MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - A Truly WTF Story (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

In 2016 a woman had just pulled into her driveway in her quiet neighborhood in Missouri, when suddenly her passenger door flung open and in jumped a man she didn't recognize who was wielding a knife. The woman froze in terror hoping this was just a robbery, but when the man spoke, she knew this situation was much much worse. Ten minutes later the police arrived at the woman’s house, and what they saw in the hallway of the first floor shocked them. However, the real shocker came a week later when they realized who this man was, and why he had gone to that woman’s house in the first place. This story starts a bit slow, but then it spirals into madness very rapidly. And that is why this story has become one of the most infamous true crime cases in modern history.For 100s more stories like this one, check out our main YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @MrBallenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In 2016, a woman had just pulled into her driveway in her quiet neighborhood in Missouri when suddenly her passenger door flung open and in jumped a man she didn't recognize who was wielding a knife. The woman froze in terror, hoping this was just a robbery. But when the man spoke, she knew this situation was much, much worse. Ten minutes later, the police arrived at the woman's house, and what they saw in the hallway of the first floor shocked them. However, the real shocker came a week later when they realized who this man was and why he had gone to that woman's house in the first place. This story starts a bit slow, but then it spirals into madness very rapidly. And that is why this story has become

one of the most infamous true crime cases in modern history. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please re-pit the 5-star review buttons, Pitted Olives. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Ballin Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into today's story. Hello, I'm Emily and I'm one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities.

And they don't get much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy. OK, maybe that's a stretch, but if I say pop star and shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about. No? Short shorts? Free cocktails? Careless whispers? OK, last one. It's not Andrew Ridgely. Yep, that's right. It's Stone Cold icon George Michael. From teen pop sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet, join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom. From the outside, it looks like he has it all.

But behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil. George is trapped in a lie of his own making, with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts or listen early and ad-free on Wanderie Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wanderie app. I'm Peter Frank-O'Pern. And I'm Afua Hirsch. And we're here to tell you about our new season of Legacy, covering the iconic, troubled musical genius that was Nina Simone.

Full disclosure, this is a big one for me. Nina Simone, one of my favourite artists of all time. Somebody who's had a huge impact on me, who I think objectively stands apart for the level of her talent, the audacity of her message. If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message, it totally floored me. And the truth and pain and messiness of her struggle, that's all captured in unforgettable music that has stood the test of time. Think that's fair, Peter?

I mean, the way in which her music comes across is so powerful, no matter what song it is. So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone. It was August 2016, and the weather in O'Fallon, Missouri was typical for summer. Hot, sunny, and humid. 58-year-old Pamela Hupp, who lived in O'Fallon, walked to the front door of her neat little three-bedroom house on Little Brave Drive, and she opened the door. But before stepping outside, she gripped the leash of the family dog and then looked around very intently outside at

the other equally tidy upper-middle-class houses that made up her new neighborhood. Pam and her husband Mark had only moved into the Great Warriors subdivision about two months earlier, and Pam was still getting a feel for the community. After scanning the street and not seeing any people or cars that were out of place, Pam relaxed and then told herself to stop being ridiculous. It had been a tough few years, but soon she and Mark would have a new circle of friends and acquaintances, and she'd know all her neighbors by name or at least by sight. After all, while Pam and Mark might be new to this particular neighborhood, the couple, along with their two kids, had lived in O'Fallon for the

past 15 years and so knew the area as well or better than most of its residents did. In fact, when Pam drove their late model SUV around O'Fallon, she didn't have to look too hard to find houses that she and Mark had, over the years, bought, renovated, and sold for a profit. Thinking of Mark with his talent for building things and his passion for fine cabinetry work, Pam smiled to herself. Neither one of them had wound up achieving the dreams they had had when they had graduated from high school, but they had done pretty well for themselves in the house flipping business. Pam stepped outside and closed the front door of her house behind her. Then, as she walked down the gentle slope of her wide driveway towards Little Brave Drive,

her one-year-old puppy pulled at the leash, eager for Pam to pick up the pace. As Pam leaned back to keep her balance, she had a flashback to her teenage years when she was a cheerleader and a member of her high school's gymnastics team. Back then, she could have walked a dog and done cartwheels, both at the same time. Now, with the help of her beautician, Pam still had the blonde hair, but the 5 foot 6 inch tall, curvy, athletic body that had attracted so many admiring looks when she was a teenager, had since filled out to a comfortable and stocky overall roundness.

