Morbid - Listener Tales 94

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

Weirdos! We're giving you a fresh batch of listener tales brought TO you, BY you, FOR you, FROM you, and ALLLLL about you!Today we have ghostly peaches, possessed dogs (question mark?), dolls in a wall, and someone who is plagued with terrible promotions! Don't forget to check out the VIDEO from this episode available on YouTube on 1/30/2025!If you’ve got a listener tale please send it on over to [e-mail] with “Listener Tales” somewhere in the subject line :) Cowritten by Alaina Urquhart, Ash Kelley & Dave White (Since 10/2022)Produced & Edited by Mikie Sirois (Since 2023)Research by Dave White (Since 10/2022), Alaina Urquhart & Ash KelleyListener Correspondence & Collaboration by Debra LallyListener Tale Video Edited by Aidan McElman (Since 6/2025) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid. And it's a special episode of Morbid because today we got to sit down with one of the co-authors of a new book that might sound familiar to you. This book is Bone Deep, Untangling the Betsy Furia murder case. And it was written by one of the authors who we were joined by or joined with today, Joel Schwartz. He's amazing. Amazing. He was the defense attorney for Russ Fulnerner. Feria, if you remember. And his co-author is Charles, Charles Bosworth. I like how you almost said Charles. I really just wanted to be British about it. Charles Balsworth. Charles is such a distinguished name, you know. But we covered this case. I think it was episode 287 and 288. It is one of the craziest cases, I would say, that we've ever covered. And so crazy, it went on to inspire a Keith Morrison podcast. Hell yet, Keith Morrison, called The Thing About Pam. And then that podcast went on to inspire maybe something that you might have seen on TV. I'm not sure. We have not, we have not gotten any messages that said you should watch this.

Sook. I think my entire message box on like Instagram and Twitter is just filled with like, have you seen the thing about Pam? Which we get it because you guys are right. Yeah, it's wild. It's a wild show. But we got the pleasure of sitting down with Joel Schwartz today and just kind of got to walk through his whole book. I mean, obviously, again, he was the defense. attorney for Russ Ferria, so he knows this case inside and out. Unfortunately, in the first case, Russ was sentenced to life without parole in prison for a crime that he, one million-gillion percent, did not commit. There was zero evidence against him. I mean, there was so much evidence pointing in another direction that it's wild that we're even here talking about this right now.

But without further ado, here's Joel. He's awesome. We love him. Yeah, Joel. So we'll get right into it. So we have Joel Schwartz on the podcast today. We're going to be talking about his new book, Bone Deep, which is absolutely incredible. And congratulations on finishing that and getting it out there. Thank you very much. It was quite the process. Frankly, I would say start to finish. It was the book itself took about 10 months. The case itself is now 10 years old. Wow. It's so crazy to think that. It's wild. It's almost a teenager. and still ongoing. And it's definitely going to make it to a teenage year because Pam Hop won't be scheduled for trial for a year, two years, who knows. Wow. I know that's the frustrating thing, too,

because everybody's waiting for answers on this. So with that being said, this obviously has to be one of the craziest cases that you've ever covered. Was there a certain point in your involvement that you said, I just have to write a book about this? I kept saying I have to write a book after I won. It was, I've never heard of or seen another case like it as far as my career or anybody's career. It's went through.

There's been now six daylines. The most ever on cases were four. And that was two extremely high profile cases. That was the O.J. Simpson case and the John Bonaughey-Ramgy case. We have completed six episodes. Three of them were two-hour episodes, and we are awaiting. We will be doing a seventh episode without question on Pam's trial. So the fact that one case has now consumed almost 10 hours of dateline, in addition to a mini-series,

gives you a real good indication as to how far out this case was. Yeah, it's pretty telling. It's like a rotten onion that you just keep pulling back the different layers. It's been absolutely incredible. And it was heartbreaking and heart wrenching. And then it kind of reversed. And now it's been a happy ending for, well, I say it's been a happy ending. It's been a happy ending for me.

It's been a happy ending for Russ. But, you know, his wife is deceased. She more than likely would have been deceased by this time. but the Lewis Gumpenberger situation where Pam Hup attempted to frame Russ the second time is as unfortunate as it could possibly get. It really is. He just, he didn't have anything to do with this at all. There was no reason for him to ever be involved. No, that gives you an indication as to who Pam Hup is.

And even more so, if you think it through what she did and she hasn't been charged, and I have to say allegedly, but her mother died with Pam being the last one with her and somebody tampered with the bars. And if it was Pam, she had to take her mother who was well under her. She was 200 and something pounds. She was not mobile. She had, I think it was 16 times or eight times the recommended dosage of Ambien. Yep. So it had to be a complete dead weight.

She had to roll it to the edge of that balcony, squeeze her mother through the bars and push her from three, floors onto a concrete slab. That's diabolical. That's just eating on it. And she came right out and said that if she did want to kill somebody for life insurance, she would kill her mother. So she basically admitted. You got paid attention. That's crazy. She advertised what she was going to do. They glossed right over it. And she did it. That's crazy. It really is. I mean, I've often said if I knew now what I, if I knew then what I know now, I am as anti-gun, they come. Not to make a political safety. I would have carried a gun knowing what was going on with her running around.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I don't blame you at all. Yeah, so it is the thing started out. I got a call. And I've since talked to several people, like the women who played Betsy with, who played tennis with Betsy Faria, who was Russia's first wife. And they were all told when they said, said what happened to Betsy. They said her husband killed her. Her husband confessed. And when I went into this, that's the information that I have.

