Harlan Coben's Final Twist (2026) s02e01 Episode Script
Betsy Faria
1
Harlan, over here.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Harlan Coben.
He's the greatest
thriller writer.
Oh, come on.
Coben's written over 30
"New York Times" bestsellers.
With over a dozen
hit TV shows and movies.
Just when you think
you have it all figured out,
think again.
I'm Harlan Coben.
My favorite stories start
in neighborhoods
that look perfectly
unremarkable
a cul-de-sac,
a backyard barbecue,
a basketball hoop
in the driveway.
Troy, Missouri,
is that kind of town.
Houses huddle close together.
Neighbors who don't just wave,
they watch,
and they know your name.
It's the kind of ordinary
that feels smug,
like nothing could possibly
find its way here.
That's why Betsy Faria's case
is so compelling.
We tell ourselves violence
happens somewhere else,
to someone else.
But we all know
that's not the case.
Hang with us until the very end.
There's a final twist
you'll never see coming.
But first, let's go back
to where our mystery begins.
Betsy was a very vibrant person.
Everybody loved Betsy.
My first impression of Russ,
he was like a big kid.
So when Russ first met Betsy,
I knew that she was the one.
They had their ups and downs,
but we never thought
something bad would happen.
The first officer
responded and said,
"This is not a suicide."
She had multiple stab wounds.
If you stab somebody
that many times,
usually it's someone
who is psychotic.
Russ can be kind of
rough around the edges.
The shocking verdict
in the case against
a man prosecutors say
stabbed his wife 55 times.
Once I met Russ,
it was blatantly obvious.
Russ has an ironclad alibi.
Follow the facts,
follow the evidence.
For Russ to have committed it,
he would have had to have
time to clean up.
A Lincoln County murder case
so unbelievable,
it keeps unraveling.
Detectives found out that Betsy,
she was going to change
her life insurance policy,
and that threw him into a rage.
This person has done things
out of the ordinary,
has lied through every
investigation, every interview.
There's crazy cases out there,
but this case,
there's no other case like it.
A crime happened here.
The past isn't what it seemed.
The story told turns out
to be deception.
And just when you're sure
you have the answer
911, what is the address
of your emergency?
Hello? Anyone there?
There's one final twist.
Betsy was she was just
a bubbly personality.
She was the one that was
the life of the party.
I met Betsy at church.
She was a funny, funny girl.
Had a really good sense
of humor, loved to laugh.
Always looking for some type of
an adventure to do with Russ.
Russ is a big guy,
but he's he's a teddy bear.
With Betsy, he found happiness.
They were right for each other.
We got married
in January of 2000.
She had two children,
two daughters
from a previous relationship.
I helped raise them
just like they were mine.
At that time,
we had moved to Troy.
We're starting a new life
in a new town,
and we were kind of looking
forward to all of that.
Then she was diagnosed
with breast cancer,
and that was just
a really big punch in the gut.
Betsy had a lot of people
that would take her
to her chemo treatments.
She didn't want Russ to be alone.
But then the doctor
let us know that
the breast cancer had spread
to her liver,
that it was inoperable.
She had three to five years.
Normally, on Tuesdays,
when I got off of work,
I would come from Troy
down to St. Charles
to play role-playing games
with several friends of mine.
On that particular night,
we decided to watch
a movie or two.
It was around 9:00
when I left there.
I arrived home right around
had to have been
around 9:30 or so.
You know, all the lights
were on in the house.
So when I came in the door,
I was calling for Betsy.
Didn't hear her
calling back to me.
And as I cleared the stairwell
is when I saw her on the floor.
She wasn't moving at all.
I knew she was gone.
Seeing the slashes on her wrists,
I immediately jump
to the conclusion
that she had committed suicide.
Betsy did struggle
with depression.
Betsy had attempted
suicide before.
The day that we were
at the at chemo,
she talked about death.
We were doing really well.
Why would she choose to
to leave this world
in such a way?
EMS walked Russ outside,
tried to calm him
and talk to him
while the police showed up.
When Russ finds Betsy,
she is wrapped in a blanket,
laying on her side.
One arm's kind of splayed
out in front of her,
on the floor of the house,
with her back towards the door.
She has a giant cut in her arm.
She has dozens
of stab wounds to her body,
and she has a knife
sticking out of her neck.
Investigators ruled out suicide.
It immediately became
a crime scene.
Most of the stab wounds
were conducted
after she had already died.
She had multiple,
multiple stab wounds.
That does tend to indicate
that it's someone
who is very passionate,
that has an emotional
connection to the victim.
It's a natural inclination.
If the wife has been killed,
it's you know,
you look at the husband.
All right.
Detectives had asked,
would you mind
coming down
to the police station tonight
and answering some questions
and making a statement?
They took a DNA sample from Russ.
They took Russ's fingerprints.
They looked under Russ's nails.
They did everything
that they should have
to a suspect in a homicide.
We want to know, what did Russ do
from basically
the time he woke up
to the time he called 911?
If someone's telling the truth,
we should be able to verify
where they're at, what they did.
If they're lying,
we should be able
to poke holes in those timelines.
They were questioning him
for hours.
And that's when
the insurance came up.
Russell was the beneficiary
of Betsy's life insurance.
Betsy had a $150,000
insurance policy.
That was the basis of
this whole thing starting off.
He's saying that he didn't do it.
Well, let's take a polygraph
and see if we can clear him.
They start asking you,
did you have anything to do
with your wife's murder?
Did you murder your wife?
Russ failed the polygraph.
I write about liars for a living.
Spotting those lies?
That's the job.
That's the chase.
That's what my characters do
and what investigators
in real life do too.
So when detectives question
Russ Faria,
it isn't small talk.
They're poking and prodding
in a quest for one thing
the truth.
The problem is, the truth
doesn't always cooperate.
It hides.
It waits.
And sometimes,
it sits right in front of you
and still refuses to speak.
The police, they said
Russ failed the polygraph.
Since there was no evidence
that he was involved,
there was no charges issued.
Right after the murder,
the police went through
any potential motive.
Everyone is saying it was
generally a happy marriage,
but then allegations came out
about some of the issues
that Russ and Betsy had had.
The detectives started
to look at infidelity
as a motive for murder.