But, despite the years and the added weight, anyone who had known Pam back in her school days would probably still recognize her. She still had that same wide smile, square jaw, and slightly broad nose that made her features strong and distinctive. And when she laughed, it was the same loud guffaw that had often sounded through the halls of Riverview Gardens High School back in 1976. But Pam hadn't just been a good athlete, she'd also been a good student who got good grades, and going into her senior year of high school, she had been just as excited as her classmates about heading off to college. Except that a few of the admiring glances she got back in high school

came from one of the most popular and good-looking boys at her school. And shortly after he had invited Pam to their senior prom, Pam wound up pregnant with his child. And three months later, Pam was married to him. And by the time her friends were packing their bags for college or some other post-high school adventure, Pam was spending her days inside of a small apartment looking after a very demanding baby. The marriage had lasted six years, and while it only took Pam four months after that divorce to marry another man, her second choice in husbands had been a lot better than her first. The second husband, Mark Hupp, was a quiet and very likable guy who was four years younger than

Pam. He had graduated from the University of Missouri in St. Louis, then was drafted by the Texas Rangers professional baseball organization who promptly sent him to play on their minor league team. But like Pam's dream of going to college, Mark's dream of eventually getting called up from the minor leagues to the major league club, the Texas Rangers, never happened. So Mark had left baseball and fallen back onto his carpentry skills. And in 1987, the family of three added another member when Pam gave birth to their son, Travis. Two years after that, Pam and Mark had surprised their families by packing up their young family

and heading 1,200 miles south to Florida. For Pam, it had been the adventure of a lifetime. She and Mark had settled in Naples, Florida, where they bought and flipped a couple of houses, and they bought and sold some other properties. Pam went back to school and earned a degree in internet technology, and for 10 years, the Hupps enjoyed a comfortable life in the southwestern part of the Sunshine State. years, the Hupps enjoyed a comfortable life in the southwestern part of the Sunshine State. Now using her free hand to push her short hair off of her hot neck, Pam couldn't help thinking about how much had changed since those early days. Even though Pam and Mark and the kids had enjoyed their time in Florida, both Mark and

Pam missed their home state of Missouri. So when Pam's mother, who still lived in Missouri, started experiencing early signs of Alzheimer's, Mark and Pam felt that they needed to head back home and be closer to her. Alzheimer's is a brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills, and eventually it destroys the ability to carry out even simple tasks like eating. So in 2001, the Hupps sold their properties in Florida and moved back to Missouri, where they settled in O'Fallon. Once they were back, Pam had worked on and off for years selling life insurance policies for State Farm Insurance Company, while Mark continued to build up their

real estate business. Nine years later, in 2010, Pam had filed for disability payments due to neck, back, and leg pain, but when her application was turned down, she just joined Mark full-time in the house-flipping business. Now, their daughter and son both had promising careers of their own, and with the responsibilities of hands-on parenting behind Pam and Mark, Pam was hoping that this latest move to their new home on Little Brave Drive in O'Fallon would be their last. She wanted to settle down there. A sudden bark brought Pam's attention snapping back to her dog. She wondered how she would stop and have casual conversations to get to know her new neighbors

if her dog was constantly barking and pulling her like this from one tree or bush to the next. A second later, Pam gave herself a mental shake. She had never had any trouble making friends. And if worry over a rambunctious dog was the worst of her problems, then maybe her life really was finally turning around and getting back to normal. Because for Pam, the last five years had not been normal at all. In fact, they'd been among the most difficult years in Pam's life. The difficult period had started back in January of 2010, nine years after they had left Florida to return home to Missouri. That's when one of Pam's best friends, a woman named Betsy Faria, had been diagnosed with cancer. Pam had met Betsy when both women were working at State Farm Insurance back in 2002 and 2003. Even though Betsy

was younger than Pam by 10 years, the two of them had similar outgoing and fun-loving personalities. Betsy even had her own side gig as a DJ, a little business she called Party Starters. As they had gotten to know each other, Betsy had come to rely on Pam as a confidant, telling the older woman all about the ups and downs in Betsy's marriage, which included a couple of lengthy separations from her husband. Once Pam had left State Farm in 2003, the two women naturally had less contact with each other, but they still kept in touch. In 2010, after Betsy was diagnosed with breast cancer, Pam and Betsy began spending more time together, and soon, Pam was one of Betsy's core people who stood by her side and rallied behind her and her family during such a difficult time.