Now, I always tend to go into things with both eyes open, along with a little bit of cynicism. I also still, after 33 years, go in with a little bit of naivete, which is just my nature. I can't help it. And I went in, I met Ross, and I believed him. his story was simply too good and it was simply so easily disprovable. A couple calls to Yelby witnesses and check out these videos. And I would say, you know, why did you just waste my time lying to me? Yeah, there's video footage, there's receipts, there's everything.

Well, I honestly believe once I got hired and met with Russ and then got the discovery, which is the reports and the video, I knew I was going to sit down. I knew in my heart and in my soul I was going to sit down with the young prosecutor without being patronizing and sit and have a long conversation with her and this case would be over. He would be dismissed and I didn't know if they would be able to go after Pam Hup or not. They had done zero investigation regarding her and couldn't have been more wrong. Seriously. Do you think that it all comes down to the 911 call? Do you think that's why they zeroed in on Russ because his first initial thought was since her arm had been slashed it was suicide

i certainly think it i can't say it all comes down to that that's part of it um they got the 911 call he said suicide and as we all know the spouse did it generally the husband did it they're at least a suspect but in this context they they assumed he did it i don't know why and still the state can't explain why nobody stepped back. There wasn't an officer in the room or cooler head that would prevail that said, wait a minute. And if they look, it was really easy to determine. Betsy Faria had attempted suicide in the past.

She actually had been involuntarily committed by some rookie officer for running a stop sign. She said, he walked up to her and said, are you okay? She said, I just want to kill myself. So he had her committed about a year before. And she had just been diagnosed with the terminal illness. So even though it was relatively ludicrous, given her injuries and given a knife in her neck, for Russ to assume it was suicide, his reasons were sound. Definitely.

Yeah, it made sense. Now, he didn't think it through, and he didn't think, okay, a knife in her neck, and this gash on her forearm, I mean, her wrists were slit. The wrist wasn't what I would call her rightness wasn't slid. It was as if somebody was trying to cut her hand off. And, I mean, it was on, and they almost. succeeded. It was all the way to the bone and almost three of the bone. So you can't do that and live. And if you look at it, there was very little blood, so we know this is all done post-mortem. However, had they

looked at that, they may have considered, okay, maybe we should take a look at this. And especially once they discovered that Pam Hup was a person who was assigned the insurance proceeds five days previously through very suspicious needs. We still don't, to this day, don't know exactly what happened. Although we do know Pam's office, insurance office, had been investigated for forgeries several times in the past. And I think we know what that's about. Additionally, Pam was the last room with her.

Pam initially lied about going out in the house. Pam lied about staying there. Pam lied about where she was when she called Betsy 20 minutes later. So given those. I'm not saying that conclusive that Pam Huff committed it, but why would nobody look at her? I pushed and I pushed and I continued to push. And I guess I could say ultimately I got somewhere. She's charged now, but that took about 10 years.

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Pretty litter.com slash morbid. It's so crazy that it took that long, especially when you think about all the things she lied about the morning after. Did you go in the house? No, I didn't. Yeah, I did. Only for a minute. Actually, a while. Like, it doesn't make any sense.

I can't believe they didn't look at her right away. And that actually leads me into my next question, and something you touched upon was the life insurance. Because Russ had been the beneficiary for close to 11 years, if I have that right. And then Pam was switched as the beneficiary. And this allegedly all happened at a library. and a librarian bore witness to this change. Do you believe that, let that whole thing happened, or do you think it was a shadier manner of events

how she ended up on that beneficiary line? No, I know it didn't happen the way Pam said, because Pam in the event, what we call P Doc, the letter that was written on Betsy's computer. Yep. We know it was written the day before the beneficiary change. And it was allegedly from Betsy saying, I want to change view and make you my beneficiary well.

So Pam knew the day in advance that that was going to happened. Initially, Pam said Betsy surprised her. They said meet me at the library. He surprised her and pulled out. His phone was already filled out. Well, the Betsy's zip code was incorrect. She wouldn't have done that. There was something signed. And the librarian said, yeah, these two women came up to me, the blonde, which would be Pam, was carrying a conversation. She seemed to be in charge. But Betsy did use her library card and check out a book that day. So we do know they were there. Oh, you know something was signed. I think.

it was probably that beneficiary form. I've had handwriting experts to look at it, and they do say it's Betsy. They say, what they say is they can't say that it's not Betsy's signature. Right. So it probably was Betsy's signature. And I think she either signed it,

not knowing she was signing it, or as her friend Linda had talked about, she was supposed to meet Pam that Friday and didn't want to. Pam was pressuring her into something. So what we did find out is they were going door to door collecting money for a friend of Betsy, for a friend of Pam's, I'm sorry, who was undergoing cancer and eventually died. They were using her Christmas card, and it was all a bunch of garbage, but Pam was taking money from these people,

and I'm guessing that she convinced Betsy that they were going to open up some sort of home for women with cancer. And this is my own traumatizing this, but it makes sense. And maybe she just told Betsy, we'll just use it for, some form of collateral with a bank to get a loan to do what we need to do. She had led Betsy to believe that she had plenty of money, so she really didn't need this. And that's been my assumption all along, but there's just no way to prove it.

