96\. The Victims of Pam Hupp
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That's N-O-O-M dot com. You're listening to an Ono Media podcast. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Into the Dark podcast. I am your host, Peyton Moreland, and I'm so glad that you are here. If you are watching on YouTube and can turn on notifications, leave a comment, give this video a thumbs up. It's a great way to support the podcast. And if you're listening on audio and can leave me a review, preferably a five-star one talking about just how...

brilliant this show is. I'm just kidding, but not really. That would help. I love you all so much. Thank you for being here and thank you for the continued support on this show. I can't explain to you how, how grateful I am to be a part of this. My 10 seconds, I'm just gonna give a little update. November is actually my birthday month and last month I did a like

like spooky gingerbread house I ended up decorating it on live on twitch with the chat and I actually got another gingerbread house that I'm gonna do so that is gonna be part of my birthday celebration and then I also saw the trend where you can go to Michael's and make your own anthropology Christmas houses so I think I'm gonna do that one night um

Honestly, probably just by myself, but it should be fun. And that's kind of how I'm celebrating my birthday throughout the month. And then Garrett is actually taking me on vacation for my actual birthday. So I think this month is going to be a good one, a fun one. I hope it is for you guys as well. But yeah, that's kind of my update.

So that being said, let's jump right into today's episode. This episode includes discussions of self-harm, including suicide. So please listen with care. I'm just going to start off by saying there is a pretty well-known story

TV show about this case. It is actually called The Thing About Pam. So you may have heard of it. It is a true crime murder case. And even if you have or if you haven't heard of it, please stick around because this true crime case is huge.

actually mind-boggling. So if you follow a lot of true crime, you probably know that there are certain clues you can almost always look to in order to identify the killer. Like when someone says something false or misleading in an interrogation, or they seem a little too upset, like they're faking their emotions, or if they have something to gain from the person's death, like a motive.

Follow enough stories like this and you'll be able to spot the real killer in almost any situation, right? Well, that's what makes today's case so interesting because it really shows how sometimes, especially in true crime, first impressions can be wrong. So on December 27th, 2011, at 9.40 p.m.,

A man called 911 in a panic. And on this 911 call, he begged the police to come to his home in the greater St. Louis, Missouri area. Now, his name was Russ Faria. And he said that he had been out that night with his friends playing role-playing games with

He'd only just gotten home to find his wife, Betsy, on the ground and covered in stab wounds.

Russ was so upset that he could barely get the words out on the call. - My wife killed herself. She's on the phone with her. - Now the 911 operator had to tell him to calm down once he started panting too hard to speak. And once he'd caught his breath, Russ explained what he thought had happened to Betsy. He said, "I just got home from a friend's house and my wife, my wife killed herself."

Well, the police responded to the call right away and they found the crime scene was mostly like Russ had described on the call, but it wasn't exactly identical. Yes, his wife Betsy was lying on the ground, just as Russ had said. She did have stab wounds all over her body with the knife still sticking out of her neck.

And sadly, when police were there, she was already dead. In fact, her body was already cold, meaning she had passed a while ago, probably sometime between 7:30 and 8:00 PM that night. But police are immediately questioning why Russ had claimed that his first thought was that his wife Betsy had killed herself.

Because there was no possible way that Betsy could have taken her own life. She had been stabbed 55 times. Some of the wounds were places that she couldn't even possibly have reached on her own. And some had actually been inflicted post-mortem. So clearly, it would have been impossible for her to do this to herself. Betsy Faria had been murdered.

And it didn't take the police very long at all to identify their top suspect. It was namely the person who'd found Betsy's body and who told the 911 operator a very unlikely story about Betsy taking her own life. So yeah, the investigators did suspect Russ, her husband, right away. And when they searched his closet, they found a pair of his slippers with blood on them.

as though he'd been wearing them while he killed her or put them on during the cleanup afterward. But interestingly enough, Russ, in the state they found him, didn't have any other blood on him. There was nothing on his hands, nothing on his clothes. But the police speculated that he could have stabbed Betsy while he was naked and then showered the incriminating evidence off. And...

