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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder. The most shocking
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 6: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 6: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 6: host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 2: The true story behind NBC's Marquee mini series The Thing
Speaker 2: About Pam, starring Rene zellawigger and as Pam Hop and
Speaker 2: Josh Domel as Jeryl Schwarze, premiering February twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: The explosive, first ever insiders account of the case that's
Speaker 2: captivated millions, The murder of Betsy Faria and the wrongful
Speaker 2: conviction of her husband, told by Joel J. Schwartz, the
Speaker 2: defense attorney who fought for justice on behalf of Russell Faria,
Speaker 2: and New York Times bestselling author Charles Bosworth Junior. On
Speaker 2: December twenty seventh, twenty eleven, Russell Faria returned to his Troy,
Speaker 2: Missouri home after his weekly game night with friends to
Speaker 2: an unthinkable, grisly scene. His wife Betsy lay dead, a
Speaker 2: knife still lodged in her neck. She'd been stabbed fifty
Speaker 2: five times. First responders concluded that Bessie was dead for
Speaker 2: hours when Russ discovered her. No blood was found, implicating Russ,
Speaker 2: and surveillance, video, receipts, and friends testimony all supported his alibi.
Speaker 2: Yet incredibly, police in the prosecuting attorney ignored the evidence.
Speaker 2: In their minds, Russ was guilty, but prominent defense attorney
Speaker 2: Joel J. Schwartz quickly recognized the real killer. The motive
Speaker 2: was clear. Days before her murder, the terminally ill Betsy
Speaker 2: replaced her husband with her friend Pamela Hupp as her
Speaker 2: life insurance beneficiary. Still, despite the prosecution's flimsy case and
Speaker 2: Hupp's transparent lies, Russ was convicted, leaving Hup free to
Speaker 2: kill again. Bone Deep takes readers through the perfect storm
Speaker 2: of miscalculations and missteps that led to an innocent man's conviction,
Speaker 2: and recounts Schwartz's successful battle to have that conviction overturned.
Speaker 2: Written with Russ Faria's cooperation, and filled with chilling new
Speaker 2: revelations and previously undisclothed evidence, This is the story of
Speaker 2: what can happen when police, prosecutor, judge and jury all
Speaker 2: fail in their duty to protect the innocent and let
Speaker 2: a killer get away with murder. The book that we're
Speaker 2: featuring this evening is Bone Deep Untangling the Betsy Faria
Speaker 2: Murder Case, with my special guests journalist and author Henry
Speaker 2: Bosworth Junior And attorney and author Joel J. Schwartz. Welcome
Speaker 2: to the program, and thank you so much for this interview,
Speaker 2: Henry Bosworth Jr. And Joel J. Schwartz.
Speaker 4: Dan, thank you so much. Joel. I appreciate you having Charles.
Speaker 3: And I Yeah, thank you, Dan.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, gentlemen for this. This is an
Speaker 2: incredible story, as evidenced by the interest in this mini series.
Speaker 2: But this we have to get right back right to
Speaker 2: how this incredible story occurred. Let's talk about you mentioned
Speaker 2: before the interview about Charles of Bosworth contacting you, Joel,
Speaker 2: and tell us about that contact and what was said
Speaker 2: and discussed.
Speaker 4: Well, certainly, as you can imagine this story which now
Speaker 4: holds the record for dateline appearances in national publicity, there
Speaker 4: had been documentarian filmmakers list contacting me throughout the years,
Speaker 4: and for whatever reason, I just didn't feel comfortable with
Speaker 4: any of these individuals who contacted me. And one day
Speaker 4: I got a call from Charlie Bosworth followed up with
Speaker 4: an email, and most of the time I had a
Speaker 4: phone conversation with people, and I said, you know what,
Speaker 4: I just don't think I'm interested. Charlie called and I
Speaker 4: can't Maybe it was his Deep Morgan Freeman's sounding voice.
Speaker 4: I don't know, but I said, yeah, I would love
Speaker 4: to meet you, Charlie, and he came on out. We
Speaker 4: had lunch, We talked about his vision. He gave me
Speaker 4: a copy of one of his previous books, which I
Speaker 4: devoured the next forty eight hours. And I called him
Speaker 4: back and said, I would be honored to work with
Speaker 4: you and write this book. And I think that my
Speaker 4: instinct has been born out given the final product of
Speaker 4: Bone Deep, that readers can take a look at and read.
Speaker 2: Charles talk about the Tuesday, December twenty seventh, twenty eleven.
Speaker 3: The thing that intrigued me from the very beginning, and
Speaker 3: I had watched this. I was in corporate communications for
Speaker 3: the last few years before I retired, and I had
Speaker 3: watched with a professional interest in his case all along,
Speaker 3: and had seen the Dateline episodes and had marveled at
Speaker 3: the fact that with all of the alibi evidence there
Speaker 3: was that Russ was convicted. And I knew Joel Schwartz
Speaker 3: by reputation, we had never met. I did know his partner,
Speaker 3: Scott Rosenblom. I had covered some cases that Scott had
Speaker 3: been involved in, and there was just something about the case.
Speaker 3: And as I was getting ready to retire, I thought,
Speaker 3: you know, I haven't heard of a book being prepared
Speaker 3: for this, and I just decided, almost on a lark,
Speaker 3: to call Jewel and see if he would be interested
Speaker 3: in working together. Happily he was, and the story begins
Speaker 3: on an evening that couldn't be any more average for
Speaker 3: the couple, the Russ and Betsy Faria. Every Tuesday night,
Speaker 3: Russ had a game night in O'Fallon, Missouri, about thirty
Speaker 3: five forty five minutes away from his home in Troy, Missouri,
Speaker 3: and he and Betsy corresponded by text several times during
Speaker 3: the day, discussing their various plans. Betsy, unfortunately was battling
Speaker 3: a recurrence of cancer and was going to be going
Speaker 3: to a chemo treatment that day, and Russ was going
Speaker 3: to pick her up at her mother's apartment after the
Speaker 3: chemo and after his game night event. He got a
Speaker 3: message from Betsy during the afternoon saying that she had
Speaker 3: a friend of hers had offered to give her a
Speaker 3: ride home. Russ was not going to have to make
Speaker 3: the trip and pick her up and take her home,
Speaker 3: so Russ did ransom errands on the way to game night,
Speaker 3: spent three hours at Game night with his four friends.
Speaker 3: They couldn't actually play the Role Master game that they
Speaker 3: usually played because one of their members was absent, so
Speaker 3: they watched a couple of movies and at nine o'clock
Speaker 3: as usual, he headed home and arrived shortly after nine
Speaker 3: point thirty and walked in to just the most horrible,
Speaker 3: unimaginable scene that any of us would would would ever
Speaker 3: want to find ourselves into.
Speaker 2: It was just awful.
Speaker 3: Betsy was on the floor of the living room and
Speaker 3: had pretty ghastly gashes across her arms, which which Russ
Speaker 3: saw as he walked into the room, and of course
Speaker 3: the horrible, horrible thing of the knife still protruding from
Speaker 3: her neck. And it's almost impossible to imagine walking into
Speaker 3: that kind of scene with your spouse, but that's what
Speaker 3: he was confronted with he had the presence of mind
Speaker 3: once he realized that she was gone, that he ran
Speaker 3: into the other room and made it called nine to
Speaker 3: one one to ask ask them to send help immediately.