Right. And I think it had to be done immediately because they were going to send notification about the change of beneficiary to Betsy. Which also leads me to believe that Pam said, I'll just hold on to it. I won't submit it. We won't do anything with it. So I think all those things leave to be.

believe. We know something fishy went on. It's just impossible to say, but, you know, your intuition is spot on, at least it's in agreement with my intuition. I just have nothing to go on beyond what we already know. That's exactly how I feel, but your scenario makes a lot more sense to me. It's so frustrating to not have any, it's like there's, like, there has to be, you feel like there has to be something that will prove because you're like, this just makes so much sense. Right. That it has to be the truth, but you're like, give me that thing. I need tangible proof. Well, that leads me into my next question, too. I feel like so many cases involve this whole life insurance as a motto for murder. Just asking you, because again, you've covered so many cases, roughly what percentage of cases

that you've taken on does life insurance seem to be a major factor in? Very few. Really? That's something in the movies. It's just too easy. Most people, contrary to what you believe, the case where the husband hires a hit man to kill his wife, those all make the news. Those become glorified. They're out there. The husband takes the kids away, something along those lines. It's more often than not a heated argument. It's just the life insurance, it's just if you're plotting it out and you have life insurance,

it's just too simple. I've never had a case like this where some random individual is the beneficiary of life insurance proceeds. Again, which speaks volumes as to what the hell were they thinking about when they didn't investigate Pam Huff? Seriously. Yeah, and what the hell was the judge thinking which you didn't allow that in? But it's after 33 years, I don't know that I can think of more than one or two cases where we're, a life insurance proceeds were the motivating factor. There are others where people received the life insurance,

but nothing where it was just bought within days to become a motive. Most, you know, somebody's married 20 years and they've had life insurance on their spouse for 20 years. You can argue it's a motive, but it kind of falls flat. Why didn't he or she killed a spouse within the last 20 years? Right. That makes sense. Thank you. And that's why it's interesting.

Thank you for saying that because it's good to, talk to like real people about this because it's true that it gets skewed with like CSI and movies and like law and order because that's always the like number one motive. But when you really think of it, what you're saying is right that it's like those are just the highly publicized ones too. Yeah. Right. Well, what was crazy in this case is the reason the judge, the prosecutor argued that Pam Huff's information, the life insurance proceeds, Pam Huff's lies didn't come in is because under Missouri law, many, many laws. There's what's called the direct connection rule to take it out of our realm. For example, if a, not to get too graphic, but a child is molested on Elm Street, and a defense attorney learns

that a guy was recently released and he lives on Main Street three blocks away and nobody can account for his whereabouts during the time the child was molested, you can't just introduce that as a red herring unless you have some way to connect those two people, a direct connection. Maybe they knew each other. Maybe he babysat for them. You can place his cell phone outside the house and anything. In this particular case, the court ruled that there was no direct connection to Pam Hup. And the insurance meant nothing because she assigned her, what does that mean? And I kept arguing there's much more of a direct connection to Pam Hup than there is to Russ Ferrea. Russ found her. Russ is the husband.

Russ got insurance as well. It's like, of course, Russ found her because he's the husband. Everything is there. And that's fine for a jury to hear. But they need to hear about the other person who does have a direct link. And the judge didn't have the,

let's say the brain power. Understand that just because she wasn't the person charged, under her ruling, there would never be anybody with a direct connection. And it was, the conviction was so egregious that I've never seen this. I filed my appeal.

Then I filed this, what's called a Mooney motion for newly discovered evidence. It's so egregious. A jury would more than likely have a different result if they had heard it. I've never heard of this in my years of practicing, and I've talked to many, many attorneys, and nobody's ever heard of this. But the court of appeal sent it back for a new trial without a reply from the state. Wow. Never heard of anything like that.

That's wild. So normally convictions, something like this, they take, or a generation, the average is about 10 to 14 years and we've heard stories of 20 years and 25 years we not only got it overturned we were in trial on our second trial in less than two years that's how egregious the original rulings were in the original trial and how angry the court of appeals were and sent it back for the new trial I remember being shocked that it happened so quickly when we were covering this case I was like wow this was like immediate and again you're really killing it at this interview because that leads me to my next question you're great at segue waste. When Russ... He's behind you and saying, talk about this subject. Exactly, yeah. So when Russ was awarded his new trial, you made the decision to do a bench trial instead

of a trial by jury. This is a little bit of a three-part question. So how often do you do that? Were you nervous about doing that? And do you think things would have gone differently had you not done that? Well, I'm still second-guessing myself. Really? On a high-profile murder case that's being covered by national news to do a bench trial, it's crazy.

