For years, Dave Kroupa was sufferer to a relentless and terrifying stalker — all the time believing it was a girl he had dated for 2 weeks and tried to let down gently when she advised they transfer in collectively.
Now, he’s opening up in regards to the harrowing ordeal he survived in Netflix‘s newest true crime providing, Lover, Stalker, Killer, which particulars the practically half decade of twisted stalking, arson and homicide that was the results of a love triangle gone terribly fallacious.
Kroupa, a single dad, had adopted his ex-partner to Nebraska in 2012 to co-parent and be near his younger youngsters, getting a job as a mechanic and wading into on-line courting in his spare time.
He started casually courting two ladies shortly after he arrived in Omaha: Cari Farver and Liz Golyar. He had informed each ladies he wasn’t searching for one thing severe, and thought that everybody was on the identical web page.
However, after simply two weeks of courting Farver, she went lacking the identical day he informed her by way of textual content message that he wasn’t fascinated with her suggestion that they transfer in collectively.
Shortly after, Kroupa and Golyar began to obtain an limitless stream of threatening textual content messages from Farver. And whereas the messages had been scary, there was a further stage of confusion and thriller: nobody may appear to seek out Farver. It was as if she had vanished from the true world and existed solely within the digital realm.
It didn’t take lengthy for the textual content threats to escalate into one thing extra harmful. Eventually, Kroupa’s ex-partner and her kids turned the goal of Farver’s messages and Golyar’s home burned to the bottom together with her pets inside.
But, nonetheless, no hint of Farver. She was nowhere to be discovered.
Read on to seek out out extra about this mind-boggling case and what occurred to Dave Kroupa, Liz Golyar and Cari Farver. (A warning — spoilers beneath!)
Dave Kroupa’s backstory
Dave Kroupa and his longtime associate, Amy Flora, met in 2000 whereas working collectively and went on to have two kids.
After 12 years, they started to develop aside and determined to separate. Their relationship was largely amicable and Kroupa adopted his household to Flora’s hometown of Omaha in 2012 to be near his youngsters.
Dave Kroupa and ex-partner Amy Flora are pictured with their kids.
Netflix Still
“I was starting over as a single person,” Kroupa stated in Lover, Stalker, Killer of his determination to strive on-line courting.
The reference to Liz Golyar
Shortly after he signed up on Plenty of Fish, Kroupa linked with Shanna (Liz) Golyar.
They went on a number of dates and Kroupa described her as “very smiley, very energetic, very full of life.”
The two shared pursuits in bikes and heavy steel they usually each had two kids from earlier relationships.
“It was exactly the right mix: I had my personal space, but there was someone around if I wanted to chat or hang out,” Kroupa stated. “It was exactly what I needed at that part of my life.”
Dave Kroupa seems in a manufacturing nonetheless from ‘Lover, Stalker, Killer.’.
Netflix
The two started courting semi-regularly.
Cari Farver enters the image
As Kroupa was establishing himself in Omaha, having fun with his work as a mechanic, spending time along with his youngsters and persevering with up to now Golyar, Farver got here into his life.
She confirmed up at his auto store someday, trying to have her automotive mounted, and Kroupa immediately felt a connection. When he noticed her profile on the courting web site a number of weeks later, he reached out they usually went on their first date.
The date was so profitable that Kroupa invited Farver again to his condo that night time. Golyar confirmed up later to retrieve a few of her stuff and Kroupa awkwardly defined to Farver the state of affairs. As she left, she handed by Golyar on her approach out of the constructing, exchanging a brief look of just a few seconds.
Cari Farver and Dave Kroupa shared a fast connection, nevertheless it solely lasted for 2 weeks.
The Cari Farver Memorial Scholarship / Facebook
It was a seconds-long encounter that might set the stage for the following 4 horrific years.
The harassment begins
Kroupa and Farver noticed a whole lot of one another over the following two weeks. Farver labored only a few blocks from Kroupa’s condo and spent the night time with him a number of occasions.
One morning, Kroupa bought up for work, giving Farver a kiss goodbye as he left. A couple of hours later, she texted him, asking if they need to transfer in collectively.
“I thought we talked about this,” he replied, recalling that they’d agreed to maintain issues informal.
The rejection triggered a nasty response from Farver, who despatched a barrage of hurtful and offended texts Kroupa’s approach.
“I’m going to destroy the things you care about,” one message learn. “Your life will be ruined for ruining mine.”
She stated she by no means wished to see him once more, and though Kroupa stated he was “a little sad” issues didn’t work out, he naively thought that was the top of the connection.
The starting of a nightmare
Soon, Kroupa and Golyar each started receiving threatening texts from Farver’s telephone.