Speaker 3: And that's that's the awful beginning to what became, you know,
Speaker 3: a ten year story of injustice and the failure of
Speaker 3: public officials to do their jobs correctly. And the good
Speaker 3: thing about Joel being dedicated to doing his job correctly.
Speaker 2: Now Joel there is the Russ is called nine one one.
Speaker 2: We talked about Charles just mentioning that tell us what
Speaker 2: happens with the first responders, the police that first arrive,
Speaker 2: talk about it. Sergeant mcaerrick tell us who first arrives,
Speaker 2: and what Russ reports to the police that he has
Speaker 2: done when he has come home, and what he finds
Speaker 2: some of the details that end up in that initial
Speaker 2: police report.
Speaker 4: How much time we got. Yeah, the first responders show up.
Speaker 4: That's EMS and the fire department. They're the first in.
Speaker 4: And the two first responders approached Betsy's body and they
Speaker 4: note and they report that the body is cooling, it's stiff,
Speaker 4: and a pool of blood right by. Betsy Furia has
Speaker 4: been drying or pooling, as they say, indicating that this
Speaker 4: has happened some time ago, in the span of at
Speaker 4: least a couple of hours prior to the time that
Speaker 4: they had arrived. The next is are the police, And
Speaker 4: the police do what it's called clearing the area, just
Speaker 4: to make sure whoever did this there's not anybody hiding
Speaker 4: in the shower or there's not anybody hiding in a closet.
Speaker 4: They clear the area, and then the detective showed up.
Speaker 4: And that's what you're talking about, there was saying. Detective
Speaker 4: on the case. Ryan mccarett was one of the lead detectives,
Speaker 4: along with a guy named Mike Merkle and a guy
Speaker 4: named Patrick Horney. And they show up. Russ had been
Speaker 4: taken outside the residence, so it's not to disturb the scene,
Speaker 4: but they immediately presumed that the husband did it. Is
Speaker 4: that fair? Well, he did find the body and he
Speaker 4: was the husband, and I think essentially most people assume
Speaker 4: it is the spouse who was responsible. What had happened
Speaker 4: on the nine to one one call that Russ had
Speaker 4: made that Charlie alluded to was when he got home,
Speaker 4: he picked up the phone. I think he was going
Speaker 4: into shock, and he immediately told the nine one one
Speaker 4: supervisor at least three times that I just got home
Speaker 4: and my wife committed suicide. Based upon that call and
Speaker 4: the attempt to say she committed suicide, I think aroused
Speaker 4: the suspicions of the officers. What they didn't know is
Speaker 4: that she had attempted suicide in the past and been
Speaker 4: involuntarily committed by a patrolman for running a stop sign
Speaker 4: because she felt like killing herself just a couple of
Speaker 4: years prior. Just prior to this time, she had been
Speaker 4: diagnosed with terminal cancer and had been at times despondent.
Speaker 4: So that is why that notion popped into Russ's head.
Speaker 4: These are things that the officers didn't know, nor did
Speaker 4: they consider when they originally considered us to be a suspect.
Speaker 4: What they did is the opposite is not only presuming
Speaker 4: it was a husband, but they based that presumption on
Speaker 4: the fact that they thought, Okay, this guy's trying to
Speaker 4: lie to us, trying to send us in the wrong direction.
Speaker 4: What they failed to realize, in addition to what I
Speaker 4: just briefly said, was all of the multitude of the
Speaker 4: fifty six stab wounds with a few exceptions or throughout.
Speaker 4: That'si's torso and her legs, and those were covered in
Speaker 4: dark clothing, so none of those wounds could be seen.
Speaker 4: If you want to take a leap of faith, what
Speaker 4: you have to presume is the person who made the
Speaker 4: call would not be just so ridiculous as to presume
Speaker 4: that the examiners would never look at the body and
Speaker 4: go along with a hypothesis of suicide. So it follows
Speaker 4: that the person who said this was suicide by calling
Speaker 4: in would not have been the person who had done this,
Speaker 4: because it wasn't made to look like a suicide. The
Speaker 4: additional factor that I neglected to mention so far is
Speaker 4: that when Russ came home, not only did he was
Speaker 4: armed with this information about Betsy and her previous suicide attempts,
Speaker 4: but there was a large, large gash in her right wrist,
Speaker 4: there were other crossways gashes on her forearms, and there
Speaker 4: was a knife berry deep into her neck as we say,
Speaker 4: it was bone deep, along with the gash and her wrists.
Speaker 4: So that's what led to US's conclusion, and I think
Speaker 4: that's what led to their primary myopia and focus on Russ.
Speaker 4: The problem with the investigation is Russ. Had he called
Speaker 4: me when he was arrested, I would have told him,
Speaker 4: as any prudent attorney, shut your mouth, I'll see you
Speaker 4: tomorrow morning. I'll want you to talk to these detectives.
Speaker 4: Fortunately for us, he did not call an attorney, certainly
Speaker 4: not me. We didn't know each other. He went in
Speaker 4: with the officers. He spoke to the first team of
Speaker 4: officers for about six hours, then he spoke to another
Speaker 4: team of officers for about six hours, with around lots
Speaker 4: of time sprinkled in between, and spent approximately thirty six
Speaker 4: hours recanting where he went the entire evening and who
Speaker 4: he was risk Fortunately what happened is they were able
Speaker 4: to go everywhere he went. They were able to confirm
Speaker 4: his presence via video and receipt and witness testimony. They
Speaker 4: also went and talked to before alibi witnesses that he
Speaker 4: claimed he had been with. They separated them, they talked
Speaker 4: to them separately, all of the which occurred while Russ
Speaker 4: was still in police custody, so we know he didn't
Speaker 4: speak to anybody. They also were able to confirm on
Speaker 4: video that he was wearing the exact same clothing that
Speaker 4: he was arrested in earlier that evening. What they in
Speaker 4: effect did was my job, meaning they proved Russe Maria
Speaker 4: could not have done this. However, inexplicably, with that conclusion
Speaker 4: in mind, at least on my mind, they charged him.
Speaker 4: I still to this day don't know why there wasn't
Speaker 4: somebody that stepped back and said, wait a minute, this
Speaker 4: guy's got an alibi. There's not a speck of blood
Speaker 4: on them, which would be impossible. There's no evidence whatsoever
Speaker 4: other than he's the spouse and he does get some
Speaker 4: insurance money that he would have done this. The big
Speaker 4: factor that they neglected was there was a clear alternate
Speaker 4: suspect served up to them on a silver platter, and
Speaker 4: that was Pam hop What we knew about Pam at
Speaker 4: the time was she got for a portion of Betsy's
Speaker 4: insurance proceeds. One policy for one hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 4: dollars have been assigned to her merely four days earlier,
Speaker 4: under strangely suspicious circumstances. In addition, when they went to
Speaker 4: talk to Pam, over the course of about three and
Speaker 4: a half hours, and I think I counted at one point,
Speaker 4: there was over twenty lies that she told that were provable.