Both of us had
had issues with fidelity
in the past.
Now, I've heard since then
that Betsy had
an ongoing relationship
with her ex-husband, Mike.
There was semen found
inside of Betsy.
They took it, ultimately,
to the lab to test.
Maybe somebody came there
and violated and raped her
and then murdered her.
Law enforcement,
they interviewed Mike Hillman,
Betsy's ex-husband.
His DNA was taken.
But he was excluded.
It was Russ's semen,
and Russ told the police
that they had
had sex 48 hours prior.
We want closure.
We want answers, even if we know
they don't quite ring true.
But tragedy is a pressure cooker,
and at Betsy's funeral,
the lid finally blew.
Betsy's funeral started out OK.
And there was a ton of people
that showed up for her service.
We had a circus,
is the nicest way to put it.
Betsy's mom started talking
really bad about Russell,
her sisters, Betsy's daughters.
Then there was Pam Hupp
at the funeral.
She came in screaming
and saying Russ was a murderer.
I had her kicked out.
Then Betsy's youngest daughter
told me I couldn't kick Pam out
because that was
her mom's best friend.
Pam and Betsy had worked together
at a insurance company
in Wildwood.
I saw her almost every day,
every other day.
We had our fair share
of arguments.
We'd even separated
a couple times.
Pam's statements about
how Russ treated Betsy,
about Russ's pillow
over Betsy's face,
about Russ's financial motive,
all of these things were key.
When we were
processing the house,
we found out that two days
before Betsy was murdered,
she made a beneficiary change
to her life insurance policy,
transferring sole beneficiary
to Pam Hupp away from Russ.
The theory became
she was afraid that
Russ would blow
through the money.
Because he was
a terrible money manager,
Betsy had signed over her
$150,000 life insurance policy
from him to Pam.
Russ must have found out.
And that's what led
to his outrage
and overkill of his wife.
So if Russ had committed this
during the time frame
that it would have been possible,
there would have had to have
been some kind of cleanup.
They look in the kitchen area.
Blood was found.
And it had been mopped up.
So they took pictures
to illustrate
where the bloody trail led to.
There was a smear of blood
on the light switch
in Betsy's room,
and there was a pair
of Russ's slippers found
in the closet
with some blood on it.
The detective said,
"Now we have probable cause."
We had police come
into the house.
They barged in.
He was officially arrested.
I was hired
as Russ's defense attorney.
Once I met him,
I had some serious doubts
as to him having
committed this homicide.
He had the most solid alibi
I've ever seen.
Investigators had their suspect,
and it's the obvious one
the husband, Russ Faria.
They have a narrative that works
with all the facts
in front of them.
We humans like a narrative,
and once we have ours,
we tend to twist any new evidence
to fit that narrative
instead of maybe
considering a new one.
I thought that
I was going up to do
what I call damage control,
to attempt to reduce
the potential penalty
to Russ Faria.
Once I met him, he had given me
convincing information,
so much so that
it was almost impossible
for him to have done it.
Russ had an airtight alibi.
December 27th at 5:00,
Russ decided to go
to his friend's house.
He picked up some lemonade,
got some cigarettes,
and this particular night,
they decided to watch a movie.
So that's four alibi witnesses
who he was with.
Russ gets a text message
around 9:00.
He leaves.
He goes to the Arby's.
He orders two sandwiches.
When his car is searched
the next morning,
there's a bag from Arby's with
the receipt stapled to it.
The receipt was
for 9:00-something at night.
Gets on the road and heads
back up to his home in Troy,
and his cell phone data
confirms all of this.
Betsy Faria was brutally
murdered at her home
at about 7:00 that night.
The initial officers
on scene discovered that
when Russ arrived home,
she had been dead
for several hours.
He couldn't have
gotten back there.
It would have been impossible
to have done this.
So I made an appointment
with the prosecutor.
And I knew when
I came out of there that
this would pretty much be done,
and I'd never hear the name
Russ Faria again.
Couldn't have possibly
been more wrong.
About 10 days before trial,
the letter that Pam referred to
that those detectives
needed to find
Was found on Betsy's computer.
The letter was essentially
saying, from Betsy,
"If something happens to me,
Russ did it."
My first thought
when I got that letter was,
we got problems.
As we start the trial,
it becomes clear that
the prosecution was going
to attack the alibi.
What the state is arguing is that
they are not alibi witnesses.
They are co-conspirators.
They're accomplices,
and they are lying for Russ.
The theory for the prosecutor
was that one of them had
kept Russ's phone at the house
to explain the cell tower data
while Russ went
and committed this murder.
Prosecutors are
painting Russell Faria
as a frightening father
who screamed and cussed
at his wife and kids.
The state talks about
how Russ was a bad guy.
On the stand,
her sisters said he was mean.
He was abusive,
an absolute monster.
Their theory was that
this was a crime of passion,
that Russell was so enraged
about losing his inheritance
that he killed Betsy.
Life in prison without parole
for a man convicted
of stabbing his wife 55 times.
We're pleased with the outcome.
It's the outcome
that we prayed for.
It's still very sad,
'cause we don't have Betsy.
I know the public wants
to know exactly what happened.
You don't have a doubt?
No doubt.
There wasn't a shred of evidence
pointing to his guilt.
Ridiculous.
Absolutely ridiculous.
I told Russ I was going
to never let this die.
I meant it.
And so what next?
We filed the appeal,
and we'll do this again.
I guarantee it.
With an appeal,
we still have hope that
we can get Russ out of prison.
I was sentenced to life
without the possibility
of parole,
plus an additional 30 years.
Life in prison without parole.
That obviously sent a lot
of other things into motion.
There were rumors
that Russ was going to try
to somehow get that money
that he believed was his
back from Pam.
In fiction,
this is where we wrap it up.
A conviction,
the bad guy behind bars.
Life returning to the quiet
rhythm of the American suburbs.
Credits roll, curtain drops.
But real life doesn't
work that way.
Real life keeps the book open.
It keeps feeding us new twists,
twists that even
this fiction writer
could have never imagined.
It's the middle of the day.
A 911 call came out
from our dispatch,
and it was just
the strangest call.
