Pamela Hupp's defense attorneys Nick Williams, left, and Brad Kessler arrive at the St. Charles County Courthouse on Monday, Aug. 12, 2019. Photo by J.B. Forbes, jforbes@post-dispatch.com
Pamela Hupp admitted in 2019 that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict her of fatally shooting a mentally disabled man in 2016 in what they say was her attempt to divert a reinvestigation of a 2011 murder. She was sentenced in August to life in prison. Photo by Christian Gooden, cgooden@post-dispatch.com
ST. CHARLES COUNTY — A judge on Friday rejected Pamela Hupp's appeal of her plea to a murder charge that resulted in a life sentence in prison.
St. Charles Prosecuting Attorney Tim Lohmar said Circuit Judge Jon A. Cunningham rejected Hupp's appeal because it was filed too late. Lohmar said Hupp tried to claim that the delay was due to the coronavirus pandemic, but prosecutors asserted that claim was false.
Hupp's handwritten appeal, filed in September, says she was not given enough time to consider the plea, and was not allowed to talk to her husband about it. She also complained that she was not released on bond and spent the three years in jail until her plea and sentencing on suicide watch.
Hupp stabbed herself with a pen after being arrested for the Aug. 16, 2016, fatal shooting of Louis Gumpenberger in her O’Fallon, Missouri, home. Hupp told police after the shooting that the mentally and physically disabled man has been trying to kidnap her. Prosecutors said it was an elaborate and amateurish plot to divert attention from herself in the reinvestigation of the 2011 murder of Hupp's friend, Elizabeth "Betsy" Faria.
Hupp was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Aug. 12, 2019, in Gumpenberger's death.