Speaker 4: And not only were they lies that ultimately changed or
Speaker 4: revolved over the course of time. They changed over the
Speaker 4: course of that initial interview. For example, two quick ones,
Speaker 4: I didn't go in the house too. I went in
Speaker 4: the house, I just went in the floyer. So I
Speaker 4: went in the foyer, I went in the living room,
Speaker 4: and I went in to the kitchen, all the way
Speaker 4: to I went all the way in the back room
Speaker 4: and went throughout the house. Is that important in and
Speaker 4: of itself. No, not necessarily. It's suspicious, doesn't mean she
Speaker 4: was a murderer. But you looked at those lies, and
Speaker 4: then you look at where evidence was found, and it
Speaker 4: simply happens to me everywhere Pam Hoak went and finally
Speaker 4: admitted to over the course of the straight and a
Speaker 4: half hours. The other line that I think is just
Speaker 4: glaring is there was a phone call made from Pam's
Speaker 4: phone to Betsy's phone approximately twenty minutes after they arrived
Speaker 4: at Betsy's house. The detectives asked miss Hubb why she
Speaker 4: called Betsy, and the first answer was to let her
Speaker 4: knowme that I made it home safe. Over the course
Speaker 4: of that interview, it evolved from well, I was almost
Speaker 4: home when I called her, and the officers for still
Speaker 4: someone incredulous because she couldn't have been almost home, And
Speaker 4: she certainly could have been home because she lived over
Speaker 4: thirty minutes away, and we know that she had spent
Speaker 4: time inside Betsy's house. The important factor there is by
Speaker 4: cell site, I was able to determine that she was
Speaker 4: still within the what they call the pie slide or
Speaker 4: the sector by cell side of the house, meaning she
Speaker 4: was either in the house or near the house at
Speaker 4: the time. And I would propose that she was in
Speaker 4: the house at the time she made that phone call
Speaker 4: merely as what we can call her own alibi call
Speaker 4: with no knowledge of technical expertise and no knowledge that
Speaker 4: they could place a cell phone as to where it
Speaker 4: was when I made the phone call. So those are
Speaker 4: just a couple of the glaring lies that changed or
Speaker 4: the stories had changed in the course of her initial interview.
Speaker 4: Eventually those stories became well. When I met was, I
Speaker 4: left her house and I sat around the corner, and
Speaker 4: I did go everywhere in the house. I can't and
Speaker 4: I don't want to go into absolutely every lie that
Speaker 4: she told. The point of this story is simply, why
Speaker 4: not take a look at this woman who stood to
Speaker 4: gain when Betsy died and she got the proceeds of
Speaker 4: her life insurance policy with Armed with that information, when
Speaker 4: I first got hired and got the discovery, I knew.
Speaker 4: I knew it in my gut. I knew it in
Speaker 4: my brain that I was going to have this case
Speaker 4: dismissed within a month to two months. And we would
Speaker 4: have been done with this in early twenty twelve, and
Speaker 4: we certainly wouldn't be talking about it ten years later,
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty two. Suffice to say, I couldn't have
Speaker 4: been more wrong in either my gut nor my brain.
Speaker 2: The thing you were wrong about was also the prosecutor
Speaker 2: in this Askie prosecutor Askie as well. But you talk
Speaker 2: about that when you got discovery, you reviewed the tapes,
Speaker 2: the police interview tapes with Hup, and you were shocked, amazed,
Speaker 2: and surprised that they took the information from her as gospel.
Speaker 2: As you as you write, what are the things that
Speaker 2: she said to police unchallenged? It seemed that swayed the
Speaker 2: police to believe that Russ was actually the killer of
Speaker 2: his wife.
Speaker 4: Well, she would throw in morsels. They said, how well
Speaker 4: do you know Russ, and as she said, I only
Speaker 4: met him two or three times, and he seemed nice enough. However,
Speaker 4: during the course of the interview, she would talk about
Speaker 4: how he was rude and how he was demeaning, and
Speaker 4: how he was having affairs and leaving Betsy and separated
Speaker 4: from her six or seven times. And ultimately it became
Speaker 4: years later that he found out strangely enough, which we
Speaker 4: think is a lie. Actually we know it's a lie,
Speaker 4: that were lovers and that Russ I'm out about it,
Speaker 4: and threatened to cut her up and bury her in
Speaker 4: the backyard. That's the magnitude of how the story changed
Speaker 4: from I barely know him, I've only met him a
Speaker 4: couple of times, which was true too. I could feel
Speaker 4: his spit on my face. He was inches away, threatened
Speaker 4: to kill me and cut me up and bury me
Speaker 4: in the backyard. That alone, the change alone, that's one
Speaker 4: little lie. She told me. Should have clued the police
Speaker 4: and to investigat her. But we can go further. In
Speaker 4: the initial interview, one of the things she kept saying was,
Speaker 4: and I'm quoting her, Betsy was going to email me
Speaker 4: everything about Russ that he was doing to her. That
Speaker 4: made her so uncomfortable. She didn't want to go home
Speaker 4: because she was scared of us. If she'd just find
Speaker 4: the email, I mean, the document that she was going
Speaker 4: to send to me. And she said it that way
Speaker 4: about five times during the course of the interview, meaning
Speaker 4: she would always say she was going to email I
Speaker 4: mean she created document. Ultimately, which we found out four
Speaker 4: years later, almost to the day, was that Betsy there
Speaker 4: was a document found in Betsy's computer. Everything that Pam
Speaker 4: had indicated would be in the document in that initial
Speaker 4: interview was in the document. It was essentially a dying
Speaker 4: declaration from Betsy. It was a letter to the police
Speaker 4: that if something or to Pam that if something happens
Speaker 4: to me, you need to show this to the police.
Speaker 4: Russ has been threatening to kill me by putting a
Speaker 4: pillow over my face and saying this is what it's
Speaker 4: going to feel like when you're dead. He continues to
Speaker 4: talk about the insurance proceeds he's going to get and
Speaker 4: then he's going to be free. All these things were
Speaker 4: contained within that document, in addition to some other things.
Speaker 4: What was so noteworthy about the document that Pam continued
Speaker 4: to direct these police student that they didn't find for
Speaker 4: four years and I might at ten days prior to
Speaker 4: the second trial. Was that it was authored in Betsy's computer,
Speaker 4: and a document that couldn't have been created by Betsy's
Speaker 4: computer because that program didn't exist. It was created at
Speaker 4: a time that Pam was with Betsy at the tennis club.
Speaker 4: We know that when Pam was sitting there watching and
Speaker 4: Betsy was playing tennis with several other people. It was
Speaker 4: the only document of all the hundreds in Betsy's computer
Speaker 4: that read author unknown, So we know it was created
Speaker 4: a time that that Pam would have had access to
Speaker 4: the computer. It was uploaded to the computer from a
Speaker 4: different computer. It contained dying declarations. It contained all the
Speaker 4: information regarding the insurance and threats about Russ. However, no
Speaker 4: family member nor anybody else could corroborate the information, with
Speaker 4: the exception of Pam, who knew everything that was in
Speaker 4: the letter. That in of itself should include the police
Speaker 4: into Maybe not to presume that Pam was the one
Speaker 4: who did it, but she's been lying about everybody, and
Speaker 4: we need to take a look at this woman. The
Speaker 4: most important factor was she had always said on that
Speaker 4: Friday before the Tuesday, that Betsy was brutally murdered. Betsy
Speaker 4: surprised her saying, Hey, I want to change my insurance
Speaker 4: proceeds to you, which I've never believed and I don't
Speaker 4: think is true as far as being surprised. But what
Speaker 4: we know was the day before that, in the supposed
Speaker 4: email that Betsy was going to send, which I believe
Speaker 4: is a document creative by Pam, she again talked about
Speaker 4: I want to transfer my insurance proceeds to you. In effect,
Speaker 4: Pam knew exactly what she was going to do. She
Speaker 4: knew the day and time she was going to do
Speaker 4: it because everybody knew Russ was gone for four hours
Speaker 4: the following Tuesday, and she knew that she was getting
Speaker 4: the insurance proceeds. All of those facts put together, combined
Speaker 4: with Russ's provable alibi, would Lee want to believe that
Speaker 4: this was the worst example of an investigation that, certainly
Speaker 4: in thirty three years I have ever seen, and I
Speaker 4: think that has led to the fascination of the public
Speaker 4: with this case, in petition to everything that Pam had done.
