by Leslie Rule
The photos snapped on Cherokee’s phone appear to be candid shots and show both Liz and Dave, clowning around together. Maybe Dave didn’t notice she was taking pictures, but he wouldn’t have objected. Liz carried on about it as if it were an unthinkable violation of his privacy. She couldn’t have been more offended if Cherokee had sneaked into the men’s room and photographed Dave at the urinal.
He soon began to receive messages, allegedly from Cherokee, suggesting that they rendezvous without Shanna. He sensed a trap and declined. He would one day learn that Liz had forged those notes. Cherokee had no idea that her trusted friend was impersonating her. It was another weird game, a baffling, pointless game that only Liz understood.
She had a strange way of viewing the world and seemed intent upon stirring up trouble. Liz was threatened by the fact that Dave and Amy were still part of each other’s lives. When the parents vowed to make their relationship as harmonious as possible, they had also agreed to share holidays with the kids. Calista and Trey wanted to celebrate Christmas with both their parents. “We always planned on spending Christmas together with the kids,” says Amy. “And we’d always done it at my house.” So far, the arrangement had worked out beautifully.
In December 2014 Mason was almost eight months old. His very first Christmas was coming up, and he was excited. While he couldn’t really understand what the holiday was, he was mesmerized by the lit trees with the shiny, red baubles and caught up in the excitement of his older siblings. When Dave shopped for Calista and Trey, he made sure to get gifts for Mason, too. The presents were wrapped and heaped beneath the tree, and Dave was looking forward to watching the kids open them. The affection was mutual between Dave and Mason. When Mason learned to talk, he called his siblings’ father, “My Dave.” The little boy was a charmer, and Dave was fond of him.
“We’d always had Christmas at my house,” Amy explains. “But that year Dave wanted to do it at his place. The little guy and I went over there, and the kids were waiting for us. We were all having a good time, the kids were opening presents and Mason was checking out everybody’s stuff. And then Liz came walking in the door.”
Her visit was unannounced, and she hadn’t bothered to knock. Like Dr. Seuss’s Grinch who stole Christmas, Liz seemed determined to destroy the holiday. Amy cringed as Liz stomped in. “You could just feel the negativity as soon as she got there. She took Dave into the dining room, and I could hear that she was angry that I was there.” Dave spoke in a subdued tone, trying to keep the argument quiet. Liz sounded mad, her voice rising as she spoke Amy’s name.
“It was very uncomfortable,” Amy recalls. “I don’t like confrontation, and it was Christmas!” Amy scooped up a protesting Mason. “I told the kids I’d see them when he brought them home later, and I left.” They were disappointed to see their mom leave, but Amy knew if she stayed that Liz’s tantrums would ruin what was left of the day. Though Liz had never heard of her Grandfather Fabian or his tirades, she continued his tradition of ruining Christmas for children. Just as Fabian had broken his wife’s nose in a tantrum over dolls more than half a century earlier, Liz, too, was behaving badly, though no blood was spilled on that day.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
AFTER OVER TWO YEARS of harassment from the stalker, Dave moved across the river to a place he hoped his tormentor wouldn’t find him. On February 1, 2015, he settled into his new apartment in Downtown Council Bluffs, near historic Bayliss Park. He lived closer to his kids now, too, and looked forward to seeing them more often. Dave’s stalker, of course, knew exactly where to find him, because he had given her his address. Dave was not stupid. And neither were the many other people Liz had fooled. Many, many intelligent people—mostly males—had been tricked by Liz. Some were professionals who dealt with criminals on a daily basis, but Liz managed to thoroughly manipulate them, too.
How is it possible that Liz got away with murder for so long? Some people who’ve read the news stories are bewildered by that, assuming that her crime was so obvious that they could have solved it, even if they’ve had no training in law enforcement. The truth is that the Golyar case is one of the most complex and confusing crimes to ever challenge detectives. It might have gone unsolved if not for those who spent months painstakingly untangling the killer’s snarled web. They sorted out the facts and presented them in an exquisitely linear fashion that made sense out of nonsense. This was done first by the investigators who captured her, then by the prosecutors who convicted her, and finally by the media who parroted the professionals who worked so hard to get justice.
