Dateline Originals - The Thing About Pam - Ep. 2: A Matter of Trust

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

The prosecution believed it was a case about greed. The defense did, too.This episode was originally published on September 19, 2019. 

The funny thing about making Dateline is that a lot of times the murderer is pretty obvious. So it's up to us to take you on a journey. Make you question your own assumptions, your biases, your guts. And this story seemed pretty straightforward, right? Husband killed his wife. The cops sure thought so. Russ Faria was the prime suspect within a day of his 911 call. And it didn't take much to get the neighbors whispering.

He must have done it. Some of Betsy's friends believed it. In time, her family would too. But was this an open-and-shut case? Well, now we know it wasn't. And this time, instead of us creating the journey, we got sucked into one of our own. In 2011, when Russ found his wife Betsy dead

just after Christmas, he had no idea that in a few short days he was going to be charged with her murder and that their entire marriage would become public fodder, dissected by everybody they were close to. Some warm memories came out in the beginning. They were very happy.

I just thought that they were a happy couple. We knew that he could not have committed this crime. But in time, some unflattering ones, too. Many people would describe him as a pig. I mean, he was a guy's guy, and pretty crude and rude. There was this anger in him that he could hide and he could put on a front. What people said about Russ to lawyers and to investigators ran the gamut. So how was it that cops decided what opinions they valued the most?

The same way many of us do, by settling on the ones that feel the most plausible. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Dateline NBC's newest podcast, The Thing About Pam. Two years after Betsy's murder, we started looking into Russ's case. I spoke to Russ's defense attorney, to Betsy's friends and her family, and we got hold of a police interview tape, all the usual stuff. And the more I learned, the more I didn't understand. The choices made by law enforcement and prosecutors were, well, they were baffling. My producer, Kathy Singer, was as mystified as I was. So I'm often asked, do you think the people in your stories really did it? And I say, well,

yeah, I've seen the evidence and I have to say they did it. But almost every day in America, people are wrongfully convicted. Police and prosecutors sometimes make decisions that just make me go, huh? And with this case in particular, she found herself saying that quite a bit. I don't think there are many murders in Lincoln County. She was right. There weren't a lot of murders in Lincoln County. In the three years before Betsy's death, there had only been two murders in the whole area. Take 2009. There were zero. That's right, zero murders. We would find out that this was the first murder trial the judge had ever presided over. The prosecutor had never tried such a case either.

From the start, it felt like the investigation had a few too many shortcomings. We'll get to that eventually. For now, the trial. Authorities in Lincoln County arrested a man in connection with the murder of a woman in Troy. We do know who the person who was arrested is, but that person has not been formally charged. The woman who had been murdered is 42-year-old Betsy Faria, classified as a homicide. Russ Faria was arrested on January 4, 2012. He pleaded not guilty.

Nearly two years passed before his trial started. And then finally, November 2013. Russ was tried in Lincoln County in Troy. This is where the Farias lived. The judge was Chris Minnemeyer, the prosecutor was Leah Askey, and the main defense attorney was Joel Schwartz. Leah Askey and Joel Schwartz called various witnesses to the stand, people who know the Farias and could talk about their dynamic, what kind of a couple they were, whether or not they were happy. But what exactly did the prosecution have that indicated Russ was responsible for the crime. Well, there was that frantic 911 call. Russell, what's going on there?

I just got home from a friend's house, and my wife killed herself. She's on the phone. Leah Askey opened the trial with it, argued that the call reeked of false emotion. Askey told the jury that this man was way over the top. And Betsy's family? Well, when I spoke to her mother, Janet Meyer, she told me...

That 911 call was goofy. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, call was goofy. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. It's like, oh, what did I do? What did I do? And Betsy's sister, Mary Rogers, had this to say. What if he got home and they started fighting and he went into a rage and he killed her and then you're just beside yourself and you're not thinking and you're doing all of these things and you're calling 9-1-1. From what I gather, initially Betsy's family did not think Russ could have killed Betsy. But as time went on from the police and possibly also the prosecutor, they became convinced that he did kill Betsy. Leah Askey presented a parade of witnesses One by one, Russ's in-laws and his stepdaughters They all took the stand And they pointed the finger

