A Missouri woman will spend the rest of her life in prison after admitting that prosecutors had evidence to convict her of killing a mentally disabled man in what authorities believe was part of a complicated plot to divert attention from another homicide case.
Pamela Hupp, 60, of O'Fallon, entered an Alford plea Wednesday that calls for life in prison without the possibility of parole at sentencing in August. Hupp could have faced the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder in the August 2016 death of 33-year-old Louis Gumpenberger.
St. Charles County prosecutor Tim Lohmar said after the hearing that the evidence was overwhelming and he believes Hupp "deserves to be put to death." But he cited several factors in the plea deal, including the fact that the victim's family preferred that she spend life in prison. He also cited the expected $300,000 cost of a trial.
St. Charles County authorities believe Hupp killed Gumpenberger to distract from the re-investigation of the stabbing death of Betsy Faria in 2011 in neighboring Lincoln County.
Russ Faria was convicted of killing his wife in 2013, but the conviction was overturned and he was acquitted in a 2015 retrial. Russ Faria blamed Hupp, saying she had a motive after becoming the beneficiary of a $150,000 life insurance policy shortly before Betsy Faria was killed.
Lincoln County prosecutor Michael Wood told The Associated Press that he wants to re-examine the Faria investigation now that Hupp's case is resolved in St. Charles County.
Wood said he hasn't determined if Hupp is a suspect in Betsy Faria's death, but "people in the community believe she's the leading suspect."
A phone message left with Hupp's attorney was not returned.
Gumpenberger, who was mentally and physically impaired from a 2005 car wreck, was killed on Aug. 16, 2016, the victim of a bizarre plot staged by Hupp to make it look like she was a kidnapping victim acting in self-defense, police said.
Hupp originally told police that she got out of her car on her driveway and Gumpenberger, whom she described as a stranger, pulled a knife and demanded she take him to a bank "to get Russ's money," an apparent reference to the insurance money she collected from Betsy Faria's death.
Hupp told authorities she knocked the knife out of Gumpenberger's hand and ran into her house on a quiet, middle class street. She said she got a gun and fatally shot Gumpenberger, who had followed her inside.
The story quickly unraveled. Lohmar said that days before the killing, a woman reported that someone matching Hupp's description in an SUV approached her claiming to be a producer for the TV show "Dateline" and promised to pay $1,000 if she would record a scripted sound bite about 911 calls. The woman at first agreed but backed out when the woman failed to show any credentials.
Lohmar said a surveillance camera showed the SUV's license plate, which matched Hupp's. He has said authorities believed Hupp was "vetting a potential victim."
Data from Hupp's cellphone indicated that Gumpenberger was not a stranger as Hupp had claimed — GPS showed she was at his apartment, 13 miles (20.92 kilometers) from her home, less than an hour before the fatal confrontation.
Police found $900 in plastic bags in Gumpenberger's pocket after his death, and a note that appeared to be instructions to kidnap Hupp and collect Faria's money. Authorities said the money and note were planted.
Lohmar said that after Hupp was arrested in Gumpenberger's death she stabbed herself with a ball point pen multiple times in the neck and arms in the O'Fallon police station, requiring hospitalization.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A big, new package of U.S. military aid will help Ukraine avoid defeat in its war with Russia. Winning will still be a long slog.
The arms and ammunition in the $61 billion military aid package should enable Ukraine to slow the Russian army's bloody advances and block its strikes on troops and civilians. And it will buy Ukraine time — for long-term planning about how to take back the fifth of the country now under Russian control.
“Ultimately it offers Ukraine the prospect of staying in the war this year,” said Michael Clarke, visiting professor in war studies at King’s College London. “Sometimes in warfare you’ve just got to stay in it. You’ve just got to avoid being rolled over.”
The U.S. House of Representatives approved the package on Saturday after months of delays by some Republicans wary of U.S. involvement overseas. It was passed by the Senate on Tuesday, and President Joe Biden said he would sign it Wednesday.
The difference could be felt within days on the front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, where Russia’s much larger army has been slowly taking territory against massively outgunned Ukrainian forces.
The aid approval means Ukraine may be able to release artillery ammunition from dwindling stocks that it has been rationing. More equipment will come soon from American stocks in Poland and Germany, and later from the U.S.
The first shipments are expected to arrive by the beginning of next week, said Davyd Arakhamia, a lawmaker with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party.
But opposition lawmaker Vadym Ivchenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament’s National Security, Defense and Intelligence Committee, said logistical challenges and bureaucracy could delay shipments to Ukraine by two to three months, and it would be even longer before they reach the front line.
While details of the shipments are classified, Ukraine’s most urgent needs are artillery shells to stop Russian troops from advancing, and anti-aircraft missiles to protect people and infrastructure from missiles, drones and bombs.
What’s coming first is not always what front-line commanders need most, said Arakhamia, the Ukrainian lawmaker. He said that even a military giant like the U.S. does not have stockpiles of everything.