Speaker 2: Afterwards, we can get into what was the blood evidence
Speaker 2: that police discovered in the home that they say pointed
Speaker 2: to Russ as the killer.
Speaker 4: And that's a wonderful question, because they continued to point
Speaker 4: to the fact that Russ's slippers were blood slaked. Well,
Speaker 4: there's a picture of the slippers in the book that
Speaker 4: Charles and I wrote, and your readers can see them
Speaker 4: from the self. But to the naked eye, it's simple.
Speaker 4: If you look at the slippers, there are there's a
Speaker 4: little bit on the side of each of the front
Speaker 4: bottom parts of each slipper, and there's a little bit
Speaker 4: on the side of each slipper. Had Russ been wearing
Speaker 4: the slippers, his slippers when Bessie was stabbed and he
Speaker 4: did this, there would have been blood covered spatter all
Speaker 4: over the tops of these slippers. Had he been wearing
Speaker 4: them and gotten it on the bottom, there would have
Speaker 4: been a footprint in the blood. And the pool of
Speaker 4: blood was contained within a carpet in their living room,
Speaker 4: so there would have been bloody footprints, or at least
Speaker 4: a bloody footprint on the carpet outside the pool of blood.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: Additionally, there were, and there was by the way, there
Speaker 4: was also no blood whatsoever on Russ's person or on
Speaker 4: anywhere in his clothing. So it defies logic that the
Speaker 4: slippers would have had blood unless you consider the way
Speaker 4: that the blood went and somebody took the slippers, they
Speaker 4: swiped them in the blood, and then they hit them
Speaker 4: in the deep recesses of Russ's closet. And additionally, there
Speaker 4: is what there is a crosshatch pattern similar to the
Speaker 4: shoes or the socks that Betsy was wearing on the
Speaker 4: light switched plates, so whoever went back into that closet
Speaker 4: to plant the shoes could see what they were doing.
Speaker 4: The most important fact in what I had just previously
Speaker 4: described as there was no footprint in the blood. It
Speaker 4: was a large pool of blood, there was no footprint
Speaker 4: on the carpet, and the pattern on the blood on
Speaker 4: the shoes was indicative if somebody swiping it. There is
Speaker 4: no reason whatsoever that Russ have taken his own slippers
Speaker 4: and swipe them in blood. There's also no logic behind
Speaker 4: the fact that he would have hit the slippers but
Speaker 4: somehow been able to stash the rest of his clothing.
Speaker 4: I have forgotten about the slippers. Again, it's just a
Speaker 4: shoddy investigation, and it still defies logic, and it's inexplictable
Speaker 4: to me. Give it. Everything that I'm describing here and
Speaker 4: there's much much deeper evidence that's gone into in detail
Speaker 4: inbone deeds that the police didn't at least step back.
Speaker 4: There wasn't one same head in the room or cool
Speaker 4: head to step back and say, okay, folks, wait a minute.
Speaker 4: You know what, Maybe we won't want to charge this guy,
Speaker 4: maybe we want to presumly did it, but don't you
Speaker 4: think we ought to take a look at this smit
Speaker 4: that never happened, and nobody ever did.
Speaker 2: You were quite angered by the behavior, you called it misconduct,
Speaker 2: and you for the prosecutor asking in the trial, you
Speaker 2: were set to go in front of a judge Dildine,
Speaker 2: and so how does prosecutor ask you who seemed to
Speaker 2: not want to go in front of this judge? How
Speaker 2: did she deal with that issue and how did she
Speaker 2: get around that?
Speaker 4: Well, unfortunately, in a state of Missouri, and I can't
Speaker 4: speak to other states, you can dismiss the case and
Speaker 4: refile it. And that's what she did. And as soon
Speaker 4: as we were sent for trial, she dismissed the case
Speaker 4: because she didn't like the judge. She then immediately refiled
Speaker 4: the case the same day. So Russ was never freed
Speaker 4: and the case was then set to be in front
Speaker 4: of a woman who I don't know what their relationship
Speaker 4: was even to this day, but I do know they
Speaker 4: went to the same high school that was who the
Speaker 4: case was set to be tried in front of. And
Speaker 4: unfortunately for myself, but more so for Russ is the
Speaker 4: inexperience of this judge became evident as we furthered ourselves
Speaker 4: into this case all up to the point of trial.
Speaker 2: You talk about pretrial motions. It was important for you
Speaker 2: as you're writing this book that you were horrified or
Speaker 2: shocked that the police took Pam Hupp's word as gospel,
Speaker 2: indicating that Russ had motive opportunity to be able to
Speaker 2: kill and ignoring her obvious motive and opportunity to be
Speaker 2: able to kill Betsy. So what was your motion in
Speaker 2: this pre trial? What did you want and feel necessary
Speaker 2: for it to happen at this first trial.
Speaker 4: Well, certainly you could argue that the husband who does
Speaker 4: get some of the insurance particies has motive. It doesn't
Speaker 4: make sense because she's been diagnosed with terminal cancer, so
Speaker 4: it sort of eliminates that motive. You could certainly argue
Speaker 4: that opportunity because he lives there and has the opportunity
Speaker 4: anytime he wants because the two of them are together.
Speaker 4: That's notwithstanding the lack of evidence against him, including his alibi.
Speaker 4: But there is a rule in Missouri called the direct
Speaker 4: connection rule that, for lack of a better term, if
Speaker 4: you can't make some sort of direct connection of an
Speaker 4: individual to the scene or to the individual, you can't
Speaker 4: just throw red hearing at the jury. For example, let's
Speaker 4: say let's take it out of context here and say
Speaker 4: there's a rape that happens on Maple Street. Well, four
Speaker 4: streets over is Elm Street, and you can show that
Speaker 4: there is a prior sex offender who got out of
Speaker 4: prison recently for committing rape. You can't simply toss it
Speaker 4: in the trial if you can't show some sort of link,
Speaker 4: either there is a fingerprint or a witness can place
Speaker 4: him at on the other scene of the crime, or
Speaker 4: he has some sort of motive, some connection to give
Speaker 4: you an opportunity to use that. So the jury is
Speaker 4: you're just not throwing a red hearing and creating something
Speaker 4: out of nothing. In this particular case, it's not a
Speaker 4: motion that I raised because it was clear to me
Speaker 4: that Pam Huff was intimately and integrally involved in the case.
