by Leslie Rule
The messages the next morning contained more chilling threats: . . . I will kill your sons. I am not joking. I don’t joke around. You better stop talking to him . . . I will know if you talk, smile, or anything with him, and I seriously will kill you and your son . . .
Jessica sat Benjamin down and had a talk with him about strangers. She’d warned him before, just as all parents do when they teach their children to be careful in a world that is not always safe. Now the danger was real and immediate. Someone had made it clear that they were ready and willing to press a sharp blade to the youngster’s throat and end his life.
The concerned mother chose her words carefully. She didn’t want to frighten her second-grader but had to make him understand that even women strangers could be dangerous. He must not go outside to play without her watching, she stressed, and she had to know where he was at all times. Benjamin nodded and promised his mother he wouldn’t let a stranger into their apartment. As for Christopher, he was too young to understand. It was ultimately up to Jessica to protect her sons. The stalker accused her of being a “worthless mother” and caring more about a man than her sons’ lives. It was far from true. She’d already decided it was too risky to meet Dave.
At 7 P.M., on May 11, a message arrived with no outright threat and no profanities. It was simply Jessica’s address, complete with her apartment number. The stalker knew exactly where Jessica was, but she had no idea where her stalker was. The horrific threats nibbled at her serenity. She double-checked the locks on her doors and windows but couldn’t shake the image of a cruel hand holding a knife to her boys’ throats. Jessica did not sleep well.
She figured she’d better learn all she could about her new enemy and visited her Facebook page. As she scrolled through “C. Lea’s” pictures, she was shocked to find a familiar photo. It was a picture of Jessica with Benjamin. Jessica had posted it on her Facebook page for her friends and family to enjoy, and the stalker had downloaded it, posting it on her own page.
“I felt very, very threatened.” Her voice trembles at the memory. She hated the fact her tormentor knew what her sons looked like. She changed her Facebook settings, so her images couldn’t be downloaded. It wasn’t much of a deterrent. Photos posted on the web can be captured just as easily with screenshots, a feature available on most computers.
Jessica had had enough. She sent a text to Dave: You’re probably a very nice guy, but I don’t need this headache. As soon as she “unfriended” Dave on Facebook, the terrorizing stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Still, it took a while for her to believe that someone was not creeping around in the shadows, knife in hand, ready to leap out and attack her family.
Four days after Jessica’s second harassment report, Liz filed another complaint with the Omaha Police Department. Sergeant Brett Schrage was working the front desk at the Southwest precinct that day. He reviewed some of the threats on Liz’s phone and advised her to save them and apply for a protective order.
The bully was finding new ways to terrify. On May 11, the same day that the stalker had sent Jessica her own address, and Dave had received the email threatening Liz and her “ugly kids,” a memorial for Liz appeared on Remembered.com, a website where grieving families can post photos and bios of their deceased loved ones.
The nut sent Dave a link to the memorial. He was shocked to see a photo of Liz with “June 28th 1975 to May 11th, 2013” printed beneath it. The obituary read: I didn’t know her very well expect [sic] that she was a whore and a man stealer. It continued with run-on sentences and atrocious grammar and punctuation mistakes: She kept stealing my man she is unable to get her own man that she has to keep taking everyone else’s men. Thank God she is gone you rid dines [sic] to you. Apparently, the writer had meant to type: Good riddance to you, but didn’t use her computer’s spell-check feature. Either that, or the errors were deliberate.
While Liz was not dead, she told Dave she was scared to death. According to the obituary, she died on May 11. That’s today, Dave realized as he studied the memorial. Liz was still alive, but the day was not over. Could someone be planning to end her life that day? Nah! It was a ridiculous idea. He figured the ugly words were empty threats. It was quite a leap from keying a car to murder. A few hours later, at nearly 2 A.M. on May 12, Dave received an email with the subject line: How do I find a hit man, contract killer? It began: I am trying to hire someone to get rid of that whore Liz for us. You told me before you wanted her gone. I can’t do it myself because the cops will figure it out. It went on to ask if they should also have Liz’s kids killed, and ended with: I love you, Dave, and I am glad you’re in this with me. I hope to see you soon. Your beautiful Cari.