When I first arrived on scene,
the victim was stating
that she had been attacked
by a man in her car, that
she was screaming for help,
that she had run
inside her house,
and that he was
threatening her with a knife.
She started yelling to me
that she shot him.
And I could see
a person on the floor.
Initially, they told me that
the homeowner was Pam Hupp.
Betsy's best friend.
She said that this man tried
to kidnap her,
tried to hurt her, and in fear,
she defended herself.
There was this young man who
was dead, lying on the floor.
As they're processing the body,
they find this Ziploc bag
that contains
miscellaneous items in it.
There was cash,
and there was a pen.
I had no idea
or any thoughts about
who else could be involved,
not until we got to the note.
The note, it looked
like a planned attack
because it's giving directions
kidnap Pam Hupp,
take her to get Russ's money,
kill Pam Hupp,
and then make it look
like Russ's wife's death.
So based on the note,
based on what Pam told us,
we had to consider Russ
as a suspect.
It would have been possible.
The theory was
that Russ orchestrated
this contract killing.
He was eagerly awaiting
release from prison.
If his appeal was granted,
then the money would be his.
I I cannot understand why.
Is Russ is he that dumb
that he would put
his name on there
and associate himself
with this crime?
It just didn't make any sense.
Investigators chase down
every lead,
looking for answers.
But sometimes
when you think you're heading
closer to the truth,
you're actually heading
even deeper down the rabbit hole.
The mystery doesn't
reveal itself.
It actually grows murky,
more elusive.
We get a call from
St. Charles County
Police Department,
from a detective who says,
"I need to talk to you
right now."
A subject by the name
of Carol McAfee
had information
regarding our case.
It was weird.
I was home, and I see
this car go driving by.
We'd just put up
security cameras.
And she pulls up,
and she's just looking at me,
like
And I'm thinking,
what does this lady want?
She's like, "Do you know
what a sound bite is?"
She said that they were in town
doing sound bites for "Dateline,"
with 911 recreations,
and that she would give me
$1,000 just to come
and do the sound bite.
You know, money's tight.
I'm working a job
that's not paying
more than $9.18 an hour.
And I climb in her car.
So I ask her where
she was shooting the set,
and she's like, "Oh, we rented
one of the newer mobile homes
here in your park."
She circles the block.
And then when she gets
to the stop sign,
she takes a left.
That's leaving.
My brain always triggers
to the worst.
So I was like, you know what?
I need to run back to the house.
She turns around,
and she goes back,
and she's,
"OK, but we gotta hurry."
I had to think of something.
I told her I was like,
look, I can't help you.
My son just called me.
I gotta go pick him up from work.
She gets out of her car.
She looks up,
and she's, like, still.
She's like, "You got cameras."
I said, "Yeah."
And then ducks back in the car
and shuts the door.
Like, I was fidgeting.
I was nervous.
I'm like,
what the hell's going on?
And then I called the police.
We get the video.
You see a vehicle
with the license plate
and her face.
My Spidey senses goes off.
Sure enough, this unknown
TV producer was Pam Hupp.
What is she up to?
So who is the man who
broke into Pam Hupp's house?
For now,
the dead man is a stranger
no name, no story.
Just a body and a knife.
And then there's the separate
case of Russ Faria,
already in prison,
charged in the stabbing murder
of his wife, Betsy.
At first, detectives treat
these as two separate cases,
but come on.
If I'm them, here's one time
I would go with
my fiction-loving gut.
There has to be a connection.
St. Charles County
Crime Scene was able
to get fingerprints
on this young man
who was found in Pam's house,
laying on the floor.
His name was Louis Gumpenberger.
Louis's mom,
she had actually filed
a missing person's report.
The reason why was Louis
never left the apartment.
He would walk outside,
sit in his favorite chair,
and smoke.
When she walked outside,
she noticed that
his cigarettes and phone
were still there.
She believed that was very odd
that he would, first off,
not tell her that
he was going somewhere,
but that he would also leave
his phone and his cigarettes.
We start listening
to Pam's 911 call,
and it just doesn't seem right.
Typically the first two,
three, four seconds,
they are being recorded
before the dispatcher answers,
"911, what's your emergency?"
Interesting thing
about this 911 call was
there was complete silence.
So there was no commotion.
When the dispatcher answered,
it was almost like, action.
Help, help, help.
Hey. Help, help, help.
I need help.
But there was nothing beforehand.
You can hear Louis
in the background,
and he's not making
a lot of sense.
It just didn't make any sense.
At the same time, the crime
scene investigators were
looking at $100 bills
in Louis's pocket.
There was sequential
serial numbers
that matched what was found
in Pam's house
and what was found
in Louis's pocket.
The statistical possibility
of two separate people
with sequential
serial-numbered bills
is almost impossible.
Louis's mom, she told us
about his car crash.
He had suffered traumatic
physical and mental injuries.
Louis actually worked
at a nonprofit
that basically helped
those with disabilities.
So we talked to the coworkers,
and they all confirmed, yes,
there is no way
that Louis could run.
He couldn't hardly write
Let alone come up with
this elaborate kidnapping,
robbery,
murder-for-hire plot for Russ.
We asked Pam if we could
download her phone,
trying to account
for where she was.
My cybercrime detective
called me.
"Hey, I've got the results."
And it zooms in and shows me
all these little pin drops.
Pam's phone was stationary
for approximately
three to five minutes
outside Louis's apartment.
So it was clear that
Pam and Louis had interacted
before the break-in.
It dramatically shifted
our attention
from looking at Louis
and Russ as a suspect
to now looking at Pam
as a suspect.
Just minutes
before the 911 calls,
we had a video that clearly
showed her vehicle
with a man in the car,
and he had on a black cap
like Louis was wearing.
Pam offered cash to do
a reenactment of a 911 call.
Pam drives him back to the house.
Unbeknownst to him,
he was going to be
murdered in the next hour.
And the note found at Pam's,
we sent that off to an expert.
It absolutely was not
Russ Faria writing that note.
Pam wrote the note.
What I find fascinating here
is something I never knew before.
911 centers start recording
before the operator
starts speaking.
In this case, the recorded
silence changed everything.
And you don't have to be
a theater critic
to spot the bad acting
in that 911 call.
We found out that Pam Hupp
killed Louis Gumpenberger.