Everybody was talking behind my back saying, what in the hell is Schwartz doing? And then the people who knew me said, don't you think he has a pretty good idea of what he was doing? All I can say is all is well. All is well. It ends well. It ended well. So I made the right choice. You definitely did.

did that based upon the judge who got appointed. This judge, if there was evidence there, would have convicted him without any qualms, without question if he felt they proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt. But I knew the evidence or the lack thereof. I talked to the judge afterwards, and he said, Joel, it was a no-brainer. I kept waiting and waiting for that piece of evidence that was going to be a dispute that was going to link him to the homicide. I've never tried a case where there wasn't a dispute of fact, meaning there's a witness who I'm accusing of lying or being misinformed or making a mistake.

Or there's two people. One says yes. One says no. I'm arguing the person who's saying no is telling the truth. You shouldn't believe this. Other than slippers that were obviously dipped and placed in his closet with one on them, there was zero. to indicate he did it. I actually, I had an expert ready to testify, but we were able to get their expert testify that based upon her experience, those slippers appeared to be dipped in blood, which to me was obvious on his face.

I was going to say, if I could see that, then anybody could see that. And the first jury, I argued that too, and they just didn't buy it. And I, if anybody who's on that first jury, it listens to this, I would love and invite for them to contact me because I've never spoken to any of them.

and I can't contact them, but they have everybody like to contact me. I would love to understand what went on. Yeah, same. Two is I have done it. I've done it in the past, but it's one of those things where it's kind of like the prosecutor knows they have a horrible case, but they can't dismiss it due to political factors due to a victim due to whatever reason. And it's a forebunk conclusion. We know what the court's going to do.

So I've done it. or we have something worked out, but we need the court to do it. We just can't come up with a deal, and the court says, look, this is what I'll do, but it's going to have to be a bench trial. So it's sort of a way to get to a result that you already know. It's almost preconceived. And then your third question was... Would it have gone differently, do you think?

I certainly hope not, but part of the decision was made because... I still, even though I couldn't get in the information regarding Pam Hop and the jury didn't hear any of it, there still was no evidence that Russ Faria committed the murder. So I was perplexed as to how the jury arrived at the conclusion that the state proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed murder. There was another case that's somewhat infamous in Missouri, the out of Boone County, a kid by the name of Ryan Ferguson. That was out of Boone County, but they filed for a change of venue because it was so high profile. brought in a Lincoln County jury. And again, with no evidence, they convicted him.

He ended up doing over 10 years before he was exonerated. And that was just one of these mornings I was out for a run. And I was thinking about Russ and jury and Judge Omer had just been appointed. And then Ryan Ferguson popped in my mind and I'm thinking, what is wrong with these juries up there? And then I thought, maybe I should judge try this case. I got home and I spoke to my wife, Marianne, also an attorney, a criminal attorney.

and I said, what do you think of this? She said, you're crazy. And I said, you're right. It was crazy. I shouldn't do it. And it just wouldn't leave my mind. And then I brought Russ in, and he and I talked about it. And his position was whatever you think.

And I just kept, and I kind of went through in my mind, I categorized all the evidence. And I thought, this judge has been in St. Louis. city. He was a prosecutor and he's been a judge for 20 years maybe. I don't remember. And I know him. We weren't friends, but I know him well. I tried cases in front of him. He is a guy who's going to hold his state to their burden, and they're not going to be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Russ Ferrea committed the murder. The opposite would be true. And I argued in closing argument. I could prove he was innocent, much less what they had. So that was what I decided to do.

and had a jury been there, I'd like to believe it would have gone the same. I shudder to think still, it just still blows me away that he was convicted after the first trial. It blows everybody that I've ever spoken to about this case away. I mean, I watched an interview and you said that your son was actually going through the files himself and said, Pam did it. My son was 12 years old at the time. His span of attention was probably. a normal 12 year olds he looked at it for 30 minutes maybe it was 45 minutes and he looked up

and it was like a riddle day he said dad you wonder who did it i would love to and that and i included in the book and i don't think it wasn't in the tv series unfortunately oh that would have been a great scene well they filmed it they filmed all these things they filmed so they filmed me with my guitar and my band they filmed all these things but it was pam's story right not my story um hopefully my story will err. We're trying to do that and there's some momentum. So we'll see what happens. That's exciting. I support that. I appreciate that. So that's how plain it was on its face. A 12-year-old, regardless of how intelligent that kid was or at least how I could think he is, he figured it out. And that has

always perplexed me as to why the prosecutor, why some officer doesn't say, wait a minute, guys we don't have anything on this guy yeah right he's got a as solid an adibi i mean i the judge said to me and i said anyone who was involved in this case would say they've never seen a better alibi because it doesn't exist if somebody nobody's going to be charged with a crime with this alibi no video elsewhere there's no blood his cell site does it it it tracks the time he got home he arrives home based upon his cell information about 45 seconds before he calls 911. I mean, everything tracked. He had Arby's receipt in his car so we know he stopped.