Like that time Mary said she got an alarming phone call From Betsy's daughters, Leah and Mariah The girls called me crying at work That he was using foul language And so I went to their house, and he was, like, out of control. I actually called the police, took the girls, and got him out of the house. Betsy's mother said she had heard things that made her uneasy about Russ. He was at my house one night, probably December, with Betsy, myself, it was just the three of us,

and we were sitting there playing Upwards. We played the Upwards game a lot. Yeah, he was very good at Upwards. Made me mad. I could never beat him. Anyway, we were playing one night, and I can't think for sure who he was talking about and going on about. He wanted to kick him in his. He got very, very violent in his talking about this. And I remember looking at him and saying, Russ,

you're scaring me. Well, that's, I really mean it. That's what I would do. That's the way I feel. I had seen what he says when he gets mad. He told a friend of mine's husband that if he got into a fight with somebody, he would fight to kill. Here's my producer, Kathy, again. They took the stand at his first trial and said bad things about him. It seems like small things became very big deals in the retelling. Then whose turn was it to take the stand? Why, Pam Hopps. He'd start playing this game of putting a pillow over her face to see what it would feel like.

Remember her? I don't know if she said, this is to see what it would feel like. Remember her? I don't know if she said, this is what it's going to feel like when you die or whatever. On the stand, Pam was not only mourning the death of her friend, but she was also mourning the death of her mother, who had recently had a horrible accident. Anyway, she repeated to the jury what she had told investigators, that Russ talked down to his wife. He told her she wasn't smart enough. She was simple. Pam told the jury

Russ was very degrading, that he made people feel uncomfortable. So uncomfortable, friends stopped wanting to socialize with Bessy if Russ was going to be around. After Pam, the prosecution presented their physical evidence. There was blood on Russ's slippers and on the light switch in his closet. A chemical test revealed that there was blood in the kitchen. Semen found in Betsy the night of her murder, which indicated to the prosecutor that Russ must have had sex with her right before killing her. The prosecutor also said that's why investigators found no blood on him.

He'd obviously been naked while committing the crime and then took a shower. And Russ's alibi, the night of the murder, all the surveillance video, the receipts, according to the prosecution, they only made him look more suspicious. It was as if he had purposefully covered his tracks. But what about his alibi, his game night buddies?

Well, all their stories were oddly identical. The prosecutor argued they'd been rehearsed. And that, in a nutshell, is the prosecution's argument. But why am I telling you this? Why isn't Leah Askey here explaining her case against Russ Faria? She won't talk to us. I can't tell you why she declined to be interviewed by Dateline. But Joel Schwartz, Russ's lawyer?

When I mentioned that to him, he thought the reason was pretty simple. She can't pick up any of these accusations. If she could, she'd come talk to you. She can't pick up any of these accusations. If she could, she'd come talk to you. She proved nothing. If Russell did this, he's not naive enough to think that they're not going to discover the multiple wounds in the back, the 56 stab wounds, the post-mortem cutting of the wrist. Someone who did this is not going to call in and say it's suicide. It makes no sense. Unfortunately, I believe the police had already decided who did this. It's the only explanation in my eyes to explain what I consider to be a horribly deficient

investigation. He doesn't hold back, does he? When the prosecution was done presenting its case, Joel was off to the races. The blood on the slippers. There is blood found on slippers that belong to Russ, and it was Betsy's blood. There was very little, if any, blood on the top of the slippers. The only blood found was in splotches on the very bottoms and the side of the slippers,

and there was no imprint of a shoe in the blood, nor was there any footprint anywhere on the tile floor leading back to where the slippers were found. Somebody attempted to stage this, dipped it in the blood, and hid those back in the closet. What about the blood on that light switch? There is a light switch in the closet that also had blood with Betsy's DNA in it. And somebody else's that they couldn't determine whose it was. However, if you looked at the light switch and the pattern on the light switch of the blood, it was basically a cross stitch as if somebody was carrying those slippers. The pattern seemed to be the same as the shoes.

But how could Joel possibly explain Russ putting a pillow over Betsy's face? I did ask her mother about that, and her mother said they were extremely close, and if there was something like that ever done, she believed Betsy would have told her. What about the number of wounds? It being a crime of passion. A couple of the wounds we're talking about, specifically I think about six of them, were about seven inches or 15 centimeters deep. Those wounds were the same exact tracking, the same distance, and came from the same areas, again with no irregularities. To me, it doesn't indicate rage, it indicates staging.

