A Tangled Web

by Leslie Rule

  Her lie backfired, and she slid a sheet of paper to Cheyann with a note on it. “It said maybe she had had sex with him more than a couple of times,” Cheyann remembers. Shanna might have had the best defense attorney in Omaha working for her, but she wasn’t helping herself by misleading him. JMD was unable to discredit Garret. If anything, the questions he asked Garret made it appear that Shanna had lied to her own attorney—and of course, she had!

  Garret’s testimony included a tidbit prosecutors knew would inspire a disturbing image. Investigators believed that Cari’s remains had been burned, and not only had they found photographs of burned tarps concealing something the size of a body among Liz’s deleted images, they had noted a consistency in the confession emails Liz had written to frame Amy. She had made multiple references to burning her victim.

  Beadle asked Garret about something he’d mentioned during the January 2013 interview with detectives—the same meeting when they’d revealed Liz had labled his photo “fat ass.” “Do you somehow mention to them in the course of the interview something about a fire at the defendant’s house?”

  Garret acknowledged he’d told detectives he’d smelled a burning odor at Liz’s house.

  “And that’s obviously prior to the arson that happened in August at her house, correct?”

  “Yes.” Unfortunately, he couldn’t recall the date he’d noticed the odor. He remembered only that it had been during the fall or winter of 2012. Cari had vanished in mid November, within the time frame Garret had indicated.

  Investigators had varying opinions about the burning. Some believed her remains were only partially burned and then thrown in the garbage, while others suspected she’d been cremeated in a burn barrel in Liz’s backyard. It was a horrific thing for those who loved Cari to contemplate, but it was a grim reality that had to be addressed. The subject came up again during Battalion Chief Michael Shane McClanahan’s testimony. Jim Masteller asked him about a burn barrel discovered in Liz’s backyard after the August 2013 fire. It was visible in a photograph admitted into evidence as Exhibit 194. “It’s a black metal barrel, approximately fifty-five-gallon drum,” Chief McClanahan acknowledged. But no one had searched the barrel for human remains. By the time Liz became a suspect in Cari’s disappearance, almost two years had passed since the fire, and the barrel was long gone by then.

  Detective Schneider thinks it’s unlikely that Liz would have been bold enough to burn a body in her backyard. While her yard was so overgrown that neighbors couldn’t peek over the fence, there was nothing to stop a neighbor from ambling over to see what she was up to. Detectives Doty and Avis, however, lean toward that possibility. No one but Liz knows for sure.

  Jessica McCarthy testified after Garret, and she gave details about the week of terror she’d endured when she’d friended Dave on Facebook. It was difficult for spectators not to gasp when she read aloud the threat, “I will cut your kids’ throats, and yours, while you sleep.”

  Liz, however, appeared unmoved. Cheyann noticed that Liz showed emotion only twice during the trial. Her eyes lit up when a slide of the Freaker’s Ball was shown. Liz and Dave appeared on the screen, a cozy couple in matching togas. Liz stared at the image, mesmerized, as Beadle emphasized that the night had been special to the defendant. It followed the 30-day commitment she’d forced upon Dave, and she’d pinned all of her dreams on what she hoped would be a magical evening.

  Obviously moved by the photo, Liz perked up even more when Dave himself appeared. She was clearly still infatuated and gazed at him longingly as he was sworn in. He was extremely uncomfortable. It had taken him a long time to accept the truth. The woman he’d feared and despised for years was actually the victim. The woman he’d felt obligated to protect was the real monster. When he realized an innocent person had died because of Liz’s obsession with him, the guilt ate at him. He was forced to glance at Liz to identify her for the record. She’d been staring but quickly looked away.

  When Beadle asked about his dating situation in early 2012, he said, “I was not in a committed relationship of any type. I was seeing multiple women.”

  “Is that kind of how you rolled then?”

  “Correct.”

  He described their relationship as, “Casual, on and off. We would be hard and heavy for a month or two, and then I would back way off. And generally, we would break up for a little while, and pretty soon we’d be back together again for a little while.”