It was more nonsense, but Liz appeared frightened. Dave tried to reassure her. It was B.S., he insisted, just like when the stalker had claimed she was locked in a car trunk. “Liz, she’s just trying to scare you,” he told her. He hoped he was right.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I love you. Don’t ignore me, or I will tear out
your whore’ s eyes and slit her throat . . .
—TEXT FROM STALKER TO DAVE KROUPA,
JUNE 23, 2013
ON MAY 18, 2013, the Facebook impostor uploaded a new profile image, originally posted by Cari on her real page. It was a photo of Cari with her dad about a month before he died. Denny looked sickly and gaunt as his daughter wistfully rested her head upon his shoulder. The accompanying text, riddled with grammar errors, was disturbing to Cari’s friends and relatives, and none of them believed she had written it: I have answered enough questions to prove myself to everyone, it began before angrily declaring that she was indeed Cari and wanted to be left alone. I left on my own free will, and I am sick of everyone giving me a hard time for doing what I needed to do. Particularly painful to Max was the claim he had refused to go with his mother. The post ended with: I love you all very much, but I need time still to sort things out.
It wasn’t just Cari’s family who was going out of their minds with worry, her friends, too, were devastated and lost. They spent countless hours combing the Internet for a sign of Cari. Nancy’s heart went out to Cari’s friend, Joy Norstrum, when she showed up at her door, so excited she was practically bursting. She thought she had located Cari through a recently posted online video and couldn’t wait to show Nancy. They turned the computer on, and Joy accessed the video. It was definitely made by Cari, but while Joy had assumed it was recent, Nancy recognized it as one Cari had filmed before she disappeared. Nancy recalls how she gently broke the news, and all of Joy’s excitement drained away. “She put her head down on the table and cried.”
Cari Farver’s absence tore holes in the serenity of many people. Over six years after her best friend vanished, Amber Jones’s eyes are still bright with pain when she talks about her. She met Cari in October 2009. Amber’s boyfriend had invited her to attend the wedding of his friend, Phillip Wades, who was marrying Cari. From the instant Cari and Amber first smiled at each other, the connection was undeniable. It was as if they’d been friends forever.
For their first outing, Amber and her fiancé had gone on a double-date with Cari and Phillip, but Amber was apprehensive. After overcoming an addiction, she was clean and sober and avoided situations where others imbibed. Cari was sensitive to Amber’s discomfort and quietly reassured her that she would abstain, too. From then on, whenever the group went out together, the ladies remained sober while the guys drank.
Amber and Cari always had so much fun together that they didn’t need cocktails to unwind. They shared a sense of humor and laughed so much that sometimes people turned to stare. While they abstained from alcohol, they found something else that was bad for them to indulge in. Amber was lactose intolerant, and Cari was allergic to gluten. “Whenever we went out to eat, we always ordered a brownie with ice cream and split it.” The guys looked at them like they were nuts. Didn’t they realize they were going to be sick later? Of course, they did! And that’s what made their choice so decadent. That’s what made it so delicious a
nd so funny. They giggled as the guys stared at them like they’d lost their minds.
The bond between the two women had been instant, powerful and rare. Amber marveled about the fact that they were so close that they often knew what each other were thinking. She loved that she could tell Cari anything, and her friend would never judge her. They could also count on each other, and it meant a lot to Amber when Cari helped her plan her wedding. As close as they were, sometimes life took them in opposite directions. They hadn’t seen each other for months when they got together for lunch the first week of November 2012. There was a lot to catch up on. Amber was very pregnant with her first child, and Cari was thrilled for her.
Cari had some exciting news of her own. She’d been seeing someone for the last week, and it was going very well. She told Amber about her first encounter with the handsome mechanic when she’d brought her Explorer into Hyatt Tire, and an undeniable energy had ignited between them. Cari said she’d been instantly taken with Dave Kroupa, and though the attraction had seemed mutual, he hadn’t asked her out. Cari told her friend that she’d sought Dave out, signing up on the Plenty of Fish dating site because she’d hoped to connect with him. In the end, Cari had gone back to Hyatt Tire, and they’d arranged for their first date at Applebee’s. Amber was glad to see her friend so happy.
