Liz Golyar: Obsession, Stalking, and Murder Pt. 2

In the 2010s, Omaha man Dave Kroupa was terrorized by thousands of harassing messages, acts of vandalism, and arson, all seemingly from a woman named Cari Farver, who had vanished without a trace. What Dave didn't know was that Cari was dead, and the real perpetrator was someone far closer to him. If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Serial Killers & Murderous Minds to never miss a case! Want all 2 parts of every case all at once? Join Crime House+ and get both parts of each case dropped together on Monday ad-free. Join atcrimehouseplus.com http://crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Serial Killers & Murderous Minds is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. 🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of Reddit, Murder True Crime Stories, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse https://www.instagram.com/crimehouse/TikTok: @Crimehouse https://www.tiktok.com/@crimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudios https://www.facebook.com/crimehousestudiosYouTube: @crimehousestudios https://www.youtube.com/@crimehousestudios

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Vanessa Richardson?

  Hi, everyone. Before today's episode, there's another show I want to tell you about. It's called What the Fact with Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum and Carter Roy. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from history and tell you the full story behind them. Plus Connor's infectious energy that'll make you realize history is the most fascinating thing on earth. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  This is Crime House.

• 0:41Vanessa Richardson?

  A lot of us curate an idealized version of ourselves online. We post pictures of our best moments and leave out the boring and messy ones. It's not necessarily healthy, but it's what we do. And some people take it even further. They heavily edit their appearance or even blatantly lie about what's going on in their life. Some people pretend to be an entirely different person altogether, and they trick others into believing it.

• 1:10Vanessa Richardson?

  In the 2010s, Dave Kroupa thought he knew who he was dealing with online. And when that person began stalking and harassing him while never showing their face, he alerted the authorities and tried his best to maintain his own safety and sanity. But Dave wouldn't truly be safe until the truth came out. And when it did, he realized who the real monster was all along.

• 1:52Vanessa Richardson?

  The human mind is powerful. It shapes how we think, feel, love, and hate. But sometimes it drives people to commit the unthinkable. This is Serial Killers and Murderous Minds, a Crime House original. I'm Vanessa Richardson.

• 2:07Tristin Engels?

  And I'm forensic psychologist Dr. Tristin Engels. Every Monday and Thursday, we uncover the darkest minds in history, analyzing what makes a killer.

• 2:16Vanessa Richardson?

  Crime House exists because of listeners like you. Want even more? Join Crime House Plus and get both parts of every story dropped on the same Monday, completely ad-free. No waiting three days for part two. Plus, Crime House bonus episodes every month. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com. Or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap Try Free at the top of the Serial Killers and Murderous Minds page. Before we get started, be advised that this episode contains discussion of sex, murder, and animal violence, and the death of an infant. So please, listen with care. Today, we conclude our deep dive into Liz Gollier, a jealous ex-lover whose vengeful fury knew no bounds. In the 2010s,

• 3:00Vanessa Richardson?

  Liz met a man who set her heart on fire. But when she realized their romance wouldn't last, her intentions turned deadly. For years, Liz masterminded a web of fear and lies, until eventually, investigators began tracing each thread right back to her.

• 3:18Tristin Engels?

  As Vanessa goes through the story, I'll be talking about things like the role of intuition and why those under extreme stress might ignore theirs. How some offenders play the victim to maintain power. And how some killers are driven by extreme insecurity and delusion.

• 3:36Vanessa Richardson?

  And as always, we'll be asking the question, what makes a killer?

• 3:47Vanessa Richardson?

  By August 2013, no one had seen Carrie Farver for nine months. Dave Kroupa, the man Carrie had briefly dated before she disappeared, had been receiving an onslaught of hostile, threatening emails and text messages from her as soon as she vanished. And so did Dave's other fling, Liz Gollier. Then, that same month, the situation took a dark turn when a fire tore through Liz's house. She and her children weren't home, but none of their four pets survived. Dave believed Carrie was behind the fire, and Liz agreed with him. However, unbeknownst to them, the arson investigator found six separate points of origin and traces of accelerant. The fire had been set deliberately

• 4:32Vanessa Richardson?

  from inside the house. Liz told investigators the locks had been changed months earlier after she reported the stalking, and that one of the three sets of keys she'd been given had gone missing. She also mentioned she'd stopped by the day before and left the garage door unlocked. Investigators wrote all of it down, but nothing in the file pointed to Liz, and the case went no further. So as far as Dave was concerned, Carrie had burned Liz's house down in an escalation of her inexplicably violent jealousy toward Liz. Dave felt horrible, especially because Liz guilted him relentlessly for bringing Carrie into her life in the first place. As far as Liz was concerned, if he had never broken things off with Liz to be with Carrie,

• 5:18Vanessa Richardson?

  then they wouldn't be in this situation. Dave thought she was right. And out of a remorse and a sense of obligation to Liz, he got back together with her. However, even though they were seeing each other again, Liz refused to give Dave her new address once she moved into a new place. Dave didn't push. If anything, he thought she was being smart. If his stalker could see everything else he did, she'd find an address written down, too. Liz said she was afraid Carrie would somehow find out where she lived. It sounded reasonable to Dave, and he wasn't especially curious, anyway. He'd only asked to make conversation. Nine months of being hunted had recalibrated what counted as strange.

• 6:02Tristin Engels?