That might sound like a pretty flimsy theory. You can't solve a murder investigation based on the fact that a person has bloody slippers. But the police's suspicions about Russ were really sealed when they questioned Betsy's good friend, Pamela Hupp, the next day. I want to clarify, Pamela and Betsy were like best friends, which is why the police are even talking to Pam.

So the police went to Pam's house because they knew she and Betsy were old colleagues. 10 years ago, they'd been at the same insurance company together and they had stayed in touch since then. Over time, their relationship had gone from being a work friendship to a real one. And according to Pam, she and Betsy had gotten very close. In fact, when Betsy was diagnosed with stage four cancer, Pam...

was the one there to take her to and from doctor's appointments. She really stepped in to help her friend. See, the disease had spread from Betsy's breast to her liver, and she knew she only had a little time left. And it was at the point where Betsy couldn't fight it anymore.

She was kind of just focused on staying comfortable and having a good quality of life until the end. It was actually an emotional time, and to hear Pam tell it, she had been a true friend to Betsy while she grappled with her impending death. In fact, she had actually been with Betsy on her last day alive before she was murdered.

When Betsy needed a ride from a doctor's appointment, Pam was the one who stepped up for her. She dropped Betsy off at 7 p.m., which means she was likely one of the last people to see her best friend alive. Pam also told the police that recently Betsy had opened up to her about her marriage difficulties. This is what Pam is telling police when they come to investigate her murder. According to Pam,

Russ was abusive. He drank too much, and when he was drunk, he would hit Betsy. On at least one occasion, he had put a pillow over her face while they were in bed together. Pam told the detectives that Russ did this just to scare Betsy. He wasn't trying to kill her at the time, but he did want her to fear for her life, to know that he could murder her anytime he wanted.

Betsy had also reportedly told Pam that she'd been cheating on Russ. And right before her death, she'd actually been thinking of leaving her husband, Russ. Now, the problem was she was afraid of how he would react. So she had waited until the absolute last minute, the night of December 27th, to tell him that she was moving out. Incidentally, this was the same night that she died.

And as if that wasn't enough, Russ was widely known to have a bit of a temper. Several of his and Betsy's friends confirmed that there were times that Russ would overreact to little things. So it really did sound like he might have been the sort of person to fly into a murderous rage when he learned that his wife was cheating on him and leaving him.

Still, the police gave him a chance to explain himself. So they called him in for an interrogation. And there they began by asking Russ, why did you tell the 911 operator that Betsy had taken her own life?

At this point, they suspected that he'd intentionally given misinformation to try and throw off the investigation. Except Russ told the police that Betsy had actually threatened to hurt herself in this way before, and it was because of her fatal cancer diagnosis, okay?

According to Russ, he said his wife didn't want to slowly just get sicker or suffer in her final days. And so she had talked to him about taking matters into her own hands rather than letting the disease kill her. So when Russ walked into the home that night and saw his wife covered in blood on the floor, he said,

This was the first place that his mind went that she had actually done it. She must have followed through on this threat and killed herself. He also admitted, yeah, we have had some marriage difficulties in the past, just like her friend Pam had said. For a while, things had been very bad. But according to Russ, they had found a way to reconcile. The two of them had begun going to church more frequently and they'd recommitted to one another.

By the time of Betsy's murder, according to Russ, her husband, they were more in love than ever. And he would never dream of hurting or killing her. Now, in this interrogation, the police did not believe what Russ was saying. So they asked him, did you know that Betsy had been cheating on you?

And he seemed surprised. He didn't know anything about the affairs that she'd apparently told her best friend Pam about. Interestingly, though, when Russ was asked if he'd ever cheated on Betsy, he kind of tried to avoid the question. And eventually later on, he fessed up that he had had an affair during their marriage, but ended it.

