The Murder of Betsy Faria: Part Five - CONCLUSION

The conviction landed in the courtroom with the kind of quiet that doesn’t feel quiet while you’re sitting inside it. Russ Faria had walked in still insisting he did not kill his wife. By the time the jury came back, the state’s version had beaten the room into shape. Husband. Sick wife. Knife. Blood. Rage. Motive. A marriage prosecutors said had been rotting underneath everything else. Joel Schwartz stood beside him when the verdict came down. Guilty. First-degree murder. Russ did not collapse. He did not shout over the judge. He stood there with the stunned, rigid look of a man hearing something impossible spoken in a room where impossible things still become official. The people who believed in him sat behind him with the same sickened stillness, looking at the jury box, then at Russ, then at the lawyers who had already started thinking about what came next.Pam Hupp walked out of that first trial as one of the state’s most important witnesses, and for a while, the public version of the story held. She had told investigators Betsy feared Russ. She had helped frame the emotional shape of the marriage. Prosecutors had used that shape to make the physical violence inside the house feel like it belonged to the husband. Russ went to prison with a life sentence attached to his name. Outside prison, the people who stood by him did not have the luxury of moving on. His friends from game night still had the same problem they had carried from the beginning: their memories of that night did not fit the story the state had told in court. The jury had heard enough to convict him, but the people who had sat with Russ that evening kept returning to the clock, the drive, the distance, and the narrow window prosecutors said held a murder...This is the FINAL Episode of Kinda Murdery's investigation of the Murder of Betsy Faria Sources: https://allthatsinteresting.com/pam-hupphttps://time.com/6156033/the-thing-about-pam-renee-zellweger-true-story/https://www.stlmag.com/longform/pam-hupp/https://www.stlmag.com/news/defense-attorney-joel-schwartz-charles-bosworth-new-book-bone-deep-true-crime-betsy-faria-pam-hupp/https://people.com/pam-hupp-charge-refiled-betsy-faria-stabbing-death-8384298https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/crime/pam-hupp-may-not-be-tried-for-betsy-farias-murder-until-2028/63-fc0923af-96e0-409a-84d3-bc585dba3ef3https://fox2now.com/news/fox-files/pam-hupp-trial-delayed-but-unexpected-encounter-outside-highlights-day/https://insurancenewsnet.com/oarticle/Russell-Farias-wife-was-stabbed-55-times-but-was-he-the-killer-a-471968https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/pamela-hupp-murder-betsy-faria-dateline-podcast-1196738/https://crimereads.com/the-bizarre-self-incriminating-confession-of-pam-hupp/https://rsflawfirm.com/Firm-News/Russell-Faria-Acquitted-Of-Wife-s-Murder/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/kinda-murdery-true-crime-murder-stories--5496890/support.Zevon Odelberg is a true crime podcast host and disability advocate.  Zevon has cerebral palsy and he wants Kinda Murdery to be welcoming community for people with disabilities and for people living with challenges of any kind.  Life can be hard, but being together makes it better.