And then later that same year, when the news came in that Betsy's cancer had gone into remission, Pam could not have been happier. But that happiness turned out to be very short-lived. Less than a year later, tragedy had struck again. Betsy's cancer was back, and this time it had spread into her liver. In late November 2011, doctors told Betsy, the bubbly and fun-loving mother of two daughters, that best-case scenario, she had maybe three to five years left to live. And that was only if Betsy undertook yet another course of aggressive and debilitating chemotherapy. And then, just a little more than one month after that dire prognosis, and only two days after Christmas, Betsy's family and friends received the terrible and shocking news. Betsy was dead.

Betsy's family and friends received the terrible and shocking news. Betsy was dead. However, it was not cancer that killed her. On the night of December 27, 2011, the day Betsy died, police near the Farias home in Troy, just a half hour north of O'Fallon, had received a frantic 911 call from Betsy's husband, Russ, who told police that his wife had committed suicide. But when police arrived at the scene and saw Betsy, they knew there was no way she could have killed herself. While Betsy had been lying on her couch that evening at about 7.30pm, someone had taken a kitchen knife, walked over to where Betsy was probably sleeping, and just started stabbing her.

And not once or twice, whoever had stabbed Betsy had just kept on stabbing her body over and over and over again, plunging the knife into her back, her chest, her neck, her face, her arms. And then when Betsy had rolled off the couch onto the ground, the killer had grabbed her wrists and begun slashing away at them. By the time the killer was finished, Betsy would be left with 56 significant stab wounds across her body. Betsy's husband, Russ, would tell investigators that he had spent the evening with friends who lived 30 minutes away, and then when he got home around 9 p.m.,

that was when he saw Betsy on the floor. He told investigators that he simply didn't notice the 50-plus stab wounds all over her body. Instead, he just saw the slash marks on her wrist and assumed she had committed suicide. But investigators were not buying his story. And eight days later, police arrested Russ for murder. And at the trial that followed, Pam had been called by the state prosecutor to testify against Betsy's husband, providing information about the couple's marital problems in the years leading up to Betsy's death.

Two years later, in December 2013, a jury only had to deliberate for four and a half hours before convicting Russ of first-degree murder and sentencing him to life in prison without parole, plus an additional 30 years. Now, even three and a half years later, in the middle of a hot summer day, Pam felt a chill go down her spine. Pam felt like nothing in her life had been more traumatic than Betsy's death and that trial. Especially since Betsy had listed Pam as the beneficiary on Betsy's life insurance policy. When Betsy made the change, she'd made Pam promise to take care of her daughters with the money. Pam had objected and

did not want to be put in this role, but Betsy had insisted that it would be a disaster if her girls or Russ got that huge payout. And even after Russ's trial, it seemed like the emotional body blows just kept coming for Pam. At the end of 2013, Pam received a call from her mother's senior living community telling her that her mother, whose memory and overall health had been steadily getting worse, had died. Pam knew that people meant well when they told Pam and her other three siblings that maybe in this case, death had been a mercy given the fact that their mother's Alzheimer's

had gotten so bad she could hardly recognize her own children. But for Pam, that didn't change the fact that her mom had only been 77 years old, and that Pam herself had been one of her mom's primary caretakers. And even if her mom didn't always know who Pam was, their visits together had become a regular and predictable part of Pam's life. And then, two years after her mother's death, Pam was absolutely shocked to find out that Russ Faria's legal team had managed to persuade the courts to consider some new evidence in his murder case. The new evidence included documents that suggested the state's case against Russ had been built on a bungled investigation,

and it would turn out this new evidence was enough. In November of 2015, just nine months earlier, Russ, the man Pam had testified against and had played a big role in putting behind bars, was acquitted of his wife's murder and released from prison. Pam was horrified. With Russ now free, she couldn't help but feel scared all the time. Would Russ try to hurt her now, to get revenge for her testimony against him? After all, Pam had not held back in court. She had given up every single detail she could possibly remember Betsy telling her about how awful and abusive Russ was, and