  Let's pause and discuss Dave for a moment because he has missed several warning signs, alarming behaviors, and manipulation tactics since knowing Liz, and even throughout this whole ordeal, which we highlighted a lot in episode one. When you've been living under such highly abnormal circumstances for so long, that is what can start to feel normal. And we adapt to that because we have to. Dave has been trying to adapt and survive nine months of incessant and harassing messages, threats, vandalism of his home, being surveilled, and escalating behaviors. And nine months later, Liz acting jealous over his child's mother or not wanting to give him her address is likely not seeming alarming

• 6:45Tristin Engels?

  in the way it would have previously. And the chronic stress he's been under makes this worse. We talked about this in episode one, but if you recall, prolonged stress can impair attention, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and decision-making. He's likely both cognitively fatigued and normalizing some behaviors that should be alarming. So from the outside, it's easy to ask why Dave isn't recognizing that something was off. But Dave is on the inside of this. His system has been on threat mode. On top of that, there's the guilt that he has. He's been consistently getting messages reinforced that this could have all been prevented if he'd just stayed with Liz in the first place.

• 7:28Tristin Engels?

  That he now owes her for what she's gone through. And he's being implicated as responsible or for being the one to blame when he's anything but. Guilt is being used as leverage, and that's very effective.

• 7:41Vanessa Richardson?

  Do you think that denial played a role in Dave's thinking? Part of it, at least? And if so, what was his brain trying to protect him from?

• 7:49Tristin Engels?

  It's certainly possible. It doesn't mean he was consciously deciding to ignore his reality, though. Sometimes it's a way of keeping something overwhelming emotionally from entering our awareness because we're not ready to deal with it. Think about what he would have to be willing to accept if he started questioning everything right now at this very moment. And that means nine months or more of everything. Like, for starters, where is Carrie? That's a lot to psychologically take on if he's not ready to. So it may actually be occurring in the sense that it's protecting him from uncertainty more than anything. He's definitely been living in a lot of that uncertainty as it is.

• 8:29Vanessa Richardson?

  Apparently, Carrie didn't like that Dave was seeing Liz again. A couple of months after the fire, in October of 2013, Dave arrived at his auto shop to find it had been vandalized. The words "Dave beats women" were spray painted in fluorescent orange across the shop's big front windows. Dave and a coworker scrubbed it off before the owner arrived. He was sure he'd have lost his job otherwise. About a year earlier, Liz's home had been vandalized in a similar way, and she and Dave blamed Carrie for it. Now, Dave thought Carrie had done this to his business, too. Especially when he received a message from Carrie proudly stating she'd done it. In response, Dave filed a police report. But it was yet another

• 9:13Vanessa Richardson?

  in a long series of vandalism reports that went nowhere. The Omaha police still couldn't find Carrie, and they still weren't coordinating with the Potawatomi County Sheriff's Office in Iowa, where Nancy had reported her missing. So neither department knew the full picture of what was going on, which meant neither of them could stop it. Dave kept receiving threatening messages throughout the day and at all hours of the night. The stress weighed on him heavily. He could barely sleep and put on weight from his excessive drinking. It was all he could do to try and distract himself. So in January 2014, he invited his friend Heather to his apartment. They'd been friends since high school and had casual hookups whenever they were both single.

• 9:57Vanessa Richardson?

  Even though Dave was seeing Liz, he wasn't serious about her, and he wanted to spend some time with Heather. While the two of them hung out on his couch, drinking beers, Dave told Heather everything that had been going on with Carrie, how she messaged him constantly and had vandalized his business. Eventually, once Dave had gotten everything off his chest and Heather comforted him, the two made their way to the bedroom. But their rendezvous was interrupted when they heard a small commotion outside, like someone was rattling the patio gate outside his first-floor unit. Dave went outside to see what was going on, but he didn't see anything. He went back inside and told Heather not to worry. Then they headed straight back to the bedroom.

• 10:41Vanessa Richardson?

  But they were interrupted again, this time by the sound of shattering glass. Dave ran and found a brick on the bathroom floor, surrounded by broken glass, freezing January air pouring in through the window. Dave didn't want to call the police. He told Heather there was no point. Whoever it was would be long gone. But she insisted, so he called. Officers took a report. The only trace they found was footprints in the snow, some under the bathroom window, some by the patio door. Afterward, Heather was still terrified. And that's when Dave admitted something to her. He told her that Carrie had not only been harassing him, but another woman he'd been seeing, Liz Gollier.

• 11:26Vanessa Richardson?

  Not only that, but he believed Carrie had burned Liz's house down. Now, he thought Carrie had been watching him and Heather all night, and that she was the one who'd smashed his window. Heather listened carefully, and she wasn't so sure about Dave's theory, because he'd told her about how clingy Liz was back when they first started seeing each other, including the time Liz showed up at his place during his first date with Carrie and refused to leave. Heather was suspicious. But unlike Dave, she didn't think Carrie was behind all the stalking, harassment, and attacks. She thought Liz had been posing as Carrie all along. Dave wasn't having it. He insisted they drive over and check that Liz was safe. He seemingly had gotten Liz's address by now.

• 12:12Vanessa Richardson?

  When they got there, the driveway was empty, and there wasn't a single track in the snow. No one had been home for hours. Heather noticed. Dave didn't want to hear it.

• 12:23Tristin Engels?

  We just talked about denial. And I think now it's almost certainly playing a role. But Heather has the advantage of distance. She, like us, listening in hindsight, is looking at this situation from the outside. Dave has been living with the assumption that Carrie has been behind this for nine months. He's been aligned with Liz on this belief, and he's invested in that belief. Heather doesn't have that investment. Heather can see these discrepancies because she doesn't have any consequences for being wrong about that. And remember what we talked about earlier, about what chronic stress can do on someone's attention, their working memory, cognitive flexibility, and decision-making? Well, Heather hasn't been under that same level of threat or sustained stress.

• 13:07Tristin Engels?

  And that allows her to process this situation much differently than Dave can.

• 13:12Vanessa Richardson?