They ended the lunch with Cari promising to throw Amber a baby shower, and they set a tentative date. But Amber had been hurt and confused when Cari failed to follow through with the party plans and ignored her phone calls. It would be weeks before she learned that Cari was not being inconsiderate, she was missing.
Amber’s first months with her new baby should have been the most joyful of her life, but instead she was sick with worry. Around the time of the Siena/Francis House hoax, Amber got a text from an unfamiliar number. Her hopes soared when the texter claimed to be Cari. But the messages were troubling. “Cari” asked for help but was vague about her situation. Amber kept her phone near, ready to hop in her car and drive to her friend the moment she was given an address. But the story kept changing. Amber’s phone was flooded with texts, some that filled her with absolute horror. “Cari” said she was being held captive, locked in a room, unable to escape.
How are you able to have a phone? Amber texted.
The explanation made sense. The phone was prepaid, and the captor didn’t know she had it. She claimed the guy had been torturing her and followed that with a frantic message: I can hear him! He’s coming! Then there were no more messages, not for many long and agonizing days. Amber was left picturing her best friend being viciously attacked, maybe even killed. She contacted the police and Nancy, though she spared Cari’s mother the frightening details. Amber was a nervous wreck, and her tiny infant surely sensed her anxiety and suffered, too. After days of silence, more disturbing texts appeared. Amber was never given a specific location. The texter never asked about Amber’s baby, or mentioned anything that convinced her that Cari was behind the messages. But Amber was afraid to cut off the communication. What if it really was Cari? If there was even a small chance that Cari was the one texting her, Amber would not abandon her.
Meanwhile, the stalker continued to harass Dave. He tried to ignore her and continued to meet women online. If he could catch his tormentor lurking outside, he would follow her and find her hideout. Then the cops could arrest her. In the meantime, he planned to keep dating, if she didn’t scare away all of his dates!
He was grateful to Liz for having the guts to stick by him, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t restless. He still got mad when she couldn’t contain her jealousy, and he broke up with her regularly because of it. The breakups didn’t last long because the stalker would always do something horrendous that would send them scurrying back to each other for comfort. While he was glad that he could talk to Liz about the problems, their conversations got old very fast because they all revolved around the stalker, what the stalker had just done, what the stalker was planning to do, and how they could catch and stop the stalker. Dave estimates that “our conversations were all about that for 99 percent of our relationship.” There had to be more to life than being stalked and talking about being stalked!
One Friday night in mid-June, Dave was visiting Amy and his kids when he received an email with the subject line, Now at your place, and the message read:
I know you’re there. Hello. Do I need to break the sliding door to get you to talk?
The sliding door was in his apartment, and the stalker apparently figured out he wasn’t home because she emailed him again a couple of minutes later: I told you I was coming to see you tonight. You weren’t there. I took out a window. I hope your whore inside was scared and never comes back . . .
Dave arrived home that night to find a brick had shattered a bedroom window. He called police to report the damage. Though the stalker had seemed to think he had a female visitor, it wasn’t so. The apartment was empty when the window was broken. Multiple emails and texts continued to come in each day, often many an hour. On the twenty-third of June, one email threatened: I’ll kill her. She stole my heart. She broke my dreams. She stole my future when she took you away from me. That whore will die.
The next day another appeared: I will remove all your whores. All that will be left is me. You left me for that ugly whore. Now I destroy your life.
The last week of June, Dave got up one morning to find his car had been keyed. Scratched in giant letters along one side of the car were the words: Dave loves fat whores. The stalker took credit in an email: I keyed your fucking car. Let people know you like fat whores.
The next day, another email laced with threats popped up: I will kill that nasty-ass whore Liz for getting in between us and every fat ass that you have been with. Then I will kill that loud-mouth kids’ mom of yours for getting in my business. She thinks she knows what’s going on. Wait till I cut her throat.