Now, there's one other detail about this interrogation that I have to touch on. And this is the whole time that the police were talking to him, Russ was acting extremely upset. He was sobbing loudly. He was gasping for breath. He was having a hard time speaking at all. And when a prosecutor named Leah Askey saw the footage of his interrogation later on, she immediately thought that

This was too much. She believed Russ must have been putting on a performance and faking his feelings during that first interrogation. She said he was acting sad and broken up for cover for the fact that he was the one who had killed his wife, Betsy. Now, besides the affair, his temper, and the possibility that Betsy might leave him, Russ still had plenty of other motive.

According to Pam, he'd been talking a lot lately about how he planned to spend the life insurance payment once Betsy died of cancer because we know her death was upcoming. Apparently, all of that talk had made Betsy feel like he was almost eager for him to collect on the life insurance. In fact, he did stand to make $250,000 in life insurance payments, or at least he thought he did.

See, Betsy had two policies. One was worth $100,000 and the other was for $150,000. Now, up until December 23rd, this would be four days before her murder,

Russ was listed as the beneficiary on both of these life insurance policies, except Russ had no way of knowing this, but Betsy had actually changed her $150,000 policy on that day, four days before she was murdered. She was afraid that if something were to happen to her and her money went to her husband, that he'd blow her savings on himself, leaving nothing for her kids.

Which is a reasonable fear. In fact, when Betsy first got her fatal cancer diagnosis, several friends came out of the woodworks to tell her not to leave that much money to Russ. He'd never been good at sticking to a budget. Well, Betsy that day changed her life insurance policy so the $150,000 payment would actually go out to someone she trusted, her best friend, Pamela.

And Betsy didn't tell Russ about this change, meaning he might have really believed that he would take home $250,000 if Betsy were to die. And that's a powerful motive. And even though he didn't get the full payout, Russ did still pocket 100 grand when Betsy was murdered.

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So this was all enough for the police to arrest Russ on January 4th, 2012. And they actually charged him with first degree murder and armed criminal action. And all the way up until his trial began, Russ maintained his innocence. But by and large,

Few people believed him. Even his own family thought he was the killer by this point. I think it's important to say that before the trial, Russ had been very close with his daughter, Mariah. Well, once Mariah saw all of the evidence that the police had uncovered, the motive, she felt like she couldn't stand by her father. She found herself wondering if this man who she'd loved, who she'd trusted,

had really killed her mother in such a brutal way. 55 stab wounds. The accusations basically destroyed this father-daughter relationship. Still, even though his own daughter didn't fully buy the story, Russ pleaded not guilty at his trial in the fall of 2013. And right from the beginning, the hearings stirred up a lot of controversy. See,

Neither side had a slam dunk case. The prosecution and defense lawyers both presented arguments with some holes in them. The state claimed that Russ didn't just kill his wife, he'd been part of a conspiracy to murder her.

I mentioned before that when Russ first called 911, he told the operator that he'd been at a role-playing game night with his friends. The problem was some of those friends didn't show up that night, the night Betsy was murdered. And so there weren't enough people to play the game. So instead, they had all watched a movie.

Still, the people who'd been with Russ all vouched for him. They corroborated his alibi. After he left the game slash movie night, Russ stopped for a late dinner at a fast food restaurant and he had a receipt to prove it. I mean, I'm basically telling you that Russ has an alibi.

at the time of the murder, according to his friends and this receipt, because we know that when first responders showed up, Betsy's body was already cold, meaning she had died earlier in the night when Russ was with his friends. And most importantly, his cell phone data showed that he'd been at his friend's house, then driving back toward home right until the time he placed a 911 call. It really didn't seem like Russ could have been home at the time of the murder. So you're like,

Like, how does the state even argue this alibi? The prosecution claimed that Russ had convinced his friends to lie for him. That his buddies had to be pretending that he was at the game and movie night so he'd have a false alibi. They might even have taken his phone for a drive so it would look like he'd been out and about all night. And one of them could have ordered the fast food and then given Russ the receipt.