We arrested her
for the murder
of Louis Gumpenberger.
I said,
"We know you killed Louis.
We just want to know why."
And I remember her looking
and turning to me
like she had no care
in the world,
and her response was,
"I'm a little cold.
Can you turn down the AC?"
We drive her back to the station,
and I remember feeling,
somebody's staring at my gun.
And I looked at her,
and her eyes were
dead set on my gun.
She was trying to figure out,
how am I going
to get out of this?
We step out of the room,
and we try to make contact
with the defense attorney
to let them know
Pam was arrested
and was going to be charged
for the murder
of Louis Gumpenberger.
Well, while we're
out of the room,
Pam's contemplating
what she's going to do.
Pam has multiple stab marks
that she did
with this ballpoint pen
to both sides of her neck
and both to her wrist.
She was taken to the hospital,
but the stab wounds
were superficial.
She was not going to die.
New developments
in the Pam Hupp murder trial.
For the first time in months,
Hupp was in court today.
Hupp is accused
of staging a home invasion
and killing Louis Gumpenberger.
What was agreed upon was
that if Pam would plead guilty
to murdering Louis,
the judge would take
the death penalty off the table.
So she took what was
called an Alford plea,
which basically says that,
I am not saying I'm guilty,
but what I'm saying is
there is enough evidence
that I would be
convicted in court.
So Pam is currently spending
the rest of her life in prison
for the murder
of Louis Gumpenberger
here in the state of Missouri.
A closed case can feel
like the ultimate win.
But every ending tends to
send you back to a beginning.
It had been four years
since Russ Faria went to jail.
I had sunk quite a bit of time,
effort, and energy into it.
I had Pam's lies.
I had Pam's motive.
I had everything to prove
that Russ could not have
murdered his wife.
For example, I had the letter.
It was found on Betsy's computer.
My expert came in,
and he basically spent
24 hours a day going
through the forensics
of this computer.
As it turns out,
it wasn't written by Betsy.
It wasn't conceived in
the computer it was found on.
And it was uploaded
onto the computer
when Betsy was playing tennis,
and Pam happened
to be there with her.
Pam Hupp committed this murder.
We discovered Pam put
Betsy's insurance money
in a trust, where she would
turn that trust over
to Betsy's daughters.
But after Russ's conviction,
she immediately took that money
and put it back
into her savings account.
The girls got nothing.
My personal belief,
Betsy's death was based on
the insurance money.
That led to murdering Louis
and setting Louis up.
She was worried Russ's defense
was making progress
and tried to turn
the attention back to Russ
as the murderer.
Leading up to Louis's murder,
Pam was going to set Carol up
and then murder her.
Luckily, her survival
instincts goes off,
and that saved Carol's life.
OK.
Ultimately, Pam's the last
person to see Betsy alive.
The day of the murder,
Pam volunteered that
she would pick Betsy up
from her cancer treatment.
But there's a text from Betsy
telling her not to come,
that she wants to spend
one-on-one time
with a friend of hers
who was in town.
Pam went anyway.
For her to insist on
taking Betsy home that night
doesn't make any sense,
unless she has to be with Betsy
in order to continue this plot.
Normally, if you see
that many stab wounds,
you would conclude
a crime of passion.
But the wounds to Betsy's torso,
Betsy wasn't moving when
those stab wounds were created.
So somebody,
after Betsy was killed,
stabbed her
over and over and over
and then buried the knife
in her neck.
It's not a frenzy.
It's calculated
calculated to look
like a crime of passion.
And we found out Pam had
talked about how her mom
had passed away of Alzheimer's.
And then we were approached
by a source who told us,
"Hey, did you hear about
what actually happened
to Shirley Neumann?"
Shirley Neumann did not die
of Alzheimer's.
And then we've learned that
she did not fall over
the ledge of her balcony.
She went through her balcony.
We also found out that
in the course of a deposition,
Pam says something
to the effect of,
"Why would I ever harm Betsy?
"If I needed money,
my mom's got Alzheimer's,
and she's worth a bunch."
Hate to say it
And to my knowledge,
the last person
to see Shirley Neumann alive
was Pam Hupp,
just like the murder
of Betsy Faria.
Given all the evidence
that's out there,
I filed something called
a Mooney motion.
A Mooney motion says there
has been new evidence found.
Please remand it for a new trial.
We end up with a new judge,
and he finds that
that evidence is sufficient
to grant a new trial for Russ.
After we finished
arguing our case,
the judge called us up,
and he said,
"This was certainly
a heinous murder.
However, there was no evidence
that Russ did it."
The first charge, not guilty.
Second charge, not guilty.
I was behind bars 3 years,
5 months, and 11 days.
I was just so emotional.
It was incredible.
I got my life back for good.
It's a unique way
to make a friend.
Not quite as unique
as the way Russ and Carol met.
I was hanging out
with my neighbor,
and he told me he knew Russ.
And I said, well, tell him
that I'm sorry about his wife
and that I hope that one day,
he can find some peace
and happiness.
I was literally getting ready
to walk back across the street
and go home.
Here comes that Jeep of his.
We became friends.
We were both at a time
in our life
when we needed to be
reminded that we were
worthy of being loved.
Well, eventually,
that friendship grew
into bigger and better things,
and two years ago
this past October,
we were married.
After our wedding,
he looks over at me,
and he takes my hand.
And he says,
"Nobody said you couldn't have
more than one soul mate
in life."
There's a piece
of Russ Faria's heart
that is always going
to belong to Betsy.
And I'm OK with that.
Betsy made me so happy
throughout the time
that we were together.
10 years after
Betsy was brutally murdered,
Pam is now charged with
the murder of Betsy Faria.
I do hope and believe
that Pam will be convicted.
Betsy's family deserves that.
There are a lot of steps to go.
Justice is just getting started.
The evidence
in Betsy Faria's murder
pointed undeniably at Russ.
But evidence can be
arranged, staged.
It can gaslight the best of us.
What's the final twist here?
Is it what Pam Hupp,
the supposed best friend,
did to destroy so many?
Is it Pam's mother plummeting
off the balcony?
Or in this case,
was love the final twist?
In the end, was the final twist
about Russ and Carol
and love and hope
and second chances?