it really had an impact on the jury. And so Pam knew Russ must hate her. But now, as Pam turned the corner back onto her street and saw her beautiful new house in view, she tried to push those memories away. She knew what Russ looked like, she knew what kind of car he drove, and she had already taken her own precautions. She and her husband Mark, the year before, had bought a handgun, and recently she had taught herself how to use it. With one last look up and down her street, Pam hustled up her driveway with her dog,

then opened her front door, stepped inside, and then shut and locked the door behind them. A few days later, on the morning of Tuesday, August 16th, Pam got up, she took her dog for a quick walk, and then tidied up her already tidy house. Then, Pam took a deep breath, and opened up her front door, and stepped outside, and began immediately scanning the nearby streets and houses. Luckily, she didn't see any strange cars or people or rusts, and so it was all clear. A minute later, Pam had hopped inside of her SUV. She had backed out of the driveway onto Little Brave Drive. She left the Great Warrior subdivision, picked up Route 70, and headed east. After she finished shopping, she planned to run a few other errands and then drop by her daughter's house. Just a few hours later, right around noon, Pam was pulling back into her

driveway. It had been an excellent morning, even if it had turned out that Pam's daughter had not been at home. Pam reminded herself that even if her daughter had been there, they wouldn't have been able to visit for very long because Pam needed to get back home and let the dog out again. But as Pam was about to press the remote to open her garage door, she noticed a flash in her rearview mirror. She turned around and she saw a silver four-door sedan had come to a quick stop right in front of her house by the curb, and a man who she didn't recognize wearing glasses and a black ball cap pulled down low over his face was climbing out of the passenger seat. Before Pam could even process what was happening, this man had run up the driveway to her car, opened Pam's passenger door, and climbed

inside the car with her and shut the door behind him. A second later, as Pam registered the squeal of tires as the silver car shot away from the curb, the strange man who was now in the car with her pulled a knife out and held it against her throat. Pam could feel the adrenaline flooding her body, and for a second, she was too shocked to even move. As she sat there, paralyzed with fear, the attacker began yelling at her to drive her car to the bank and take out the money she had stolen from Russ. Understanding suddenly dawned on Pam. Russ must have hired this man to do this. Russ wanted Betsy's $150,000 insurance money that Pam had been entrusted with.

But then, as Pam thought of this, she wondered if her attacker would actually let her go if she turned over this money. And somewhere deep in her brain, Pam knew the answer to that question. No, this man was going to kill her. Suddenly, Pam's survival instincts kicked in, and using all of her strength, Pam struck out with her right hand and hit the attacker on the face, while simultaneously

with her left hand, she fumbled to open the car door. Taken completely by surprise, the attacker lost grip on the knife and it tumbled down onto the floor of the car. By the time he retrieved it, he looked up and saw Pam was out of the car running towards her garage. But as quick as Pam was, her attacker was even faster. Pam managed to get through the back door that led into the garage, but when she turned around to try to shut and lock it, her attacker had already thrown half of his body into the space between the door and the frame, forcing it open. And so Pam eventually stopped trying to shut the door on him and just turned and ran across her garage and opened the door that led into her house. Once she was inside, she made a quick turn to the right and sprinted

into the master bedroom. At this point, the attacker had gotten inside of the garage. He went through the same door that went into the house, but as he went right, he ran so fast he overshot the door that led into the master bedroom where Pam was. And that mistake bought Pam just enough time to get all the way to her bedside table in her bedroom, open up her drawer, and pull out the gun she had put in there. And so by the time the attacker had corrected himself, turned around, and come into the master bedroom, Pam was standing there with the gun held out straight, screaming at him while dialing 911 with her other hand. The time was 1210 p.m. as the dispatcher at the O'Fallon police station picked up that emergency call. The dispatcher could hear the voice of a woman on the other end of the line calling for help

and yelling at an intruder to get out of her house. Then there was the sound of a scuffle and a man's voice in the background, and before the dispatcher could get the caller's address, she heard the distinctive and unmistakable sound of five gunshots all fired in rapid succession. By the time police arrived at Pam's residence just minutes later, Pam was standing just inside of her open garage, clutching the collar of her dog who was cowering and whining at her feet. And inside of her house,

the man who had just attempted to kidnap and rob her was dead. Hello, I am Alice Levine, and I am one of the hosts of Wondery's podcast, British Scandal. On our latest series, The Race to Ruin, we tell the story of a British man who took part in the first ever round the world sailing race. Good on him, I hear you say. But there is a problem, as there always is in this show. The man in question hadn't actually sailed before.

