Hey everyone, it's Andrea Canning.
Happy New Year.
You are listening to Dateline True Crime Weekly.
A lot going on all of a sudden.
It's January 1st, 2026, the start of a new year in courtrooms across the country.
So this week, we're going to tell you about some cases we'll be paying close attention to this year.
There's another trial too, right?
Is this going to throw a wrench in the whole trial?
Is it going to be delayed?
Gosh, could we have a verdict tomorrow?
Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly's Look Ahead 2026.
Here's what's on our docket.
In Utah.
Corey Richens, the woman who wrote a children's book about grief before being accused of fatally poisoning her husband, prepares for trial.
And she's adamant about her innocence.
I'm anxious to get to trial, and I'm ready to get this one heck of a fight.
In Dateline Roundup, we've got a rundown of upcoming trials to watch out for.
From the trial of alleged Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann, to Brendan Banfield, the IRS agent accused of murdering his wife with the help of the family au pair.
This may be one of the more outlandish murder plots we've heard in a while.
We've got dates and details.
Plus, a troubling new trend.
Thieves are going high tech.
We'll have tips on how to keep your home safe.
A burglary happens about every 28 seconds in the U.S.
But before all that, we're headed to Missouri for a preview of one of the most highly anticipated trials of 2026.
And a defendant Dateline fans know all too well.
If you've been watching and listening to Dateline in recent years, you'll surely recognize the name Pam Hupp.
She's been the subject of six Dateline episodes and one of the very first podcast series we ever did.
This is a strange story.
A strange story and a career of strange stories.
You may also have seen the NBC miniseries The Thing About Pam starring Renee Zellweger, which was based on our reporting.
You know when people want you to admit to something you didn't do?
I can't do that.
I'm not that kind of person.
But believe it or not, the Pam Hupp saga isn't done yet.
The case revolves around the 2011 stabbing death of Hupp's friend, Betsy Faria.
Even though he had an alibi, Betsy's husband, Russ, was charged with her murder.
And in 2013, a jury convicted him, thanks in large part to Hupp's testimony against him.
But Russ, who always maintained his innocence, was granted a new trial in 2015 and acquitted.
While Russ rebuilt his life, Pam's began to unravel.
In 2016, she fatally shot a man by the name of Louis Gumpenberger.
She claimed it was in self-defense that the man tried to kidnap her and made it look like he'd been hired by none other than Russ Faria.
But investigators didn't buy it.
They uncovered evidence that Pam had lured the victim to her home by posing as a Dateline producer and then murdered him.
Why would she do that?
Well, like most things involving Pam Hupp, it's complicated.
We'll get into that in a minute.
Pam Hupp ended up taking an Alford plea for Gumpenberger's murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Then in 2021.
I'm here to announce that we have filed murder charges in the first degree against Pamela Hupp in the stabbing death of Betsy Faria.
We will be seeking the death penalty in this case.
She has pleaded not guilty.
Her trial is expected to start in August.
And Keith is here to make sure we're ready for it.
Keith, thanks for joining us.
Thank you for having me.
Yes, this is quite an epic story.
So, Keith, why did it take 14 years to get Pam on trial for Betsy's murder?
You know, what changed?
Well, the wheels of justice run slow, and it just took a long time to put everything together.
So what are prosecutors saying is the motive?
Why do they allege Pam killed Betsy?
Money.
Pam became aware that Betsy had some life insurance policies.
And so...
Pam arranged for Betsy to name Pam as her beneficiary.
And they went to a library and got a librarian who had nothing to do with insurance or law or anything else to sign the paperwork.
The cover story was that Betsy didn't trust her husband to make sure it was distributed properly if she died.
She was going to die because she had cancer.
But I think Pam saw the opportunity.
So, Keith, what evidence do prosecutors say they have?
There wasn't a lot of forensic evidence found at the scene, or at least evidence that could be used against Pam.
But they do have electronic evidence, and I think that'll probably be the backbone of their case.