Again, part of this big murder conspiracy. And I know it sounds complicated and a little out there, but this is what the police and the state claimed at trial. They pointed to Russ's bloody slippers, his highly emotional interrogation, and his alleged history of abuse as further evidence that he would want Betsy dead. And as for the defense, they argued that Russ had been framed by none other than

Pamela Hupp, Betsy's best friend. According to the defense and to Russ, Pamela was the one who had lied about everything. Russ and Betsy weren't having marriage problems, at least not anymore.

Their difficult period was long over and Russ was utterly devoted to Betsy by the time she died. He says, "Pam's lying. I never hit her. I never put a pillow over her face to scare her." And for what it's worth, none of Betsy's other friends had ever heard of her cheating on Russ or wanting to leave him. So either Pam was the only person who Betsy had told these details

or Pam had made it all up. And frankly, Pam had a strong motive to want Betsy dead since she, four days before the murder, had become the new beneficiary of a life insurance payment. In fact, Pam claimed that Betsy had left her the money to ensure her children were taken care of.

Like that Betsy left the money to Pam and said, please use this money to take care of my kids. But since Pamela had gotten the cash, she'd kept everything. She hadn't shared Betsy's money with any of Betsy's kids, choosing instead to spend it on herself. So according to Russ's lawyers at trial,

Pamela Hupp had killed Betsy while Russ was with his friends that night. And then she told the police lie after lie about Betsy and Russ to try and implicate Russ. She'd even taken Russ's slippers out of the closet, dipped them in Betsy's blood after she murdered her and put them back away to make him look more guilty, which

which is why there was only blood found on the slippers and nothing else. The defense also said that Pamela's statements to the police were contradictory. According to Pamela, she had dropped Betsy off after her doctor's appointment and then just left right away, right? Like she dropped her friend off and left. But her cell phone records showed that

that Pam was still in Betsy's neighborhood at 7.30 p.m. This is right around the time of the murder and 30 minutes after she had supposedly dropped Betsy off and said goodbye. And then there's one last thing that I have to say about Pamela giving Betsy a ride home from the doctor's appointment that night.

Apparently, Pam had lied to police about being the one to take care of Betsy during this illness,

Her driving Pam wasn't a regular thing, but that day, Pam had insisted on picking Betsy up. She'd actually been pretty pushy about taking her to this appointment, almost like she was very invested in finding a way to be home alone with Betsy at the time that she knew Russ would be gone. So to hear Russ's lawyers tell it, it sounded like Pamela had a lot more motive, opportunity, and means than

to commit the murder than Russ even did. But Russ is the one on trial. Still, this seems a little dramatic, right? Like that this woman had expertly executed the perfect murder and then fooled all of the investigators and now Russ was on trial. Like I said, neither argument seemed particularly airtight. And by the time the case went to deliberation, the jurors were evenly split. Half were convinced that Russ was guilty and the other half figured he was innocent.

So they spent some time debating the merits of the case and then they did something they shouldn't have. The jury found Russ guilty, even though several jurors still weren't sure if he had done it. They said there was definitely reasonable doubt at play. But as those jurors later told the press later,

They were confident that if Russ was convicted, they say he's guilty just to get this over with, that he would file an appeal and would win. So the idea was that some other jury in the appeals court could sort it all out. They didn't want to make the tough decision for themselves.

So, Russ was convicted of both of the charges, first-degree murder and armed criminal action, and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. And just as the jurors had predicted, he filed for an appeal. So he won the right to a retrial. And I have to tell you, it is not because of the evidence, his alibi,

or because of the problems with the jurors' deliberations and them going to the media afterward and saying, eh, half of us actually didn't even think he was guilty. But because it came to light after his verdict that,

that his prosecutor had been in an inappropriate sexual relationship with a police officer who was investigating this case which is obviously inappropriate because in order to make each other look good it would be great if she backed his police work and said Russ was guilty and he said whatever he had to to make sure that she wins the case so this is another twist

But it was enough for Russ to have another chance to prove his innocence, and he was released from prison before his second trial began. Russ got out on June 15, 2015, and the hearing was scheduled for that November. And then, when he did get his new day in court, he waived his right to a jury trial. I mean...