Meanwhile, Farver’s mom, Nancy Raney, had no concept this was occurring. She was, nonetheless, involved that she hadn’t had a lot contact together with her daughter, save for a textual content from Farver that stated she was transferring to Kansas for a brand new job and could be leaving her son, Max, together with her mom.
Raney quickly filed a lacking report for her daughter, which introduced police into the fold.
Investigators, at first, attributed Farver’s disappearance to a “mental health crisis,” noting that she had beforehand been identified with bipolar dysfunction and despair.
Meanwhile, Kroupa and Golyar had rekindled their romance, partly out of concern, and had been leaning on one another as consolation. As they hung out collectively, they’d obtain harassing textual content messages and emails from Farver on the similar time — usually with particular particulars that led them to imagine they had been being watched.
Soon after, Golyar’s automotive was deeply keyed and she or he confirmed Kroupa a photograph of the injury to the automobile.
The threats escalate
It wasn’t lengthy earlier than Kroupa was receiving dozens of texts and lots of of emails per day. He acquired an e mail that included pictures from inside Golyar’s home, suggesting Farver was coming into his girlfriend’s residence when she wasn’t round. It reached a tipping level when he acquired a photograph from inside Golyar’s storage, the place the phrase “whore” had been spray-painted on the wall.
The promotional poster for Netflix documentary ‘Lover, Stalker, Killer.’.
Netflix
Kroupa lastly went to police in late November 2012.
“I felt like Liz was being harassed because I dated this woman who’s now making her life hell too,” Kroupa stated in Lover, Stalker, Killer. “I felt like she was the real victim in all of things and I wanted to try to protect her. We felt safe together and our relationship rekindled.”
Police attempt to find Farver
As Farver’s harassment marketing campaign escalated, police started digging into the case.
At this level, Farver had left her teen son in her mom’s care, refused to talk to anybody over the telephone, had missed her brother’s wedding ceremony and father’s funeral and wasn’t heard from exterior of the threats to Kroupa and Golyar.
Most peculiar, nonetheless, was that her financial institution accounts had been going untouched.
In January 2013, Kroupa reported to police that he had seen Farver’s automotive in a parking zone. Around this time she had additionally began to harass Kroupa’s ex Flora and their kids, and each Kroupa and Golyar reported extra vandalism to their houses and automobiles.
After Kroupa reported that considered one of her residence’s home windows had been smashed and clothes strewn round her bed room had been “stabbed and slashed with a knife, like murder-style,” detectives agreed that there was possible trigger to arrest Farver for stalking, however they nonetheless couldn’t discover her.
“I was on the road to having a mental breakdown,” Kroupa defined within the documentary. “The paranoia is your life. You’re thinking about the ‘what-ifs’ all the time. It was hard to know sometimes what was real and what I was imagining.”
Golyar exits the image
In August 2013, Golyar’s home burned to the bottom, taking with it her pets and all her possessions. She and her youngsters had been spared any harm, however Golyar left city and didn’t inform Kroupa the place she was heading.
Kroupa, feeling extra alone and desolate than ever, determined the most secure factor to do was transfer. He modified his quantity, too.
“I wanted to rebuild my life away from Cari, but in the back of my mind, I knew that she was still out there.”
While making an attempt to rebuild his life, as soon as once more, he bought again into on-line courting on a brand new platform. It didn’t take lengthy for Farver to seek out him on there, and with entry to his new telephone quantity, the stalking continued.
A giant break within the case
By 2015, Farver’s reign of terror was escalating, regardless of not having been seen for greater than two years.
In Iowa, two Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office investigators, Ryan Avis and Jim Doty, took an curiosity within the case and started to dig.
Officers discovered it odd that Farver’s residence remained intact and that her financial institution accounts had gone untouched for thus lengthy. They started to contemplate that maybe Farver wasn’t alive.
“It’s not normal for adults to just up and leave and literally spend no money. No one’s seen them and no one’s heard their voice…. it just didn’t make sense,” Avis informed ABC News. “I had come to the conclusion that I could not prove she was actually alive.”
A manufacturing nonetheless exhibits Polaroid pictures of Cari Farver’s untouched residence.
Netflix
Turning to the assistance of an IT specialist, who painstakingly combed by IP addresses and metadata of the 1000’s of messages ever despatched to Kroupa and Flora, they had been capable of observe the majority of the messages to a house in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
The residence’s proprietor, Todd Butterbaugh, informed investigators that his on-again-off-again girlfriend, Liz Golyar, had moved in with him after her home burned down.
A pivot within the investigation
After the stunning revelation, Avis and Doty took what they’d discovered to Kroupa. They informed him that Golyar had been impersonating Farver for years, going as far as to burn down her personal home in an try to destroy Kroupa’s life.