She made some phone calls suspicious phone calls which indicated that she was either at the house or right beside the house when the murder occurred, and not, you know, 30 minutes away, as she claimed.
That'll be key.
And then several other circumstantial pieces of evidence about the way she was able to get the life insurance, about the way she claimed she was going to give the proceeds of the life insurance to Betsy's daughters.
But in fact she put it into a trust fund only for the duration of Russ's trial and then took it back out again.
How does Lewis Gumpenberger's death fit into all of this?
When she was suspected of murder but had not yet been charged with Betsy's murder and she wanted to redirect the suspicion back to Russ Faria.
This was after he had finally been released from jail.
She went scouting around a random neighborhood one day looking for somebody.
She stopped at one woman's house and told her she was a Dateline producer and she needed to take her for a drive to look at something or other.
Okay, and this woman got into Pam's car but quickly felt uncomfortable.
She says she asked Pam to take her home, and she did.
But then Pam kept looking around for somebody else.
And eventually she found this man, Louis Goppenberger, who had been in an accident and he had a brain injury.
So he was not really able to make rational decisions.
He got into the car with Pam.
He was supposedly going to come in and kill her at the behest of Russ Faria, kill Pam.
That was the story she wanted to get out.
He couldn't possibly have committed the murder.
And she forces him to make that 911 call, which just doesn't go as planned at all.
It doesn't go as planned.
No, no, no, no.
And then she murdered him.
So we know some elements of Pam Hupp's defense.
We've gotten some glimpses of it in recent pretrial hearings.
The defense is focused on getting access to lab reports and DNA analysis conducted by the state.
They are particularly interested in the knife that was used to kill Betsy.
According to the defense, the crime lab found the DNA of an unknown male and the victim, but not Pam Hupp.
Yes, that makes sense, actually, that they would do that.
Assuming she did kill Betsy Faria, she was very careful not to leave any evidence of herself behind in the crime scene.
Do you think that we'll ever hear Pam testify?
I'd love to hear her testify, just like I'd love to interview her.
She's an interesting woman.
I don't know what prison has done to her, though.
That may have changed her in some way.
In the end, you know, this boils down to justice for Betsy Faria.
You spoke with one of Betsy's daughters, Keith, for one of your Dateline episodes on the case.
And she has said she will be at the trial this summer.
I think so.
I'd be very surprised if she wasn't.
Betsy's whole family went through such an emotional ringer in this story.
I felt so badly for them.
I'll never forget the one interview I had with Betsy's mother where I presented her with the evidence that Russ did not commit this crime.
And she said, I'll believe Russ did it no matter what kind of evidence they presented.
She really had come to believe that her son-in-law did this.
But since then, obviously...
A lot of water is under that bridge and the changes that that family must have gone through, the emotional wrenching changes, have to be very difficult for them.
I mean, the family, there's so many layers to this and what the family has been through.
You know, it's hard enough with one trial, one suspect, you know, one defendant.
I mean, it's just so unfair to them.
Keith, thank you for joining us.
And, you know, we look forward to talking to you about this case that keeps on giving.
We'll be there.
Thanks.
When we come back, the countdown is on for Corey Richens' murder trial.
Could a last-minute switch-up from a key witness shake up the case against the Utah mom?
Over a year ago, and before her murder trial was even on the Summit County docket Dateline, received exclusive jailhouse audio from Corey Richens, the Utah mom accused of poisoning her husband.
I'm anxious.
I'm anxious for my innocence.
I'm anxious to get to trial.
And I'm ready to get this one heck of a fight.
You took an innocent mom away from her babies.
Richens has pleaded not guilty to the charges against her.
But since we received that audio, a lot has changed for the accused killer.
Richens has been denied bond two more times and, most notably, was hit with over two dozen new charges for financial crimes.
As her February 2026 murder trial nears, we wanted to sit down with Dateline producer Karen Israel to talk through the latest in this case and what we can expect when trial gets underway.