By the time the case was served up in a neat package for public consumption, the facts were so well organized that it appears far simpler than it actually was. Online chatter unfairly criticized the first round of investigators for being fooled by a killer. But those investigators reacted as probably 99 percent of their peers would have if confronted with the same crazy illusion, and they shouldn’t be faulted for that. They didn’t solve the case, but they did collect and preserve valuable evidence. This initial group of investigators did exactly what was expected of them. The second wave of investigators, however, did more than what was expected—much, much more! And it is this group that should be singled out as extraordinary.
In order to get justice for Cari Farver, they worked thousands of hours without pay, sacrificed important relationships and even risked their health. While several brilliant people worked endless hours to nab the killer, this complex endeavor called for so much more than brains and hard work. The case could not have been solved without vision, creativity, and heart. It took vision to see the truth that so many others had missed, creativity to devise traps to trip up the predator, and heart to feed the passion required to see a difficult case through till the end.
* * *
Detective Jim Doty always knew he wanted to work in a helping field. The Council Bluffs native graduated from York College with a Bachelor’s in Psychology and was employed as a counselor in a group home for troubled children when he heard Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office was hiring. He applied on a lark and wasn’t expecting a written test. Applicants were presented with various scenarios that could arise on patrol and asked how they’d respond. He must have done well, because he was invited in for an interview. Two months later, “They called and said, ‘We’ve got one spot, and we want to give it to you.’”
He hesitated. “I don’t really know what you guys do,” he admitted and asked if he could shadow a deputy before accepting the position. But they needed someone immediately, so he had to pass. He later signed up to go on a ride-along with a patrol deputy and realized “I could still help people like I wanted to as a mental health counselor, but I didn’t have the monotony of doing the same thing every day.” A few months later, in August 2007, another position opened up, and he went to work as a deputy.
Ryan Avis also went into law enforcement because he wanted to help, though his path was more treacherous than Doty’s. Avis’s parents struggled with drug addiction and ran with a dangerous crowd. “I had a really rough childhood. I saw a lot of things that most people don’t see in their whole life before the age of ten. I never had good encounters with police when I was a kid because they would arrest my parents, and I went to that place where he worked,” he says, nodding toward Doty. “That group home—that’s where I would go for a night or two because I had no one to care for me.”
The police he encountered as a boy were cold and indifferent. “I grew up with disdain toward police. They’d never helped me out.” Born in Houston, Texas, Avis moved to Iowa with his family when he was four. Soon after, his parents divorced, his father overcame his heroin addiction and got custody of Ryan and his sister. The fact he survived “is proof enough of a higher power,” says Avis. He lived in Treynor, Iowa, throughout most of his childhood. Morningside College in Sioux City offered him a scholarship when he was recruited to play football. Later, he went to Western, working to pay for school.
He was employed as a
guard at the Pott County Jail for about a year and a half and went to work as a road patrol deputy in March 2008. He joined the Investigation Unit in May 2014 and was promoted to corporal in the spring of 2015, around the time Randal Phyllips was promoted to sergeant. Detectives Avis and Doty had heard “water-cooler talk” about the Farver case. They were intrigued by the peculiar mystery, and they asked to have the case reassigned to them. Sergeant Phyllips gladly handed over his case file.
When they teamed up to investigate the disappearance of Cari Farver, Doty and Avis devised a unique strategy to avoid tunnel vision. They approached the case from opposite angles. Avis worked it as if Cari were alive. Doty worked it as if she were dead. “We started from scratch,” notes Avis. But they found nothing to suggest Cari was alive. She’d dropped out of the lives of her dying father, her teenage son, and everyone else who loved her. No one had seen or talked to her for two-and-a-half years. She had abandoned her house, her car, and all of her possessions. She had not withdrawn money from her bank or used her credit or debit cards. It appeared they were investigating a homicide.
If Cari was deceased, then who was sending messages in her name? Only the killer would have a motive to make it appear Cari was alive, but it was an unusual scheme. It would have made more sense for the culprit to distance themselves from the whole situation. Why in the world would they impersonate their victim for over three years? One thing was clear. This was not a typical homicide, and the killer was not a typical suspect.