  Dave heard Heather's argument, but he couldn't believe Liz would be capable of impersonating someone, sending such vile messages, not to mention setting fire to her own home and killing her own pets. In his opinion, Liz was highly insecure and emotionally needy, but not dangerous. The thing was, Dave didn't know Liz as well as he thought. They'd been sleeping together on and off for over a year, but he never learned much about her past. And that was probably intentional on Liz's part, because it wasn't a pleasant story. Two months before Liz turned three, the state of Michigan removed her and her baby brother from their mother's home because of the violence of their mother's boyfriend,

• 13:55Vanessa Richardson?

  who was also Liz's father. Weeks later, their mother Dolores was walking home from a laundromat in Kalamazoo when a car veered onto the sidewalk and killed her. She was 12 days short of her 29th birthday. Liz stayed in the foster care system. According to Liz, foster care was extremely traumatic. During that time, she allegedly experienced sexual abuse. Fortunately, she eventually found a family who took good care of her. She lived with them into her early 20s, and they continued to support her financially. But eventually, Liz wanted to strike out on her own after she met a man named Ray and became pregnant. Ray surprised Liz and bought a trailer for them to live in.

• 14:38Vanessa Richardson?

  That's when she told him she'd already found somewhere else to live with another man, who we'll call Steve. Liz said she and Steve were just friends, but Ray was suspicious of the situation. By his own family's account, Steve had a learning disability and was easy to lead. His mother described him as someone who would believe whatever he was told. Ray wondered if Liz was taking advantage of that to get a place to live. Steve rented the house from his parents, and when his mother realized Liz had moved in, she asked her to pay rent. Liz never really did. At times, Ray wondered if Liz was cheating on him with Steve. But those fears subsided when the baby arrived, and he bore a striking resemblance to Ray. They named him Cody,

• 15:23Vanessa Richardson?

  and Ray made sure to be involved in his son's life. Before long, Steve's family developed concerns of their own about Liz's parenting. His mother was alarmed to find Liz swaddling her son so tightly that he couldn't move his arms. As she put it, Liz didn't seem to want the baby moving at all.

• 15:42Tristin Engels?

  All right, there's a lot here. And I want to be careful not to turn Liz's childhood trauma into an explanation for everything she does as an adult. Most people who experience childhood trauma do not go on to have severely dysfunctional relationships or harm other people. Trauma can increase vulnerability to certain difficulties, but it doesn't determine someone's personality or their behavior. That said, from what you described, Liz reportedly did experience significant events very early in her development. Experiences like childhood maltreatment, loss, and disrupted caregiving can be associated with later difficulties involving attachment, trust, emotional regulation, and interpersonal relationships.

• 16:27Tristin Engels?

  So when we're looking at Liz's adult relationships, that gives us important developmental context. Because if your earliest relationships taught you that caregivers can disappear, or they become dangerous, or unsafe, or can be unreliable, that can influence how you interact with people later in life, the strategies you develop for maintaining closeness or attachment, or responding to separation, especially as you get older. And parenting can also activate many of those same attachment and caregiving systems or wounds. And research does find an association between childhood maltreatment and difficulties in some aspects of later parenting. But again, that's an increased vulnerability.

• 17:12Tristin Engels?

  It's not a destiny. It's not deterministic. In fact, I have met many once-mistreated children who turned out to be doting and wonderful parents. It all depends on a convergence of many different factors. These are some explanations of how these experiences could have shaped her current interpersonal behavior.

• 17:37Vanessa Richardson?

  It may have been hard for Ray to co-parent with Liz, especially since she treated Steve more like the baby's father, including when it came to emergency situations. One night in January of 1999, while Steve was at work, Liz called him. She was inconsolable and told him she'd dropped the baby hard. Steve rushed home, but when he got there, Cody seemed fine. So they decided not to take him to the hospital. The next morning, January 29, 1999, Steve and his mother, who we'll call Gladys, took the baby along on a grocery run while Liz was at work. Gladys was struck by how quiet Cody was. He didn't cry once. She left around noon. When she came back at 5:00,

• 18:22Vanessa Richardson?

  Steve was dozing in a chair, and Cody wasn't breathing. Gladys started infant CPR while Steve called 911. Police got there before the ambulance and drove Cody to the hospital in a squad car. Doctors worked on him for hours. He was pronounced dead just after midnight. They listed the cause of death as shaken baby syndrome, which is a term for an abusive head trauma in an infant. At first, the police suspected Liz, and so did Ray. But later, officers questioned Steve, sleep deprived and for the second time in 12 hours. He told them he sometimes tossed Cody in the air to make him laugh, and, under pressure, eventually said he'd shaken him once.

• 19:07Vanessa Richardson?

  Police acknowledged afterward that they hadn't started recording until they'd already prompted him. The doctor who examined Cody testified that the injuries would have taken 20 seconds or more of violent shaking. And the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome says tossing a baby in the air, while inadvisable, is unlikely to cause them. Steve was charged with second-degree murder anyway. During the trial, Liz testified against Steve. She arrived in a dishwater blonde wig and a floor-length skirt. She was a fugitive at the time with two outstanding felony warrants and didn't want to be recognized at the courthouse. On the stand, she read aloud from seven letters she claimed he'd sent her from jail, and the contents were shocking,

• 19:52Vanessa Richardson?

  not just because he admitted to killing Cody, but because of the extravagant romantic language he used to describe his love for Liz. Gladys never got the chance to testify. Liz's appearance brought the trial to an abrupt end, and she wouldn't learn what was in those letters until 2019, when a journalist read them to her over the phone. She laughed out loud. "Her son," she said, "could not have written like that." But the jury didn't know that. And in the end, Steve spent eight and a half years in prison. After his conviction, Liz moved to Omaha and never looked back. Dave had no idea that Liz's past

• 20:36Vanessa Richardson?

  was such a tangled web of trauma and devastation. Maybe if he did, it would have shed some light on her behavior. Instead, he still believed that she was Carrie's victim and that he was the one to blame. His friend Heather's theory that Liz was impersonating Carrie didn't change anything for him, especially because Dave and Liz often received messages from Carrie while they were sitting right next to each other. So Dave thought there was no way that Liz was the one sending them. Little did he know, law enforcement was beginning to question whether Carrie really was capable of everything that had happened, or whether she was even still alive.