Oh, and his boat wasn't seaworthy oh and also tiny little detail almost didn't mention it he bet his family home on making it to the finish line what ensued was one of the most complex cheating plots in british sporting history to find out the full story follow british scandal wherever you listen to podcasts or listen early and add free on on apple podcasts or the Wondery app. If you're listening to this podcast, then chances are good you are a fan of The Strange, Dark, and Mysterious. And if that's the case, then I've got some good news. We just launched a brand new Strange, Dark, and Mysterious podcast called Mr.

Ballin's Medical Mysteries. And as the name suggests, it's a show about medical mysteries, a genre that many fans have been asking us to dive into for years, and we finally decided to take the plunge, and the show is awesome. In this free weekly show, we explore bizarre, unheard of diseases, strange medical mishaps, unexplainable deaths, and everything in between. Each story is totally true and totally terrifying. Go follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're a Prime member, you can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music. By early afternoon, a very shaken and upset Pamela Hupp was sitting inside an interrogation room at the O'Fallon police station,

giving police her formal statement describing exactly what happened. And with hands that trembled, Pam pressed her palms together, extending her thumb and forefinger in the shape of a gun, and showed police how, when the man started coming towards her in the bedroom, she had just kept pulling the trigger of her pistol until she had emptied every round into that man's chest. And although Pam could not tell police who the man actually was, she did feel very confident that Russ Faria had to be involved. He likely sent him. She then explained her connection to Russ and why he might want to hurt her or rob her or both. connection to Russ and why he might want to hurt her or rob her or both. As she recalled the details of the attack, Pam even thought that maybe the driver of that silver car that had dropped the attacker off, that driver might even have been Russ himself. It kind of looked like him, but she

couldn't be sure. She only saw him for a second. After giving police all the information she could possibly think of, Pam signed her official statement, and then she was released. Just like Pam, detectives also believed that what happened to her had to be connected to Russ and his recent acquittal. But seven days after the attack on Pam, investigators had discovered that while the attack on Pam was indeed connected to Russ, it was connected to him in a way that no one was expecting. Based on what the investigators learned, here is a reconstruction of the days leading up to the attack on Pam,

as well as what actually went down on that day, August 16th. On August 10th, 2016, eight months after Russ was released from prison and six days before Pam was attacked, 39-year-old Carol Alford was sitting on the front steps of the porch attached to her home in a trailer park just north of St. Louis. The weather that morning was hot and muggy, but Carol didn't seem to notice. She was wearing a long-sleeve lime green hoodie and lounge pants. Her only concession to the heat was that she didn't have on any shoes, and she was letting her dog wander around her little yard while she sat still, rather than the two of them going out for a walk. At around 11 a.m. that morning, Carol was surprised to see a car she didn't recognize

pull up alongside her driveway. The driver rolled down the car window and asked if Carol was interested in earning a thousand dollars. The driver introduced themselves as a producer for NBC's TV program Dateline and said that they were looking for people to help them with a reenactment scene that involved staging a robbery, kidnapping, and a 911 call. Carol thought this was a bit odd, but she was intrigued and she wanted the money, so she said okay. At which point, the driver instructed Carol not to bring her car keys or cell phone. Carol nodded, but narrowed her eyes. Suddenly, this whole thing felt very off. She told the driver she'd be right back, and then she turned around, walked into her house,

and into her kitchen. There, she opened a drawer and began rummaging around inside of it until she found what she was looking for, a folding knife. Carol slipped the knife into one sleeve of her hoodie and then walked over to the counter and took out a large kitchen knife from its holder and put that into her front pouch pocket. Then, Carol picked up her cell phone, she silenced the ringer, and tucked her phone out of sight in her pants pocket. A thousand dollars was a lot of money, but there was no way Carol was getting into a car with any stranger unless she felt like she could protect herself. And so Carol, now armed with two weapons and her phone, walked back outside and climbed into the car. As the driver pulled back onto the road, they told Carol that they were doing the reenactment at a location that was just behind a nearby strip mall. But,