I mean, the prosecutor had the gall to argue that one of the alibi witnesses got the Arby's received. I mean, who would have that kind of foresight? When we covered the case and said that, I was like, why would nobody would do that. Yeah, that was the thing that blew both of our minds. I was like, that was an actual argument. Like, I was like, that doesn't make sense to anyone. No.

Regardless of law experience. it's like, what? Who would do that? And then it was crumpled up in his car. Yeah. So the alibi witness would have had to bring him the receipt, and then they would have to have the foresight to say, okay, well, let's not make it obvious and put it in my pocket. Kind of crumple it.

Put it in the car in the trash with, oh, and the guy, the alibi witness also ate a couple of Arby's roast beef sandwiches and crumpled those wrappers up as well on the car. Yep. Again, it's all these things. I can point to so many factors that I still just don't understand what the hell did you read was thinking. With my schedule and how I'm always,

go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. I really don't have a ton of time to do the things that I love to do, like reading. That's why I love Audible. Audible offers an incredible selection of audiobooks across every genre, from bestsellers and new releases to celebrity memoirs, mysteries, thrillers, motivation, wellness, business, and more. You'll discover exclusive Audible originals from top celebrities, renowned experts,

and exciting new voices and audio. As an Audible member, you can choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog, including the latest bestsellers and new releases. All Audible members get access to a growing selection of audiobooks, audible originals, and podcasts that are included with membership. You can listen to All You Want and more get added every month. A few of you have showed me recently that you were listening to this book called Bone Deep, written by Attorney Joel Schwartz, who we have on the show.

if you haven't, download that book, get Audible and listen to it because it's a pretty good book. Let Audible help you discover new ways to laugh, be inspired, or be entertained. New members can try it free for 30 days. Visit Audible.com slash morbid or text morbid to 500,500. That's Audible.com slash morbid or text morbid to 500,500 to try Audible free for 30 days. Audible.com slash morbid. Well, one of those factors, we got to talk about the blood and the Luminol testing.

So when the crime scene was first analyzed, the investigators made it seem like there was some trail of blood going from Betsy's body. And it was a towel drawer, I think, in the kitchen. And they said they did the luminal testing. And, you know, the room lit up like a Christmas tree. But the only thing that stinks is the photos didn't develop. Whoops. Somehow. Somehow you got your hands on those.

So walk us through that. That was interesting. After it was overturned. I kept, the officer testified that they didn't develop. And he was never clear. I kept saying, are we using film still? What is it that didn't develop? I want the camera.

I want the negatives. I want whatever's there. Anything. I don't know what's there. And I kept insisting I wanted it. And I was kept told, okay, we'll get it. Whatever's there. And it was about six weeks before the second trial.

I got a DVD in the mail from the Lincoln. County Prosecuting Attorney's Office and had no idea. I had no idea what was in it. And I opened it up and put it on and it was photographs. It's like, finally I got them. And that guy perjured himself because these all developed. And he didn't only perjure himself about what was shown, but the fact that they didn't develop.

So I was going to destroy this guy in second trial. I couldn't wait. And we start the second trial. and Leah asked you, the prosecutor does an opening statement that she talks about the search and she talks about the luminal. And unfortunately, the camera malfunctioned. And so they were in the photo's developed. I leaned over to my co-consul, made Swanson, and said, she has no clue that we have these photos.

You must have been so excited just to be like, boom. I was frothing. Yeah. He got up and he testified the same way. And I just, I'm sitting there. I can't believe it. and I get up and I go on the attack. And that's probably one of the more accurate portions of the film with Josh Dumas when he attacked the officer.

I was a little bit more rabid when I went out to the end. I just, oh, I got up and I started with the photos. And Leah Aski said to me, under her breath, where did you get those? So I knew, oh, I knew during the opening statement, she didn't know I had them. It was a shock. I still don't know and can't prove otherwise she'd be charged with the crime

what she knew and what she didn't know and I don't know how I got the photos of you sent it to me that's so wild she just trusted the officer I never looked at the DVD and forwarded to me or there was that whistleblower in her office like they portrayed

the Tina in TV series right I don't know but it was like a man I went up and it was like a magic trick, pick a photo, any photo. Really? It didn't matter what you picked. They all developed. And not one showed this luminal trail that only, it showed a cleanup trail.

And there would be no sense for some random person to clean up, to go get towels and wipe up. It would be a, it would be Pam up or some random person. And it would indicate it was Russ if he was telling the truth. He clearly was not. So that doesn't happen very often either. You catch people in lies, but something. that's that egregious. It's a, I mean, for people who do that should be, especially on a murder, prosecutors,

and Russ Faria is on a huge big way again about this. Prosecutors are immune, and police have qualified immunity. They can do this stuff and walk away. If they lose, they lose, okay, no big deal. But if they win and get away with it, people go to prison. And in Russ's case, it was for life without parole. So had we not discovered these and had we not got it overturned, he would be done. dying in prison.

It's so scary to think that it could have gone that way had you not done the bench trial, you know? Well, I like to think the second time it would have gone better for me because I... With those photos especially. With the photos, no, just with the photos, but I got in everything. I got, I was able to show that by cell side, Pam Hub was still at the house at the time of the murder. For the life of me, I can't give a reason as to why the judge ruled I couldn't get into that.