  “During the time you were on with her, were you seeing other women as well?”

  “Correct.”

  A picture of their tumultuous relationship emerged as Dave answered questions about the breakups and makeups, and his desire for freedom as Liz pressured him to commit. He was handed emails Liz had sent and asked to read them aloud. Some she’d sent as herself, but in others she impersonated Cari, and the wording was crude. Conscious of Cari’s mother watching him, he tried to censor the foul language, but Beadle explained he had to read the letters as is. He cringed inwardly and forged ahead.

  On cross exam, JMD said, “I think you indicated that you met Shanna Golyar in 2012?”

  “Correct.”

  “And that was on Plenty of Fish?”

  “Correct.”

  “And although you saw Cari Farver at Hyatt, you also saw her on Plenty of Fish, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “That’s where you did your fishing, right?”

  “There you go.”

  “You didn’t know there were sharks in the water, though, did you?”

  “Apparently not.”

  JMD brought up Dave’s texts with other women. “There were texts going back and forth with Sue, right?”

  “Yep.”

  And Pam, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Joanne, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Kelly, right?”

  “Yep.”

  JMD went on, naming multiple women Dave had known, and then went through the names again, asking if they’d had threats made against them. This group of women had not been threatened. With that shrewd line of questioning, Liz’s attorney demonstrated that she had known about many other women, and nothing had happened to them.

  He asked Dave if he’d ever been afraid of Liz, and he said no.

  As uncomfortable as it was for Dave to testify, it was worse for Amy Flora. “It was the scariest thing I ever had to do,” she confides. “I was having panic attacks. Brenda told me, ‘Don’t look at Liz. Look at us. The only time you have to look at her is when you’re asked to point her out.’”

  Amy’s testimony came about halfway through the ten-day trial, on the morning of Tuesday, May 16. She fixed her eyes on Jim Masteller as he asked about her Internet server, her email address, and her cell phone number. She answered easily, but his next question stumped her.

  “Now,” said Masteller. “You said you have Internet access at your residence. Do you ever use VPNs?”

  “I don’t know what that is,” she replied.

  “Have you ever used a Surf-Easy VPN?”

  “I have no idea what that is.”

  “How about Hotspot Shield VPN?”

  “No.”

  Amy didn’t know what a Virtual Private Network was because she had no reason to hide her location. Liz had sometimes used VPNs when impersonating her. It was clear that Amy had not sent the confession emails. She hadn’t even heard of some of the technology Liz had used to conceal her crimes.

  Amy dreaded reading aloud the confessions Liz had written in her name. She was worried Cari’s family would believe the letters—that they would think she had harmed Cari. Even if they knew she was innocent, Amy didn’t want Cari’s family to have to picture the things described by the killer. Not ever. And yet, there they sat, in the front row of the gallery, waiting for Amy to read words that would hurt them.

  Everyone in the courtroom seemed to be holding their breath. It was so, so quiet, and when Amy began to read, she hated how her voice cut through
the silence. She wanted it to be over, and without realizing she was speaking too quickly, she read, “My last email got deleted, just so you know it’s me—”

  “Whoa! Whoa!” JMD interrupted.

  “Sorry,” Masteller apologized to Amy. “The court reporter is going to have to type everything you say, so you’re going to have to go really slow.”

  It was bad enough that she had to speak such horrible words! Now she had to read slowly! “I did meet up with Cari at a local place here in Council Bluffs. I have a family that won’t let me go to jail. So, when I met Crazy Cari, she would not stop talking about Dave and him being her husband.”

  “Let me stop you right there,” Masteller interrupted. “Is it hard to read this email?”

  His question was about the misspellings, not about Amy’s state of mind. She knew what he meant and replied, “Yes, the spelling is terrible.”

  “Yes, please continue.”