after driving for only a few minutes, Carol suddenly felt like she had made a terrible choice and she needed to get out of that car immediately. So, she told the driver that they needed to go back to her house for just a minute because Carol had forgotten to put on her shoes before getting into the car. The driver looked over at Carol's feet, and sure enough, Carol did not have any shoes on, and even though the driver was really annoyed by this, they agreed to go back to Carol's trailer. When they got there, Carol suggested that the driver pull all the way into the driveway, and then as soon as the car was stopped where Carol had suggested, Carol hopped out, and then as she walked towards the door of her trailer, she very deliberately looked up, making sure that the surveillance camera on the corner of her front porch was aimed directly at the front of the driver's car, where it would get a clear picture of the car's driver

and the car's license plate. Carol would go inside of her trailer home and then come out a minute later still barefoot. She approached the driver and said she changed her mind and did not want to do the gig after all, and then Carol looked again very deliberately at the security camera that was now peering down directly on both of them, and then Carol turned around and stared at the driver, suspicion written all over Carol's face. As the driver looked at the camera, Carol stepped back and pulled out her cell phone and showed it to the driver and said, yeah, I am going to call the police. And yes, that is a security camera and it's watching you. Without a word, the driver rolled up the window, pulled back out onto the

narrow road and drove away. And true to her word, Carol would call the St. Charles County Police. She told the emergency dispatcher that she just had a very strange encounter with someone claiming to be a Dateline producer, and Carol just wanted the police to know about it. Six days later, on the morning of August 16th, the day Pam was attacked, the driver who had approached Carol decided to try a different neighborhood further to the south. Forty minutes later, the driver rolled up to a complex of plain two-story brick buildings separated by strips of lawn and central sidewalks. Scanning the scattering of chairs along the various entryways to the apartments, the driver spotted a young man sitting

in the shade, legs outstretched in front of him, head tilted back as he looked up at the cloudy sky. In this man's world, a thousand dollars was a lot of money. He had two young children and not much in the way of income or excitement. So when the driver rolled down the window of their car and explained that they were a Dateline producer looking for someone to reenact a robbery, kidnapping, and 911 call in exchange for what seemed like a small fortune, the young man did not hesitate. A minute later, the young man had hopped into the car, and then on the 17-mile drive west to Pam Hupp's house on Little Brave Drive, the driver of the car carefully explained exactly what they wanted the young man to do. When you get there, tell her to give you the money. Make her drive you to the bank and get it for you, the driver told Lewis. She's going to try to make a call to 911, and things might

get a little physical, but remember, tell her you are there to get the money. That's the most important part. By the time the car reached Pam Hupp's house, the driver's actor for the day was excited and ready to play his part in this reenactment. Little did he know, he was walking into a trap. After the young man had barged into Pam's bedroom, he had tried to follow the script and say the lines that the driver had told him to use, but as he did, he looked up and saw Pam was not only on the phone with 911, but was also holding a gun in her other hand and she was aiming it at his chest. The young man, believing this must just be part of the reenactment, continued to try to say his lines, but at the same time he began backpedaling into the hall.

But before he got there, Pam began pulling the trigger. When police found the young man 10 minutes later, he was lying in a pool of blood, his head propped against a doorway. When police checked his pockets, they found a clear plastic bag containing a handwritten note and nine $100 bills. Although the man was not carrying a wallet, cell phone, or ID, it did not take police long to find out exactly who he was. Running the dead man's fingerprints through their database of known criminals, police got a match to a 33-year-old local St. Charles man

named Louis Gumpenberger. According to police records, Louis had had several brushes with the law back when he was in his early 20s, including a drunk driving charge and a few court entries that involved non-payment of child support for his two kids. By August 17th, one day after the shooting, investigators were knocking on the door of Margaret Birch, Lewis Gumpenberger's mother. She had just gotten back from filing a missing person report for her son at the local police station. Margaret was devastated when police told her that Louis was dead. But when police went on to explain the circumstances of his death, that he had been shot after forcing his way into a woman's house, Margaret dropped a bombshell. What the police had just told her was actually not possible. Meanwhile, investigators from the O'Fallon Police Department were following up on another lead from