I was able to get into Pam Hub's lies at the second trial. I couldn't get into any of those. things in the first trial. The things that you couldn't say in the first trial, I remember reading through it and just thinking, but why can't he bring that? It's relevant. I don't understand. Well, every, all the lawyers who have read it around here who are, you know, my partners, you know, they knew it was frustrating, but they had no idea to the extent. So they read the book and they were like, how did your head not explode? Truly. That's what I was thinking the entire time. My head would have exploded. Because you know you're right. And we usually, we read these

cases from like a completely outside point of view, obviously. And when we read things like that, when somebody walks, especially this kind of thing where they walked into that crime scene even with a preconceived narrative of what they decided happened there. Immediately. It is so infuriating because you're like, that's not your job. Like your job is to look at it fresh and to let it speak to you. And it's the same thing in the trial. It's like it seemed like there was this preconceived narrative that was just working against the facts. It was maddening. It was infuriating.

In the back of my mind, though, I'll also say I knew how long it was, and I knew I'd get a second trial if I lost this trial. But I also knew I wasn't going to lose until I did. Well, that was the main thing in this case that really ticked me off was they just completely lied about those luminal tests amongst various other things, is there. there anything other than the luminal testing that really you can point to that just you were infuriated about how much time we got as much as you want go off it's i mean this ryan mackarrick pulled my client told ross out of his cell twice to attempt

to get him to confess after he was represented again that's a civil rights violation you have to do that we wrote and i didn't find out this till after the book was published He had put someone in his cell in an attempt to rough him up. He put someone in a cell in an attempt to get a confession. And he had actually already written the report with the confession in it. Oh, my God. Yeah. I didn't find out about that until I actually the book was published.

So if there's a follow up, that will be in it. Yeah. That's got to be in there. That's wild. Part of the problem with it was never utilized. It was never. So I can't, there's no civil rights. violation because there was no effect. But we see what we were dealing with. And we also see with

wide open eyes what happens and what can happen. Because people tend to trust and believe police. And when you get into more rural counties, for whatever reason, there's more of a trusting nature. And I think it's just due to the population because people know his brother-in-law or they know his cousin and they trust him. So when you get an officer saying this guy confessed, You want to believe it. You want to believe that the officer's telling the truth. And to go way back in the 80s when I was a younger man, and starting the South, people would say, yeah, police lie all the time.

And I grew up in a suburb of St. Louis, pretty sheltered. And I kept thinking to myself, I asked, why would they do that? That doesn't make any sense. If they say they saw this, you should be able to believe them. Why would they lie about that? Well, I'm here to say they do. And unfortunately, it gives many, many police officers a bad name. And it's a minority that do it.

And what's been really telling is every time dateline airs, I will get emails and I'll get voicemails and text. And I get so many people in law enforcement thanking me for exposing these guys because they make them look so bad. Of course. I suppose the better it is. Yeah, it's frightening what goes on. And, you know, when I'm done with doing what I do and I look back, that's one of the things that still to this day bothers me. And I can't even give you the extent to which it bothers me

because I cannot imagine, first of all, guilty or not, I can't imagine going to live in a cage. No. These cages are about 6 feet by 8 feet, and it's small. Everything in there is steel. I can't imagine that. Take that to a whole different level of being innocent of a crime and going to live in that cage. And you're convicted because somebody lied, and that just, I've been in these cells.

I've been in many, many prisons and many jails, and I always go in and I leave. I just can't imagine hearing those bars clang for somebody like Rush for real. So it's a bit of a cautionary tale. And if people are prosecutors and law students can watch that or read the book and understand, hey, this could happen. I don't do this. I did an interesting story. I got a letter from a gentleman whose son is the dean of one of the Ivy League law schools.

And he told me he read the book and he sent it to his son recommending that it become required reading for every law student. I was just going to say it should be. It should be. It is a cautionary tale. You can pull that off. I'm all in favor. That would be really nice for book sales. Let's get it going. We've got to figure this out for you. It reminds me, too, of it's just like it has little echoes of like the West Memphis three case with the confession thing, how it is hard for people, especially in like a small town kind of thing to hear that somebody either confessed or if they didn't either way. But hearing a confession and nobody can wrap their brain around the idea that somebody can falsely confess.

too. Or that is just being lied about completely. Like it's something that nobody can just sit there and be like, oh, yeah, they're probably lying. It's like you want to believe that that's real. And it feels like certain investigators kind of prey on that idea that we all kind of trust that. It's very, very difficult to understand why somebody would confess to something they didn't do, especially something serious. But, you know, if you watch some of these documentaries now, the making a murderer, the The nephew that confessed. Can I go back to school now?

Can I go home? Exactly. heartbreaking. My very first murder trial, a guy confessed to shooting and killing a woman. His confession was on videotape. And there were two eyewitnesses to a 10-year-old and a 12-year-old. Well, I don't want to get into all the details of that, but he was found not guilty. It was clearly a false confession. And juries want to know why in public.

