The Thing About Pam · NBC News

5 - I'm a Little Cold

·35 min·2 clips
As detectives arrest Pam Hupp for murder and lay out a mountain of evidence against her, her only response is 'I'm a little cold.'
Pam Hupp remains the center of gravity. The episode opens on an August 2019 walk to her O'Fallon, Missouri home, three years after Russ was pulled into another chapter of the Pam Hupp saga. A 911 call is heard again. Pam says someone is breaking in, and the show uses that call to reopen the question of what happened inside the larger story. The narration keeps stepping back. It traces how investigators handled Pam's account, how the police connected Pam and Louis, and why the trail pointed toward Russ Faria before being narrowed away. Russ does not stay in the shadows. He goes to the O'Fallon police to set the record straight, confirms his alibi, hands over his cell phone, and provides a handwritten statement. The episode lingers on the note. That scrap, found in Louis' pocket, includes his last name, Faria, and becomes a problem Russ has to answer in front of the police. The test is plain. An investigator gives Russ a clean white notepad, reads the note found at the crime scene aloud, and asks him to copy it exactly, line by line. The show lets the routine feel unsettling. Words like Blonde, older and short, and instructions about a garage become evidence because the handwriting has to match or fail in front of the room. Russ is not asked to speculate. He is asked to reproduce the note that could tie him to the crime, while the police have already ruled him out. The contradictions keep piling up. The episode emphasizes how many small, awkward details are left behind for investigators to weigh, from the recorded call to the note to the copied writing sample. Nothing is rushed. The tension comes from watching a case stay unstable even when the facts are laid out in order.

As heard by us

A handwriting test turns the case into a fresh knot of doubt.

This chapter keeps circling Pam Hupp through police work that refuses to settle, even after Russ Faria is cleared. It follows the walk to Pam's home in O'Fallon, Missouri, then brings in the 911 call, the mixed signals, and the effort to see whether the note in Louis' pocket…

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Why you'd press play

For when a handwriting test and a 911 call turn into the episode's sharpest kind of suspense.

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