Michael Merkel, a former sheriff’s deputy in Lincoln County, Missouri, was charged Tuesday with two counts of perjury for allegedly giving false testimony during Russ Faria’s 2013 murder trial. It’s the latest development in an ongoing case that has unfolded over more than a decade.
The charges stem from the December 27, 2011, murder of Betsy Faria. That evening, her husband, Russ Faria, returned home from “game night” with friends to find his wife stabbed to death on their living room floor. After a brief investigation, Russ was charged with Betsy’s murder.
In 2013, due in part to testimony from Pam Hupp, his wife’s friend, Faria was convicted by a jury and sentenced to life in prison. Faria’s conviction was later overturned.
At his retrial in November 2015, Faria’s defense attorney, Joel Schwartz, pointed to Hupp as the person with the motive and opportunity to kill Betsy, which he had not been allowed to do in the first trial. Hupp was not called by either side to testify.
Russ Faria was acquitted, but Leah Askey (now Chaney), the Lincoln County prosecutor at the time, who led the state’s case against Russ at both trials, continued to maintain that he was Betsy’s killer.
The case took an unexpected turn in August 2016, when Hupp shot and killed a man she claimed had accosted her in the driveway of her O’Fallon, Missouri home. She said he demanded “Russ’s money” and threatened to kill her.
Investigators determined that the man, Louis Gumpenberger, was not an intruder but was instead an unwitting participant in a scheme Hupp had devised to frame Russ Faria and portray him as a violent person.
According to investigators, Gumpenberger, who had a brain injury, was approached by Hupp, posing as a Dateline producer. Investigators believe Hupp lured Gumpenberger into her car with a bogus promise of money to re-enact a 911 call for an upcoming episode, something Dateline would never do.
A week after the incident, Hupp was charged with Gumpenberger’s murder. In a St. Charles County, Missouri courtroom in the summer of 2019, Hupp entered an Alford plea in the case allowing her to avoid a death-penalty trial. Without admitting guilt, Hupp acknowledged that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict her of killing Gumpenberger. She was sentenced to life in prison.
That case prompted then-newly-elected Lincoln County Prosecuting Attorney Mike Wood to reopen Betsy Faria’s murder case, and in 2021 he charged Hupp with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in Betsy’s death.
Russ Faria’s attorney and others had long believed Hupp was the killer. She was the last known person to have seen her alive and gave multiple statements to police disparaging Betsy’s husband, Russ.
Deputy Merkel was involved in the original murder investigation and was another key witness against Betsy’s husband in both the 2013 and 2015 trials.
According to the Lincoln County prosecutor’s office, Merkel knowingly testified falsely at Russ Faria’s first trial that photographs taken at the crime scene documenting a forensic test for the presence of blood in the Faria home showed “absolutely nothing.” Merkel also testified that the camera used to document that test malfunctioned. According to prosecutors, the camera did not malfunction. In fact, it captured 132 digital images, all of which contained complete metadata.
“Mike Merkel lied because the photos didn’t show what he said they were going to show. He said there was a cleanup of blood and there never was one,” said Wood.
“I’ve always held the opinion that this was an orchestrated and well-organized effort among all of law enforcement to manipulate and secrete evidence in order to secure a conviction against Russ Faria.” Wood added, “We do have more evidence that other members of law enforcement perjured themselves and we will be developing more charges in the next few months.”
In 2020, Sheriff Rick Harrell ran for office in part, he said, because of the mishandling of the Betsy Faria murder investigation. “My goal was to turn things around and rebuild public trust.”
Harrell worked with Mike Wood and the Lincoln County Prosecutor’s Office to conduct an internal investigation into possible police misconduct.
“It took a long time starting with the original investigation and the court transcripts and it had to be pulled apart and scrutinized and this is now the end result of it,” said Sheriff Harrell.
Harrell went on to say, “It was important that the truth be exposed so the community could understand how it happened, that it wasn’t by accident, that it took bad actors to take steps to see that an innocent man was sent to prison.”
For Russ Faria, the charges against Merkel were welcome news.
“It has been a long time coming and was particularly refreshing to get the news nearly on the anniversary of my release from prison, which was on June 15, 2015,” Faria told Dateline. “I’m looking forward to working with Mike Wood and his team to help make sure that Merkel and his counterparts can never do this to anyone again.”
Mike Merkel’s attorney, Joel Eisenstein, told Dateline, “Mr. Merkel is going to be completely exonerated.”
Eisenstein says the charges are a “political stunt” and “the filing of this raises more questions than answers.”
These aren’t the only charges Mike Merkel is facing related to the Faria case. In 2022, Merkel was charged with stalking and harassing the detective leading the misconduct investigation for the sheriff’s office. Merkel pleaded not guilty to the charges.
“We believe the motive was to prevent the internal investigation from moving forward,” Mike Wood told Dateline at the time of those charges and arrest.
Despite that alleged effort on Merkel’s part, the misconduct investigation continued.
“We had always suspected that there was corruption involved with the sheriff’s office at that time and this particular instance reaffirms our belief that these people were willing to do things that are criminal in nature in order to continue to cover wrongdoing that occurred in the past,” prosecutor Wood said at the time of the arrest.
Pam Hupp has repeatedly denied having any involvement in Betsy Faria’s murder. She is scheduled to go on trial in August 2026.