“It didn’t take me long, checking the boxes in my head, to figure out that Cari was probably dead,” Kroupa stated within the documentary. “And that’s tough to swallow. That’s beyond tough.”
The story unravels
As the police had been starting to make actual strides of their investigation, however earlier than they’d sufficient proof to arrest Golyar, Kroupa returned residence one night time to discover a gun he had acquired to maintain his household protected had been stolen from the highest shelf of his closet.
Golyar, in the meantime, was assembly with the investigators, claiming she was being harassed by Kroupa’s ex Flora. While making an attempt to file the grievance, she described Kroupa’s gun intimately and blamed Flora for stealing it.
A day later, Golyar referred to as 911 to report that she had been shot within the leg at a park in Iowa.
“I found it highly suspicious that the day before she felt the need to tell me that Dave Kroupa’s gun had been stolen … and less than 24 hours later, she is shot,” Avis informed ABC News. “It was pretty quickly determined that most likely Liz Golyar had shot herself.”
Police, who had obtained permission from Golyar to go looking her telephone, discovered a photograph of Farver’s automotive, which was taken on Christmas Eve 2012. Searching her automotive, as soon as once more, they discovered considered one of Golyar’s fingerprints on a container of mints that had been within the automotive’s centre console. A tracker they’d put in on Golyar’s automotive confirmed that she had been circling Flora’s residence daily.
A manufacturing nonetheless photos exhibits a recreation of investigators inspecting Cari Farver’s automotive.
Netflix
Two weeks after the capturing, Avis and Doty introduced Golyar in for extra questioning, however modified techniques. They determined they’d faux to associate with Golyar’s story of the occasions in query, within the hope it could result in extra particulars about Farver’s disappearance.
When Golyar pressed the police to do extra to arrest Flora for the capturing, the officers informed her they wanted extra proof that Flora was the one behind the harassment and capturing.
Golyar, believing the cops had been on her aspect, fell for it. She started forwarding emails to the detectives that had been purportedly from Flora and contained express particulars about Farver’s homicide. The emails described Farver being stabbed to demise, burned and tossed in a dumpster.
Turning as soon as once more to Farver’s automotive, police discovered a big pool of dried blood beneath the material of the passenger’s seat.
The blood, mixed with Golyar’s fingerprint, was the proof they wanted. Golyar was arrested and charged with first-degree homicide.
One final piece of proof
Because Farver’s physique had by no means been situated, investigators knew the trial could be a toss-up. Without human stays or a homicide weapon, the decision may go both approach.
In a last-ditch effort to dig up extra filth on Golyar, they turned as soon as once more to Kroupa, asking him if there have been any outdated electronics he had that may include any sort of proof.
Kroupa managed to fish an outdated pill out of his storage locker and turned it over. On a micro SD card discovered within the pill had been 11,000 beforehand deleted pictures, which included selfies Golyar had taken across the time Farver went lacking.
Most damning, nonetheless, was a photograph of a foot of a lifeless physique. A tattoo on the foot matched the Chinese character that Farver had.
The case goes to trial
“We were all worried there was every possibility (Golyar) could walk out of there,” prosecutor Brenda Beadle shared within the documentary.
However, regardless of the dearth of a homicide weapon or physique, the jury was satisfied by the detectives’ digital and blood proof and located Golyar responsible of first-degree homicide.
On Dec. 16, 2016, she was sentenced to life in jail with no probability of parole. The decide additionally handed her a further sentence of 18 to twenty years for making an attempt to border Farver for burning down her residence.
Liz Golyar poses for her mugshot.
Nebraska Correctional Center for Women
She now resides within the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women.
Justice for Farver — and regrets for Kroupa
“Everyone’s perception of (Cari) has been completely distorted by the fact that somebody hijacked her identity,” director Sam Hobkinson says. “One of the things that I hope the film does is somehow cement her true identity.”
Kroupa is now making an attempt to maintain a low profile — he doesn’t give out his e mail tackle or telephone quantity a lot anymore — and says he struggles with the guilt of Farver’s demise, acknowledging that in the event that they hadn’t met she would most likely nonetheless be alive.
“I don’t feel blameless in all of this. A lot of bad things happened to good people, all because of a series of events that I’m at the centre of,” he defined within the documentary. “The woman that I dated had goals, and was smiley and wanted to do something. She was just trying to make her way in this world.”
“I’m very sorry for what happened,” he stated. “If I hadn’t met Cari, she wouldn’t have met Liz and this all wouldn’t have happened. If I’d have known the choice was this craziness or tell Cari I’m not interested, I would’ve told Cari I’m not interested. But you don’t get that choice.”
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‘Lover, Stalker, Killer’ is obtainable for streaming on Netflix Canada.