• 21:21Vanessa Richardson?

  In January of 2014, someone threw a brick through Dave Kroupa's window for the second time. He reported the incident to the Omaha Police, then resumed living in fear. Dave believed Carrie Farver was behind the constant harassment and violent vandalism. He wasn't sure what she would do next. So he bought a 9mm Smith & Wesson handgun to protect himself. There was already a misdemeanor warrant out for Carrie's arrest, but the Omaha authorities still hadn't touched base with their counterparts in Iowa, where Carrie's mother had reported her missing. Since no one knew the full scope of the situation, no one had managed to find Carrie. The break came from the Iowa side.

• 22:05Vanessa Richardson?

  By the spring of 2015, two investigators with the Potawatomi County Sheriff's Office had heard enough watercooler talk about the Farver file to ask for it themselves: Jim Doty and Ryan Avis. Doty and Avis knew all about the mystifying case, and the first thing they did was pour through the case files. The biggest roadblock so far was that no one could find Carrie, and Avis and Doty had a feeling no one ever would. If she was dead, that naturally raised the question of who was sending all the messages. And rather than get caught in the same puzzling loop as previous investigators, Avis and Doty tried a new approach. They split up their efforts. One of them approached the case as though Carrie were still alive,

• 22:49Vanessa Richardson?

  and the other as though she were dead. Eventually, they realized there was no concrete evidence to support the idea that Carrie was alive. Not only had no one seen her in two and a half years, but there was no paper trail confirming her existence, no bank transactions, court, or hospital records.

• 23:10Tristin Engels?

  In episode one, we talked about how serious mental health conditions in women can often be dismissed as dramatic or hysterical and overshadow investigations. But two and a half years later, we are way beyond the point where Carrie's bipolar disorder reasonably accounts for what investigators are seeing. Because at this point, Carrie has essentially disappeared from every system that we would expect her to interact with during that time. There are no bank transactions, like you said, no medical records, no court records, and most importantly, there's been no sighting of her for two and a half years. Could someone experiencing a severe psychiatric episode leave their life behind? Absolutely. Could they become transient, stop treatment,

• 23:51Tristin Engels?

  stop working, or deliberately avoid family and anyone who knows them? Yes, it tragically happens far too often. But the longer that continues, the more evidence you should expect that they're still existing somewhere. People need food, they need shelter, they get sick, they encounter other people, they use money, or they interact with systems. They're spotted by people through online campaigns. They're not invisible, and just because Dave was receiving countless harassing messages and emails does not prove that it is Carrie either. They just assumed it was, and they weren't communicating with each other. That's why using mental illness to explain,

• 24:33Tristin Engels?

  dismiss, or minimize an investigation can be extremely detrimental. Her family has been seeking answers for two and a half years. Her child, Maxwell, has been missing his mother for two and a half years. This harassment has been going on for two and a half years. It's just unacceptable that it took this long.

• 24:52Vanessa Richardson?

  If someone out there is managing bipolar disorder, what would be your advice to their loved ones for keeping track of them and keeping them safe and healthy in the event of a crisis?

• 25:02Tristin Engels?

  I think the best thing loved ones can do is to have these conversations while the person is doing well, rather than waiting until they're in an episode or a crisis. Bipolar disorder can look different from one person to another. So learning that person's individual warning signs is critical. I would encourage them to look at what has happened before their previous episodes. We call them prodromal signs. Maybe they start sleeping significantly less, or they become more energetic, or irritable, or restless, or they start talking much faster than normal, or they're spending impulsively, or they're being more reckless, or they're withdrawing. There's all different types of signs that could be warning to them. Sometimes the people closest to us notice those things

• 25:47Tristin Engels?

  before, like, the individual can recognize it themselves. And then, I would say, make a crisis plan together. Their provider can help with the specifics of what that crisis plan can look like. I also think it's important that support doesn't become surveillance of that person. Having bipolar disorder doesn't mean someone needs their family monitoring everything they do. The goal is to help them maintain their autonomy, but also creating a safety net that everyone's agreed upon ahead of time. And if someone does begin showing signs of an episode, respond to the change itself. Avoid accusatory language. Talk about what you're actually observing symptom-wise.

• 26:32Tristin Engels?

  And then, obviously, involve their treatment team as early as possible. And that's definitely easier when the individual is wanting to include you in that treatment process. So, again, if you can speak with them before they're in an episode or before they're in a crisis, and if they're agreeable to signing a release of information and allowing you to freely speak with their providers, this definitely makes it easier. But as a mental health provider myself, we can receive information from you. You can tell us things. You can freely contact us all day long. We can't necessarily respond if we don't have that release of information and this individual's an adult. We can't say anything to you necessarily

• 27:14Tristin Engels?

  without that signature or without that agreement from our patient, but we can receive that information. So you can send us and tell us things that you're seeing anytime. So I think that's very important.

• 27:26Vanessa Richardson?

  Now that Doty and Avis knew how unlikely it was that Carrie was still alive, they understood which question they had to answer next: who was sending the messages? They kept digging through the case files and noticed a curious pattern: one name that popped up over and over: Liz Gallier. Liz was purportedly one of Carrie's victims as well, but Avis and Doty couldn't nail down a clear motive as to why Carrie would target Liz on such a violent level. Because based on Dave's statements, Liz hadn't actually stolen Dave from Carrie, like the messages alleged. So why was Liz such a huge part of this story? They knew they needed to get as clear a picture of the situation as possible, which wasn't easy, because there were thousands of messages to look through.