Hey, Karen.
Hi, Andrea.
You and I have been covering this story for a while, so it's amazing that the trial is finally nearing after all this time.
I know.
It's been a really long time.
So we've talked about it on the podcast.
Can you give our listeners a quick refresh on this story?
Sure.
So back in March of 2022, Corey Richens said she found her husband Eric, unresponsive in bed and first responders couldn't do anything to save him.
An autopsy ultimately showed that he died from a fatal dose of fentanyl.
It was five times the lethal dosage.
Listeners will probably remember that about a year after her husband's death, Corey went on to write a self-published children's book called Are You With Me?
She said it was to help her kids cope with their grief.
And she even went on local TV to promote it.
And then just a month later, she was charged with his murder.
Yeah, that book is what got so much attention in this case.
Karen, how do prosecutors allege Corey poisoned Eric and why?
According to the information filed by the prosecution, Corey got fentanyl from her housekeeper and somehow gave it to Eric.
Corey's also charged with one count of attempted murder.
Prosecutors say she tried to poison her husband by lacing a sandwich just a couple of weeks before his death.
Prosecutors allege that Corey killed her husband for financial gain.
They say that Corey was deeply in debt after... failed real estate deals from her realtor business.
And she was counting on payouts she received should Eric die, life insurance policies.
There was a prenup and more from his estate.
There's also evidence that she had a new love.
The prosecution called him in filings her paramour.
And apparently they were texting the night of Eric's death.
They were sending I love you messages and kiss emojis.
So it's been over two and a half years since Corey's arrest.
And, as we mentioned off the top, her case has taken a long time to make its way through the court system to this impending trial.
Yes, it has, mostly due to pre-drial motions filed by both the prosecution and the defense.
The prosecutor's motions mostly have to do with what evidence they'd like admitted or excluded from trial.
For the defense.
Their motions are far more expansive, including one about moving the case to another county because of pretrial publicity.
But the defense motion that really got headlines recently was when they accused the prosecution of withholding critical information favorable to the defendant, what's known as a Brady violation.
They say that a key prosecution witness had recanted or changed their story.
And defense attorneys didn't learn about the change in testimony for nearly six months.
Fascinating.
Who is this witness?
So this is a man by the name of Robert Crozier.
And according to prosecutors, he told detectives that he sold fentanyl to Corey's housekeeper around the time of Eric's death.
But in a recent sworn affidavit Crozier said he was detoxing from drugs when he spoke to detectives and now can't remember giving that interview.
What's more, he denies selling fentanyl to the housekeeper.
The defense says without this testimony the prosecution can't prove Corey ever got her hands on any fentanyl to poison her husband.
So how did the prosecution respond to this allegation about the key witness?
Well, they fired back that Crozier's new story is not credible and doesn't change anything.
But ultimately, Karen, we know it's up to the judge.
What did the judge decide about how to handle this?
So there was a request from the defense's team for a third bond hearing.
The judge denied that.
So Corey is not getting out of jail anytime soon.
And He basically said if Crozier is called to testify, the defense can challenge his credibility.
And like all witnesses, the jury can decide what to believe or not to believe.
The judge also said his testimony was just, you know, a small piece of all the other evidence the prosecution plans to present against Richen.
We haven't seen a witness list yet.
Who do we think could be called to the stand for the state?
There's a very good chance they will want the Richens' housekeeper to testify.
She's pretty key to everything.
I could also see them calling financial experts to better lay out Corey's alleged motive for killing her husband.
What about Corey Richen's defense team?
Have they offered any sort of clue as to what their trial strategy will be?
From what happened with this witness Crozier, the defense will likely try to prove Corey never obtained fentanyl in the first place.
They say that payments made by Corey to her housekeeper can be for cleaning work, not drugs.
And we expect them to attack the credibility of the housekeeper's testimony.
And they'll likely argue there's a lack of evidence that Richens administered the lethal dose herself.
Could they say Eric accidentally overdosed?
