PAM’S SURE GOT A ‘THING’
NBC true-crime series focuses on a murder in the Midwest
The brutal murder of Betsy Faria made national headlines in 2011: at least 55 stab wounds and a kitchen knife left lodged in her neck. Her husband, Russ, who told 911 that it was suicide, was arrested almost immediately.
That’s usually how it goes. It’s the husband who did it. But in this story, which shook the small town of Troy, Mo., nothing went as it usually goes.
“The Thing About Pam,” a drama miniseries premiering Tuesday on NBC, opens hours before Russ (Glenn Fleshler) comes home from playing “Dungeons and Dragons” with friends to find his wife Betsy (Katy Mixon) bloodied on the living room floor.
But in this true-crime show, the focus is on Pam Hupp, played by Renée Zellweger, who is a nosy co-worker, maybe a friend, maybe a gay lover, maybe a stranger.
“Pam looks like the mom who drove me to soccer practice,” showrunner Jenny Klein, who grew up five hours away from Troy, told the Daily News. “Midwest towns have a sense of security and normalcy that lures you in. It makes it all the more unsettling when horrible things happen there.”
In Pam’s telling, she was Betsy’s savior, guiding her through chemotherapy treatments and comforting her when the breast cancer metastasized into her liver. She drove Betsy home on the fateful night, then woke up the next morning to the news. No one questioned why Betsy had changed her $150,000 life insurance at the last minute, leaving Pam as the sole beneficiary.
She left trails for the detectives straight to Russ’ door. She claimed that he was abusive, that he would hold a pillow over her face and tell her what it would be like to die.
On Nov. 21, 2013, Russ Faria was convicted of murder and, a month later, sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years without the possibility of parole.
“He had great belief that the truth would out,” Fleshler, the 53-year-old Queens native playing Russ, told The News. “He went through great suffering because of that trust in the justice system and in his community and the people around him and the powers that be and the police.”
Fleshler, who spent hours talking to Russ before production began, understands why the husband was arrested. The 911 call, blaming a brutal assault on suicide, was suspicious. He was the only one home. But the story, spun so carefully by Pam of an abusive relationship, never added up.
“The community was completely unsuspecting that something like this would happen in their town,” he said. “It’s easier, when you’re knocked off balance, to grab onto something you’re told is the truth to make sense of a crazy, tragic scenario.”
Leah Askey, the Lincoln County prosecutor who tried Russ, was voted out in 2018 and now works in private practice. “The Thing About Pam” is clear on how badly Askey messed up. From day one, she and the detectives homed in on Russ and never waivered, never considered another suspect, even as their narrative fell apart.
“We all have a real need to be right,” Judy Greer, who plays Askey, told The News. “That’s something that I struggle with in my own life: letting go of an idea that I’m clinging to too hard. Leah has found herself a woman in a man’s world, in a boy’s club, and she is fighting for that … appreciation to maintain that position that she is in.”
In November 2015, Russ was retried and his conviction overturned. Last summer, Pam was arrested and charged with the first-degree murder of Betsy.
Pam, with her rambling monologues and her blond bob cut, was a headline-maker. NBC News’ “Dateline” took a special interest, airing five separate episodes on the case. The attention she had seemingly always craved was finally hers.
“She’s so unfazed when she’s caught in a lie. She could just change her story in the next breath without batting an eye. It results in this series of contradictory statements that are so brash that it makes you actually try to convince yourself that you must have just heard her wrong,” Klein told The News.
“She puts on a good show. We’re sucked in not by what she says but how she says it, and by the emotional buttons she pushes while saying it.”