You decide.
I'm Harlan Coben.
Good night.
Harlan, over here.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Harlan Coben.
He's the greatest
thriller writer.
Oh, come on.
Coben's written over 30
"New York Times" bestsellers.
With over a dozen
hit TV shows and movies.
Just when you think
you have it all figured out,
think again.
I'm Harlan Coben.
My favorite stories start
in neighborhoods
that look perfectly
unremarkable
a cul-de-sac,
a backyard barbecue,
a basketball hoop
in the driveway.
Troy, Missouri,
is that kind of town.
Houses huddle close together.
Neighbors who don't just wave,
they watch,
and they know your name.
It's the kind of ordinary
that feels smug,
like nothing could possibly
find its way here.
That's why Betsy Faria's case
is so compelling.
We tell ourselves violence
happens somewhere else,
to someone else.
But we all know
that's not the case.
Hang with us until the very end.
There's a final twist
you'll never see coming.
But first, let's go back
to where our mystery begins.
Betsy was a very vibrant person.
Everybody loved Betsy.
My first impression of Russ,
he was like a big kid.
So when Russ first met Betsy,
I knew that she was the one.
They had their ups and downs,
but we never thought
something bad would happen.
The first officer
responded and said,
"This is not a suicide."
She had multiple stab wounds.
If you stab somebody
that many times,
usually it's someone
who is psychotic.
Russ can be kind of
rough around the edges.
The shocking verdict
in the case against
a man prosecutors say
stabbed his wife 55 times.
Once I met Russ,
it was blatantly obvious.
Russ has an ironclad alibi.
Follow the facts,
follow the evidence.
For Russ to have committed it,
he would have had to have
time to clean up.
A Lincoln County murder case
so unbelievable,
it keeps unraveling.
Detectives found out that Betsy,
she was going to change
her life insurance policy,
and that threw him into a rage.
This person has done things
out of the ordinary,
has lied through every
investigation, every interview.
There's crazy cases out there,
but this case,
there's no other case like it.
A crime happened here.
The past isn't what it seemed.
The story told turns out
to be deception.
And just when you're sure
you have the answer
911, what is the address
of your emergency?
Hello? Anyone there?
There's one final twist.
Betsy was she was just
a bubbly personality.
She was the one that was
the life of the party.
I met Betsy at church.
She was a funny, funny girl.
Had a really good sense
of humor, loved to laugh.
Always looking for some type of
an adventure to do with Russ.
Russ is a big guy,
but he's he's a teddy bear.
With Betsy, he found happiness.
They were right for each other.
We got married
in January of 2000.
She had two children,
two daughters
from a previous relationship.
I helped raise them
just like they were mine.
At that time,
we had moved to Troy.
We're starting a new life
in a new town,
and we were kind of looking
forward to all of that.
Then she was diagnosed
with breast cancer,
and that was just
a really big punch in the gut.
Betsy had a lot of people
that would take her
to her chemo treatments.
She didn't want Russ to be alone.
But then the doctor
let us know that
the breast cancer had spread
to her liver,
that it was inoperable.
She had three to five years.
Normally, on Tuesdays,
when I got off of work,
I would come from Troy
down to St. Charles
to play role-playing games
with several friends of mine.
On that particular night,
we decided to watch
a movie or two.
It was around 9:00
when I left there.
I arrived home right around
had to have been
around 9:30 or so.
You know, all the lights
were on in the house.
So when I came in the door,
I was calling for Betsy.
Didn't hear her
calling back to me.
And as I cleared the stairwell
is when I saw her on the floor.
She wasn't moving at all.
I knew she was gone.
Seeing the slashes on her wrists,
I immediately jump
to the conclusion
that she had committed suicide.
Betsy did struggle
with depression.
Betsy had attempted
suicide before.
The day that we were
at the at chemo,
she talked about death.
We were doing really well.
Why would she choose to
to leave this world
in such a way?
EMS walked Russ outside,
tried to calm him
and talk to him
while the police showed up.
When Russ finds Betsy,
she is wrapped in a blanket,
laying on her side.
One arm's kind of splayed
out in front of her,
on the floor of the house,
with her back towards the door.
She has a giant cut in her arm.
She has dozens
of stab wounds to her body,
and she has a knife
sticking out of her neck.
Investigators ruled out suicide.
It immediately became
a crime scene.
Most of the stab wounds
were conducted
after she had already died.
She had multiple,
multiple stab wounds.
That does tend to indicate
that it's someone
who is very passionate,
that has an emotional
connection to the victim.
It's a natural inclination.
If the wife has been killed,
it's you know,
you look at the husband.
All right.
Detectives had asked,
would you mind
coming down
to the police station tonight
and answering some questions
and making a statement?
They took a DNA sample from Russ.
They took Russ's fingerprints.
They looked under Russ's nails.
They did everything
that they should have
to a suspect in a homicide.
We want to know, what did Russ do
from basically
the time he woke up
to the time he called 911?
If someone's telling the truth,
we should be able to verify
where they're at, what they did.
If they're lying,
we should be able
to poke holes in those timelines.
They were questioning him
for hours.
And that's when
the insurance came up.
Russell was the beneficiary
of Betsy's life insurance.
Betsy had a $150,000
insurance policy.
That was the basis of
this whole thing starting off.
He's saying that he didn't do it.
Well, let's take a polygraph
and see if we can clear him.
They start asking you,
did you have anything to do
with your wife's murder?
Did you murder your wife?
Russ failed the polygraph.
I write about liars for a living.
Spotting those lies?
That's the job.
That's the chase.
That's what my characters do
and what investigators
in real life do too.
So when detectives question
Russ Faria,
it isn't small talk.
They're poking and prodding
in a quest for one thing
the truth.
The problem is, the truth
doesn't always cooperate.
It hides.
It waits.
And sometimes,
it sits right in front of you
and still refuses to speak.
The police, they said
Russ failed the polygraph.
Since there was no evidence
that he was involved,
there was no charges issued.
Right after the murder,
the police went through
any potential motive.
Everyone is saying it was
generally a happy marriage,
but then allegations came out
about some of the issues
that Russ and Betsy had had.
The detectives started
to look at infidelity
as a motive for murder.
Both of us had
had issues with fidelity
in the past.