  “She tried to attack me, but I attacked her with a knife. I stabbed her three to four times in the stomach area. I then took her out and burned her. I stuffed her body in a garbage can with crap. She was carried out to the dumpster, probably when Dave took my garbage out for me. So be glad I did not do you that way, Liz. I will never admit to Dave or police, no one. Maybe I’m drunk now and just telling lies to you. Dave will always take care of me and protect me, so I will never go to jail . . .”

  While Cari’s family and friends understood that Amy had not written the emails, they realized that much of what Liz had written had actually happened. One line in particular would forever haunt them. “When I killed Cari, you know she begged me to call Dave at work, and she begged me to talk to her family before she died.” As Amy read, she heard Cari’s mother cry, and it broke her heart.

  Though Judge Burns had warned spectators they could be ordered to leave if they showed a reaction, he did not reprimand the grieving mother. Her pain was raw and real, and she obviously had no control over her anguished sobs. If a jury had been present, he would have been forced to consider the effect Nancy’s reaction could have on them. Emotional outbursts from the gallery can influence a jury, sometimes causing mistrials. But Burns was a professional and would not let emotion influence his ruling.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  ANTHONY KAVA, the State of Nebraska’s star witness, took the stand in mid morning on Thursday, May 18. No one else had his grasp on the complex digital evidence tracing Golyar’s covert activities. It was not only difficult to comprehend, it was difficult to explain, because IT terminology can almost sound like a foreign language to laymen. But Kava was not only brilliant, he had superior communication skills. He’d prepared a PowerPoint presentation with thousands of slides to illustrate his testimony. A rudimentary understanding of the cyberworld and vocabulary associated with it was necessary for the evidence to make sense. Everyone in the courtroom got a crash course in digital forensics.

  Over his next three days of testimony, Kava painted a vivid picture of Liz’s crimes, describing everything from the fake emails she created in Cari’s name to how she used proxy servers to hide her location. He explained how he revived the deleted evidence from Liz’s cell phone, and he showed the images she thought she’d destroyed.

  Perhaps most telling was the activity on Cari’s Facebook account on the morning she disappeared. Kava determined that someone had logged onto Cari’s page from Dave’s apartment at 6:42 A.M. That would have been a legitimate log-in by Cari. The next Facebook log-in was at 9:54 A.M., and Dave Kroupa was unfriended. That, investigators maintained, was Liz invading Cari’s Facebook page, probably after she’d attacked her. The pings from Cari’s phone, the unauthorized use of her debit card at Walmart, and the curious Facebook activity had all occurred in Omaha. That evidence was crucial to establishing venue.

  Liz had used Cari’s phone the first time she’d logged onto Cari’s Facebook page. Cari’s computer was never recovered. Cari had a very long password she’d guarded jealously, and Liz had probably discarded the laptop when she realized she couldn’t crack her code. Kava traced Liz’s steps in her creation of the Sam Carter and Amber Mildo fake Facebook profiles she’d used in her attempt to lure Cari into her trap—a clear indication of premeditation.

  Sam Carter was a made-up name, but the photo was real. It belonged to a doctor who lived on the East Coast. He had no idea a killer had borrowed his handsome face to use in her twisted games. As for Amber Mildo, Liz had created her years earlier and had used her many times in online deceptions. Kava’s investigation revealed that around the time Cari vanished, Miss Mildo had tried to friend 15-year-old Max on Facebook but had accidentally sent the request to the wrong Max Farver.

  While Kava’s testimony was the most comprehensive, the most shocking revelations came from the State’s last witness. On May 22, Omaha forensic pathologist Dr. Michelle Elieff testified she had performed over 2,500 autopsies and had seen bodies in every stage of decomposition.

  The startling photo Kava had found appeared on the screen, and Eileff was invited to step down to point out the features consistent with a foot. “This is the top part, or what we refer to as the ‘dorsum’ of a human foot, and it includes several blood vessels—the greater saphenous vein, an arch, and the lesser saphenous vein; and digital and branch vessels that come out to the toes and the distal, or farthest away from the body, toe area of the top of the foot.”