Speaker 4: What we had is a state filing emotion that I
Speaker 4: could not get into Pam Huff's lies or what they
Speaker 4: call politely enough, her prior and consistent statements. Nor could
Speaker 4: I get into the fact that she had gotten the
Speaker 4: insurance pro seats from Betsy assigned to her four days earlier,
Speaker 4: and then actually received the proceeds upon Betsy's death. And
Speaker 4: the reason the state argued is because I cannot demonstrate
Speaker 4: a direct connection to Pam Hup, given the scene, given
Speaker 4: the timing, I didn't take it seriously because there was
Speaker 4: no judge on earth that was going to preclude me
Speaker 4: from getting into that information. Well, couldn't have been wrong. Again,
Speaker 4: couldn't have been more wrong the judge. The judge ruled
Speaker 4: in Leah Askey's favor, precluding me from getting into those things.
Speaker 4: So I took and I found the motion for reconsideration.
Speaker 4: And during the motion, the state showed up with a
Speaker 4: case that said that the court has the authority to
Speaker 4: limit the scope of cross examination, which is true. I
Speaker 4: can't get into the fact that a witness got suspended
Speaker 4: when they were in high school, or that they were
Speaker 4: got grounded when they were in third grade, because that's
Speaker 4: irrelevant in that you can limit the scope. But what
Speaker 4: I can get into our elements surrounding the case, and
Speaker 4: certainly witnesses reasons for testifying, their bias, their motive, things
Speaker 4: of that nature. I can get into their lives, which
Speaker 4: the prior and consistent statements. So what I did was
Speaker 4: gave the court one hundred cases and I continued to
Speaker 4: stick and five by five until they piled up to
Speaker 4: a point where the judge could no longer even see me.
Speaker 4: It was basically to stress the point because I knew
Speaker 4: she wasn't going to change her mind, but I didn't
Speaker 4: need to do that, and I needed to preserve it
Speaker 4: for the corner of appeals. And lo and behold, the
Speaker 4: judge did not allow me to cross examin and panel hop.
Speaker 4: I couldn't get into her inconsistent statements, many of which
Speaker 4: I just previously talked to you about. I couldn't show
Speaker 4: my expert by cell site through my expert that she
Speaker 4: was still at the scene of the crime at the
Speaker 4: time of the homicide, nor could I get into the
Speaker 4: shur insurance process. So the jury got to hear absolutely
Speaker 4: none of that information.
Speaker 2: What other things were shocking to you, and in terms
Speaker 2: of Europe being handicapped in terms of the defense of
Speaker 2: russ what else surprised you? You talked about three particular
Speaker 2: incidents that you said you were going to file for mistrial.
Speaker 2: So tell us more about what you consider a misconduct
Speaker 2: on behalf of the prosecutor.
Speaker 4: Well, when the trial started, the court had ruled that
Speaker 4: I couldn't get into the insurance information. Miss Asky got
Speaker 4: up and started her opening statement, and she said that
Speaker 4: this case is about one thing. Agreed he killed his
Speaker 4: wife to the insurance proceeds. Well, at that when I
Speaker 4: went ballistic, because the court had already ruled that we
Speaker 4: can't go into that. So I approached the bench. I
Speaker 4: asked the court to instruct the jury to disregard, and
Speaker 4: I asked for a mistrial. And the court looked at
Speaker 4: her rulings and said, no, no, no, that's not right,
Speaker 4: mister Schwartz. I ruled that you can't get into the insurance.
Speaker 4: I did not rule that the state couldn't. I've never
Speaker 4: heard anything as ludicrous as that was. So what I
Speaker 4: ultimately did was I asked the court that I said,
Speaker 4: to the court, where the door has been opened by
Speaker 4: her arguing this and opening statement, so I can get
Speaker 4: into the insurance. The judge again, I said, I stand
Speaker 4: by my earlier ruling. You cannot get into that. Again ridiculous.
Speaker 4: One of the other things that the state had gotten
Speaker 4: there too is when my alibi witnesses were testifying, Lea asked,
Speaker 4: He asked them, isn't it true that you refuse to
Speaker 4: take a polygraph test? Well as anybody who has any
Speaker 4: knowledgeable one those that that is inadmissible in court number one,
Speaker 4: that's important, not as important as the fact that that
Speaker 4: was a complete total mischaracterization of the truth. The alibi
Speaker 4: witnesses all would have volunteered had they been asked to
Speaker 4: take a polygraph. Nobody ever asked them, So she created
Speaker 4: the impression with the jury that with this inadmissible evidence,
Speaker 4: these guys were lying. The fact. Couldn't have been further
Speaker 4: to the from the truth that they were telling the truth,
Speaker 4: and it could have been further from the truth that
Speaker 4: they had turned down taking a polygony. Those were two
Speaker 4: of the major major issues that we had gotten into.
Speaker 4: And then there were some other areas that I asked
Speaker 4: for a mistrial and that those were more of the norm,
Speaker 4: with the exception of the prosecutor's closing argument, which was
Speaker 4: a taialept out of Hollywood that I never had heard,
Speaker 4: and it was a mischaracterization of the evidence that we
Speaker 4: had heard. And it was also in direct conflict with
Speaker 4: some of the factors that we were aware of that
Speaker 4: didn't come into evidence, and so essentially she stood in
Speaker 4: front of the jury and lied.
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Speaker 2: com promo code true Murder. Now, Joel, we were talking
Speaker 2: about this trial, the outlandish statements by as you say,
Speaker 2: the prosecutor ask you what happens at this trial in
Speaker 2: terms of verdict?
Speaker 4: Well, what I can Sady is, to my surprise, I
Speaker 4: guess prosecutor asking was a little bit more persuasive than
Speaker 4: I gave her credit for. Because the jury came back
Speaker 4: ultimately and convicted ruskfore have murder in the first degree.
Speaker 4: He was convicted, the judge then stated, and the only
Speaker 4: potential sentence is life without parole, meaning you are never
Speaker 4: eligible to be released. The uh. The judge sent, why
Speaker 4: don't the schedule a date for sentencing right now, to
Speaker 4: which I rather rudely replied, why don't we go ahead
Speaker 4: and schedule the date for the new trial right now too,
Speaker 4: because I guarantee we'll be back here with this case.
Speaker 4: The judge looked at me and didn't say a word.
Speaker 4: I kept thinking at some point, just because based upon
Speaker 4: my attitude, she was going to hold me in contempt,
Speaker 4: which thankfully I guess she did not do in any way.
Speaker 4: That he was convicted Ultimately, he was sentenced to life
Speaker 4: without parole. Essentially he would die in prison.
Speaker 2: So you vowed to appeal, and you feel that there's
Speaker 2: grounds for appeal, But how do you approach that appeal?
Speaker 4: Well, the appeal was put together and we had too
Speaker 4: many issues for the appeal unfortunately, and they were very
Speaker 4: very strong issues, and I didn't I guaranteed Russ. Maybe
Speaker 4: I shouldn't have done that, but I guaranteed Russ that
Speaker 4: I was going to get him out and that I
Speaker 4: was going to see this thing through to the end.
