3 - Manna from Heaven

·23 min·2 clips

Pam Hupp revoked the trust fund for Betsy's daughters right after Russ's murder conviction, contradicting her earlier promises.

The episode opens with a transcript excerpt from the July 21, 2014 deposition of Pamela Hupp in the civil case brought by Betsy Faria's daughters Leah and Mariah Day, seeking the insurance money their mother had supposedly designated for them through Pam as an intermediary. Pam sits across from the daughters' lawyers in a conference room and immediately begins denying things she said clearly on police recordings. She claims not to recall telling detectives that Betsy entrusted the money for her children, despite audiotapes showing exactly that statement being made. The deposition catches Pam in a series of contradictions: she cannot remember whether she told police she was financially set and did not need the money, a statement she had apparently made to establish she was not a financial motive. She does not recall sacred promises she described in vivid detail to police. Lawyers note that she made these statements only months earlier but cannot recall them under oath. The episode contextualizes this deposition in the broader arc of the case: Russ Faria had been convicted of Betsy's murder in December 2013 despite multiple witnesses placing him at a game night far from the house during the time of the killing. His defense attorney Joel Schwartz had argued from the start that the alibi was solid and that Betsy's financial situation, particularly the insurance payout to Pam, pointed to another perpetrator. The episode traces how the case against Russ was built on forensic testimony about the bloodstain pattern at the scene and on the jury's apparent distrust of Russ's personality rather than on direct evidence of his guilt. The deposition, combined with other developments, begins to build pressure on the original investigation and prosecution.

As heard by us

A deposition turns the money question into something harder to trust.

Pam Hupp's story is built around a deposition that reads less like routine testimony than a pressure test. In a small St. Charles County room, under fluorescent lights, she is asked again about what she told detectives, and the same fault line keeps opening: what she said about…

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Why you'd press play

Pam Hupp gets cornered by the record, not theatrics, in a deposition packed with questions.

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