• 28:11Vanessa Richardson?

  Dave alone had been getting 50 to 60 emails a day, on top of the texts and missed calls. Not only that, but a digital analyst discovered that the sender had regularly found new ways to hide their IP address. While the analysts tried to crack the code, Doty and Avis continued looking through the files. And that's when they made a huge realization: they had a trove of Liz's cellphone data. She and Dave had both handed over their phones back in 2013. That was two years earlier. But the detectives figured they could at least use Liz's phone to gain a better sense of who she was. It turned out, the contents of Liz's phone cast her in a grim light. In the days before Carrie went missing,

• 28:56Vanessa Richardson?

  Liz's call logs showed six calls to Carrie's home phone on November 6th and 7th, 2012, days before she vanished. This made no sense, since Liz and Carrie had only ever crossed paths once outside Dave's apartment. But that wasn't all. They also found a photo of Carrie's Ford Explorer on Liz's phone. The Ford Explorer had mysteriously turned up outside Dave's apartment building the year before. At the time, investigators in Iowa didn't find any helpful clues inside the vehicle. The vehicle was spotless, other than a pair of unidentified fingerprints on an empty mint container in the cup holder. But the photo on Liz's phone showed something else. It wasn't anything in the image itself,

• 29:40Vanessa Richardson?

  it was the metadata, showing that the photo had been taken on Liz's phone on December 24th, 2012, after Carrie went missing and before her car turned up. Based on the timeline of the photo, Doty and Avis wondered if Liz had Carrie's car in her possession that entire time. And why? Soon, they found something else that sent a chill down their spines. Back in 2013, Dave had received a photo of a woman tied up in the trunk of a car. We mentioned that in episode one. The person who sent the photo claimed to be Carrie, and the woman tied up was allegedly Liz. Dave had texted Liz at the time to check on her. She never answered.

• 30:23Vanessa Richardson?

  But now, Doty and Avis discovered that Liz had taken the photo. They didn't know what to make of this exactly, but it was beginning to seem more and more like Liz had done something terrible to Carrie before taking over her identity.

• 30:39Tristin Engels?

  The pictures you described, she may have believed wouldn't have stood out as incriminating to them because they're not really that alarming on their own, if you think about it. I mean, a picture of a Ford Explorer, they might not have like put the two together. Or if Dave brushed off the picture of an obscure, what he thought was Liz, potentially tied up, but you couldn't really tell, then they might brush that off, too. So Liz may have become overconfident and had a false sense of security because of that. And because so much time has passed, she likely became, like I said, overconfident, especially when her phone was already examined back in 2013 and nothing happened. It's also possible

• 31:19Tristin Engels?

  she underestimated forensic investigations, especially, you know, as time has passed and there are technological advances, or they have new leads that allow for them to get more advanced experts to look at it. It's not uncommon for offenders to overestimate what they think they know and underestimate what law enforcement knows or what they can do. And I think she knew very well what was on her phone. I just think she likely believed that they wouldn't be able to connect the dots, or maybe they wouldn't look that deep into her phone and find it to begin with. But yeah, it's either overconfidence or a false sense of security, I think, is playing a role here.

• 31:56Vanessa Richardson?

  Well, Liz may have thought her digital trail was untraceable, but pretty soon investigators were able to trace a lot of the messages back to the IP address of the house Liz was living in. And that wasn't all. Liz's fingerprints were already on file. The detectives ran her prints against the one found on the mint container. They were a match. Doty and Avis were sure that Liz Gollier was behind Carrie Farver's disappearance and had been impersonating her all along. Now they had to figure out what happened to Carrie and if Liz had killed her. But first, they knew they needed to handle another important aspect of their

• 32:36Vanessa Richardson?

  investigation, informing Carrie's mother, Nancy Rainey, of their theory. On May 8, 2015, Doty drove out to see her in Iowa. He told her something no one had said to her in two and a half years. He didn't think Carrie had left on her own. The authorities hadn't taken Nancy seriously before. They'd seized on a bipolar diagnosis Nancy herself doubted and decided Carrie had run off. Now Nancy had mixed feelings. She was relieved that law enforcement finally believed her, but it also raised new questions about Carrie's safety.

• 33:14Tristin Engels?

  I cannot imagine the complicated wave of emotions Nancy must have been experiencing in this moment. I mean, certainly there was likely some degree of relief because for two and a half years, she'd been saying something was wrong and she was finally being validated. But at the same time, she just learned that her daughter may have never left voluntarily and may not even be alive. And that Carrie's disappearance may never have been fully investigated because of potentially her mental illness, a diagnosis Nancy herself questioned and likely only mentioned because she couldn't think of another explanation for why she would just abandon her life like that. I imagine she also had a lot of anger. There may have

• 33:58Tristin Engels?

  also been guilt. She's been living with ambiguous loss, but so has Carrie's son Maxwell. They're grieving someone who is physically absent, but they have no closure for. And they don't know whether to, you know, hold on to hope right now or begin mourning. And for children, ambiguous loss can be especially challenging because they're trying to make sense of an absence that no one else around them can fully even explain to them. So depending on, you know, Maxwell's age right now and developmental stage, some children, you know, might personalize that loss, wondering if they did something wrong or somehow caused, you know, their parent to disappear. And that's what makes this so heartbreaking because her entire family has been living with this uncertainty, with unanswered questions and

• 34:43Tristin Engels?

  the emotional consequence of this. And they still have now more questions and now anger than they do answers. And it's just so tragic.

• 34:53Vanessa Richardson?