We'll see.
Yeah, we've definitely heard that one floating around for a while, the accidental overdose.
The defense has really pushed back on the prosecution's alleged motive.
That's right.
They dispute the idea that Corey was financially desperate.
And they say that claims that she took out large life insurance policies before his death were false.
How long is her trial expected to last?
Right now, jury selection is set to begin February 10th, with the trial getting underway on February 23rd.
And it's supposed to last for five weeks or so.
But of course, with any trial, as you know, we have to wait and see.
Yeah, well, I will see you out in Utah.
And we look forward to getting more updates from you as the trial gets underway.
Thanks, Karen.
Thank you, Andrea.
Up next, it's time for Dateline Roundup.
We've got details on more big trials heading our way in 2026.
Plus, Wi-Fi jammers and hidden cameras.
Thieves are going high tech.
What you need to know.
Welcome back.
Joining me for this special edition of Roundup is Dateline producer Sue Simpson.
Hey, Sue.
Thanks for having me.
Hi, Andrea.
So there's some pretty big cases heading to court this year that we've had our eye on.
Let's take a look at the calendar and see what's coming up.
Okay.
Sue, give us a quick recap.
Absolutely.
So back in November of 2018, 911 dispatchers got two panic calls about two house fires.
The first one at 51-year-old Paul Canero's house and the second at his younger brother Keith's home.
Everyone in Paul's home survived, but Keith, his wife, and their two children died.
The next day, Paul Canero was arrested and charged with arson.
A couple of days after that, he was hit with four murder charges.
The Monmouth County prosecutor held a press conference.
Let's listen to what he alleged Paul Canero did.
We allege that the defendant repeatedly shot and killed his brother and then moved to murder the rest of the family inside the home.
We also allege that, after murdering the Canero family, the defendant then set fire to the house in an effort to conceal and disguise his earlier committed crimes.
After that, the prosecutor said Paul went to his own home and set fire to that too.
Sue, what do prosecutors allege is the motive here?
Money, Andrea, money.
Court documents say Keith found out that Paul was stealing money from him and was planning on cutting him off.
Prosecutors say Paul was desperate to keep that income.
He had debts and a mistress who was costing him a lot of money.
Canero pleaded not guilty back in 2019 to 16 charges pertaining to the murders and the house fires.
We will be bringing you more on this case in next week's Dateline, True Crime Weekly, so be sure to tune in for the latest from inside the courtroom.
Up.
Next we're checking in on another trial scheduled for January, this one in Fairfax County, Virginia.
It is the trial of Brendan Banfield, a former IRS agent.
Prosecutors say masterminded an elaborate plot to murder his wife Christine.
That involved the murder of a second person to a man by the name Joseph Ryan.
This is a complicated crime, Sue.
Can you break it down for us?
In February, 2023, officers responded to a 911 call at the home of Christine and Brendan Banfield.
And they found Christine dead in her bedroom with multiple stab wounds and Joseph Ryan shot to death nearby.
Christine's husband Brandon, and the couple's live-in au pair, Juliana Perez-Migales, told investigators they'd walked into the home and found Ryan attacking Christine.
So they both grabbed guns and shot him dead to try and save Christine.
But they said they were too late.
Christine was already dead.
Then investigators quickly got suspicious of the story after they learned that Banfield and the au pair were having an affair.
That's right.
Eight months after the murders, the au pair was arrested and charged with second-degree murder for shooting Joseph Ryan.
Nearly a year later, Banfield was arrested, too.
He was charged with murdering Christine and Joseph Ryan.
At various pretrial hearings, prosecutors have presented their theory about what happened inside that house, and they're calling it the catfish theory.
This is where things get complicated, Sue.
They do.
They certainly do.
This may be one of the more outlandish murder plots we've heard from prosecutors in a while.
Prosecutors say that Banfield created a fake profile for his wife on a fetish website and when Joseph Ryan, a complete stranger, responded to it Banfield, who was still posing as his wife, invited Ryan to the house for what Ryan thought was a consensual sexual encounter.
