I hunted pet-killing stalker who sent ex 50,000 texts & burned down lovers house - but then came

HEARING his phone ping for the hundredth time that day, Dave Kroupa’s blood ran cold - and a chilling message from his ex, Cari Farver, confirmed his darkest fears.

“I set the nasty wh***’s house on fire,” he read. “I hope the wh*** and her kids die in there.”

The terrifying arson attack on the house of Dave’s on-off girlfriend, Liz Golyar, in August 2013, came after a nine-month campaign of terror.

Former fling Cari had vowed to “destroy” his life, sent thousands of abusive messages including numerous death threats and even broken into Liz’s home and slashed her clothing.

But the fire, which killed Liz’s pet dogs and snake, was far from the final ordeal for dad-of-two Dave - whose stalking hell continued for another two years, with break-ins, vandalism and terrifying threats to kill his children as they slept.

Despite her crimes, police in the local area of Omaha, Nebraska, were unable to find Cari, who had disappeared in November 2012 and had been registered as a missing person by desperate mum Nancy Raner.

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“She was a single mum that hadn't seen her son or her mother in all that time, so we thought maybe there's a chance there's more to this.

“But Cari was just a name on a page, and a picture. I didn't know her, but once I met Nancy, I had a real victim. I saw the pain and hurt that Nancy had gone through and that motivated us and pushed us to continue working even harder to get her answers.”

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Love triangle

Recently split from former partner Amy Flora, 35-year-old mechanic Dave moved to Omaha, Nebraska, to be close to his two children.

Feeling lonely, he joined dating agency Plenty of Fish but was determined to keep any new romances as casual as possible.

“I was wild and free and I was determined to enjoy,” he says. “I was definitely not looking for something serious.”

After a few days he hooked up with mum-of-two Liz and found the pair had a lot in common. “She seemed very cool, down to earth. She loved animals. She had two dogs, a cat and a big snake.

“We both like sci-fi, action movies. Heavy metal. We both had a son and a daughter and were both lonely. We really hit it off.”

On their first date, Dave made it clear he didn’t want to be tied down and he said Liz accepted the casual nature of the fling.

He adds: “I had my personal space but there was someone around when I wanted to chat or hang out. That was just what I needed at that time in my life.”

A few weeks later, IT worker Cari Farver, 37, walked into the garage where Dave was working and he was instantly attracted to her.

After looking her up on a dating site, they met for a date.

“Cari’s spirit and drive marked her out as different from the rest of the women I had met,” he says. “She was smart and sexy, out of my league.”

The pair embarked on a “hot and heavy” fling, spending almost every night together, although both agreed they were not looking for anything serious.

Abusive texts

But on the morning of November 13, 2012, two weeks into the relationship, everything changed.

After kissing goodbye to her in his apartment, and going to work, Dave received a text from Cari saying: “We should move in together.”

Shocked, he replied, “I thought we talked about this” and, almost instantly, the barrage of abuse began with “F*** you”, and “You’ve ruined my life.”

At his apartment, Dave found Cari had gone, along with her bags and her toothbrush, but more messages began to arrive, getting “meaner, ruder and more threatening as time went on”.

One read, “I’m going to destroy the things you care about.” Another, “I’m going to ruin your life like you ruined mine.”

At the same time mum Nancy was trying to contact Cari, and apart from short messages on Facebook, was having no luck.

She filed a missing person’s report and Dave was questioned by police, but after seeing the abusive texts, they dismissed it as a bad break-up.

Then, out of the blue, Liz showed up at his apartment, saying her car had been keyed. She showed him a message from Cari which read: “I will do more if you don’t leave Dave alone.”

Dave also received a message reading: “She is responsible for us being apart, I’m more diabolical than a few scratches on a car.”

I could tell how much stress this was putting on Liz. I felt like she was the real victim in this and I wanted to protect her.

Dave Kroupa

While Dave reported every detail to the police in Omaha, who scoured the area around his work, they found no trace of Cari.

The stalking escalated with pictures from inside Liz’s house, and spray-painted obscenities on the outside wall.

“I could tell how much stress this was putting on Liz,” says Dave. “I felt like she was the real victim in this and I wanted to protect her. We felt safe together and our relationship rekindled.”

His ex, Amy, was also so terrified of what might happen that she banned the kids from seeing their dad at his home.

Liz then called Dave and said a window in her house had been smashed and it had been broken into.

Over the bed the words “Go away wh***” had been written in lipstick and clothes had been strewn on the bed, then “stabbed and slash with a knife” in images like a murder scene.

A text to Dave that day read: “She will die, no one can stop me.”

Admitting he was “on a road to having a mental breakdown,” he adds: “Normal kind of evolves into abnormal and paranoia is your life.

“You’re thinking about all the what ifs all the time, it was hard to know sometimes what was real and what I might be imagining.”

Arson attack

In August 2013, the case took an even more sinister turn when Liz’ s house burned down, killing all her pets.

Liz told the police: “She texted me saying she wanted to kill me and my kids. I just wish she would go away.”

In the aftermath, Liz moved away, not telling Dave her new address but he says: “I didn’t blame her because she didn’t want Cari following her.”

He adds: “I felt alone. I didn't know whether to be mad or sad.