Now, I've heard since then
that Betsy had
an ongoing relationship
with her ex-husband, Mike.
There was semen found
inside of Betsy.
They took it, ultimately,
to the lab to test.
Maybe somebody came there
and violated and raped her
and then murdered her.
Law enforcement,
they interviewed Mike Hillman,
Betsy's ex-husband.
His DNA was taken.
But he was excluded.
It was Russ's semen,
and Russ told the police
that they had
had sex 48 hours prior.
We want closure.
We want answers, even if we know
they don't quite ring true.
But tragedy is a pressure cooker,
and at Betsy's funeral,
the lid finally blew.
Betsy's funeral started out OK.
And there was a ton of people
that showed up for her service.
We had a circus,
is the nicest way to put it.
Betsy's mom started talking
really bad about Russell,
her sisters, Betsy's daughters.
Then there was Pam Hupp
at the funeral.
She came in screaming
and saying Russ was a murderer.
I had her kicked out.
Then Betsy's youngest daughter
told me I couldn't kick Pam out
because that was
her mom's best friend.
Pam and Betsy had worked together
at a insurance company
in Wildwood.
I saw her almost every day,
every other day.
We had our fair share
of arguments.
We'd even separated
a couple times.
Pam's statements about
how Russ treated Betsy,
about Russ's pillow
over Betsy's face,
about Russ's financial motive,
all of these things were key.
When we were
processing the house,
we found out that two days
before Betsy was murdered,
she made a beneficiary change
to her life insurance policy,
transferring sole beneficiary
to Pam Hupp away from Russ.
The theory became
she was afraid that
Russ would blow
through the money.
Because he was
a terrible money manager,
Betsy had signed over her
$150,000 life insurance policy
from him to Pam.
Russ must have found out.
And that's what led
to his outrage
and overkill of his wife.
So if Russ had committed this
during the time frame
that it would have been possible,
there would have had to have
been some kind of cleanup.
They look in the kitchen area.
Blood was found.
And it had been mopped up.
So they took pictures
to illustrate
where the bloody trail led to.
There was a smear of blood
on the light switch
in Betsy's room,
and there was a pair
of Russ's slippers found
in the closet
with some blood on it.
The detective said,
"Now we have probable cause."
We had police come
into the house.
They barged in.
He was officially arrested.
I was hired
as Russ's defense attorney.
Once I met him,
I had some serious doubts
as to him having
committed this homicide.
He had the most solid alibi
I've ever seen.
Investigators had their suspect,
and it's the obvious one
the husband, Russ Faria.
They have a narrative that works
with all the facts
in front of them.
We humans like a narrative,
and once we have ours,
we tend to twist any new evidence
to fit that narrative
instead of maybe
considering a new one.
I thought that
I was going up to do
what I call damage control,
to attempt to reduce
the potential penalty
to Russ Faria.
Once I met him, he had given me
convincing information,
so much so that
it was almost impossible
for him to have done it.
Russ had an airtight alibi.
December 27th at 5:00,
Russ decided to go
to his friend's house.
He picked up some lemonade,
got some cigarettes,
and this particular night,
they decided to watch a movie.
So that's four alibi witnesses
who he was with.
Russ gets a text message
around 9:00.
He leaves.
He goes to the Arby's.
He orders two sandwiches.
When his car is searched
the next morning,
there's a bag from Arby's with
the receipt stapled to it.
The receipt was
for 9:00-something at night.
Gets on the road and heads
back up to his home in Troy,
and his cell phone data
confirms all of this.
Betsy Faria was brutally
murdered at her home
at about 7:00 that night.
The initial officers
on scene discovered that
when Russ arrived home,
she had been dead
for several hours.
He couldn't have
gotten back there.
It would have been impossible
to have done this.
So I made an appointment
with the prosecutor.
And I knew when
I came out of there that
this would pretty much be done,
and I'd never hear the name
Russ Faria again.
Couldn't have possibly
been more wrong.
About 10 days before trial,
the letter that Pam referred to
that those detectives
needed to find
Was found on Betsy's computer.
The letter was essentially
saying, from Betsy,
"If something happens to me,
Russ did it."
My first thought
when I got that letter was,
we got problems.
As we start the trial,
it becomes clear that
the prosecution was going
to attack the alibi.
What the state is arguing is that
they are not alibi witnesses.
They are co-conspirators.
They're accomplices,
and they are lying for Russ.
The theory for the prosecutor
was that one of them had
kept Russ's phone at the house
to explain the cell tower data
while Russ went
and committed this murder.
Prosecutors are
painting Russell Faria
as a frightening father
who screamed and cussed
at his wife and kids.
The state talks about
how Russ was a bad guy.
On the stand,
her sisters said he was mean.
He was abusive,
an absolute monster.
Their theory was that
this was a crime of passion,
that Russell was so enraged
about losing his inheritance
that he killed Betsy.
Life in prison without parole
for a man convicted
of stabbing his wife 55 times.
We're pleased with the outcome.
It's the outcome
that we prayed for.
It's still very sad,
'cause we don't have Betsy.
I know the public wants
to know exactly what happened.
You don't have a doubt?
No doubt.
There wasn't a shred of evidence
pointing to his guilt.
Ridiculous.
Absolutely ridiculous.
I told Russ I was going
to never let this die.
I meant it.
And so what next?
We filed the appeal,
and we'll do this again.
I guarantee it.
With an appeal,
we still have hope that
we can get Russ out of prison.
I was sentenced to life
without the possibility
of parole,
plus an additional 30 years.
Life in prison without parole.
That obviously sent a lot
of other things into motion.
There were rumors
that Russ was going to try
to somehow get that money
that he believed was his
back from Pam.
In fiction,
this is where we wrap it up.
A conviction,
the bad guy behind bars.
Life returning to the quiet
rhythm of the American suburbs.
Credits roll, curtain drops.
But real life doesn't
work that way.
Real life keeps the book open.
It keeps feeding us new twists,
twists that even
this fiction writer
could have never imagined.
It's the middle of the day.
A 911 call came out
from our dispatch,
and it was just
the strangest call.
When I first arrived on scene,
the victim was stating
that she had been attacked
by a man in her car, that
she was screaming for help,
that she had run
inside her house,
and that he was
threatening her with a knife.
