In 2016, a 31-year-old man, Louis Gumpenberger, was found dead in Pam Hupp’s house. Per the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, she shot him in what she claimed was an act of self-defense. Notably, The Sun reported that Gumpenberger used a wheelchair.
It was eventually revealed that Hupp had posed as a producer for the television series “Dateline,” luring Gumpenberger into her car by saying she needed help in filming a reenactment. Upon arriving at her home, she shot Gumpenberger. ”The evidence seems to indicate she hatched a plot to find an innocent victim and murder this innocent victim in an apparent effort to frame someone else,” St. Charles County Prosecuting Attorney Tim Lohmar said.
Hupp’s arrest reopened the Betsy Faria case. It was also revealed that Hupp’s mother had fallen to her death from a balcony in 2013, and investigators never interviewed her at the time of the incident even though she may have been the last person to see her mother alive. Hupp initially pled not guilty in the murder of Gumpenberger, but she dropped it and entered an Alford Plea after prosecutors threatened to pursue the death penalty. According to Cornell Law School, an Alford Plea is when a defendant accepts the punishment of a guilty verdict without attesting to committing the crime.
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