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Hey weirdos, I'm Elena. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.
And it's a special episode of Morbid because This book is Bone Deep.
Untangling the Betsy Faria Murder Case. And it was written by one of the authors who we were joined with today, Joel Schwartz.
He's amazing. He's amazing. Amazing. He was the defense attorney for Russ Faria, if you remember.
And his co-author is Charles Bosworth. I like how you almost said Charles.
I really just wanted to be British about it.
Charles. 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.
So crazy, it went on to inspire a Keith Morrison podcast.
Hell yeah, Keith Morrison. Called The Thing About Pam.
And then that podcast went on to inspire maybe something that you might've seen on TV.
I'm not sure. We have not gotten any messages that said you, you should watch this.
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.
It is so good. Yeah, it's wild. It's a wild show.
But we got the pleasure of sitting down with Joel Schwartz today. just kind of got to walk through his whole book.
I mean, obviously, again, he was the defense attorney for Resferia, 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 1 million gajillion percent did not commit.
No way. 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. 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 years because Pam Hopp 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 datelines.
The most ever on cases were four. And that was two extremely high profile cases.
That was the OJ Simpson case and the JonBenet Ramsey case. 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 it's been absolutely incredible and it was heart breaking 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 Hub attempted to frame Russ a 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.
Now, that gives you an indication as to who Pam Hupp 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 . 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. 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 then what I know now, as anti-gun as they come.
Not to make a political statement, but 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 Russ's first wife.
And They were all told when they 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 had.
Now, I always tend to go into things with you know, both eyes open along with a little bit of, 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. couple calls to yell by witnesses and check out these videos.
And I would say, you know, why did you waste my time lying to me?
Yeah, there's video footage, there's receipts, there's everything.
I honestly believe once I got hired and met with Russ and then got to the discovery, which is the reports in the video, I knew I was gonna sit down, I knew in my heart and in my soul, I was gonna sit down with the young prosecutor um 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 hopper not they had done zero investigation uh regarding her and uh 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. 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 assumed he did it.
I don't know why and still to 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 suicide. by some rookie officer for running a stop sign.
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 a terminal illness. 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, OK, 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 right wrist wasn't slit.
It was as if somebody was trying to cut her hand off.
And they almost succeeded. It was all the way to the bone and almost through the bone.
So you can't do that. 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 Hupp was the 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 one with her.
Pam initially lied about going 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's conclusive that Pam Huff committed it, but why would nobody look at her?
I pushed and I pushed. 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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That's prettylitter.com slash morbid to save 20% on your first order. prettylitter.com slash morbid. 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 And this allegedly all happened at a library, and a librarian bore witness to this change.
Do you believe that, that 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 what we call PDOC, 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 for you and make you my beneficiary.
Well, So Pam knew the day in advance that that was going to happen.
Initially, Pam said, Betsy surprised her.
They said, meet me at the library. He surprised her and pulled out this phone that was already filled out.
Well, 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, carrying the 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, only know something was signed.
I think it was probably that beneficiary firm.
I've had Handwriting experts look at it, and they do say it's Betsy's.
What they say is they can't say that it's not Betsy's signature.
Right. 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. 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 surmising this, but it makes sense.
And maybe she just told Betsy, we'll just use it for some form of collateral with the 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. 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 lead to 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 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, you feel like there has to be something that will prove, because you're like, this just makes sense. so much sense 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 it's something in the movies ah it's It's just too easy.
Most people... contrary to what you believe, the case where the husband hires the hitman to kill his wife, those all make the news. and those become glorified, they're out there, the husband usually 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.
This is, 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 Seriously.
Yeah, and then what the hell was the judge thinking when she 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 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 kill the spouses in the last 20 years?
Right. Mm hmm. 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.
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.
It's too easy. Yeah. Well, what was crazy in this case is the reason the judge The prosecutor argued that Pam hubs information, the life insurance proceeds, didn't come in is because under Missouri law and many, many laws, there's what's called the direct connection law. 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 unless you have some way to connect those two people, a direct connection.
Maybe they knew each other. Maybe he babysat for him.
You can place his cell phone outside the house at anything.
In this particular case, the court ruled that there was no direct connection to Pam Hopp. 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 pay them up than there is to Russ Faria.
Definitely. Russ found her. Russ is the husband.
Russ got insurance as well. It's like, of course it was Fonda 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 in charge, Under her ruling, there would never be anybody with a direct connection.
And the conviction was so egregious that I've never seen this.
I filed my appeal. Then I filed this, what's called a mooting 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 appeals sent it back for a new trial. without a reply from the state.
Never heard of anything like that. That's wild.
So normally convictions, something like this, they take or generations.
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 segues. When Russ... 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? Yeah, on a high profile murder case. that's being covered by national news to do a bench trial is 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's doing?
All I can say is all is well that ends well and it ended well.
So I made the right choice. You definitely did.