I can't really blame him because a jury had really betrayed him the last time he trusted them. And this was apparently a good call because the judge ended up siding with Russ and his conviction was overturned and he'd been found not guilty of Betsy's murder. But even though it was great for an innocent man to be set free again, there was also something tragic about all of this.

Russ had spent roughly three and a half years in prison. Those were three and a half years he'd never get back. Not to mention his relationship with his daughter had been ruined. He did sue the police department, the prosecutor, and the county, and he won $2 million. This is a pretty good payout, but still, he couldn't buy back all of the time and relationships he'd lost. And there was still one big question looming over everything. If Russ didn't kill Betsy, who did?

A little under a year after the conviction was overturned, some new information came out about this mystery. See, on August 10th, 2016, a woman named Carol McAfee called the police with a very...

According to Carol, she was at home playing in the yard with her dog when a stranger pulled up in an SUV and started talking to her. The driver was a woman and she said she was a producer with the television program Dateline.

She said she needed someone to come give a quick interview for an upcoming episode. The woman also said she would give Carol a thousand bucks for her time and that she'd pay it in cash. So there'd be no paper trail and no need for a Carol to even report it to her taxes. Now, obviously this sounds off to Carol in a lot of ways. She hadn't done anything worthy of a Dateline interview. What did she know? And she couldn't imagine a major television show paying someone so much money under the table.

But on the other hand, this is $1,000 we're talking about. The money was too good to turn down. So she got into the woman's car and they started driving away. Now, right away, Carol has some second thoughts. Something in her gut just told her that this woman was not who she said she was. Something bad could happen if she stayed in this car. So she changes her mind and she tells the driver to stop and just let her go home. And they do. And that's exactly what Carol does.

She leaves before she ever got the chance to figure out what the woman was really up to. But it was all odd enough that she just felt like she needed to come and say something to the police. Carol also told the investigators that she had security cameras on her house and she'd filmed the moments when the woman had driven up and when they had returned.

Although the woman never got out of her car so her face didn't show up on camera, they did capture the license plate. And when the police ran the plate, it belonged to none other than Pamela Hupp, the best friend who was a major part of this still unsolved murder case.

So the question to police was, why would Pamela do this? What is she doing? Like, what is she doing? She obviously doesn't work for Dateline. And what did she hope to gain by driving off with this random woman? So the investigators were still trying to figure that out when they got another call six days later on August 16th.

And this call was from Pamela Hupp herself. The police at this point are probably like, what is going on?

Pamela sounded panicked in this 911 call and she told the dispatcher that someone had broken into her house, that it was a man and he was trying to force her to get into his car. He was trying to kidnap her. Then not long after she placed the call, Pamela claimed that she shot the man and he was dead by the time the police made it to the scene. So she was the only living witness to describe what had happened.

She said that she had killed this man in self-defense. And when she was called into an interrogation, Pamela claimed that the alleged kidnapper had been asking her for Russ's money. Russ, the husband of our murder victim. She's like, I have no idea what that meant. I don't know what that means.

Investigators also found a note in the dead kidnapper man's pocket and it referenced Russ's money.

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So at first, please think, maybe someone, maybe Russ, had sent this man after Pamela. Maybe he'd been planning to rob her for Betsy's life insurance money, the money that he never got because he was taken off as the beneficiary. Maybe it was an act of revenge to have her killed for daring to implicate him back then. Except perhaps.