Joel had an explanation for pretty much everything. Russ had, after all, four alibi witnesses. He had cell phone data placing him at his house, finding Betsy. Rigger Mortis had set in when he found her. She'd been dead for a couple of hours by then. And Russ could account for all of his activities starting at 5 o'clock that day. Seemed pretty clear cut. So Joel felt confident. I, in a million years, couldn't imagine,

based on what had been presented to them, how they could believe beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond any doubt at all, that Russ had anything to do with this. But then, Via AsII went a little off script during her closing argument. The argument was a complete surprise to me.

Here to read the argument is my colleague Barbara Rabb, senior producer at NBC. First, I want to thank you for your attentive listening. It started out innocuously enough, and then she started getting creative. He decided this would be the ultimate role play, the ultimate game, the ultimate way to stage, but it required all hands on deck. It required a pretty good... First thing she did was accuse four innocent people of murder.

He had the idea, and I think he brought it to his friends. I think he talked about it. How would we do this? How would the ultimate role play happen? It just so happens... She had stated that this, in her eyes, this had been planned for years. It was years in the making, and tonight was the night, and it was ludicrous. The night. The night we've been talking about for months, for years. The night. It's here. It's real. Tonight is the night.

He then, according to the prosecutor, went to his friends, said, guys, tonight's the night. He left his cell phone, sped home. For some reason, she argued, he then had sex with her one last time. He leaves his phone, and he heads back to Troy He comes into the house Betsy is on the couch She's covered in a blanket

And I submit to you that he has sex with her That he violates her one more time That he controls her just one more time I'm going to humiliate him This all sounds a little graphic A little far-fetched It's about to get stranger. Because, in the end, only eight sperm were found in Betsy.

Eight! In the police interview with Russ, he had said that they were intimate on Sunday night. This was a Tuesday night, which would account for eight sperms still being present. But that didn't stop the prosecution from arguing that Russ violated Betsy before the murder and then showered. Now, in the initial search, the pipes were searched. There was no evidence that a shower was taken and there was no blood in any of the pipes. They were actually removed and tested. He goes back, takes a shower, gets any evidence off of him that he has, and then he comes out.

He then got out of the shower and I remember her saying, what do you do when you get out of the shower? You put your slippers on. So he went to clean up with his slippers on, presumably still naked. You can tell that he's moving when he's on that call. And I would submit to you that while he's talking to 911, he realizes the slippers, the killer gets careless. He's thought of everything else. It's perfectly staged, but the slippers.

So he took the slippers off, took the slippers back, hid them in his closet, came back in, cleaned up, I guess waited till his friend, who picked up the receipt, returned the cell phone, and immediately upon returning the cell phone, he called the police and reported it as a suicide. The prosecutor spun quite the tale in her closing argument. But remember, closing arguments are not considered evidence in a court of law. Only problem was sometimes it's difficult for a jury to remember that. Without any evidence, Askey accused four people of helping murder Betsy. And without any evidence, she hinted that Russ sexually assaulted his wife, had violated her one last time. Joel told me he was infuriated.

For her to accuse those four people of doing this is not only insensitive, in my mind, it's immoral to do that in the position of authority that she is in. But by now, he was used to being frustrated by this strange case. He'd encountered hurdle after hurdle in preparing Russ's defense. And one of the biggest hurdles was some of Joel's best evidence. Couldn't use it. Judge Mennemeier refused to allow it to be presented to the jury. It felt like pulling my hair out

and banging my head against the bench. I've never encountered decisions like that. According to Joel, there was an alternate suspect, and she was very close to the case, perhaps even the key witness, Pam Hopp. The judge would not allow him to ask this person any questions that would indicate she could be involved, like maybe she lied about her whereabouts based on her cell phone tower information, that she had gotten insurance money.

Insurance money? The prosecution argued that this was a case about greed, Russ's greed. But how could that be if Pam was the one who received the big payout? In the beginning, Russ and other members of the family were trying to figure out where the insurance money was to help pay for the funeral. And then they found out that Pam got one of the policies for $150,000.

So four days before Betsy's murder, the beneficiary in one of her life insurance policies for $150,000 was switched into Pam's name from Russ's name. Yet, Pam escaped scrutiny, somehow. Might be asking, how did nobody know about the switch? Wait till you hear the story. Both women had worked in insurance for years. In fact, they worked together. And yet, they didn't go to a notary or an insurance office to make this change.