Do 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, There's a witness who I'm accusing of lying or being misinformed or making a mistake. or there's two people, one says, One says yes, one says no, and I'm arguing.
The person who's saying no is telling the truth.
You shouldn't believe this. other than that were obviously dipped and placed in his closet with blood on them, there was zero to indicate he did it.
I actually 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 gonna say if i could see that then anybody could see that And the first jury argued that too, and they just didn't buy it.
If anybody who's on that first jury listens to this, I would love and invite for them to contact me because I've never spoken to any of them.
I can't contact them, but they have every right 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 we all kind of, it's a foregone 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 Hopp 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 reasonable doubt that he committed murder.
There was another case that's somewhat infamous in Missouri, out of Boone County, 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 and they 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.
I was thinking about Russ and jury and Judge Omer had just been appointed.
And then Ryan Ferguson popped in my mind and what is wrong with these juries up there?
And then I thought, Maybe I should just try this case.
I got home and I spoke to my wife, Mary Ann, who's 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 and I just kept and I kind of went through in my mind 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 like 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 the state to their burden And they're not going to be able to prove that Russ Faria committed the murder.
The opposite would be true. And I argued in closing argument, I could prove he was innocent. state.
So that was what I decided to do. And had a jury been there, I 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 old.
He looked at it for 30 minutes, maybe it was 45 minutes.
And he looked up and it was like a riddle game.
He said, dad, you want to know who did it?
I would love to. And that, and I include it 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 me with my guitar and my band.
They filmed all these things. It was Pam's story, not my story.
Hopefully my story will air. We're trying to do that.
There's some momentum. So we'll see what happens.
That's exciting. I support that. So that's how clean it was on its face, a 12-year-old.
Regardless of how intelligent that kid was, or at least how they could think he is, he figured it out, and that has always perplex 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, a solid anatomy.
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.
Nobody's on video. Elsewhere. blood, his cell site does 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 an 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 .
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.
Regardless of law experience, it's like, what?
Who would do that? And then it was crumpled up in his car.
Yeah. Shut up. 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. 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 the wrappers up as well in 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 a jury 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.
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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 kind of 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 luminol testing and, you know, the room lit up like a Christmas tree.
But the only thing that stinks is the photos didn't develop.
Yeah. Somehow, somehow you got your hands on those.
So walk us through that. But 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? The point is, it didn't develop.
I want the camera. 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.
We'll have 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 I had no idea what was in it. opened it up, put it on, and it was photographs, 232 of them.
It's like, finally, I got them. That guy purged himself because these all developed and He didn't only perjury himself about what was shown, but the fact that they didn't develop.
So I was going to destroy this guy in the second trial.
I couldn't wait. And we start the second trial. we ask you the prosecutor does an opening statement that.
She talks about the search, and she talks about the luminol, and unfortunately, the camera malfunctioned, and so the photos developed.
I leaned over to my co-consul Nate Swanson and said, She has no clue that we have these photos.
You must have been so excited just to be like, boom.
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 Duhamel. when he attacked the officer.
I was a little bit more rabid I just, oh, I got up and I started with the photos.
And Leah Anske said to me, under her breath, where did you get those?
So I knew during the opening statement she didn't know I had them.
It was a shock. Yeah, I still don't know. and can't prove, otherwise she'd be charged with a crime, what she knew and what she didn't know.
And I don't know how I got the photos you sent me.
That's so wild. She just trusted the officer and never looked at the DVD and forwarded to me. or there was that whistleblower in her office like they portrayed the Tina in the TV series.
Right. I don't know. But 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 luminol trail that only, it showed a cleanup trail.
And it would be no sense for some random person to clean up, to go get towels and wipe 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 bandwagon 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 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.
I was just with the photos, but I got in everything I got.
I was able to show that by cell side, Pam 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 couldn't get into that.
I was able to get into Pam Hub's lies in 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. Yeah. all the lawyers who have read it around here who are my partners that, 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, like And when we read things like that, when somebody walks it, 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 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 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 luminol tests. amongst various other things.
Is there anything other than the luminol testing that really you can point to that just you were... infuriated about.
How much time we got. you want go off it's I mean this Ryan McCarrick pulled my client, pulled Russ out of his cell twice to attempt to get him to confess. after he was represented.
Again, that's a civil rights violation. You can't do that.
He wrote, and I didn't find out this until after the book was published, he had put someone in his cell in an attempt to rough them up He put someone in a cell in an attempt to get a confession, and he had actually already written the with the confession in it.
Oh my God. Yeah. I didn't find out about that until actually the book was published.
So if there's a follow-up, that will be in it.
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 is telling the truth.
And to go way back, I want to notice in the 80s when I was a younger man, and starting in 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, why would they do that?
That doesn't make any sense. If they say they saw this, He 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.
What's been really telling is every time Dateline airs, I will get emails and I'll get voicemails, 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.
