A Deadly Obsession: The story of Dave Kroupa, Cari Farver, and Liz Golyar
In 2012, Dave Kroupa was working at an auto repair shop in Omaha, Nebraska. He was casually dating a woman named Liz Golyar with whom he meant on a dating app. Like Kroupa, Golyar had children and said that she was okay with his interest in seeing other people. Kroupa first met Cari Farver when when she dropped off her Ford Explorer for maintenance and the connection was immediate.
Farver was a single mother looking for a casual relationship that would fit into her busy life. When she met Kroupa, an unattached bachelor with two kids of his own, things seemed to be going well.
It was on their first date that Farver informed Kroupa that like him, she wasn't looking for anything serious. Later that evening, while leaving Kroupa's apartment, Farver ran into Golyar in the hallway. The two barely acknowledged each other, but that moment would lead to something far more sinister.
In November 2012, Farver was staying with Kroupa because she was in the midst of a work project and he lived close to her office. On the morning of November 13th, Kroupa gave Farver a kiss goodbye and they went about their days.
A few hours after leaving his apartment, Farver texted Kroupa saying she wanted to move in with him, something neither of them had talked about previously. When he politely declined, the texts grew angry and continued to escalate.
Farver's mother, Nancy Raney, as well as her 15-year-old son, Max would also receive bizarre texts from Farver. In them, she claimed to have found a job in Kansas and would make plans to pick up Max, but she never showed up.
Around this time, Kroupa began seeing Golyar again, who was also on the receiving end of rage-filled texts. Occasionally, Kroupa would receive a text detailing what he was doing at that exact moment.
On November 23, 2012 - 10 days after Kroupa last saw Farver - Golyar gets home and finds spray-paint on the inside of her garage. Someone had broken in and painted "Whore from Dave" and also stolen some checks. Golyar freaked out and called the police and filed a police report.
Months pass and Farver missed her son's 15th birthday, her own birthday, thanksgiving, stepbrother's wedding, and her father's funeral. This is when Farver's mother knew that something was wrong and she filed a missing person report.
In January of 2013, Dave got home from work and saw Farver's vehicle in the parking lot of his townhouse. He snapped a picture of the license plate and sent it to the cops who came and pick up the vehicle. They looked it over but the only thing they really find is a mint container in the front seat console. There were two fingerprints on the container, only one was useable but it didn't come back as a match to anyone in the system (and it didn't match Farver either).
More months pass and Farver's mom got a call from a man calling himself Dave saying that Farver was at a homeless shelter, wanting her mom to come and pick her up. Nancy and the cops go to the homeless shelter but Farver has never been there. They also check in with Kroupa who said he never made the call.
On May 18, 2013, Cari puts up a post on her Facebook page. She says she's sick and tired of all the questions that she's getting. She's done proving herself - she left of her own free will and she is not interested in coming home.
While all of this is happening, Kroupa continued using Plenty of Fish. However, he is impressed with how Golyar has stuck through this all with him so they start getting closer than ever - in fact they get so close that Kroupa gives Golyar a day of the week...Wednesday.
Despite all the time that has gone by, the messages haven't stopped coming in to Kroupa and Golyar - sometimes they'll even get messages when they're in the same room. At one point, Kroupa got a picture message of a woman tied up in the trunk of a car. He couldn't really tell who it was, but the message that came with the picture said that Kroupa needed to call Golyar and leave a message that he was breaking up with her and hates her or else Golyar would die in the trunk. Kroupa doesn't respond, instead, he texts Golyar to make sure that she was okay and she was.
In August of 2013, Golyar came home to find her house on fire. Unfortunately, her 2 dogs, cat and snake all died. The firefighter at the scene said it was obviously an intentionally set fire, and Golyar mentions the woman who's been stalking her - her boyfriend's ex-hookup of 2 weeks.
Nancy Raney had told police that her daughter was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in her 20s, but after working the case, they didn't believe this had anything to do with her disappearance. However, ABC News reported that Golyar quickly became a person of interest after they realized she was only involved in Farver's life after she disappeared.
Before long, a digital forensics administrator at the Pottawattamie County Sheriff's Office was brought in to help. When Kroupa and Golyar had the "content of their phones downloaded in 2013 for the initial group of investigators," that's when authorities found something. A digital trail that is too wild to believe led them back to Golyar who, according to the digital forensics investigator, spent 40 to 50 hours a week impersonating Farver.
The detectives then concocted a story they fed to Golyar, who had been claiming that Amy Flora (Kroupa's ex and the mother of his children) was involved in Farver's disappearance. Golyar would come into the police station under the guise of answering questions that could pin the case on Flora. The police would tell her all things they needed to know in order to make an arrest.
Not long after those interviews, Golyar would return to the police station with emails she had received from "Flora," laying out all the information the cops needed. In those emails, the murder of Farver was described in gruesome detail. However, it wasn't Flora who sent the emails, but Golyar herself. Realizing that only the killer could know the kinds of details that Golyar did, police arrested her and charged her with murder on December 22, 2016. The judge gave her another 15-20 years for setting fire to her own home a year after the murder.