Prosecutors say Ryan arrived at the home thinking he'd been invited there, of course, and he went to the bedroom and he held Christine down.
And that's when they say Juliana and Banfield shot him and Banfield stabbed Christine.
The whole thing was an attempt to try and frame Ryan for Christine's death.
What are prosecutors saying they believe the motive was?
Well, they say Banfield wanted Christine out of the picture so he and the au pair could be together.
The au pair, Andrea, ended up pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter.
We haven't seen any witness lists yet, but we think the au pair will be testifying against Banfield at his trial.
He has pleaded not guilty and says that the au pair is lying because she was pressured by investigators.
Our next trial date on the Roundup calendar is in October, and it's a case I've been watching closely.
The defendant is former Stoughton police officer Matthew Farwell, accused of murdering pregnant teacher's aide, Sandra Birchmore.
This case really caught the attention of Dateline viewers and listeners.
It really did, Andrea.
And here are the basics.
Back in 2021, 23-year-old Sandra Birchmore was found dead in her Canton, Massachusetts apartment.
Her death was initially ruled a suicide by the state medical examiner, much to the dismay of Sandra's family, who just didn't believe she would have killed herself.
Federal investigators ended up taking a look at the case and they came to a very different conclusion that it was a homicide.
Prosecutors charged Farwell with murder.
He was someone Sandra knew from a very young age, which is one of the reasons this case has caused such outrage.
Yeah.
Matthew Farwell was an instructor with the Stoughton Police Department's Explorers program, a program for young people interested in law enforcement.
Sandra started attending that program as a preteen.
Prosecutors allege Farwell groomed and then sexually exploited her when she was underage and murdered her all these years later to prevent her from disclosing his sexual exploitation of her and also because he believed that she was pregnant with his baby.
And Farwell is also charged with staging the scene at Sandra's apartment to make it seem like a suicide.
He's pleaded not guilty and he's denied having sex with her when she was a minor.
Sue, as we mentioned in my Dateline episode, it turned out Farwell is not the father, after all, of Sandra's unborn child, which was a twist in the story.
The final trial we want to flag isn't on our calendar yet, but we expect it to go to trial in 2026.
This is another case I've been following for years.
We're talking about the trial of Rex Huerman, the alleged Long Island serial killer, who is accused of the murder of seven women.
He has pleaded not guilty.
Sue, where do things stand with that case right now?
Well, the last time Heuermann was in court was back in September, when a judge ruled that he'll be tried for all seven murders at the same time in one massive trial.
Prosecutors allege Heuermann's DNA is the key to their case against him, linking him to the victims.
That DNA evidence will be at the heart of both the prosecution and defense cases, because the type of testing the prosecution is relying on is called whole genome sequencing, which is relatively new and it hasn't been used in a New York courtroom before.
The defense will more than likely hit hard on whether it's legitimate or not.
At a pretrial hearing, they called it, quote, magic, not science.
Okay Sue, so many trials to watch in the new year and we will be following them all here on Dateline True Crime Weekly.
Thank you.
Thank you, Andrea.
Thank you.
For our final story, we've got some news about a crime that can hit close to home.
Whether it's porch pirates stealing holiday packages or organized gangs targeting celebrity mansions, thieves are going high-tech.
Last year, there were reports of criminals using devices like Wi-Fi jammers that can take out your home security system or camouflage cameras that blend in with the bushes.
Los Angeles homeowner George Wynn told NBC4 Los Angeles that he found a camera hidden on his own lawn.
I used my left foot to kick it out, and that's when I discovered it was a device.
Here to help us understand how these devices work and what to do to improve your home security in 2026 is NBC News correspondent Adrienne Broaddus.
Adrienne, welcome to the podcast.
Absolutely.
Thanks so much for having me.
First off, let's talk about home burglaries in general.
I feel like at this point we all know someone who has been affected by this.