  As a parent, I go numb thinking about what Nancy's been through this past two and a half years. What happens in the brain when a parent receives this kind of horrible news about their child?

• 35:03Tristin Engels?

  I mean, it's responding to a profound threat to one of its strongest attachment bonds. The body's stress response activates. Attention narrows. Many parents describe feeling numb, like you just said, disconnected, or unable to fully process what they're hearing. At the same time, they immediately start searching for answers because they want certainty to calm that stress response. That's why parents often cycle through being, you know, in denial or disbelief, hope, fear, guilt, anger, and just all the what ifs or woulda, coulda, shoulda questions. In a single conversation that Nancy's having right now, the, her entire understanding of like the past and her hopes for the future are all changed and her brain

• 35:45Tristin Engels?

  and her heart are all trying to process that. And that's going to take a long time, I'm sure.

• 35:53Vanessa Richardson?

  Despite the horror she was living through, Nancy also realized she had a crucial piece of information for the detectives. Back in 2012, shortly after Carrie went missing, Nancy received a message supposedly from Carrie saying she was selling all her furniture. After that, the sender attached a photo of the check, $5,000, made out to Carrie and signed in Liz's own legal name, Shanna Gollier. Nancy had never heard the name Liz Gollier, but she refused to let a stranger into her daughter's house, and she forwarded the photo straight to the police. That was November 2012. The clue had been sitting in the file

• 36:35Vanessa Richardson?

  ever since. Liz clearly believed she could get away with anything, and she was about to make one of her most frightening moves yet.

• 36:51Vanessa Richardson?

  By the spring of 2015, detectives Jim Doty and Ryan Avis had become convinced that Carrie Farver was no longer alive. They believed Liz Gollier was behind Carrie's disappearance and that she'd been impersonating Carrie for the last two years. Dave Kroupa didn't know about the detectives' theory, so he was still reluctantly seeing Liz. And a few months later, he agreed to spend Thanksgiving with her. Most likely, Liz had used the constant string of threatening messages, which were supposedly from Carrie and which Liz was also receiving, to manipulate Dave. But a blizzard hit that day, and Amy called. Her baby son, Dave's kid's little brother, had a respiratory infection, a fever of 103,

• 37:36Vanessa Richardson?

  and was struggling to breathe. She was too frightened to drive on the ice, so Dave went. Liz picked a fight with him over it, and he was disgusted enough that he told her that night, it was finished. But the next morning, Dave realized something nefarious had occurred overnight. First, he woke up to dozens of angry text messages from almost every woman in his contact list. While looking through the messages, Dave realized that the night before, the women had received vile sexist texts from his phone, but he wasn't the one who'd sent them. His thoughts jumped to Carrie. He still believed she was the one stalking him. However, when he looked around his apartment, Dave didn't find any

• 38:18Vanessa Richardson?

  signs of a break-in. That's when a thought surfaced. Liz had a key to his apartment. He'd given it to her at some point and never asked for it back. Dave started to panic as the realization set in that Liz may have let herself into his apartment while he slept and sent the messages. And if she'd done that, what else could she have done?

• 38:43Tristin Engels?

  Remember how quick Dave was to reject this possibility when Heather first suggested that Liz was responsible? He wasn't ready to accept it. So finally coming to that realization himself was likely incredibly overwhelming because it forces him to reinterpret every threatening message, every act of vandalism, every apology, every time he comforted her, and every moment he felt guilty. Not to mention, he now has to confront the possibility that he made countless decisions based on information that wasn't even true. And that he has been vilifying a woman, Carrie, that he had cared about for years. That kind of realization

• 39:25Tristin Engels?

  can be very destabilizing for someone. And he likely experienced shock and disorientation and even began questioning his own judgment. He's been living in a false reality ever since Carrie disappeared, and that is a tremendous amount of information to process.

• 39:43Vanessa Richardson?

  Why is it that some facts, like Liz having a key to Dave's apartment, can somehow jolt people out of denial? Do you think that Dave was able to make this realization because Heather had already planted that seed?

• 39:55Tristin Engels?

  So first, I think it's important to remember that Dave believed he and Liz had survived being stalked and harassed together. He believed Liz had been victimized because of her relationship with him, so he felt responsible for what happened to her. That made the idea that Liz being actually responsible incredibly more difficult to accept. That said, Heather's conversation still mattered because even though Dave may have rejected the idea initially, when she brought it to him, like we talked about, I do think the seed was planted at the time. So when this happened, and Dave was forced to essentially investigate it himself, which is basically what happened, he already had an alternative

• 40:36Tristin Engels?

  explanation available for it. He checked for signs of a break-in, found none, and then remembered that Liz had a key to his apartment. And that's often how belief revision works. People don't often change their minds because of a single conversation or just like one fact that doesn't align. It's often because someone or something introduces another possibility. So it's when new evidence compiles until the old explanation doesn't hold up anymore that they can start forming a new belief system. And that's, I think, what happened here for Dave.

• 41:10Vanessa Richardson?

  Well, now that Dave's eyes were opened to the undeniable facts, he noticed something else that sent his heart into his throat. The handgun he'd recently purchased was missing. Dave reported the theft to the Council Bluffs police. Doty and Avis never heard about it. Council Bluffs kept a separate database from the sheriff's office. That gap would turn out to matter enormously. They knew that when it came to a potential stalker, they had to be careful about when they approached her. However, Doty and Avis would never have to corner Liz because on December 4th, 2015, she walked into the sheriff's office and asked to speak with them. They agreed, and that's when Liz told them something completely unexpected.

• 41:55Vanessa Richardson?

  She said she no longer believed Carrie Farver was the one stalking and harassing her and Dave. Amy Flora was. The detectives knew how important it was to gain Liz's trust, so they pretended to believe her. And they told her that in order to build evidence against Amy, they needed to see the contents of Liz's phone. Once again, she handed it over.

