Betsy's daughters; in a July 2014 civil deposition, she admitted she had not done so. (In August 2016, it was revealed that Hupp's company H2 Partners LLC had loaned $122,574.84 to her son Travis.)