The plot of "The Thing About Pam" follows the twists and turns of the deeply upsetting case of the murder of Betsy Faria, who was battling terminal cancer at the time of her death. Just after Christmas in 2011, Betsy's husband, Russ, returned home to find his wife had been stabbed multiple times. He was quickly arrested and charged with her murder. Hupp, Betsy's co-worker who had pointed the finger at Russ during the investigation, testified against him in court in November 2013, and he was convicted by a jury and sentenced to life in prison.
In 2015, Russ' conviction was overturned and he was found not guilty during his retrial. At the time, his attorney, Joel Schwartz, had pointed the finger at Hupp, noting that she stood the most to gain from Betsy's murder. Then, in 2016, Hupp was charged with the murder of Louis Gumpenberger. According to NBC News, investigators believed he was lured into Hupp's car under the pretense that she was a producer for "Dateline." She was eventually sentenced to life in prison for Gumpenberg's murder, which led prosecutors to reopen the Betsy Faria case.
According to court documents obtained by "Dateline" in the summer of 2021, when Hupp was charged with the first-degree murder of Betsy, the deceased had made Hupp the beneficiary of her $150,000 life insurance policy just four days prior to her death. Hupp never gave any of the money to Betsy's daughters as she had asked. The documents also revealed that Hupp was the last person to see Faria alive, having taken her home from her chemotherapy treatment that day.
Given that this is an ongoing case following the charges brought against Hupp in July 2021, it's unclear just how much of the story will be told in "The Thing About Pam," but based on what we already know, it's likely that the series is going to be a darkly chilling tale.