  The photo had been taken when decomposition was underway, and few people could have glanced at it and understood what they were looking at. Masteller asked, “Now, in your experience of bodies that you’ve examined postmortem, in which the bodies had tattoos on them, when the skin sloughs off of a portion of the body that actually contains a tattoo, does the tattoo itself slough off?”

  “It does not.”

  “Why is that?”

  “The tattoos go into the deeper layers of skin, and it’s the superficial or top layers of skin that get sloughed off and may get very discolored. Sometimes when the body is undergoing skin slippage or blistering of the skin on top of a tattoo, that area can be wiped off, and the tattoo can be clearly visualized.”

  JMD requested a voir dire examination and established that it was Dr. Elieff’s opinion that the tattooed foot in the photo belonged to a deceased human. The doctor could not say with absolute certainty that the image in the photo was a foot, Liz’s attorney stressed. “I object to any opinion.” He was overruled.

  Liz Golyar had photographed her victim’s body, according to prosecutors, so that she could have a “trophy” of her vicious crime. When she deleted that photo, she had no idea it would come back to haunt her.

  Closing statements began a little after 9:30 on Tuesday morning, May 23, and Jim Masteller brought up Liz’s sick souvenirs. The tattoo photos weren’t the only keepsakes important to her. There was also the shower curtain she’d purchased with Cari’s debit card. It, too, was a trophy. Investigators had found nude selfies of Liz, posing in front of it. She had taken it with her each time she moved. First to Garret’s home and then to Persia. The prosecutor pointed out, “They’re not particularly expensive. They get dirty, of course. Why wouldn’t you just leave it?”

  It’s hard to imagine the kind of dark thoughts that emerge from a killer’s mind, but Masteller may have had a perfect grasp on it as he explained what the shower curtain meant to Liz. “This is something she’s proud of, something she’s able to look at every single morning and think about how she killed Cari Farver and got away with it. It’s hiding in plain sight.”

  In his closing statement, JMD started by congratulating the prosecution for doing an impressive job but then pointed out that their case was built on circumstantial evidence. He referenced email exchanges between Dave and his client where she seemed to calmly accept that they were “going to take a break” from their relationship. She certainly hadn’t behaved as if she were planning a murder. “Dave Kroupa’s a nice guy, but who can say he’s worth killing for? And that’s what they’re saying.”
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br />   JMD reminded the court that the case was not about stolen property and not about his client’s bizarre behavior. He again listed the many things the State could not prove. “There’s a hundred unanswered questions,” he stressed. After touching on the evidence the State had presented and explaining again why it wasn’t viable, he said, “We’re going to ask you, based on all the evidence you’ve heard—and mostly based on all the evidence you haven’t heard—to find my client not guilty of first-degree murder.

  Brenda Beadle had the last word, and she spoke passionately about the victim she had never met yet had come to know so well. “For years, the defendant portrayed Cari as a conniving, jealous, obsessed stalker. But all along, it was her. She was all of those things.” She nodded at the image of the smiling woman. “This is the real Cari Farver. She was a bright, beautiful, hardworking mother, sister, daughter friend, coworker. And her life was violently cut short by this defendant’s twisted, obsessive, reprehensible acts of violence . . .”

  Beadle asked the court to find Liz guilty. “Cari deserves justice, and so does Cari’s family.”

  * * *

  Judge Timothy Burns delivered his verdict on Wednesday morning, May 24. His eloquent speech touched the hearts of Cari’s loved ones, those who’d worked so hard to find the truth, and the prosecution team who’d expertly presented the evidence. His verdict included the powerful revelation that, “Cari Farver did not voluntarily disappear off the face of the Earth. Very sadly, she was murdered. The Court finds beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant intentionally killed Cari Farver with deliberate and premeditated malice on or about November 13, 2012, in Douglas County, Nebraska.

  “The Court further finds beyond a reasonable doubt that during the defendant’s twisted plot of lies, deceit, and impersonations through digital messaging, the defendant, on or about August 16, 2013, intentionally caused damage to her residence and property inside her residence located here in Douglas County, Nebraska, by intentionally starting a fire.”