Prosecutors vow to seek death penalty in Pamela Hupp murder trial
By Robert Patrick
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. CHARLES COUNTY • Prosecutors here said Thursday that they would seek the death penalty if Pamela Hupp is convicted of murdering a 33-year-old disabled man last year.
Hupp, 58, faces charges of first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the fatal shooting of Louis Gumpenberger on Aug. 16.
At a press conference Thursday afternoon, St. Charles County Prosecuting Attorney Tim Lohmar called the death penalty an “extraordinary remedy” but said the crime qualified as “one of the worst of the worst.”
It is also extraordinarily rare for a woman. The last woman to be executed in Missouri went to the gas chamber in 1953. Lohmar said he could not recall a death penalty case against anyone in St. Charles County in at least a decade.
There are 17 “aggravating circumstances” that can qualify someone for the death penalty, and at least one must be present. In the case of Hupp, prosecutors said that the murder was “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman in that it involved depravity of mind.”
Under questioning by reporters, Lohmar declined to go into detail about what made the killing merit the death penalty but did say that the victim had been chosen at random and cited “the wanton disregard for human life” in Gumpenberger’s “execution.”
In a court filing, prosecutors said the factors that supported Hupp’s “depravity of mind” were that Hupp’s choice of Gumpenberger as her victim “was random and without regard to the victim’s identity” and “thereby exhibited a callous disregard for the sanctity of all human life.”
Lohmar said Gumpenberger’s family supported the decision to pursue a death penalty.
Hupp’s attorney Nick Williams released a brief statement that said: “Another press conference. The prosecutor is doing his best to make it impossible to seat an impartial local jury.”
Among the mitigating factors that would have to be considered by a judge or jury would be Hupp’s lack of a criminal record and her mental state.
Lawyer Rick Sindel, who estimates that he’s handled more than 20 state and federal cases involving prosecutors seeking the death penalty, called the aggravating factor selected by St. Charles County prosecutors “kind of a stretch” for the circumstances of the Hupp case, but said that “you can probably shoehorn anything into it.”
He said that juries, who will ultimately make the decision about whether an aggravating factor applies, were often “most worried about … ‘Is this person dangerous to my family and my friends?’ ” But before deciding that, they also may hear about any other “bad acts” by Hupp.
Sindel said very death penalty sentence would be reviewed by the Missouri Supreme Court, where it would be compared with others that cited the same aggravating factor.
He also said Lohmar’s move could be a tactic to win a guilty plea from Hupp.
“Everything is a negotiating tactic in a death case,” Sindel said.
If convicted and sentenced to death, appeals would delay any execution for years. Mark Christeson was executed on Jan. 31, almost exactly 19 years after he killed a woman from south-central Missouri and her two children.
The last woman to be executed in Missouri was Bonnie Brown Heady, on Dec. 18, 1953, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections. But Heady’s death sentence was a federal one — for the kidnapping and killing of 6-year-old Bobby Greenlease Jr.
No women are currently facing a death sentence in Missouri. In recent decades, one woman who was once sentenced to death died, apparently of suicide, while her case was being retried, according to the department. Four women who were facing death were re-sentenced to life without parole. Two are still alive.
There is also no “death row” in Missouri. Inmates facing death are integrated in the general population. A woman sentenced to death would be held at the Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Vandalia, the department said.
A complicated plot
Police and prosecutors claim that Hupp shot Gumpenberger on Aug. 16 in her home in O’Fallon, Mo., as part of a complicated plot to divert attention from herself in a reinvestigation of the death in 2011 of Hupp’s friend Elizabeth “Betsy” Faria outside of Troy, in Lincoln County.
Prosecutors speculate that Hupp posed as a producer for NBC’s “Dateline” who was seeking someone to re-enact a 911 call. Two other people say Hupp approached them with some variation of that ruse six days before Gumpenberger was killed.
Prosecutors claim Hupp picked up Gumpenberger outside his apartment in St. Charles, drove him to her home and invited him inside. Hupp then called 911 and pretended to be the victim of a home invasion while shooting Gumpenberger, they say.
When police arrived, she claimed that Gumpenberger had jumped into her SUV as she arrived home and held a knife to her neck while talking about getting “Russ’ money.” A note in his pocket had kidnap instructions and again referenced getting “Russ’ money,” promising a $10,000 bounty.
“Russ,” investigators believe, is Russell Faria, who was convicted of his wife’s fatal stabbing before the conviction was overturned and he was acquitted in a retrial. The conviction was overturned in part because Faria’s attorneys weren’t allowed to present Hupp as an alternative suspect in Betsy Faria’s murder. Hupp was the last person, other than the murderer, to see Faria alive. She also became the beneficiary of a $150,000 life insurance policy days before the murder.
After Faria’s acquittal, federal investigators began to look into the case.
Investigators’ doubts
Police soon began to doubt Hupp’s story about the shooting. Gumpenberger was disabled from a car crash and would have been unable to move as Hupp claimed, friends and acquaintances told the Post-Dispatch.
The serial number on a $100 bill found in Hupp’s bedroom was sequential to four $100 bills found in Gumpenberger’s pocket, something O’Fallon police Detective Kevin Mountain described in a court document as “extremely uncommon for two people who reportedly do not know each other.”
Surveillance video shows Hupp’s interactions with one of the witnesses who described the “Dateline” ruse.
Investigators also believe that Hupp bought the knife, along with paper matching that used for the kidnapping instructions, eight days before the shooting, sources close to the case have told the Post-Dispatch.
The trial, subject to change, is set to begin Oct. 3. Lohmar said the death penalty issue could delay that date.
Hupp’s attorneys are seeking to have jurors brought in from outside St. Charles County, citing the extensive publicity surrounding Hupp and Betsy Faria. Prosecutors are opposed.
The Faria murder was the subject of a joint Post-Dispatch-KTVI Fox 2 investigation in 2014 and has also been featured multiple times on “Dateline.”
The death of Hupp’s mother, Shirley Neumann, 77, has also been mentioned in court and in the news. Neumann was found dead in 2013 after an apparent fall from the balcony of her apartment near Fenton. Police said that they were taking another look after Hupp was charged with Gumpenberger’s murder.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/c...70591a72a.html
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