The police soon learned that the alleged attacker, Louis Gumpenberger,

was severely cognitively disabled. He had an old head injury that had seriously impeded his ability. So this alleged kidnapper was not all there in the head. He was disabled. He probably wouldn't have been able to take public transit on his own or otherwise find his way to a new place that he'd never been before. Honestly, he wasn't capable of pulling something like this

And that note in the pocket about Russ's money, police soon learn it's in Pamela's handwriting. So the assumption was that Pamela had staged this entire scene. She must have picked Louis up on the street somehow, told some story to lure him into her car, this disabled man. And then once they made it back to her house,

She called the police with that fake story about an attempted kidnapping. And then she killed Lewis before anyone could make it to the scene and talk to him. She took advantage of someone who didn't know better. And then she tucked that note into Lewis's pocket and gave a false statement to make it look like Russ had tried to kidnap her.

Now, once the detectives pieced all of that together, they could only think of one reason that Pamela would want to frame Russ at this point. She knew that he'd been let out of prison and that Betsy's murder was now technically unsolved again. She really didn't want the police to reopen their investigation into Betsy's murder again.

and find another suspect other than Russ. And police are like, the only reason for that is because potentially Pam was the real killer.

So it was too early to say for sure, but when the police looked at Pamela's history, they saw some signs that she had been capable of violence for a long while. I mean, they already knew that she had killed Lewis and they thought that she might have been targeting Carol too. I mean, that weird incident where she lured Carol into her car saying she worked for Dateline had been less than a week before Lewis's death.

So while the police weren't sure how she'd gotten Lewis to her home, they figured she'd probably used the same strategy that she had with Carol. She must have seen him on the street, pulled over, pretended to be a television producer and offered him money. Maybe if Carol hadn't freaked out and demanded to be taken home, Pamela would have shot her first and told a wild story about Carol attempting to rob or kidnap her.

But even with this list of possible victims, Lewis, Carol, Betsy, there was yet another suspicious death in Pamela's past. It was her mother's death. See, way back on October 30th, 2013, Pamela had gone to see her mom, Shirley Newman, in a nursing home.

And for the duration of their visit, they were alone together in her mother's third floor room. And when Pamela headed home afterward, she told the staff not to check in on her mom, that she would be skipping dinner that night and breakfast in the morning. She said, don't worry, don't go in her room, she's good. This is an odd request, sure, but the staffers did what Pamela asked. She is her daughter after all.

So nobody checked in on Shirley. They didn't hear from her at all until the next day when her body was found on the ground underneath her balcony. Some of the safety railings were broken, so the nursing home employees initially figured that Shirley might have tripped and fallen through them. But it would have taken a lot of force for her to break the barriers, more force than she'd have if she just tripped.

If someone had pushed her, however, she could have broken through a lot more easily. Plus, Shirley had taken a dangerously high dose of sleeping pills before her death that showed up in her autopsy. So police are now wondering, did Pamela drug her mother and then shove her off a balcony to kill her? To date, I want to tell you she hasn't been charged with anything related to her mother's death.

but her mother's cause of death has been reclassified from an accident to undetermined. And it is worth noting that Pamela inherited about $120,000 from her mother once everything was split up with other family members. So it's hard to say if anything will come of this or if charges will ever be pressed for Shirley, but Pamela was charged with

with Lewis's death and in 2019 she took an Alford plea. In simple terms that meant she wouldn't fight the charges but she also maintained her innocence. Basically it's like saying she was pleading guilty while also saying she wasn't guilty. It was a fine distinction and one that didn't save her from being sentenced to life in prison. So finally Pamela had been brought to justice just

Just not for Betsy's murder. For another potentially related one. But where does this leave everyone that Pamela basically destroyed? That she didn't kill, but she definitely destroyed their lives. I mean, Russ, how does he just go back to living a normal life after learning that Pam allegedly killed his wife, framed him, he lost his relationship with his daughter, he went to prison for three and a half years,

And then Pam killed another defenseless man to try to frame Russ again. How can you find a sense of normal again when your spouse has been murdered and you've spent years in prison for crimes you didn't commit? Well, one night, Russ got an unexpected phone call out of the blue. It was from a friend of his who called to say a ton of police cars had just raced onto his street

to question one of his neighbors. Specifically, that friend lived close to Carol, the woman who Pamela had reportedly tried to kidnap first. So here's what happened.