The more exposed, the better it is done.
Yeah, it's frightening what goes on. And 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 I cannot imagine.
First of all, guilty or not, I can't imagine going to live in a cage.
No. are about six feet by eight feet, and it's small.
Everything in there is steel. I can't imagine. 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, many jails, and I always go in and I leave.
I just can't imagine hearing those bars clang for somebody like Russ Faria.
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 lawsuit.
I was just going to say it should be. It makes so much sense.
It should be. It is a cautionary tale. If you can pull that off, I'm all in favor.
That would be really nice for book sales.
Let's get it going. We got to figure this out for you.
It reminds me too of, it's just like, it has little like, um, 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- Like in this case. 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.
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 if you watch some of these documentaries now, the Making a Murderer, the nephew that confessed, hey, can I go back to school now or 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, 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.
And public question, why would somebody ever do that then?
If they've ever found themselves in that situation, then they understand.
The fact of the matter is, if the police have a solid case and they've got the evidence, they're not gonna waste their time trying to secure a confession.
They'll try. and they'll be done. In that particular case, they questioned him 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 the Lewis-Gumpenberger murder, where she tried to frame Ross and left a note on him allegedly from Ross.
That can be used as consciousness of guilt to show motive.
She says, tried to cover up the Pam Hupp murder because she was, I mean, the Betsy Faria murder because she was being investigated.
So there's enough there. We can place you there by cell site.
And the question becomes, it's such a severe penalty.
And there is no direct evidence to say she did it.
Had they done an investigation, and I don't wanna accuse anybody, but there more than likely would have been an accomplice.
Or there might not have been, who knows?
We don't know. We have no idea. Their defense is going to argue. the amount of strength it 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 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 any of 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 Gumpenberger and cold blood murder.
We know about that. And then you tread in 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'm i don't know the outcome the uh 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.
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? would say there's no chance.
Okay, good. I'm glad to hear that. I don't think they'll do that.
To me, the most damning evidence of a murder first is going to be what they attempted to use against Russ.
And that will be the document that Pam created on Betsy's the day before the beneficiary was changed.
But 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 most murder first charges are 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.
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 that.
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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. like initially Pam said she never received a text, but Betsy texted her, she said essentially, Don't come.
I'm going to spend one-on-one time with Bobby Wan, 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. crossed to examine her.
She said, well, I did, but I got it, but I didn't.
And I use that in some of my speaking engagements because it's panel 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 know. Never understand how they think they're going to get away with that.
No. 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 dropped 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 could ask me a question now, I'm going to answer it different than I said 10 minutes ago because my brain injury.
And 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 then I would ask him about Pam Hopp's lies, things like that.
Well, I did that with Pam Hopp 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, under oath, My mother has been sick with Alzheimer's and she just died three weeks ago of Alzheimer's.
And I think I said, I'm sorry to hear that.
The trial ended the day after trial. I think I got six calls from people saying her mother did not die of Alzheimer's.
This is her mother's name. She'll look it up.
I looked it up, Shirley Newman fell from the third floor balcony and was found and Pam up was the last one with them.
So I called County St Louis County Homicide and that with them.
They did a cursory investigation, changed the manner of death, and since the Lewis Gumpenberger murder, they have been conducting an investigation 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?
And the answer is there isn't proof. There really isn't.
I mean... What do we know? 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, then 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 Duhamel in person.
And when the first episode aired, it was like, 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.
Um, and it was, I was taken aback a little bit.
I enjoyed it. But Pam Hupp 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. the obsession of the true crime fans and even the general public with this, it was over the top.
And they were really, I was upset that there wasn't at least two more episodes.
There could have been four more. 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, it was there was so much behind the scenes.
But then I under, you know, you realize it was right now it's Elweger.
It was the Pam Huck story through Pam Huck'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.
And it might be. streaming NBC show. I'm not exactly sure.
I believe it. Yeah, that's incredible. I went to, have you guys ever heard of or been to CrimeCon?
We haven't been, but we have definitely heard of it.
So I went to CrimeCon this year and The way I characterize it is I spoke there in a room of 4,000 people.
It was such a joy. I was like Tom Cruise in Tom Cruise.
That must have been awesome. to the show and they knew all about me.
All right. Well, my last question is a little just gossipy.
You don't have to answer if you don't want to.
But Leah Askey Chaney, the prosecutor in the original trial and second trial.
She said that most of the podcast, 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 dateline?
I did. she would put her morals up against anyone's.
If that gives you any idea. if her morals are anywhere near the rest of people in society, we're 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. 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 Lasky 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.
Oh, wow. That was a great comment, Joel.
Thank you. Good tea. Well, thank you so much.
Everybody needs to go out and buy your book, obviously.
Is there anything else that you wanna 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 well.
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.
If you want to do a redo, let me know. Thank you so much.
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The town of Agde in France is famous for sun, sand, sea and sex.
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