She started yelling to me
that she shot him.
And I could see
a person on the floor.
Initially, they told me that
the homeowner was Pam Hupp.
Betsy's best friend.
She said that this man tried
to kidnap her,
tried to hurt her, and in fear,
she defended herself.
There was this young man who
was dead, lying on the floor.
As they're processing the body,
they find this Ziploc bag
that contains
miscellaneous items in it.
There was cash,
and there was a pen.
I had no idea
or any thoughts about
who else could be involved,
not until we got to the note.
The note, it looked
like a planned attack
because it's giving directions
kidnap Pam Hupp,
take her to get Russ's money,
kill Pam Hupp,
and then make it look
like Russ's wife's death.
So based on the note,
based on what Pam told us,
we had to consider Russ
as a suspect.
It would have been possible.
The theory was
that Russ orchestrated
this contract killing.
He was eagerly awaiting
release from prison.
If his appeal was granted,
then the money would be his.
I I cannot understand why.
Is Russ is he that dumb
that he would put
his name on there
and associate himself
with this crime?
It just didn't make any sense.
Investigators chase down
every lead,
looking for answers.
But sometimes
when you think you're heading
closer to the truth,
you're actually heading
even deeper down the rabbit hole.
The mystery doesn't
reveal itself.
It actually grows murky,
more elusive.
We get a call from
St. Charles County
Police Department,
from a detective who says,
"I need to talk to you
right now."
A subject by the name
of Carol McAfee
had information
regarding our case.
It was weird.
I was home, and I see
this car go driving by.
We'd just put up
security cameras.
And she pulls up,
and she's just looking at me,
like
And I'm thinking,
what does this lady want?
She's like, "Do you know
what a sound bite is?"
She said that they were in town
doing sound bites for "Dateline,"
with 911 recreations,
and that she would give me
$1,000 just to come
and do the sound bite.
You know, money's tight.
I'm working a job
that's not paying
more than $9.18 an hour.
And I climb in her car.
So I ask her where
she was shooting the set,
and she's like, "Oh, we rented
one of the newer mobile homes
here in your park."
She circles the block.
And then when she gets
to the stop sign,
she takes a left.
That's leaving.
My brain always triggers
to the worst.
So I was like, you know what?
I need to run back to the house.
She turns around,
and she goes back,
and she's,
"OK, but we gotta hurry."
I had to think of something.
I told her I was like,
look, I can't help you.
My son just called me.
I gotta go pick him up from work.
She gets out of her car.
She looks up,
and she's, like, still.
She's like, "You got cameras."
I said, "Yeah."
And then ducks back in the car
and shuts the door.
Like, I was fidgeting.
I was nervous.
I'm like,
what the hell's going on?
And then I called the police.
We get the video.
You see a vehicle
with the license plate
and her face.
My Spidey senses goes off.
Sure enough, this unknown
TV producer was Pam Hupp.
What is she up to?
So who is the man who
broke into Pam Hupp's house?
For now,
the dead man is a stranger
no name, no story.
Just a body and a knife.
And then there's the separate
case of Russ Faria,
already in prison,
charged in the stabbing murder
of his wife, Betsy.
At first, detectives treat
these as two separate cases,
but come on.
If I'm them, here's one time
I would go with
my fiction-loving gut.
There has to be a connection.
St. Charles County
Crime Scene was able
to get fingerprints
on this young man
who was found in Pam's house,
laying on the floor.
His name was Louis Gumpenberger.
Louis's mom,
she had actually filed
a missing person's report.
The reason why was Louis
never left the apartment.
He would walk outside,
sit in his favorite chair,
and smoke.
When she walked outside,
she noticed that
his cigarettes and phone
were still there.
She believed that was very odd
that he would, first off,
not tell her that
he was going somewhere,
but that he would also leave
his phone and his cigarettes.
We start listening
to Pam's 911 call,
and it just doesn't seem right.
Typically the first two,
three, four seconds,
they are being recorded
before the dispatcher answers,
"911, what's your emergency?"
Interesting thing
about this 911 call was
there was complete silence.
So there was no commotion.
When the dispatcher answered,
it was almost like, action.
Help, help, help.
Hey. Help, help, help.
I need help.
But there was nothing beforehand.
You can hear Louis
in the background,
and he's not making
a lot of sense.
It just didn't make any sense.
At the same time, the crime
scene investigators were
looking at $100 bills
in Louis's pocket.
There was sequential
serial numbers
that matched what was found
in Pam's house
and what was found
in Louis's pocket.
The statistical possibility
of two separate people
with sequential
serial-numbered bills
is almost impossible.
Louis's mom, she told us
about his car crash.
He had suffered traumatic
physical and mental injuries.
Louis actually worked
at a nonprofit
that basically helped
those with disabilities.
So we talked to the coworkers,
and they all confirmed, yes,
there is no way
that Louis could run.
He couldn't hardly write
Let alone come up with
this elaborate kidnapping,
robbery,
murder-for-hire plot for Russ.
We asked Pam if we could
download her phone,
trying to account
for where she was.
My cybercrime detective
called me.
"Hey, I've got the results."
And it zooms in and shows me
all these little pin drops.
Pam's phone was stationary
for approximately
three to five minutes
outside Louis's apartment.
So it was clear that
Pam and Louis had interacted
before the break-in.
It dramatically shifted
our attention
from looking at Louis
and Russ as a suspect
to now looking at Pam
as a suspect.
Just minutes
before the 911 calls,
we had a video that clearly
showed her vehicle
with a man in the car,
and he had on a black cap
like Louis was wearing.
Pam offered cash to do
a reenactment of a 911 call.
Pam drives him back to the house.
Unbeknownst to him,
he was going to be
murdered in the next hour.
And the note found at Pam's,
we sent that off to an expert.
It absolutely was not
Russ Faria writing that note.
Pam wrote the note.
What I find fascinating here
is something I never knew before.
911 centers start recording
before the operator
starts speaking.
In this case, the recorded
silence changed everything.
And you don't have to be
a theater critic
to spot the bad acting
in that 911 call.
We found out that Pam Hupp
killed Louis Gumpenberger.
We arrested her
for the murder
of Louis Gumpenberger.
