Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This Woman is The Worst Person I've Ever Covered - The Pam Hupp Story

Episode Date: December 7, 2025

Pam Hupp is a Missouri woman at the center of one of the most notorious wrongful-conviction cases in the U.S. in 2011, after her close friend Betsy Faria was brutally stabbed to death, Hupp- who had secretly made herself the beneficiary of Betsy’s $150k life-insurance policy just days earlier- helped steer police toward Betsy’s husband Russ Faria, who was wrongly convicted and imprisoned for nearly three years before being fully exonerated; when investigators began refocusing on Hupp in 2016, she staged a fake kidnapping plot to frame Russ again and instead murdered Louis Gumpenberger, a cognitively impaired man she lured with a fake Dateline acting job.

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Now, the woman's name is Pam, and Pam's about 51 when this story starts, and she's living in Missouri. And like everyone, we talk about, Pam has a problem. She really wants money, but she doesn't know how to get it. But one day, in 2010, all that changes, because her best friend gets diagnosed with cancer, and it's not looking good for her. Her best friend is this woman, Betsy. And Pam, she's a good friend to Betsy. She like checks on her all the time. She drives her to her chemo appointments and whatnot.

But as I said, Pam really wants money. So as time goes on, she starts thinking about how to get paid from all this. And she comes up with a diabolical plan to collect her life insurance after she dies. And so she gets to work and she does everything she can to get close to Betsy. She positions herself as the most supportive person in Betsy's life, even when Betsy doesn't ask for it. And over time, Betsy really starts to trust Pam. And in confidence, Betsy tells her that she's worried that her teen daughters and husband will irresponsibly spend her life insurance pay out when she dies.

And of course, Pam sees this as an opening. Because instead of reassuring Betsy that she's just being paranoid and that surely her family can handle it, Pam tells Betsy to change her life insurance policy to make Pam the beneficiary. That way, she'll get the $150,000 payout when she dies. And of course, Pam tells her that she'll put it in a trust and distribute this money to Betsy's daughters when they get older, but we all know she ain't going to do that. She's going to keep it for herself.

Anyway, so Betsy agrees, and they get the paperwork signed, and now Pam is the beneficiary. Here's the thing about all this, though. Betsy has cancer, but she isn't necessarily going to die soon. Like, she's still fighting through it. Like, there's a chance she could live. And I guess Pam wants to make sure that she doesn't survive. Like, she really wants that life insurance money.

So she decides to speed up the process by murdering her, and she'll do it in such a way that she doesn't get caught. So at this point, we're in 2011, and Pam sets her plan into motion. One night, Pam and Betsy are out, and Pam gives her a ride home. And they get there, and they go into the house, and suddenly, she just grabs a knife, and boom, she stabs her. And then she stabs her again and again and again. She ends up stabbing her 55 times. Then she leaves.

Later, Betsy's husband gets home. This guy, Russ. So Russ gets home, and he sees the body, and he panics, and he calls. calls 911. But, unfortunately, it's too late. She's already gone. And so police investigate all this, and they have no idea Pam had anything to do with this murder. They're actually suspicious of Russ, the husband. So he becomes a suspect. And so police, they interview a bunch of people for their investigation, including Pam, who very much wants to be interviewed. And so they interview her, and Pam starts putting the blame on Russ. Like, she tells you.

police that Betsy and Russ were having marital problems and about how one time Betsy said that Russ threatened to kill her and held a pillow over her face. And police, they're not able to verify anything that Pam is saying, but even so, I guess they believe her. And they become convinced that Russ killed his wife. So they keep pursuing him as the main suspect. And when they finally feel like they have enough evidence against him, bam, they arrest Russ. Here's his mugshot. So in In 2013, poor Russ, he has to go to trial over all this, over this murder he didn't commit. And then Pam gets on the stand and she lies and she testifies against him. So at the end of it all, Russ ends up getting convicted and he's sentenced to life in prison.

Now, of course, Russ ends up appealing his conviction. Like he's not trying to stay in prison. But then, at some point, Betsy's daughters come to the realization that Pam never made a trust for them with their mother's life insurance money in it, like she promised she would. You know, Pam's trying to keep that money for herself. So they get pissed off and they file a lawsuit against her. During this civil lawsuit, it's discovered that Pam had lied about a bunch of stuff in Russ's murder trial. And so those civil attorneys who have been working on that lawsuit, they hand their findings over to Russ's lawyers who are currently working on his appeal. So then, in 2015, Russ's conviction gets overturned and after

spending two years in prison, he's finally let out. And so now all eyes are on Pam, because not only was she caught lying in court, but she was the last one to see Betsy alive. And so Pam, she starts freaking out because, you know, she's about to get busted. And so she comes up with another plan to frame Russ again. She's going to make it look like he hired a hitman to kill her. So she starts looking at for a supposed hitman. And she goes driving around local neighborhoods and she comes across a guy hanging outside his apartment complex.

This guy, Lewis. And Lewis, he's cognitively impaired and he's somewhat physically disabled. Now at some point, Pam is talking to Lewis and she pretends to be a producer on the show Dateline. And she tells him that she's looking for an actor to be in a segment for the show where they recreate a crime that happened.

And in this scene, she's going to fake a 911 call while he pretends to attack her. And for this acting gig, she offers to pay him a bit of money. So Lewis, he agrees to do it. And he gets in Pam's SUV and she drives him over to her house. Then she brings him inside into her bedroom area. And then she gives him lines to read and everything. Then she calls 911 and is like, Someone just broke into my house.

Help. And she tells the operator that this guy is trying to. to attack her. And poor Lewis, he thinks this is all part of the reenactment for the Dateline show. So he reads his lines as if he's attacking her. Then, Pam, while she's still on the phone with the 911 operator, suddenly pulls out a pistol, points it at Lewis, and blam, blam, blam, she shoots him and she unalives him. Now the 911 operator heard what she believes was an attack and she dispatches police. And while police are on their way, Pam stages the scene to make Lewis look like the aggressor.

She puts $900 in a plastic bag in Lewis's pocket, and she plants a knife in his hand. She also puts a handwritten note in his pocket. And the note looks like it's from Russ, and it's instructing Lewis to kill Pam, but not before taking her to the bank and forcing her to get money out. So all this is supposed to look like Russ hired Lewis as a hitman to kill Pam, and that when Lewis came over to assassinate her, she shot him in self-defense. Because she's thinking, if it looks like Russ tried to kill her, maybe police will think he killed his wife years before, and this will take the heat off of her. So anyway, eventually the police show up, and Pam tells them her whole sob story about how she was attacked by this man and that she had to shoot him in self-defense.

But, after a quick investigation, police, they're skeptical about Pam's story. I mean, Lewis was not only, cognitively impaired, but he also had physical limitations as to what he could do with his body. Like he had severe balance issues, so he walked with a limp, he couldn't run, and, you know, etc. And it would have been impossible for him to attack someone. So a lot of things about Pam's story just don't add up. And so, bam, they arrest her. Here's her mugshot. And ultimately, Pam is charged for Lewis's murder, and she takes a plea deal and she gets sentenced to life in prison. She's also charged with Betsy's murder and she's actually still waiting on her trial for that one. So bad luck to her.