Speaker 4: So ultimately we put the appeal together. A young lady
Speaker 4: by the name of Hannah's outwork with me and did
Speaker 4: a wonderful, wonderful job beating the appeal. Together. We filed
Speaker 4: the appeal fully expecting to win, and in the course
Speaker 4: of while the appeal was pending, we got some new
Speaker 4: information during the course of a lawsuit that had been
Speaker 4: filed by Bench's daughters against Pam Hubb for the proceeds
Speaker 4: of the insurance. It's a friend of mine who was
Speaker 4: an attorney night by the name of David Bush, called
Speaker 4: me and said he had just conducted the depositions of
Speaker 4: Pam and came across the information that Pam Hup opened
Speaker 4: up a trust before a trial in order to look
Speaker 4: good to injury even though it was coming in and
Speaker 4: that was at the suggestion of the police. However, one
Speaker 4: week after the verdict, Pam Hupp had defunded the trust
Speaker 4: that him be created for me.
Speaker 2: For the children.
Speaker 4: I just found that to be unconsonable. And that was
Speaker 4: in addition to a letter I received regarding an affair
Speaker 4: between one of the officers named his hands. So I
Speaker 4: took this information, and Hannah had come up with this
Speaker 4: thing called the Mooney motion. Frankly, I had never heard
Speaker 4: of it at the time, and I've never heard of
Speaker 4: any other attorney using it, and it is so rare
Speaker 4: that I did find out after the fact that it
Speaker 4: had been the third time in the two hundred plus
Speaker 4: year history of the state that anybody had ever been
Speaker 4: successful in a Mooney motion. And what that motion contains
Speaker 4: is the allegation that the evidence you, had you known
Speaker 4: it and it has been turned over to you, would
Speaker 4: have been so agracious that it would more than likely
Speaker 4: have cause a jury to return a different verdict, thankfully,
Speaker 4: and that's an emergency motion. So thankfully, the Court of Appeals,
Speaker 4: through the Chief Justice Rody's scathing opinion, sending this case
Speaker 4: back to the trial court, and this judge, who was
Speaker 4: an experience, for whatever reason and I still don't know why,
Speaker 4: recused herself and we ended up getting a very very
Speaker 4: experienced judge in the name of Steve Homer, And I
Speaker 4: was thrilled. On's that occurred to me?
Speaker 2: Now, how do you prepare for this new trial? How
Speaker 2: do you do that?
Speaker 4: Well? I prepared the same way. But I knew at
Speaker 4: this point, because of the judge, I was going to
Speaker 4: be able to get into the important evidence surrounding and
Speaker 4: regarding Pam Hup, regarding the insurance proceeds, regarding Pam Huck's
Speaker 4: whereabouts or her motive, all the things that you should
Speaker 4: normally be allowed to get into in a trial that's
Speaker 4: conducted appropriately. What I didn't contemplate until one morning I
Speaker 4: was out exercising and I was jigging, and as I'm jogging,
Speaker 4: you know, I've known this judge a long time. We're
Speaker 4: not friends, but he's a fair man. He's a great judge.
Speaker 4: And I thought to myself, I still can't believe that
Speaker 4: this jury convicted yet what if I just let the
Speaker 4: judge this side. Frankly, there's no fact that needs to
Speaker 4: be decided as to what witness is telling the truth.
Speaker 4: Because there was no one who could do anything to
Speaker 4: put Russ there, Everything indicated and pointed towards Pam. Nothing
Speaker 4: pointed towards Russ. So rather than put the hand in
Speaker 4: my Russ's life in the hands of twelve citizens, I
Speaker 4: made the incredibly risky decision simply doing what they call
Speaker 4: a bench try or a judge try trial right. I
Speaker 4: talked to my wife, Mary Ann, who was also a
Speaker 4: seasoned attorney, and she thought it was a good idea.
Speaker 4: I talked to some others and I heard after the
Speaker 4: fact that while this was a hundergoing, people thought, what
Speaker 4: the hell is Schwarts doing? This is crazy? But as
Speaker 4: we not know, also ends of Russ was acquitted.
Speaker 2: You talk about the satisfaction you had in cross examining
Speaker 2: people like Sergeant mcarrick can tell us about that.
Speaker 4: Well, I finally got to cross examine these people, and
Speaker 4: every one of them told a different story. And the
Speaker 4: fact that Pam's story had evolved and changed to the
Speaker 4: point of where they weren't even going to put her
Speaker 4: on the stand anymore came out clearly in this new trial,
Speaker 4: and so much so that it was just that it
Speaker 4: was painfully obvious to the observer that Pamhalk had been
Speaker 4: hiding something and hiding secrets all along and more than
Speaker 4: likely had something to do with us. Raising, as the
Speaker 4: judge ultimately said in his verdict, this investigation and trial
Speaker 4: his reasonable questions and answers. The biggest cross examination came
Speaker 4: with the detective Mike Merkle, who was one of the
Speaker 4: main officers on the case. There had been a search
Speaker 4: of Russ's house, Russe and Betsy's house about a week
Speaker 4: or several I think it was five days after the
Speaker 4: murder had occurred. The scene wasn't preserved and had been contaminated. Anyway,
Speaker 4: they did what's called a luminol tests, where you turn
Speaker 4: off the lights and you spread this illuminating substance that
Speaker 4: will glow isn't when there is blood evidence. So they
Speaker 4: claimed that they had done this search and they had
Speaker 4: taken these photographs. However, the camera malfunction and nothing showed
Speaker 4: up on the on the film, and there were no
Speaker 4: pictures that they could show. That Pool was testified into
Speaker 4: the during the first trial by Officer Markel somehow, and
Speaker 4: I kept insisting, if it didn't work, I want what
Speaker 4: did did you use? Films? The digital? I want more information.
Speaker 4: Every time we would meet, I found motion upon motion.
Speaker 4: I had support the order to turn it over. Inexplicably,
Speaker 4: I got a package during the course of the summer.
Speaker 4: It contained a DVD and that had one hundred and
Speaker 4: thirty two pictures of that search of the house. Every
Speaker 4: picture developed, no pictures showed with this officer testified too,
Speaker 4: that they showed nothing contrary to what he testified to.
Speaker 4: They showed the exact opposite, as there was no dominating,
Speaker 4: there was no trail of blood like they testified to
Speaker 4: all of them, and in a fact they were lying.
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Speaker 2: Stop for these messages. When you say that you were
Speaker 2: catching this Sergeant mcarrick in a web of lies, you
Speaker 2: also pressed him about how he ascertained that Pam Hoff's
Speaker 2: version of events was true. Sarcastically, you challenged them on.
Speaker 4: That that's correct. Essentially it was her story was so
Speaker 4: unre and her story continued to evolve lie based upon lie,
Speaker 4: based upon line, but it went unchallenged throughout the entire
Speaker 4: four years of this ordeal that Russ had to endure.
Speaker 4: And rarely do you get an opportunity to cross exam
Speaker 4: an officer such as this regarding these lies told by
Speaker 4: a witness. And thankfully the judge saw through her lives,
Speaker 4: saw through the stories that the police were supporting, and
Speaker 4: found that there was no effort evidence to support the
Speaker 4: allegations against us.
Speaker 2: When you were able to get a new trial for us,
Speaker 2: it's poignant. Did you talk about contacting him in prison
Speaker 2: and then getting him out on Originally he had a
Speaker 2: very very high bond and he was unable to no
Speaker 2: one was able to raise. This time he did get
Speaker 2: a bond. Just tell us about some of that interaction
Speaker 2: and the perseverance of Russ and keeping his spirits high
Speaker 2: despite everything that had gone on with the prosecution.