I said,
"We know you killed Louis.
We just want to know why."
And I remember her looking
and turning to me
like she had no care
in the world,
and her response was,
"I'm a little cold.
Can you turn down the AC?"
We drive her back to the station,
and I remember feeling,
somebody's staring at my gun.
And I looked at her,
and her eyes were
dead set on my gun.
She was trying to figure out,
how am I going
to get out of this?
We step out of the room,
and we try to make contact
with the defense attorney
to let them know
Pam was arrested
and was going to be charged
for the murder
of Louis Gumpenberger.
Well, while we're
out of the room,
Pam's contemplating
what she's going to do.
Pam has multiple stab marks
that she did
with this ballpoint pen
to both sides of her neck
and both to her wrist.
She was taken to the hospital,
but the stab wounds
were superficial.
She was not going to die.
New developments
in the Pam Hupp murder trial.
For the first time in months,
Hupp was in court today.
Hupp is accused
of staging a home invasion
and killing Louis Gumpenberger.
What was agreed upon was
that if Pam would plead guilty
to murdering Louis,
the judge would take
the death penalty off the table.
So she took what was
called an Alford plea,
which basically says that,
I am not saying I'm guilty,
but what I'm saying is
there is enough evidence
that I would be
convicted in court.
So Pam is currently spending
the rest of her life in prison
for the murder
of Louis Gumpenberger
here in the state of Missouri.
A closed case can feel
like the ultimate win.
But every ending tends to
send you back to a beginning.
It had been four years
since Russ Faria went to jail.
I had sunk quite a bit of time,
effort, and energy into it.
I had Pam's lies.
I had Pam's motive.
I had everything to prove
that Russ could not have
murdered his wife.
For example, I had the letter.
It was found on Betsy's computer.
My expert came in,
and he basically spent
24 hours a day going
through the forensics
of this computer.
As it turns out,
it wasn't written by Betsy.
It wasn't conceived in
the computer it was found on.
And it was uploaded
onto the computer
when Betsy was playing tennis,
and Pam happened
to be there with her.
Pam Hupp committed this murder.
We discovered Pam put
Betsy's insurance money
in a trust, where she would
turn that trust over
to Betsy's daughters.
But after Russ's conviction,
she immediately took that money
and put it back
into her savings account.
The girls got nothing.
My personal belief,
Betsy's death was based on
the insurance money.
That led to murdering Louis
and setting Louis up.
She was worried Russ's defense
was making progress
and tried to turn
the attention back to Russ
as the murderer.
Leading up to Louis's murder,
Pam was going to set Carol up
and then murder her.
Luckily, her survival
instincts goes off,
and that saved Carol's life.
OK.
Ultimately, Pam's the last
person to see Betsy alive.
The day of the murder,
Pam volunteered that
she would pick Betsy up
from her cancer treatment.
But there's a text from Betsy
telling her not to come,
that she wants to spend
one-on-one time
with a friend of hers
who was in town.
Pam went anyway.
For her to insist on
taking Betsy home that night
doesn't make any sense,
unless she has to be with Betsy
in order to continue this plot.
Normally, if you see
that many stab wounds,
you would conclude
a crime of passion.
But the wounds to Betsy's torso,
Betsy wasn't moving when
those stab wounds were created.
So somebody,
after Betsy was killed,
stabbed her
over and over and over
and then buried the knife
in her neck.
It's not a frenzy.
It's calculated
calculated to look
like a crime of passion.
And we found out Pam had
talked about how her mom
had passed away of Alzheimer's.
And then we were approached
by a source who told us,
"Hey, did you hear about
what actually happened
to Shirley Neumann?"
Shirley Neumann did not die
of Alzheimer's.
And then we've learned that
she did not fall over
the ledge of her balcony.
She went through her balcony.
We also found out that
in the course of a deposition,
Pam says something
to the effect of,
"Why would I ever harm Betsy?
"If I needed money,
my mom's got Alzheimer's,
and she's worth a bunch."
Hate to say it
And to my knowledge,
the last person
to see Shirley Neumann alive
was Pam Hupp,
just like the murder
of Betsy Faria.
Given all the evidence
that's out there,
I filed something called
a Mooney motion.
A Mooney motion says there
has been new evidence found.
Please remand it for a new trial.
We end up with a new judge,
and he finds that
that evidence is sufficient
to grant a new trial for Russ.
After we finished
arguing our case,
the judge called us up,
and he said,
"This was certainly
a heinous murder.
However, there was no evidence
that Russ did it."
The first charge, not guilty.
Second charge, not guilty.
I was behind bars 3 years,
5 months, and 11 days.
I was just so emotional.
It was incredible.
I got my life back for good.
It's a unique way
to make a friend.
Not quite as unique
as the way Russ and Carol met.
I was hanging out
with my neighbor,
and he told me he knew Russ.
And I said, well, tell him
that I'm sorry about his wife
and that I hope that one day,
he can find some peace
and happiness.
I was literally getting ready
to walk back across the street
and go home.
Here comes that Jeep of his.
We became friends.
We were both at a time
in our life
when we needed to be
reminded that we were
worthy of being loved.
Well, eventually,
that friendship grew
into bigger and better things,
and two years ago
this past October,
we were married.
After our wedding,
he looks over at me,
and he takes my hand.
And he says,
"Nobody said you couldn't have
more than one soul mate
in life."
There's a piece
of Russ Faria's heart
that is always going
to belong to Betsy.
And I'm OK with that.
Betsy made me so happy
throughout the time
that we were together.
10 years after
Betsy was brutally murdered,
Pam is now charged with
the murder of Betsy Faria.
I do hope and believe
that Pam will be convicted.
Betsy's family deserves that.
There are a lot of steps to go.
Justice is just getting started.
The evidence
in Betsy Faria's murder
pointed undeniably at Russ.
But evidence can be
arranged, staged.
It can gaslight the best of us.
What's the final twist here?
Is it what Pam Hupp,
the supposed best friend,
did to destroy so many?
Is it Pam's mother plummeting
off the balcony?
Or in this case,
was love the final twist?
In the end, was the final twist
about Russ and Carol
and love and hope
and second chances?
You decide.
I'm Harlan Coben.
Good night.