In addition to being beaten down by the stalker, Dave was also once again feeling stifled by Liz’s incessant nagging, and he pulled away. He met a woman online he was very attracted to. Sally was a voluptuous blonde in her late thirties. “She seemed to have her stuff together. She had a job and a couple of Volkswagens because that was her thing.”
As always, his harasser seemed to know exactly what was going on in his dating life. One of the emails he received on July 1 made that point clear: Oh, Loser, I saw you out on another date tonight. I see you gave up on that whore Liz. Thank God. I haven’t seen her at your place lately. Well, I’m glad. Everyone told me you can’t stand her and that you two aren’t even friends, and you two aren’t even talking to each other. Thank God you woke up and realized she was no good for you.
On Wednesday, Sally brought one of her Volkswagens to Hyatt Tire to have Dave look into a problem she was having with the radio. “I put a fuse in it, and I walked her out to her car. I said good-bye, and I gave her a little kiss.” He didn’t realize someone was watching. Within two hours, Sally was bombarded with calls, texts, and emails from someone claiming to be Cari. Dave also heard from “Cari,” boasting about how easy it had been to trace Sally through her license plate number: So now I found two of your whores. One drives a burgundy car and lives close to downtown. The other I saw at your job through binoculars from Menard’s.
Dave glanced across the busy four-lane highway at Menard’s, a huge home-improvement store that was part of a Midwest chain. He realized with a shiver that someone could park in the lot and watch him at work. “I was in the Menard’s parking lot two minutes” after the text arrived. “Of course, it was well after the fact, and I didn’t find anybody.”
On July 3, at 6:10 A.M., one of the emails Dave received referred to both Sally and Liz: So, loser, I told you I watched you, and I saw you with a fat-ass whore at your work. Got that fat-ass whore’s license plate number, can get her address, name, telephone number from it. Now I see that ugly whore Liz at your apartment. If you don’t want them finding out about each other, break up with ugly whore Liz now, or I will rui
n your life like I told you I would. I can see the whore’s car.
“Loser” was apparently the stalker’s new pet name for Dave, but she stuck with her old standby for Liz, continuing to refer to her as “a fat-ass whore.” In the stalker’s mind, the two worst things a woman could be were “a whore” and “fat,” and when that fat accumulated around a woman’s lower region, the insult was as bad as it could possibly get. “A fat-ass whore” was the ultimate denigration, and the stalker seemed to delight in the slur. It was not reserved just for Liz. Any female who so much as smiled at Dave was a “fat-ass whore” and in danger of being sliced by the sharp blade of the watcher’s knife.
Neither Liz nor Cari were fat. The size and shape of a person’s body were not something that Cari ever would have criticized. She had never judged or mocked anyone for their physical appearance, and had, in fact, been accepting of all manner of idiosyncrasies of her fellow human beings. Dave, however, still knew very little about the woman he had spent two blissful weeks with. Whatever good qualities he had noticed in that short period of time were overshadowed by eight months of foul-mouthed threats.
I would do anything to make you hate her.
The stalker had written that in reference to Liz. But Dave did not hate Liz. If anything, he felt more fondly toward her, more protective of her, because of the thousands of threats and ugly words targeting her. It was Cari he had come to despise. How ironic that the stalker, so determined to make him hate Liz, had succeeded only in making him hate her. Dave was so exhausted by the crazy games that he didn’t stop to reflect on this. He never questioned his stalker’s identity. He had assumed from the beginning that Cari was behind all of the ugliness. The first disturbing texts had come from her phone, and the troublemaker had claimed to be her, brazenly and gleefully taking credit for every mean deed. Why would the stalker lie? She said she was Cari, so who else could it be?
Dave was not alone in his belief. He was one of many intelligent males, including experienced detectives, who saw exactly what the culprit had wanted them to see and nothing more. Several females, however, had suspected the truth. Some tried to speak up but were shushed or laughed at. Others knew that no one would believe them and didn’t bother to voice their theories.
