LINCOLN COUNTY, MISSOURI: The murder case against Pamela Hupp accused of killing her friend Betsy Faria in 2011 has been refiled by prosecutors in an attempt to move the trial closer to the scene of the crime.
Why did prosecutors refile murder case against Pamela Hupp?
Hupp was originally charged in July 2021 by Lincoln County Prosecutor Mike Wood who said on Friday, October 27, that he dropped and refiled the case to petition for a closer venue.
He said he hopes the move will ease the financial and travel burden on prosecutors, witnesses, and Faria’s family as reported by St Louis Post-Dispatch.
“It was too much to ask of witnesses and Betsy Faria’s loved ones,” Wood said.
The defense had filed a motion to move the original case out of Lincoln County, a common tactic to ensure a fair jury pool in highly publicized cases.
Prosecutors had agreed to reportedly move the case to Greene County last year, about a three-and-a-half-hour drive from the St Louis region.
The office announced it would be refiling murder charges to try to find another location closer to Lincoln County.
A Greene County judge had scheduled a trial in the case for summer 2025.
Wood said on Friday, October 25, he doesn’t expect the refiling to set that schedule back at all.
Did Pamela Hupp kill Betsy Faria for insurance money?
Prosecutors allege Hupp killed Faria to cash in on a $150,000 life insurance policy that Faria had switched over to Hupp days before her death, according to Fox 2 now.
They accuse Hupp of badgering Faria into accepting a ride home for chemotherapy.
Prosecutors said Hupp waited until her friend was weak and lethargic from a chemotherapy treatment before she began stabbing her repeatedly as she lay on a couch under a blanket, as per KSDK.
Then, she dipped the victim's socks in her own blood and spread it around the house to make it look like her husband Russell Faria killed her in a domestic assault incident, according to court documents charging Hupp with the 2011 murder.
The case captured national attention after Russell Faria was convicted of his wife’s murder in 2013 and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The prosecutors, however, had that conviction overturned amid claims by Faria’s lawyers that investigators ignored Hupp as a suspect.
Faria was acquitted in a retrial and Russ was freed after spending three years in prison. In July 2021, Wood charged Hupp with Betsy Faria’s murder, accusing her of framing Russ Faria for the crime.
Pamela Hupp’s other crimes and media attention
Hupp is already serving life in prison for the 2016 fatal shooting of Louis Gumpenberger in her O’Fallon, Missouri, home.
Hupp claimed Gumpenberger, a mentally and physically disabled man, was trying to kidnap her for Faria's insurance money, but her story quickly fell apart.
Hupp entered an Alford plea in St Charles County Circuit Court in 2019, acknowledging that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict her without admitting guilt.
The case was the center of attention of local news investigations in the Post-Dispatch and KTVI (Fox2), along with a series of episodes of NBC’s 'Dateline' that later turned into a scripted show starring Renee Zellweger called 'The Thing About Pam.'
Wood has said he will seek death penalty for Hupp in the case.