Is it as common as we think? a burglary happens about every 28 seconds in the U.S.
And yes, you guys heard me right, every 28 seconds.
But the thing is, there's good news.
Burglary in the U.S. has been on the decline since 1980.
Okay, that's almost kind of scary though, when you're saying every 28 seconds and that's considered better.
Really unbelievable.
So break-ins were in the news a lot in the past few years.
We've heard about these celebrity athletes being targeted, like Travis Kelsey and Patrick Mahomes from the Chiefs and so many more.
First of all, I just want to know do authorities even know who these criminals are, who are targeting these high profile people?
Well, law enforcement is saying that South American criminal rings specifically, are coming into the US to target Holmes.
And they're bringing these high-tech devices.
It's called burglary tourism.
That was something new when I heard this.
And last year seven Chileans were charged in the burglary spree that targeted athletes like Travis Kelsey and Patrick Mahomes.
OK so Adrienne, we know that the celebrities are the ones who are getting the headlines when their homes get broken into.
But this is happening to all kinds of regular folks.
How are these criminals pulling off these heists?
I mean, this is what's really caught our attention.
Here is like the new ways they're coming up with to take your stuff.
Yeah, the common theme here is that the thieves are getting smarter using better technology.
In this one particular case in Bel Air Texas, criminals used a Wi-Fi jammer to cause a glitch in the security camera so they could not be identified.
Picture a distorted image.
OK, so I think one of the things that really scares me is you mentioned the Wi-Fi jammer, because people have these home security systems.
They feel like they're safe because the alarm is going to go off and it's going to make all kinds of noise and the police are going to come.
But the Wi-Fi jammer is really messing up this sense of security.
Explain to us how this thing works.
Okay, so picture a small device that you can carry by hand, not much bigger than your cell phone.
This Wi-Fi jammer can disable all devices on your home Wi-Fi.
And an expert I spoke with told me that they're surprisingly easy to get.
They cost about $60 or $70, and they only work in a short range, about a 10 to 12 feet radius.
Since a lot of home security devices, like your ring camera or your alarms, run on the Wi-Fi network, a Wi-Fi jammer would disable them with the push of a button.
In other incidents, residents like the one we heard from earlier have found cameras hidden in their bushes or lawns that monitor when people are coming and going.
So think they might be covered in fake grass or turf, completely camouflaged so you cannot see someone surveilling you, your family, your kids.
So awful.
Adrienne, is there anything that you can do to combat these devices that the crooks are using?
Yeah, I spoke with Mark Rash.
That's that security expert.
He used to work for the U.S.
Justice Department, and now he works for this security firm out of New Jersey.
And he said the best thing that people can do is use a hardwired system.
So it's a system that doesn't depend on Wi-Fi, and it's much harder in that case to jam.
Now, if you do use Wi-Fi, make sure you're choosing a signal that's more resilient, like a 5G bandwidth.
There are also security devices that can save the data to an SD card.
So even if the Wi-Fi fails, you'll always have a backup and you can give that to police.
And hopefully that will lead them to the crooks.
Adrienne, this is such amazing advice.
So thank you.
Anytime.
That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly.
To get ad-free listening for all our podcasts, subscribe to Dateline Premium.
Coming up this Friday on Dateline, a jeweler is murdered in his home.
Is it a robbery gone bad or the ultimate betrayal?
No one would talk to me about how things really happened, so I took it upon myself to figure it out.
Watch my classic episode, Ghosts Can't Talk, on NBC at 9, 8 central.
Thanks for listening.
Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Carson Cummins, Caroline Casey, and Kiani Reed.
Our associate producers are Ellery Gladstone-Groth and Aria Young.
Our senior producer is Liz Brown-Kurloff.
Production and fact-checking help by Audrey Abrahams.
Veronica Mazeka is our digital producer.
Rick Kwan is our sound designer.
Original music by Jesse McGinty.
Paul Ryan is executive producer.
And Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline.
Okay, thanks everybody.