No. They went to a local library, and they went up to a young woman there who worked the desk and said, can you just sign this form? And she did. And they put it in the mail, and the beneficiary was switched to Pam. But don't worry, Pam had an explanation for that, too. She said that it was Betsy's idea, that Betsy wanted to meet her, and she showed up at the library one day, and Betsy had all the forms filled out. But why Pam? Why would Betsy choose her? She's been on the record saying that Betsy wanted her to have the money so that she could help her daughters out when they needed it.

And she was afraid that Russ, in his grief, would just spend too much money, especially on the daughters. Ah, yes, the spendthrift husband. That's how Pam explained it. She said Betsy trusted her to handle the money responsibly. I guess I'm kind of looking at the finances. You talked about the fact that she had some insurance. She'd mentioned insurance to you. Yes.

They talked about that. She said, I'm going to make you the beneficiary if you could, when my daughters are older, give them some money. I said, okay, well, how much is it for? $150,000. The insurance company called the cops to make sure that Pam should get the proceeds. They wanted to make sure she wasn't a suspect in Betsy's murder. Police said, no, she's not a suspect at all.

Go ahead. The cops gave the green light to Pam Hupp's insurance payout. This fact never stopped being odd, no matter how many times I thought about it. They took Pam's story at face value without looking more deeply in the fact that she was the last person to see her alive, and the beneficiary form was signed just four days before Betsy's murder. That, you'd think, would be huge red flags.

Initially, after Betsy's death, Pam was friendly with the family. But then they found out that she got the insurance money and she was keeping it for herself. And they wanted some of that money to be used for the funeral. And she said no. And she thought, no, that's wrong. Why should Betsy pay for her own funeral when, you know, her husband killed her? And I think that was the turning point. That's when I think their relationship fell apart.

And that was that. Pam got the money. She put $100,000 into a trust for Betsy's daughters, and she told investigators that she gave the remaining $50,000 to a struggling family she knew. To Joel, these things added up to motive. But the jury never heard about any of them. You might be asking why. Well, Judge Menemeyer told Joel this evidence was to be excluded because... It was not relevant. It would serve as a red hearing and merely confuse the jury is what I was told. In every case I've ever handled, a witness's bias and interest comes in. A witness's prior and consistent statements come in, and I have a right to cross-examine

them on that. Well, not according to this judge. At this point, there was just no way to know how seriously the jury would take the prosecutor's closing statement. After four hours, the jury came back with a verdict. Guilty. First-degree murder. Punishment. life in prison. You know, I've been through this. The worst part of it was looking at Russ's face.

He was in shock. He couldn't believe it. And I haven't lost sleep in a long time over something in this business, and I lost sleep for a long time. Insurance? Oh, no. How on earth does a man with a corroborated alibi get convicted of murder? The jury was left with no alternative. And in most people's words, the husband did it. Who else would have? Russ went to prison. Betsy's family was relieved.

They could mourn now. But this story wasn't over. Let's go to Joel's office. It was 2014. He was still working with Russ, attempting to file an appeal for his client. And then he got a phone call. It was another lawyer working on a civil case between Betsy Faria's daughters and Pam Hopper. A case about the money Pam got after her friend's murder. He said there was something odd with the case, something that happened right after Russ was convicted, something Joel might want to look into.

A trust had been opened in the name of the kids approximately five days prior to the commencement of trial. That trust was funded on that day. But how quickly things would change. Only 20 days after the trial, Pam drained it. The trust was defunded over 99.7% of what had been placed in there. Oh dear. Pam got the payout. And the girls got nothing. That didn't look good. Next time on The Thing About Pam, we'll get to hear the facts the jury never got to hear.

And we'll ask, who is Pam Hopp? And how is she able to avoid suspicion? The Thing About Pam is brought to you by Dateline NBC. From Dateline NBC, Kathy Singer and Christine Fillmore are producers. Jackie Montalvo is the associate producer. Susan Nall oversees our digital programming. Adam Gorfain is our senior broadcast producer. Liz Cole is our executive producer. David Corvo is our senior broadcast producer. Liz Cole is our executive producer. David Corvo is our senior

executive producer. At NBC News, Steve Lichtai is the executive producer of podcasts, and Barbara Rabb is the senior producer of podcasts. From Neon Hum Media, Mary Knopf is the producer. Natalie Wren is the associate producer. Catherine St. Louis is the editor. Jonathan Hirsch is the executive producer. Sound design and mixing by Scott Somerville. Additional mixing by Meneka Wilhelm. Original music by Andrew Eapin. Thank you.