“I had lost my partner, the one person who understood what I was going through. I felt like the only thing I could do was also pack up and move, change my phone and get a new job.

“I wanted to rebuild my life away from Cari but in the back of my mind I knew that she was still out there.”

Chilling photo

Cari’s mum and son Max, then 14, had been receiving sporadic messages on Facebook - with one claiming she’d moved to Kansas to start a new job.

But while her daughter had a history of depression, Nancy says she was not one to go months without contact, especially as she knew her dad was dying.

“She would never have left because her dad was so sick,” she says.

“Two weeks after he passed, I had this very vivid dream about him and in that dream he said ‘It's okay, Cari’s here with me.’ I had to be there for Max to give him a stable life but I just knew Carrie is not with us anymore.”

Cari wasn't the one who keyed my car or burned down my house or smashed my windows. It was Liz stalking me the whole time

Dave

When Jim Doty took over the case, he was the first to take Nancy’s concerns seriously and he told her he believed Cari had been abducted or murdered.

Bank statements revealed that, other than two transactions in the days after she vanished, Cari’s account had not been touched.

Her apartment was full of her clothes and possessions, with no sign of any packing up in preparation for a move.

Then came a huge breakthrough.

“When we went back to the original case file, we looked at downloads from Liz's phone and we found a picture of Cari's vehicle,” he says.

“The metadata showed the picture was taken on Christmas Eve 2012.

“Cari vanished on November 13 and law enforcement didn't recover her vehicle until January 2013. So how did Liz know where the vehicle was? That was a huge one.

“That led us to compare fingerprints we found on a mint box in the vehicle - which matched Liz's known print.”

Shooting

In the meantime, the stalker turned their attention to Dave’s ex Amy and his two children, Ryan and Lexi, sending messages that proved she was watching them playing.

“One night we got a text message from Cari saying ‘I’m going to slit your kid’s throat as they slept,” says Amy. “Ryan was sleeping on the couch with a baseball bat saying he wanted to protect us.”

Police put a tracker on Liz’s car and found she was sitting outside Amy’s home for hours every day.

Terrified, Dave bought a gun for protection but, when it was stolen from his house, he feared for their lives.

Then, in a new twist, on December 5, 2015, Liz was shot in the leg in a park, near Amy’s house.

She claimed emails from Amy proved she was the shooter and had also murdered Cari.

Jim and colleague Ryan Avis turned the tables by playing along and getting her to forward “Amy’s confessions”, which were actually forged by Liz and included details of how the killing was carried out and how the body was left in a dumpster.

Painstaking research into hundreds of thousands of messages, sent from different phones and different IP addresses, proved many had come from the home Liz was now sharing - bizarrely with an IT investigator from Jim’s own police department, who was unaware of her crimes.

Finally, blood stains found on the bottom of the seat in Cari’s car proved she had been stabbed to death in the vehicle.

And an old memory card from Liz's phone revealed one more macabre discovery - a picture of Cari's tattooed foot, after her death.

When Jim revealed the real stalker to Dave he was stunned.

“My head was spinning, I went to the back of the shop where my tool box is, and just cried," he says.

“Cari wasn't the one who keyed my car or burned down my house or smashed my windows. It was Liz stalking me the whole time.”

Cold-hearted killer

In 2017, Shanna Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Golyar was jailed for life, without parole, for Cari Farver’s murder.

Jim says Liz, who has never admitted the murder, came across as “selfish” and “cold.”

“She seemed very absorbed in her own life and the thing she wanted,” he says.

“I would say cold would be the best description of her. I never saw any remorse. I never saw any care that not only has she taken somebody off this earth, but she'd also ruined a mother's life and a son's life because of this too.

“She's never admitted to any of this. She's never taken responsibility for this so I can only speculate what her motive was and I do think it was a selfish obsession with Dave.

“She has kids herself and she didn’t care about what she did to a whole other family.”

In the documentary, Nancy pays tribute to Jim and his team, saying: “They saved my sanity.

If it hadn’t been for them I would still be in the dark now.”

There is a sense in this of love being blind and he was trapped in this web of deceit

Director Sam Hobkinson

Jim says telling Nancy how her daughter died was the hardest part of the case.

“As investigators, we’re happy that we solved the case but in doing so, we dashed any hope Nancy had of ever seeing her daughter,” he says.

“Any joy in getting answers is quickly diminished by seeing the sorrow and the pain that we have to bring somebody when we tell them such horrible news.

“She's been dealing with this for years, probably knowing in her gut that her daughter's gone, but still clinging on to some hope because every message somebody received, every new social media profile that's created, has given a little bit of hope.

“What we brought was horrible news but she could also start to face that reality. She could start to mourn, the family could start to move on with their lives.”

British director Sam Hobkinson says he was attracted to the story by “everyman” Dave, who found himself in a horrific situation he could never have foreseen.

“Dave is a lovely man and when he first told me his story. I saw a lot of all of us men in it,” he says.

“There is a sense in this of love being blind and he was trapped in this web of deceit and I guess it shows if you want to have your own uncomplicated, polyamorous situation, you might get in trouble.

“But Dave has obviously been very damaged by this. He’s made peace with it but there is a level of paranoia in his day to day life that he will never share and he's still scarred by it.

“He is now in a stable relationship with a lovely woman he met at the end of all this and they live a quiet life.