Hupp's claim that she had shot Gumpenberger (who had mental and physical disabilities) in self-defense after he pursued her into her home wielding a knife was not accepted by law enforcement.

Hupp has also been investigated in connection with the death of her mother, Shirley Neumann, who died in 2013 from injuries sustained in a fall from the balcony of her third-floor apartment in Fenton, Missouri.

In 2001, Hupp and her husband settled in O'Fallon, Missouri, where she worked as an administrator for State Farm and flipped houses on the side via a company called H2 Partners LLC.

There was no evidence to suggest Faria knew the fundraiser was questionable, with her friends recalling that she said she was excited to be helping a struggling family, even though she herself was dying.

Prosecuting attorney Leah Askey countered that Russ' friends were providing a false alibi and had conspired with him to perpetrate the murder – including holding onto his cellphone and posing as him to buy food at Arby's to falsify his whereabouts – as an "ultimate role play".

[18] The trial judge, Christina Mennemeyer, refused to allow Schwartz to present evidence implicating Hupp as an alternative suspect,[15] including cellphone records showing she had been in the vicinity of the Faria house for up to thirty minutes after the time she claimed to have dropped Betsy off[14] or that Betsy had made Hupp the sole beneficiary of the life insurance policy shortly before her death.

[24] In a secret hearing during the trial, Hupp claimed that she had put $100,000 of the insurance money in a trust for Betsy's daughters; in a July 2014 civil deposition, she admitted she had not done so.

[5] Although a central premise of the prosecution's case was that his four friends had been complicit in the murder, no charges were ever brought against them;[15] they were not aware they had been implicated by Askey in her closing arguments until the media informed them.

[23][32] In August 2015, Robin Taylor of Le Mars, Iowa was charged with misdemeanor harassment of Hupp by phoning her and accusing her of having killed Betsy.

[36] CSI agent Amy Buettner, who had examined the crime scene, testified that she believed the slippers found in Russ's closet had not been bloodied by stepping in blood.

[14] Hupp also told police that she had "remembered" seeing Russ and another man in a car parked in a side street outside the Faria house as she drove Betsy home.

[46] In August 2018, both Mennemeyer and Askey (now Leah Wommack Chaney) were voted out of office, a result attributed to the mishandling of the murder case and trial.

"[48] In a 2021 interview, Leah Wommack Chaney (née Askey) noted that she had believed Hupp would have been physically incapable of inflicting the wounds found on Betsy's body.

[45] In a July 2021 interview, Betsy's daughters stated that when they had asked about the possibility of Hupp having been the murderer, they were told by former Lincoln County investigators "she physically could not do that".

[30] In September 2019, federal district judge John Andrew Ross dismissed Russ' suit against Leah Wommack Chaney on the basis of prosecutorial immunity.

[17][49][50] In January 2018, attorneys acting for Russ deposed Hupp as part of his lawsuit against Lincoln County; she declined to answer 92 questions relating to the killing of his wife.

[52][53] In June 2019, after Hupp entered an Alford plea to the murder of Louis Gumpenberger, Lincoln County prosecuting attorney Mike Wood announced that he would be reopening the Betsy Faria homicide investigation.

[72] In October 2022, the venue of Hupp's trial was moved to Greene County, Missouri to ensure a fair jury pool given the publicity around the case, being transferred to the 31st Judicial Circuit.

[74][75][76] In February 2024, Mike Wood filed a motion with the Lincoln County Circuit Court declaring the state's intention to pursue the death penalty due to "the statutory aggravating circumstance that the murder was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible, or inhumane in that it involved depravity of the mind".

Following a police investigation, assistant medical examiner Raj Nanduri concluded that Neumann had died from blunt trauma to the chest resulting from an accidental fall.

[2] The next month the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office received an anonymous note suggesting Hupp, the last person known to have seen Neumann alive, had murdered her mother for the life insurance.

Earlier that year, prior to her mother's death, Hupp had been videotaped saying, "My mom's worth half a million that I get when she dies [...] if I really wanted money, there was an easier way than trying to combat somebody that's physically stronger than me".

"[16][85] In November 2017, Mary Case, the chief medical examiner for St. Louis County, changed the manner of Neumann's death from "accidental" to "undetermined".

[2][89] Shortly after 12:00 noon on August 16, 2016, Louis Gumpenberger died after Hupp shot him five times in the hallway of her home at 1260 Little Brave Drive in O'Fallon.

[94] Hupp claimed Gumpenberger had jumped out of a car which was driven by another person, brandished a knife while she sat in her SUV in her garage, and demanded she drive to a bank to retrieve "Russ' money".

[88] Upon being arrested, she asked to visit a bathroom, where she used a ballpoint pen to stab her neck and wrists in an apparent suicide attempt;[2] St. Charles County assistant prosecutor Phil Groenweghe described the act as "consciousness of guilt".

[120][121][122] Burch's attorney, Gary K. Burger, subsequently filed to garnish Hupp's prison trust account, into which her $1,200 (equivalent to $1,413 in 2023) COVID-19 CARES Act relief stimulus was paid.

[124] In June 2022, Burger's firm secured an initial payment of $783 (equivalent to $815 in 2023) garnished from money Hupp had earned working as a tutor in the Chillicothe Correctional Center.

[136] In July 2019, filmmaker Daniel Blake Smith announced that he was writing and producing Proof, a feature film based on the stories of Russ and his defense attorney Joel Schwartz.

Renée Zellweger, who had become interested in the case after becoming "obsessed" with the Dateline NBC podcast, served as executive producer for the series and also portrayed Hupp using facial prosthetics and a fatsuit.