• 42:18Tristin Engels?

  So Liz has decided to abandon Carrie and name Amy as the new suspect. This seems like a sudden and drastic shift, and in a sense it is, but it actually makes sense from her perspective. Remember, they have been alleging that Carrie's been stalking them for nearly three years. Three years and nothing has come of it. She's handed her phone over twice now. And since then, no one can find Carrie or put a stop to this. So at some point, this allegation is going to become less convincing and it's going to lose its credibility. And on some level, she may already sense that. So she's naming a suspect that they can actually locate, and she's a plausible one because she has a relational history with Dave.

• 43:00Tristin Engels?

  This also makes her appear flexible and believable to law enforcement, or at least that's the hope she has. This way, she can appear helpful and attempt to steer suspicion or attention away from her and onto Amy, who she's already threatened by. But cooperation isn't evidence, unfortunately, for Liz. What's on her phone, or isn't on her phone, is evidence.

• 43:25Vanessa Richardson?

  Once the detectives had Liz's phone, they talked with her a while longer and managed to get even more incriminating information from her. They asked her questions about Amy, still making it seem like they believed Liz's claim. Liz spoke freely, and eventually, she said she believed it was Amy who'd stolen Dave's 9mm Smith & Wesson, silver and black, she added, loaded with two magazines. Neither detective had even known the gun was missing, so there was no innocent way for Liz to know its make, its color, or how many magazines were in it, unless she was the one who had taken it. Once Liz left the station, they knew they had to work fast to compile their evidence and arrest her.

• 44:09Vanessa Richardson?

  Otherwise, she might do real harm to someone. While they worked, digital analysts came back with more chilling insight into how Liz had orchestrated her stalking and impersonation scheme. Part of the reason it took Dave so long to believe Liz may have been the culprit was because she often received messages from Carrie while sitting right next to Dave. Now, the analysts had found an explanation. Liz had been using services that let her write messages and schedule them to send later, and others that masked her IP address, which meant she was able to impersonate Carrie while building an alibi for herself. The day after Liz spoke to Doty and Avis, she called 911 and said she'd been shot in the leg.

• 44:54Vanessa Richardson?

  It was 6:41 in the evening, long after dark. Officers rushed to Big Lake Park in Council Bluffs, Iowa, just across the river from Omaha. When they arrived, they found Liz sitting on the ground beside her Honda, the only car in the unlit parking lot, with a gunshot wound to her left thigh. She immediately told them Amy was the one who'd shot her after ambushing her and telling her to stay away from Dave. The officers tried to calm Liz down and understand exactly what happened, but the details of her story kept changing. The only part that stayed consistent was that Amy was the shooter. Liz received medical attention, and on the strength of Liz's accusation, officers went to Amy's house.

• 45:38Vanessa Richardson?

  Amy opened her front door to find guns pointed at her, her toddler son inside. She was cooperative, and her car was cold to the touch, which meant it hadn't been driven in hours. It's unclear whether authorities were able to analyze the bullet that injured Liz, but Doty and Avis were convinced she'd shot herself and that she'd done it with Dave's stolen gun. However, they knew they may never find the gun, so they thought of a faster way to prove their theory about Liz. While questioning her about the shooting, they asked if she'd be willing to try and bait Amy into confessing, and Liz said yes. While they prepared for their fake sting operation, which was really just a ruse to get Liz to detail her own crimes,

• 46:22Vanessa Richardson?

  investigators also reexamined Carrie's Ford Explorer. Doty and Avis tracked the Explorer down. It had been sold on by then, and it had been processed twice more in Iowa. The first search that December turned up nothing. But in February, the technician peeled the cloth cover off the passenger seat. Soaked into the foam underneath was a large red stain. Now, Doty and Avis believed Liz may have killed Carrie inside the car, then scrubbed it clean, not realizing the blood had already soaked through the seat cover into the foam beneath. And when they sent out a sample of the blood for testing, it showed a match to Carrie's DNA. With this bombshell evidence in hand,

• 47:06Vanessa Richardson?

  the detectives were also ready to have Liz carry out the fake sting on Amy. They told her to email Amy and ask about the shooting. Liz got a response that detailed the attack. She forwarded the message to investigators. Little did she know, they quickly confirmed that Liz was impersonating Amy under a fake email address. From there, they urged her to ask about the last two years of stalking and harassment, as well as the acts of vandalism, arson, and Carrie Farver's murder. Soon, Liz showed them the messages, which admitted to everything. Now investigators had confessions to each and every lurid crime,

• 47:48Vanessa Richardson?

  including details of how Carrie had been stabbed in her own car, wrapped in a tarp, then burned and put out with the garbage. And it had all come from Liz Gallier herself. After that, authorities were finally able to secure search warrants in February 2016 for Liz's apartment and the house she'd been living in more than three years after Carrie Farver disappeared. They came away with cell phones, cameras, memory cards, and a black and white floral shower curtain matching one bought with Carrie's debit card the week she vanished. But the photograph that mattered most didn't surface until February 2017. Dave remembered a tablet he put in storage,

• 48:33Vanessa Richardson?

  one Liz had access to. On a memory card inside were more than 13,000 deleted photos, including a close-up of a human foot bearing a tattoo consistent with one on Carrie's left foot. A pathologist testified the foot showed signs of decomposition. In December 2016, the state of Nebraska officially charged Shanna Elizabeth Gallier with the first-degree murder of Carrie Farver. Even though Carrie's body had never been found, the confessions Liz had written in someone else's name and the blood in Carrie's car were enough. Prosecutors later amended the charges

• 49:13Vanessa Richardson?

  to add second-degree arson for the 2013 fire at her own home. Dave Kroupa was shocked when he heard the news, and throughout the trial, he'd only become more sick with grief and regret. The defense ultimately argued there was no body, no weapon, and no eyewitnesses. But there was no jury to win over. Liz had waived one on her attorney's advice. He judged that ordinary jurors would never get past what she'd done. So it fell to a single judge to weigh the digital footprints, the bloodstains in Carrie's car, and the confessions she'd written in someone else's name.