So why would somebody ever do that, if they've ever found themselves in that situation, than they understand. The fact of the matter is, if the police have a solid case and they've got the evidence, they're not going to waste their time trying to secure a confession. They'll try and they'll be done. In that particular case, they questioned them for 12 hours before he finally confessed, and they just break you down and beat you down. And I've never been in that situation, and I know I wouldn't confess to anything,

but I can't tell you what I would have done before I did this. Of course. People just don't get it. They don't understand. We say that all the time because we've covered a few cases where they've confessed, but it's clear it was under duress. But I would say, thankfully, in my opinion, at least the right person is now on trial. Pam is finally facing charges for Betsy's murder. And the prosecutor, Mike Wood, is actually going for the death penalty.

What do you think the outcome, in your opinion, what would that be? It's going to be difficult because remember, they did absolutely no investigation regarding Pam. Nothing. Fortunately, she couldn't shut her mouth and she continued to talk. And her lies and that will give them evidence. And then Lewis Gumpenberger murder where she tried to frame Ross and left a note on him from allegedly from Ross. That can be used as consciousness of guilt to show motive. She tried to cover up the Pam Hup murder because she was being, I mean,

Betsy Ferea murder because she was being investigated. So there's enough there. We can place her there by self-sight. And the question becomes it's such a severe penalty. And there is no direct evidence to say she did it. Have they done an investigation, and I don't want to accuse anybody, but there more than likely would have been an accomplice. Or there might not have been.

Who knows? But we don't know. We have no idea. The defense is going to argue the amount of strength that would have taken to drive that knife into Betsy that many times. There's no evidence that there's blood. anywhere on Pam because nobody looked. Right.

And she took like eight showers afterwards. She got showering and she handed them clothes. They never confirmed whether or not those are the clothes she was wearing. We don't know. Nobody ever checked her car for DNA or blood evidence. There was never anything done to secure anything to those. So even though we all know in our gut and our head that she did it, proving it beyond a reasonable doubt is another thing.

and then asking not only to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, but to give her the death penalty, it's a very, very big ask. If you do get to a penalty phase, you've got the Lewis-Cumpenburg and cold blood murder. We know about that. And then you tread in a dangerous area trying to get into the murder of her mother because she's never been charged and you've got no proof. So it's a fine line for a prosecutor to try to walk. I don't know the outcome. the Delaney harms who's handling it with Mike is very, very good.

They're being as thorough as they can, but there is no smoking gun here. So it will be interesting to see. I do think she'll get convicted. Definitely. Do you think there is a situation in which they would introduce another Alford plea like they did in the Lewis Gumpenberger murder? I would say there's no chance. Okay, good. I'm glad to hear that.

I talk with Mike with my dad, and I don't think they'll do that. To me, the most damning evidence of a murder first against Pans. is going to be what they attempted to use against Russ. And that will be the document that Pam created on Betsy's computer the day before the beneficiary was changed. That showed exactly what she was planning on doing. And that was six days in advance or five days in advance. So that shows most murder first charges aren't murder first. Nobody people get killed and it's murder.

But for the most part, nobody really wants to kill somebody else. That's a small percentage of people who have been sentenced from murder first. first. And this was a murder first degree. She plotted it out. She knew exactly what she was doing. She knew when she was going to do it because everyone in the world knew them, and the rest was gone for about four hours every Tuesday night. When you stick by what's important to your very core, it's going to show in everything you do. Everlane is committed to doing the right thing from start to finish. That means partnering with more responsible factories and ensuring every piece of clothing looks and feels great for years to come.

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and sign up, Everlane, helping people live their best lives with the least impact on the planet. That's the craziest thing, too. And even just her wanting to take Betsy to her appointments, like Russ was supposed to take her that day and Pam pushed to do it. I wonder if that could be pushed in as evidence at all.

Oh, absolutely. And then, like initially, Pam said, she never received a text, but Betsy texted her, don't come. She said essentially, don't come. I'm going to spend one-on-one time with Bobby Juan, the woman who was in town visiting. And Pam said, bummer. But then she went anyway. When I deposed her, she said, she never received the text. And then I crossed to examine her. She said, well, I did, but I got it, but I didn't. And I used that in some of my speaking engagements.

Because it's Pam speak. I don't know what that means. I did, but I didn't. I got it. And then I didn't get it. And then I did. I never understand how they think they're going to get away with that, especially with like an attorney, like a defense attorney. It's like you're not going to get that past them. No. And then something, oh, sorry, go ahead. Problems with Pam, she never would.

She wouldn't answer anything. And then when she'd give an answer, she would just say, well, that's migraine injury. Well, we never got the medical records. So it became, she had drop foot. Yeah, she had a back injury. She had a spine injury. She had a neck injury. She had a head injury.

so she couldn't remember anything. If you'd ask me a question now, I'm going to answer it different than I said 10 minutes ago because my brain injury. So infuriating. I do believe there was an injury of some sort, but nobody knows the extent of it. That's the problem. And then something that you touched upon before was there is a possibility that Pam murdered her own mother.