the St. Charles Police. Seven days earlier, on August 10th, police had received a 911 call from Carol Alford, who described a disturbing encounter she had just had with a stranger who had approached her at her home and then tried to get her to go with them to act out this weird kidnapping robbery scene for a thousand dollars. But at the time, on August 10th, the police did not act on any of the information she gave them. However, fast forward a week back to August 17th, the day after Lewis was killed, and suddenly now, given the weirdness of Lewis's actions and the statements given by Pam about what she saw and what she heard, it seemed possible that the mystery driver who had been rejected by Carol had simply moved on to someone else to try to wrap up in their bizarre

scheme, and that someone else was likely Lewis. And so the police hauled Carol into the O'Fallon police station, and they showed her a lineup of six photographs of people they thought could be the mystery driver. And without a moment's hesitation, Carol reached over and tapped a particular picture. This one, she said, this is the person who approached me. Six days later, on Tuesday, August 23rd, police had confirmed that yes, the person who approached Carol was the same person who approached Lewis. And because they had this mystery person's name and contact information, they decided it was time to go arrest them. It would turn out that when Louis Gumpenberger's mother told police that her son could not have forced his way into

Pamela Hopp's house, she meant that literally. Louis had been in a terrible car accident in his youth that had left him with a serious and irreversible brain injury. The injury had left him with the mental capacity of a 12-year-old, which made him very gullible and exploitable, and the injury had left him with serious physical limitations as well. Most notably, Lewis could barely walk. And so when Lewis's mother was told that her son had run up the driveway and barged into Pam's house, Lewis's mother knew that could

not be true. Lewis literally could not run. And it would turn out Lewis's mother was correct. Lewis did not do any of the things Pam accused him of doing because the story Pam told police about the attack on her had been a total lie. There was never a silver car that suddenly pulled up outside of her house, driven potentially by Russ Faria, that contained Lewis, who had then leapt out and charged up the driveway to attack her. What really happened was Pam, aka the mystery driver, had become totally paranoid after Russ was let out of jail. And so, in her crazed, paranoid state, she decided she had to take drastic action to put him behind bars again to protect herself. And so, she put together this very elaborate scheme to frame Russ for murder. Then, she began looking around town for someone

to kill. And she found Carol first, but Carol did not fall for the trap. And so Pam kept looking. And a few days later, she found Louis. And Louis immediately took the bait. Pam led Louis into her house on Little Brave Drive while reminding him that the scene they were about to reenact was just that. It was an act. So just say your lines and everything will be fine. And then once the pair was in Pam's bedroom, Pam said, okay, we're starting the scene now. And at that point, Louis began trying to say his lines while Pam called 911 and turned away from Louis and fished her gun out of the bedside drawer. The 911 operator would answer Pam's call and immediately hear her scream out that there was an intruder in her house. call and immediately hear her scream out that there was an intruder in her house. And then the operator would hear a man in the background, which was just Lewis fumbling through his lines, and then

the operator would hear Pam fire five shots into Lewis's chest. After Lewis was on the ground, either dead or bleeding to death, Pam pulled a note in a plastic bag from her pocket and she tucked it into Lewis's pocket. The note was designed to look like instructions Lewis might have been given by Russ. It said, get Russ's money, kidnap Pam. Carol Alford would ultimately seal the deal that Pam was indeed the mystery driver and Lewis's murderer. It was Pam's picture that Carol identified in that six-photo lineup, and Carol provided police her security camera footage, taken from outside of her home, that clearly showed Pam's license plate on her car and her face

as she drove up in her car to Carol's home on the day she tried to lure Carol to her death. And so, at 11 a.m. on August 23rd, police cars rolled into the quiet Great Warriors subdivision in O'Fallon, and just minutes later, they found Pam. She had just left her driveway in her SUV and had made it down the street before police cars surrounded her and forced her to pull over. Moments later, police approached Pam's vehicle and told her that she was under arrest for the first-degree premeditated murder of Louis Gumpenberger. But this was not the end of the story. Far from it. The reason Pam had been so paranoid after Russ got out of jail was not just

because she feared retribution from him. It was also because Pam was afraid that the new evidence presented at Russ's second trial would reveal a new suspect in the brutal murder of her friend Betsy Faria. And that new suspect was Pam herself. The beneficiary of Betsy's $150,000 life insurance policy, a policy that Pam had cashed and then given absolutely none of to Betsy's family. And not only had that life insurance policy been officially signed over to Pam four days before Betsy was killed, but also Pam, not Russ, had been the last person to see Betsy Faria alive. Five years earlier, on December 27, 2011, the night Betsy was killed, it was Pam who had driven Betsy home