“The logic behind this first package was, you (the U.S.) finds our top priorities and then you see what you have in the warehouses,” Arakhamia said. “And sometimes they do not match.”
Hope for future breakthroughs for Ukraine still hangs on more timely deliveries of Western aid, lawmakers acknowledge.
Many experts believe that both Ukraine and Russia are exhausted by two years of war and won’t be able to mount a major offensive — one capable of making big strategic gains — until next year.
Still, Russia is pushing forward at several points along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front, using tanks, wave after wave of infantry troops and satellite-guided gliding bombs to pummel Ukrainian forces. Russia is also hitting power plants and pounding Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, which is only about 30 kilometers (some 20 miles) from the Russian border.
Ivchenko said the goal for Ukraine’s forces now is to “hold the line” until the bulk of new supplies arrive by mid-summer. Then, they can focus on trying to recapture territory recently lost in the Donetsk region.
“And probably ... at the end of summer we’ll see some movement, offensive movement of the Ukrainian armed forces,” he said.
Some military experts doubt Ukraine has the resources to mount even small offensives very soon.
The U.S. funding “can probably only help stabilize the Ukrainian position for this year and begin preparations for operations in 2025,” said Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank.
In the best-case scenario for Ukraine, the American aid will give commanders time to reorganize and train its army — applying lessons learned from its failed summer 2023 offensive. It may also galvanize Ukraine’s allies in Europe to increase aid.
“So this just wasn’t about Ukraine and the United States, this really affected our entire 51-country coalition,” said U.S. Congressman Bill Keating, a Democrat who visited Kyiv on Monday as part of a four-member congressional delegation.
Zelenskyy insists Ukraine's war aim is to recapture all its territory from Russia — including Crimea, seized illegally in 2014. Even if the war ultimately ends through negotiation, as many experts believe, Ukraine wants to do that from as strong a position as possible.
Whatever happens on the battlefield, Ukraine still faces variables beyond its control.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump, who seeks to retake the White House in the November election, has said he would end the war within days of taking office. And the 27-nation Europe Union includes leaders like Hungarian President Viktor Orbán and Slovakian Prime Minister Richard Fico, who have opposed arming Ukraine.
Ukraine’s allies have held back from supplying some arms out of concern about escalation or depleting their own stocks. Ukraine says that to win the war it needs longer-range missiles it could use for potentially game-changing operations such as cutting off occupied Crimea, where's Russia's Black Sea fleet is based.
It wants Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMs, from the U.S. and Taurus cruise missiles from Germany. Both governments have resisted calls to send them because they are capable of striking targets deep within Russian territory.
The new bill authorizes the president to send Ukraine ATACMS “as soon as practicable.” It's unclear what that will mean in practice.
Sometimes, promised weapons have arrived late, or not at all. Zelenskyy recently pointed out that Ukraine is still waiting for the F-16 fighter jets it was promised a year ago.
Meanwhile, Russia is using its advantage in troops and weapons to push back Ukrainian forces, perhaps seeking to make maximum gains before Ukraine's new supplies arrive.
For weeks it has pummeled the small eastern city of Chasiv Yar, at the cost of 900 soldiers killed and wounded a day, according to the U.K. Ministry of Defense.
Capturing the strategically important hill town would allow them to move toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, key cities Ukraine controls in the eastern region of Donetsk. It would be a significant win for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who Western officials say is bent on toppling Ukraine’s pro-Western government.
Russian pressure was aimed not just at gaining territory, but on undermining Zelenskyy and bolstering critics who say his war plan is failing, said Clarke of King's College London.
The U.S. aid package decreases the likelihood of a political crisis in Ukraine, and U.S. Speaker Mike Johnson deserves credit for pushing it through Congress, he said.
"He held history in his hands,” Clarke said.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
From left, U.S. representatives Nathaniel Moran, R-Tx, Tom Kean Jr, R-NJ, Bill Keating, D-Mass, and Madeleine Deane, D-Pa, talk to journalists during a joint news conference outside Saint Michael cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. A newly approved package of $61 billion in U.S. aid may prevent Ukraine from losing its war against Russia. But winning it will be a long slog. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
A volunteer makes a camouflage net at a facility producing material for Ukrainian soldiers in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. A newly approved package of $61 billion in U.S. aid may prevent Ukraine from losing its war against Russia. But winning it will be a long slog. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Davyd Arakhamia, a lawmaker with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Servant of the People party, talks during an interview with Associated Press in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
A woman rallies to raise awareness on the fate of Ukrainian prisoners of war in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, April 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Ribbons with the colors of the European Union and Ukraine are attached to a tree next to memorial wall of Ukrainian soldiers killed during the war in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
The body of a woman killed by Russian bombardment in Chernihiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Soldiers carry the coffins of two Ukrainian army sergeants during their funeral in Lviv, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