And that death certificate was actually changed. The manner of death was changed to undetermined. Do you think that that could help if she ever did face charges? for her mother's murder? Well, it would have to be to homicide. And I mean, it got changed because I contacted. What happened is, and this is something that they could use, is during the course of the first trial,

I would do what's called an offer of proof with all the witnesses because of the stuff I couldn't get into in front of the jury. You need to preserve the information for the court of appeals. So an officer would testify. The jury would leave, and I would ask him about Pam Hub's lies, things like that. Well, I did that with Pam Hop,

and we talked about the insurance, and we talked about her lies. She continued to just be slippery as she could. But one of the things she did say and volunteered to me, she said, would you like to know what took me so long to make the trust? Because she created a trust for Betsy's kids one week before trial to make it look good. I said, absolutely, what took you so long? And she said, my under oath, my mother has been sick with Alzheimer's,

and she just died three weeks and ago of Alzheimer's. And I think I said, I'm sorry to hear. The trial ended. The day after trial, I think I got six calls from people saying her mother did not die of Alzheimer's. She said her mother's name. Shirley Newman looked it up. I looked it up. Shirley Newman fell from the third floor balcony and was found a day later and Pam Hup was the last one with her.

So I called County St. Louis-Saintless County homicide and met with them. They did a cursory investigation, changed the manner of death. And since the Lewis-Gumperger murdered, they had been conducted even this. But there's just too many issues. It was a day after there is no security cameras. The doors at that facility are locked. So it's one of those things where if I were defending Pam, I would just argue in front of the jury.

Yeah, you may all believe in your gut. Your instinct may tell you this is Pam Hub's doing. But is there any proof beyond a reasonable doubt? The answer is there isn't proof. That really isn't. I mean, what do we know? Yeah. We know what we know, but there's no point.

So frustrating. Well, one of the greatest things that came out of this case is your book, obviously, which went on to inspire Keith Morrison's podcast, the thing about Pam. Like we said, that that went on to inspire a series with the same title. You've seen it. What are your thoughts? Of the series? Yes.

You know, I met with, I was an integral part of meeting with the writers for, weeks and weeks and I spent time with Josh, first on Zoom, and then Josh Dumel in person. And when the first episode aired, it was like, holy, what are they doing? I didn't, I mean, they told me it was going, you know, Keith was going to narrate it. And they were trying to differentiate it from all the other streaming out there because there's so much. And it was, I was taken aback a little bit. enjoyed it, but Pam Hup singing and...

It's a lot. I mean, it was crazy. It's very campy. It can't be satirical. So I was on a serious subject. So I was a little bit concerned. And then it got better and better and better. And the obsession of the true crime fans and even the general public with this, it was

over the top. I mean, they were really, I was upset that there wasn't at least two more episodes that could have been formal because they just didn't include, and I talked with Josh about this, my level of frustration and the arc that I went through to get to where I was, because it was, I mean, there was so much behind the scenes. But then I under, you know, you realize it was, right now as Elweger, it was the Pam Hub's story through Pam Hub's eyes. And I think they did an incredible job. I have been told, I haven't verified it, but it's the highest rated NBC show of the year.

Wow. And it might be the highest rated streaming NBC show. I'm not exactly sure. I believe it. Yeah, that's incredible. I went to, have you guys ever heard of her been to CrimeCon? We haven't been, but we have definitely heard of it. Yeah.

So I went to CrimeCon this year. And the way I characterized it is I spoke there in a room of 4,000 people. It was such a joy. I was like Tom Cruise in top. That was from an awesome. They knew the show, and they knew all about me. All right. Well, my last question is a little just gossipy,

and you don't have to answer if you don't want to. But Leah Askey Cheney, the prosecutor in the original trial and second trial, she said that most of the podcasts, the book, the series done on the case, portray her in a way that is, quote, unquote, fundamentally false. Do you have any comment on that? you saw the last date line I did all right

she would put her morals up against anyone's yeah if that gives you if her morals are anywhere near the rest of people in society were in trouble no it was not fundamentally flawed

I will go on record saying the woman Judy Greer who played Leah Askey love Judy Greer love so do I Judy Greer is incredible. She is. My cameo was spent, you know, I spent the afternoon and evening with Judy Greer.

So it was a scene where she was in a bar as Leasky cutting me down, which was really kind of fun and surreal. But as wonderful as an actress as she played and as over the top bitchy as she attempted to be, she still didn't touch the real thing. Wow, wow. That was a great comment, Joel. Thank you. A tea. Well, thank you so much. everybody needs to go out and buy your book, obviously.

Is there anything else that you want to say before we wrap up? No, it's been a pleasure, and I hope people enjoy it. And I do hope people go if they're interested and get bone deep because my partners who looked at me and said, why do I need to read this? Read it, and they were, I mean, they read it. They both said they couldn't put it down. So hopefully your listeners will find the same and enjoy it. And I appreciate you guys having me on.

Absolutely. anytime. And we both enjoyed the crap out of the book so we know our listeners. I was just going to say, I could not put it down. And I have like no time for leisure reading at all. I couldn't stop this one. I was like, hold on, kids. I have like serious ADD and I was turning those pages. Thank you guys so much. I appreciate it. Absolutely. And thank you for coming on the show. They want to do a redo. Let me know. Thank you so much. Awesome. Thank you.