• 49:54Vanessa Richardson?

  On May 24th, 2017, Liz Gallier was found guilty of first degree murder and second degree arson. That August, she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder, plus a consecutive 18 to 20 years for the arson. She appealed, arguing again that there was no body, no weapon, and no witness, and that her own lawyer had failed her by advising the jury waiver. In November 2018, the Nebraska Supreme Court rejected every argument and affirmed the conviction. As of this recording, she still maintains her innocence. For Dave Kroupa, the end of the trial brought long-awaited

• 50:37Vanessa Richardson?

  peace, but the scars of what he went through still remained.

• 50:41Tristin Engels?

  I can't imagine the weight Dave carried in the aftermath. This is an enormous psychological burden. Just walking through his situation, he felt responsible for Carrie and Liz ever crossing paths to begin with. He believed he failed to recognize what was happening. He was manipulated into distrusting Carrie and protecting Liz. And afterward, he likely replayed countless moments in his mind and wondering whether there was something he missed, something he could have done differently to prevent Carrie's death and everything that followed. Survivor's guilt is the intense guilt that someone can experience after surviving when another person dies or is seriously harmed. And I think one of its most difficult

• 51:24Tristin Engels?

  features is that it can create this illusion of control over something the person never actually controlled. When someone is experiencing survivor's guilt, they tend to rewrite what happened in their mind by saying things like, "If I only did this," or "If I only believed that," "If I stopped this," "If I intervened there." But that's hindsight. And take Dave's situation. At the time, he was making decisions based on information that he genuinely believed to be true. And based on that information, he did what he thought was right. He felt protective of Liz. He supported her. He empathized with her. He genuinely believed that she was in danger alongside him. And had the situation

• 52:06Tristin Engels?

  actually been what he believed it was, those responses would have made complete sense. And he wouldn't have this guilt. He didn't have the information then that he has now. And that's part of what makes this kind of guilt so psychologically painful and hard for people. You're not only grieving, you know, what you went through, what happened, the loss. You're grieving this imaginary version of yourself, someone who knew more, acted sooner, or made the right decision. And you're holding your past self-responsible for not having knowledge that you only got after the fact.

• 52:38Vanessa Richardson?

  That is some intense, prolonged trauma. So how can someone like Dave start to understand that they're not at fault? And how can they ever feel safe again after that?

• 52:48Tristin Engels?

  I think in this case, one of the first steps is separating responsibility from the deception. And I'm talking about Dave in particular. Obviously, everybody's situation is different, even from what I was just speaking on. Dave may feel responsible because, again, he was manipulated into believing certain things. But responsibility for being lied to for years and the harm that was caused belongs to the person who chose to create it to begin with. So putting the responsibility where it belongs is very important to address the self-blame that often results from that. Feeling safe again is often just a much longer process. Experiences like this can affect your sense of safety, your trust in other

• 53:30Tristin Engels?

  people, for sure, especially in Dave's situation, and even in trust in yourself. Recovery is about gradually helping your mind and your nervous system learn that this particular threat has ended. And it's rebuilding confidence in your own judgment, recognizing healthy relationships, establishing boundaries, which definitely I think Dave will really need, and learning that not everyone is going to manipulate or betray you. And working with a qualified licensed mental health professional is an important part of processing trauma, and that is definitely recommended.

• 54:09Vanessa Richardson?

  Carrie Farver was a dedicated mother, a gifted computer programmer, and a beloved daughter. Her life was cut short, not because of anything she did, but because she crossed paths with a monstrous killer. Dave has been able to rebuild his life, and his story is a reminder of how much damage one person can do with a phone and a fake name, and of how long it can take to be believed.

• 54:40Tristin Engels?

  Before we get out of here, I'm excited to introduce a new segment that I'll be doing at the end of every case. We're calling it "The Angle's Angle," where I'll tell you three pieces of advice that I'd give our subject if they were my patient. This is not meant to be a formal diagnosis or official treatment. This is educational entertainment only. So here's what I would tell someone like Liz Gallier if she came into my office. Number one, rejection is information. It's not a personal attack. Do not personalize

• 55:20Tristin Engels?

  it. It happens to all of us. Number two, if jealousy starts to change how you behave or treat someone, then it's time to create distance and seek external support. Number three, if you have to manipulate someone's reality to keep them interested in you, then you've already lost the relationship.

• 55:39Vanessa Richardson?

  Thanks so much for listening. Come back next time for a deep dive into the mind of another murderer.

• 55:58Tristin Engels?

  Serial Killers and Murderous Minds is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on Instagram at @CrimeHouse. Don't forget to rate, review, and follow Serial Killers and Murderous Minds wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference.

• 56:20Vanessa Richardson?

  And to enhance your listening experience, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode of Serial Killers and Murderous Minds ad-free, along with early access to each thrilling two-part series. Serial Killers and Murderous Minds is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson, and forensic psychologist Dr. Tristin Engels, and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Serial Killers and Murderous Minds team: Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Lori Marinelli, Natalie Pritzowski, Sarah Kamp, Alyssa Fox, Mara De La Rosa, Claire Swartzlander, Sarah Batchelor, Sarah Tardif, and Carrie Murphy. Thank you for

• 57:05Vanessa Richardson?

  listening. If you're looking for your next podcast, check out What the Fact with Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum and Carter Roy. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from history and tell you the full story behind them. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen, or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.