Once Pamela murdered Lewis, the police noticed that his case did seem very similar to Carol's, the woman who had called in. So the investigators had some follow-up questions for her. A bunch of detectives swarmed onto her street to try and piece the clues together. And naturally, before long, gossip was racing up and down the block about why the police were questioning Carol. When her neighbor realized what had happened, they called Russ just to say something like,

Hey, you might have a wild connection with this woman who lives close to me. And not long afterward, Russ and Carol decided to meet up in person and kind of talk about what they'd been through. Like, Pam hadn't killed either of them, but had really turned their lives upside down. Now, Russ and Carol had one big thing in common. Pamela had tried to frame the both of them. And that was enough for them to start talking and get to know one another.

And from there, they realized that there was a romantic spark between them. They began dating. And finally, in early 2024, the two of them actually got married. So Russ and Carol got their second shot at love. But there was still the question of whether Betsy would ever get justice. After Pamela was convicted for Lewis's murder, she was also charged with Betsy's homicide, too.

And this time around, she was facing a potential death penalty if she was found guilty. But each time a trial date for Betsy would be set, it would get pushed back.

First, her attorney died of a heart attack and Pamela needed time to hire someone new. And then the prosecutors wanted the trial to take place in a different jurisdiction. So time went on. And to this day, Pamela has still not been tried for Betsy's murder. She's due to come back to court in 2025. Unless, of course, there's somehow another delay before then. In an interview with Fox, Betsy's daughter, Mariah, said,

surprisingly said she was okay with the postponements because every time she thought about her mother's murder, it hurt. And each time she saw an update about it on the news or an acquaintance brought it up in conversation, it hurt. And the thought of sitting through another murder trial, it was harrowing.

So if she could put it off for a few more weeks, months, even years, she was okay with it. Mariah feels like she didn't need to get justice right away, especially if it was coming eventually. So that question is still up in the air. As of this recording, Betsy's murder has not been solved and Pamela is considered innocent until proven guilty. She is, however, still in prison for Lewis's murder. In the meanwhile, Betsy's family is focused on finding a way to heal.

I mentioned before how Betsy and Russ's daughter, Mariah, believed the police at first when they said Russ was the killer. Well, once she heard all of the evidence against Pam, she changed her mind and she went back to supporting and believing her father. But their relationship had changed permanently.

And it's hard to say if they'll ever go back to the easy trust they used to have. That's the really upsetting thing about these kinds of stories. It's not just the actual victim who loses. There are ripple effects from the murder. Other people who experience other kinds of losses that can never be repaired. And it's important to recognize all of the victim in these cases, including the less obvious ones. And again,

Whenever I dive into this case, whenever I venture into the dark in it, I am devastated for Betsy, for Russ, for Mariah, but I'm also devastated for Louis and his family. He was quite literally taken advantage of and dragged into a situation that he didn't know better and murdered for no reason. And where is he in this story? Where do we get

Sure, Pamela has been put away for his murder, but is there any justice in the fact that his name gets buried because of the bigger story going on here? This entire case is devastating. And honestly, the fact that Russ's defense was correct in their theory at trial...

and these jurors did not take their responsibility seriously and still found him guilty is infuriating. It's frustrating to listen to jurors go to the media and say, we didn't really think he was guilty, but we're just going to mess around with his life anyway. The whole case is just astounding. And it's really, really sad and really, really frustrating. But that's where it's at.

I guess I will keep you guys updated if Pam ever does go to court in 2025. But we'll see. With this type of case, another twist just simply wouldn't blow my mind. And that is the story of Pamela Faria and Louis Gumperberger's murders. I will see you guys next time as we dive further into the dark together. Goodbye.

Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently, I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation. They said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous two-year contracts, they said, what the f*** are you talking about, you insane Hollywood a**hole?

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