Pamela Marie Hupp ( Neumann; born October 10, 1958) is an American murderer serving a life sentence in Missouri's Chillicothe Correctional Center for the 2016 shooting of Louis Gumpenberger in her home in O'Fallon, Missouri. Hupp's claim that she had shot Gumpenberger (who had mental and physical disabilities) in self-defense after he pursued her into her home wielding a knife was not accepted by law enforcement. She ultimately entered an Alford plea before charges of first-degree murder and armed criminal action could go to trial.
Testimony from Hupp had played a key role in the 2013 conviction of Russ Faria for the murder of his wife, Betsy Faria, who was stabbed to death in her home in Troy, Missouri, in 2011. After a successful appeal and second trial in 2015, Faria was exonerated after his defense attorney was permitted to introduce evidence that was withheld from the original trial jury, some of which implicated Hupp the beneficiary of a life insurance policy held by Betsy as the killer. Law enforcement have theorized that Hupp tricked Gumpenberger into entering her home and then murdered him in a failed attempt to frame Faria. In July 2021, Hupp was charged with the first-degree murder of Betsy Faria.
Hupp has also been investigated in connection with the death of her mother, Shirley Neumann, who died in 2013 from injuries sustained in a fall from the balcony of her third-floor apartment in Fenton, Missouri. A tip-off to police accused Hupp of killing Neumann for financial gain. Neumann's death was initially ruled an accident, but in November 2017 the chief medical examiner for St. Louis County changed the cause of death to "undetermined", referencing the events in O'Fallon and Troy. An investigation into Neumann's death by the St. Louis County Police Department was inconclusive.
The killings of Betsy Faria and Louis Gumpenberger have been the subject of significant media coverage, including extensive reporting from the local Fox affiliate station KTVI in St. Louis and six Dateline NBC episodes airing from 2014 to 2022, as well as a Dateline NBC true crime podcast. A scripted television series featuring actress Renée Zellweger as Hupp, The Thing About Pam, premiered on NBC in March–April 2022.
Prior life
Pamela Marie Neumann ("Pam") was born on October 10, 1958. She grew up in Dellwood, Missouri (a suburb of St. Louis) where she attended Riverview Gardens High School. In her young adulthood she held several jobs in the life insurance industry; on two occasions, she was fired for forging signatures. In 2001, Hupp and her husband settled in O'Fallon, Missouri, where she worked as an administrator for State Farm and flipped houses on the side via a company called H2 Partners LLC. By 2010, Hupp had stopped working and was claiming disability benefits for back, leg, and neck pain.
In 2011, Hupp and Betsy Faria, a friend terminally ill with cancer, reportedly collected money for a family also impacted by cancer. St. Louis station KTVI discovered several years later that the family did not know about the collection; information was presented to Lincoln County authorities in 2014, but was not investigated further. There was no evidence to suggest Faria knew the fundraiser was questionable, with her friends recalling that she said she was excited to be helping a struggling family, even though she herself was dying. One of them, Kathleen Meyer, said, "This was going to be a legacy for her, to leave something like this behind in her memory."
Death of Betsy Faria
Elizabeth Kay Meyer Faria ("Betsy") was a coworker of Hupp at State Farm. She lived on Sumac Drive in Troy, Missouri, with her husband, Russell Scott Faria ("Russ"), and two daughters from a previous relationship. In 2010, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. In October 2011, Betsy learned the cancer had metastasized to her liver and was terminal.
On December 22, 2011, days before her death and unbeknownst to her family, Betsy changed the sole beneficiary of her $150,000 () State Farm life insurance policy from her husband to Hupp, who originally said that Betsy had asked her to give the money to her daughters when they were older. Hupp later said that Betsy had wanted her to keep the money for herself. Betsy's daughters launched a legal challenge against Hupp and her husband to attempt to claim the life insurance policy in 2014, which was dismissed in 2016; Russ launched his own legal challenge against State Farm in 2016. Hupp admitted that she had lied about what she intended to do with the life insurance proceeds. Prosecutors later speculated that Russ had been angered by Betsy's actions, giving him a motive to kill her. Russ remained the beneficiary on a separate $100,000 () policy.