Speaker 4: Russe knew he didn't do anything. He knew he was innocent.
Speaker 4: Obviously there was some fear involved in going to trial.
Speaker 4: I don't believe for one second that Russ ever lost
Speaker 4: faith in me, even though given what had happened before
Speaker 4: and there was a bit of an anecdote where we
Speaker 4: had completed the course of the trial. Russ was out
Speaker 4: of the parking lot smoking a cigarette and I was
Speaker 4: talking to him with some of the news crews that
Speaker 4: had been covering the case, and the judge was what
Speaker 4: he called deliberating, he was viewing the evidence. So during
Speaker 4: the course of that time, my associate was working with me,
Speaker 4: Nathan Swampson called me and said, they asked the prosecutor
Speaker 4: wants to know if we're interested in the deal. I
Speaker 4: was concerned, and I frankly knew that she was going
Speaker 4: to offer him a deal for time served on an
Speaker 4: involuntary manslaughter. I asked Russ, and that would be no
Speaker 4: risk of person. He would go home. I asked Russ,
Speaker 4: she wants to know for interested in the deal? What
Speaker 4: do you want me to tell her? And it's worse
Speaker 4: for choice. She could give me a parking ticket and
Speaker 4: I would tell her where she should sink that. And
Speaker 4: he went a little further. So I told Nathan to
Speaker 4: tell the prosecutor weren't interested in the deal. However, prior
Speaker 4: to that, I said, find out what deal she's offering. Again,
Speaker 4: I cannot assess this woman to save my life, because
Speaker 4: she was offering soft life, meaning he would be forced
Speaker 4: to serve thirty years and be elisibi per after fifteen.
Speaker 4: I knew at that point in time how wonderful our
Speaker 4: case had gone, and I was very, very confident that
Speaker 4: the judge was going to put him. I think she
Speaker 4: just had no handle whatsoever on the weaknesses of her case,
Speaker 4: which is astounding to me again to this day.
Speaker 2: It's very interesting you write too about the media, Chris
Speaker 2: Hayes from Fox to Television News and Dayline. You had
Speaker 2: already mentioned featuring episodes about this case. But there there
Speaker 2: was a real by the media, a real indictment of
Speaker 2: Pam after this trial, wasn't there.
Speaker 4: Well. I give Chris Hayes all the credit in the world.
Speaker 4: He took this story, he covered it. He was the
Speaker 4: only one initially who covered it. Gavel to Gavel, as
Speaker 4: they say, he fought his producers to cover it and
Speaker 4: they allowed him to. And it's a shame because he
Speaker 4: works at a rival network that he can't appear in
Speaker 4: the Dateline, he can't do anything regarding the TV series.
Speaker 4: But what a great job he did. And then Dateline
Speaker 4: got behind it and ran with it and They both,
Speaker 4: along with Robert Patrick from the Post Dispatch here did
Speaker 4: a wonderful job investigating and coming up with the truth
Speaker 4: about the thing about Pam. All of these media agencies
Speaker 4: were wonderful in their investigations, and I was able to
Speaker 4: use their assistance sometimes in finding out different areas that
Speaker 4: I hadn't been aware of.
Speaker 2: What about Pam? You talk about this special, but also
Speaker 2: there's so much more information. I mean, we had in
Speaker 2: an introduction that would leave leaving Hup free to kill again?
Speaker 2: So what of that? Tell us what other information that
Speaker 2: you found out about Pam Up?
Speaker 4: Well, during the course of the trial, as I told you,
Speaker 4: I could make what's called off the record or offers
Speaker 4: of proof, meaning I could get into the facts that
Speaker 4: I've been speaking about, but they were outside the hearing
Speaker 4: of the jury. For example, I could cross examine Pam
Speaker 4: about the insurance, but the jury didn't get to hear
Speaker 4: any of it. And that's merely to make a record
Speaker 4: for the Court of Appeals, right, So while that was occurring,
Speaker 4: at one point, I'm cross examining Pam and she volunteers.
Speaker 4: Would would you like to know why it took me
Speaker 4: so long to create the trust? Because remember she had
Speaker 4: created that trust for the kids one week before trial,
Speaker 4: two years after the death of Betscene, and I said, yeah, sure,
Speaker 4: what took you so long? Her response was, I've been
Speaker 4: taking care of my mother who has Alzheimer's, who just
Speaker 4: recently died of Alzheimer's. And I said, my condolence, says,
Speaker 4: I'm sorry to hear that Resultum. Well, I certainly didn't
Speaker 4: know it at the time, but the day after the
Speaker 4: trial concluded, I think I received about five or six
Speaker 4: calls from various individuals who were in the courtroom who
Speaker 4: said her mother did not die of Alzheimer's. Her mother
Speaker 4: fell from the third floor about and he have a
Speaker 4: retirement community, So I called the retirement community. They didn't
Speaker 4: have an Alzheimer's wing. And I talked to an Alzheimer's
Speaker 4: expert who said nobody with Alzheimer's would ever be placed
Speaker 4: on the third floor. So she clearly lied under oath
Speaker 4: about that. The two Chris Hayes at Fox and Dateline
Speaker 4: both engineering experiments extensively to show that what Pam had
Speaker 4: claimed had occurred couldn't have happened, meaning her mother was
Speaker 4: found on this concrete slab at the base of her
Speaker 4: apartments with two of the value strads beneath her and
Speaker 4: several of them bent out for her body to have
Speaker 4: fit through them, not over the balcony. Well. The woman
Speaker 4: was found with fourteen times the recommended nose of ambient
Speaker 4: in her system, and she was somewhat immobile because she
Speaker 4: used a walker, so she certainly couldn't have ran through
Speaker 4: those bars and fallen over the valty. As to what
Speaker 4: did occur and who did it, I don't know. What
Speaker 4: I can't tell you is Pam did receive some insurance
Speaker 4: benefit from her mother, which she had talked about earlier
Speaker 4: with receiving with Brian mccarrot. In addition, she was the
Speaker 4: last one with her and she went downstairs and it's
Speaker 4: been reported that she told the people working at the home,
Speaker 4: Mom won't be down for dinner and probably not breakfast either.
Speaker 4: She's tired. It wasn't until when she didn't show up
Speaker 4: for lunch the next day that they went into her
Speaker 4: room and they saw her body at the base of
Speaker 4: the balcony. Finally, to continue on about Pam about you know,
Speaker 4: I can't give his set a time frame, but I
Speaker 4: got a call from Russ after he'd been acquitted after
Speaker 4: I had contacted the US attorney and said this woman
Speaker 4: needs to be investigated, and the call was, Joe, You're
Speaker 4: never going to believe this. Pam Huff shot somebody. What
Speaker 4: she had done is she found an individual named Lewis Gumpenberger,
Speaker 4: and Lewis's history seemed to indicate he was had the
Speaker 4: education or he had the brain level or thinking level
Speaker 4: of I think they said a seventh grader due to
Speaker 4: a car accident he had had. He was thirty three
Speaker 4: years old at the time. She enticed him to come
Speaker 4: back to her house through a dateline who was saying
Speaker 4: that she was filming something and taking something for a
Speaker 4: new dateline episode. She ultimately got him back there. She
Speaker 4: called nine to one one and which is what she
Speaker 4: said she was taking for dateline, and in the course
Speaker 4: of doing so, she shot him point blank and emptied
Speaker 4: her gun into him, killing him. When the police arrived,
Speaker 4: they final found a note on him indicating that it
Speaker 4: was from Russkorea to take Pam, get my money, bring
Speaker 4: it back to me. As it turns out Russ police.