that evening from her chemotherapy appointment. And it was Pam who had helped get Betsy settled comfortably on the family couch, likely just minutes before Betsy was stabbed 56 times with a kitchen knife. And right after that violent and gruesome murder, it was Pam who fed overly willing prosecutors unsubstantiated allegations that Pam claimed Betsy told her in confidence that painted Russ Faria as an abusive and violent spouse. It was also Pam who kept pushing the theory that Russ must have killed his wife in a fit of rage when he discovered he was not the beneficiary of her life insurance policy. And it was also Pam who kept elaborating on that story and bringing in even more damning testimony about Russ to the state's lead prosecutor, and the prosecution team ate it all up. But Russ knew

Pam had been lying the whole time, and so immediately after Russ was acquitted and freed from prison, he directed his lawyers and the press to look at all the evidence in his wife's murder case again. And he started urging the courts to investigate Pam as the primary suspect in his wife's murder. And reporters and lawyers weren't just asking questions about Betsy's death. They were also asking questions about the death of Pam's own mother. According to the official police report, on October 31st, 2013, Pam's mother had apparently died of a fall from her second-floor apartment balcony. But in hindsight, that accidental death was starting to look suspicious. The autopsy revealed that at the time of her death, The autopsy revealed that at the time of her death, Pam's mother had ingested eight times her recommended dose of the sedative Ambien.

Not only that, the 77-year-old Alzheimer's patient had somehow fallen through, not over, the railings of her balcony. And not only was Pam the last person to see her mother alive, Pam was also one of the beneficiaries of her mother's half-a-million-dollar life insurance policy. Just a few hours after Pam was arrested for the murder of Louis Gumpenberger, detectives sat Pam down inside of an interrogation room and reviewed all of the evidence against her. After they were done going over it, Pam's only response was that she wanted to speak to her attorney. When investigators left the room to call her attorney, a video recording of the interrogation session showed Pam reaching across the desk in front of her and grabbing a ballpoint pen

that she slips into the back waistband of her jeans. Video footage also showed that while Pam was sitting there alone, Video footage also showed that while Pam was sitting there alone, she repeatedly reached up and touched each side of her neck as though searching for the location of her jugular vein. If that vein is punctured or severed, a person can quickly bleed to death. When investigators returned to the interrogation room, Pam was waiting for them at the door, telling them that she needed to go to the bathroom. A few minutes later, investigators heard one of their colleagues screaming for medical assistance immediately. After walking calmly into the bathroom, Pam had taken that ballpoint pen she had stolen,

and over and over again she stabbed herself in both sides of her neck and on the inside of both of her wrists. When officers opened the bathroom door, they found Pam kneeling on the floor in front of the sink, her forehead resting on the tiles. Her shirt was soaked with blood, and more blood spattered the floor and sinks. However, as dramatic as the suicide attempt was, the wounds she inflicted on herself turned out to be non-life-threatening, and so Pam was quickly patched up and sent to jail to await trial. Three years later, on August 12, 2019, 61-year-old Pamela Hupp was sentenced to life

in prison without parole for the first-degree murder of Louis Gumpenberger. Two years later, in 2017, the medical examiner's office changed the official cause of death for Pam's mother from accidental to undetermined. A year after that, in 2018, the state prosecutor and judge who were involved in Russ Faria's first and badly botched trial were both voted out of office. Two years after that, in March 2020, Russ Faria, now engaged to Carol Alford, the woman Pam had tried to lure to her death, was awarded $2 million in damages for the wrongful conviction that put him behind bars for three and a half years. And finally, two years after that, in February of 2022, Pamela Hupp was officially charged with murder in the stabbing death of Betsy Faria. According to the prosecutor who was preparing the case against Pam,

the motive for that murder was financial gain. If Pam Hupp is convicted of Betsy's murder, the prosecutor has said he will seek the death penalty. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you got something out of this episode and you haven't done this already, please re-pit the five-star review buttons, Pitted Olives. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Ballin Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Google, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. This podcast airs every Monday and Thursday morning,

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