Pam Hupp case back in court. DNA evidence could prove her innocence, attorneys say (2024)

ST. CHARLES — Pam Hupp’s attorneys were back in court on Thursday, for the first time in months, this time seeking DNA evidence to try to prove her innocence.

They asked a judge to tell investigators to share DNA test results collected at the scene of Betsy Faria’s death in 2011. The judge agreed.

Circuit Court Judge Chris McDonough gave the St. Charles County crime lab 30 days and the Utah-based Sorenson Forensics lab 90 days to provide the DNA analysis and related files to Hupp’s legal team.

Hupp is accused of stabbing Faria to death inside of her Lincoln County home to cash in on Faria’s $150,000 life insurance policy that named Hupp as beneficiary.

Faria named Hupp as the recipient of her life insurance policy days before her death, prosecutors said.

Defense attorney Steven Lewis says the DNA information could exonerate his client.

He said Hupp’s DNA was not found on the murder weapon, on a bloodied light switch within the home or inside a pair of socks that were used to “spread blood around the crime scene.”

“All of these things tend to negate the guilt of Miss Hupp,” Lewis said. He added that the DNA samples collected at the scene belong to an “unidentified male” who was identified as a person of interest by investigators.

Prosecutors denied that on Thursday.

Faria’s death garnered national attention including a series on NBC’s “Dateline” and a television series after her husband, Russell Faria, was convicted of the murder in 2013 and sentenced to life without parole. His lawyers argued that investigators ignored Hupp as a suspect.

Russell Faria was ultimately acquitted in a retrial and has settled lawsuits against officials connected with his prosecution.

The St. Charles County Crime Lab performed DNA analysis on several items seized at the crime scene in 2012, and the Sorenson labs ran additional DNA tests in 2021, according to court documents.

Wood also appointed a special prosecutor, Dulany Harms, to oversee Hupp’s prosecution. The case was initially transferred to Greene County in southwest Missouri but later brought to St. Charles County following a change of venue request, a common tactic to ensure a fair jury pool in highly publicized cases.

Harms said Thursday that Lewis and co-defense attorney Anthony Davidson were taking a “shotgun approach” with their records requests.

“They just keep sending out more and more requests without time for us to get a response,” Harms said in court. “We are still working on responding to their requests, and we will provide what we can.”

Lewis, Hupp’s defense attorney, said documents created by the crime analysts, draft results of the DNA tests, as well as any notations made at the scene by investigators, are as vital to the defense as crime scene photos.

Hupp, who was not present for Thursday’s hearing, is already serving life in prison for the 2016 fatal shooting of Louis Gumpenberger in her O’Fallon, Missouri, home. Hupp claimed Gumpenberger, a mentally and physically disabled man, was trying to kidnap her for the Faria insurance money.

That story quickly fell apart under scrutiny from investigators. Hupp entered an Alford plea in St. Charles County Circuit Court, acknowledging that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict her without admitting guilt.

Wood has previously said he will seek the death penalty in the case, which is tentatively set for a monthlong jury trial in 2026.