Speaker 4: I talked to police. We immediately responded with Russ. He
Speaker 4: gave them his phone. He cooperated with them, he gave
Speaker 4: him handwriting examplers. It was clear that Russ had absolutely
Speaker 4: nothing to do with this, and then Pampa had killed
Speaker 4: who was two, which he has ultimately been convicted and
Speaker 4: sent to life in prison without parole. So in effect
Speaker 4: she set up Russ. Once she was effected, at least
Speaker 4: initially with that, she then attempted to set him up
Speaker 4: a second time. And god knows what would have happened
Speaker 4: had this occurred in the same county where he was
Speaker 4: first church.
Speaker 2: Yes, incredible. Yeah, Charles tell us about this NBC's interest
Speaker 2: in a mini series and were you involved at all?
Speaker 3: I was not involved in that. NBC began working on
Speaker 3: the mini series as a result of all of the
Speaker 3: Dayline episodes. I think they're one of their last episodes
Speaker 3: was actually entitled The Thing About Pam, which is the
Speaker 3: title of the mini series. But she began dealing directly
Speaker 3: with them and even made on camera comments about their
Speaker 3: producer on the Dayline series, and I think that's kind
Speaker 3: of what piqued their interest as well as as Joel
Speaker 3: has explained, Keith Morrison was in town and did five
Speaker 3: episodes I think now six, and they just saw through
Speaker 3: the entire veil of injustice and incompetence that that cost
Speaker 3: Rush free of four years in prison, and realized that
Speaker 3: in the character of Pam Huffed, that they had this
Speaker 3: extraordinary woman who had just bamboosled the police and the
Speaker 3: prosecutor completely, and they decided to build this mini series
Speaker 3: around the character of Pam Hup. And I think there's
Speaker 3: going to be as Joel has described it, there's kind
Speaker 3: of a it looks like there's a bit of a
Speaker 3: Fargo approach to the story with a little bit of
Speaker 3: dark humor, because Pam Hup can be an extraordinary and
Speaker 3: beguiling character. But they opened their season, Joel, I can't
Speaker 3: remember which year it was, Was it twenty one, twenty
Speaker 3: or twenty one when they opened the season with a
Speaker 3: two hour special episode that they caught the thing about
Speaker 3: Pam and they showed the many interviews that she did
Speaker 3: with the police and with the prosecutor. She and Leea
Speaker 3: ask He sat down a couple of times to talk
Speaker 3: about the case. And I think they really really went
Speaker 3: into the character of Pam Hup and that's what led
Speaker 3: them to the mini series and Renee Zelweger immediately signed
Speaker 3: on as a Star and the trailers that are appearing
Speaker 3: now for the show that premieers March eighth. I mean
Speaker 3: Sprene Zell Worker is unrecognizable and look so much like
Speaker 3: Pam Hupp. It's extraordinary, It's really amazing.
Speaker 2: It's interesting. Also when does this book released? And also
Speaker 2: just tell us a little bit more about the interest
Speaker 2: in this story for you as an author. When you
Speaker 2: first started this project, were you aware of how fascinating
Speaker 2: and all encompassing this story would be.
Speaker 3: No, I wasn't, and that's a great question. I was
Speaker 3: aware of Russ's alibi, and that's an extraordinary As Joel
Speaker 3: has explained, that's an extraordinary alibi. I've covered hundreds of
Speaker 3: criminal cases. I was a reporter for twenty seven years
Speaker 3: twenty years with the Saint Louis Post Dispatch and was
Speaker 3: a crime and court specialist, and have covered hundreds of cases,
Speaker 3: including a number of capital cases, death penalty cases, and
Speaker 3: that albi struck me as so extraordinary that I could
Speaker 3: not believe that that Russ was convicted with that albi.
Speaker 3: And I didn't attend the trial, so I was relying
Speaker 3: on reports, you know, from Chris Hayes and Robert Patrick
Speaker 3: and the other reporters who were covering it. But as
Speaker 3: it went on, and there was the Lewis Gumpenberger murder,
Speaker 3: which was a plot twist that no one could have
Speaker 3: foreseen right and just launched this story into an entirely
Speaker 3: different level of atmosphere. That's when I decided to call
Speaker 3: Joel to see about working on a book with him.
Speaker 3: It was beyond anything that I had ever encountered. And
Speaker 3: I've seen some incredible cases here in the Saint Louis area,
Speaker 3: and one of the books I wrote was about the
Speaker 3: Jean Benet Ramsey case, and you know, you think that
Speaker 3: that case is extraordinary, but this case, just the Alby
Speaker 3: alone and the involvement in Kumpenberger, made me think that
Speaker 3: there was a tremendous book here. When I got involved
Speaker 3: with Joel and I went in and saw all of
Speaker 3: the video recordings of the interviews with Russ and all
Speaker 3: of the police officers, and then the contemporary interviews with
Speaker 3: Pam Hup. Again, this took the story to a whole
Speaker 3: new level for me, and it just put together an
Speaker 3: example of missed opportunities for the justice system to operate correctly.
Speaker 3: There were so many mistakes made along the way in
Speaker 3: so many cases of what appeared to be incompetence that
Speaker 3: this was a story that just had to be told
Speaker 3: and it just complemented Joel's dedication in the case. And
Speaker 3: one of the episodes that he didn't mention was he
Speaker 3: was trying to get the judge to listen to him
Speaker 3: during one of the motions hearings, and the judge was
Speaker 3: just not understanding Joel's point, and he said, he said,
Speaker 3: I don't know what else to do. Am I going
Speaker 3: to have to strip down to my shorts and bang
Speaker 3: my head against the bench to get you to listen
Speaker 3: to me? Yeah, And for a lawyer to take that
Speaker 3: that kind of comment to the judge is extraordinary.
Speaker 2: And when Chroll told.
Speaker 3: Me about that, I thought, you know this, this case
Speaker 3: just keeps taking more turns than I ever could have
Speaker 3: imagined when I first got involved.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is an extraordinary case and and an extraordinary book.
Speaker 2: And congratulations to you both for this book, Bone Deep
Speaker 2: Untangling the Betsy Faria Murder Case. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Charles Bosworth Junior and Joel J. Schwartz for this interview.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Is there a website or a
Speaker 2: Facebook page that people might refer to about this case.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can go to JOELJ. Schwartz dot com. That's
Speaker 4: my author page, and I know Charles has a page
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 3: Charles, it's Charles Bosworth books dot com.
Speaker 2: That's great. Thank you, thank you so much. The book
Speaker 2: comes out January twenty seconds, so yesterday the book was
Speaker 2: officially released. Thank you so much. Gentlemen, Charles Bosworth Junior
Speaker 2: and Joel J. Schwartz. You have a great evening, and
Speaker 2: thank you so much for this interview.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you very much. Thank you.