When it comes to female victims, 58 percent of the time the killer is either an intimate partner or a family member, according to a 2018 global study published by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Investigators, aware of the statistics, looked closely at David Kroupa. Not only was he the victim’s boyfriend, he was the last known person to see her. But he’d been nothing but cooperative, and they quickly ruled him out. They found themselves focusing on someone else, a woman whose name popped up so frequently that it had to be more than a coincidence. The first time her name surfaced was just two days after Cari was last seen. On Thursday, November 15, 2012, a West Corp supervisor received a text from Cari’s phone: I won’t be coming back. I’m taking a job in Kansas. Sorry for the short notice. I am sending someone out to you to fill the position. Her name is Shanna Golyar.
Those who knew Cari best insisted she wasn’t one to make capricious decisions and that she’d never move away without her son. And she knew she couldn’t hire her own replacement. West Corp had a rigorous hiring process, first screening resumes of promising applicants before inviting the most impressive in for a series of interviews. “Cari’s” recommendation was especially ludicrous because Shanna had no training in computer coding. A manager at West Corp forwarded the message from “Cari” to his superiors, adding his own comment, “I’m not putting a lot of faith in the recommendation.” Shanna filled out an application a few hours after the text was sent to the West Corp supervisor. Under reference, she listed Cari Farver. She did not get the job.
As detectives studied the endless emails and texts, signs of Liz’s obsession with Dave began to emerge. Both he and Liz had allowed downloads of their phones early on, and investigators now became familiar with the strained dynamics of their relationship as they read the thousands of words that had passed between them. The messages attributed to Cari were strange. They found the email from the January 2013 kidnapping hoax, the one with the attached photo of the bound woman in the trunk that “Cari” claimed was Liz. The metadata on the photo revealed it was taken with an LG spectrum cellphone, model number, VS920, identical to one of the phones Liz owned.
They viewed a YouTube video, allegedly uploaded by Cari, and discovered by one of Cari’s friends who’d forwarded it to police. The video, “My Husband’s Cheating Place,” features an apartment building as the videographer walks toward it. The detectives ran the plate numbers of parked cars, visible in the video, and traced them to residents of Dave’s former apartment complex. The cars’ owners weren’t involved in the case, but the plate numbers verified the video was made outside of Dave’s Omaha apartment. The detectives now knew where that video was made but couldn’t prove who had made it. They needed more information and submitted a search warrant to YouTube.
* * *
Nancy Raney was brokenhearted. Her daughter had been missing for two-and-a-half years, and she was certain something terrible had happened to her. She had tried repeatedly to make authorities listen. In the beginning, when police reported that Cari was breaking into houses and vandalizing property, Nancy had been shocked. Cari had never done such wretched things. But they’d been so adamant, that Nancy had begun to wonder if it were possible. As the weeks melted into months, and Cari’s family and friends continued to be taunted with bizarre texts, Nancy knew the truth. Her daughter was not a criminal. She was a victim.
On May 8, 2015, Detective Doty went to see Nancy. When he appeared at her door, she steeled herself to hear more negative things about her daughter, and she admits she wasn’t very friendly. But then he said something she wasn’t expecting. “I want you to know that I don’t think Cari left on her own.”
All of Nancy’s anger was swept away in a wave of relief. Finally! Someone believed her! Overwhelmed with gratitude, she hugged the detective. When he asked to download the contents of her Samsung cellphone, Nancy granted permission at once. He was particularly interested in the image of the check the texter had sent as proof of payment for the furniture in Cari’s house. That image, of course, had proven to be a picture of a check that Shanna claimed Cari had stolen from her garage. Until now, no one had considered comparing the signature on that check to Shanna’s actual signature. Doty explains, “I looked up several traffic citations, issued to Shanna Golyar in the past, and looked at the signatures.” The signatures he found were nearly identical to the one on the check. It appeared that Shanna Golyar had indeed written that $5,000 check. It was enticing evidence but not proof she’d harmed Cari.
The investigators found it odd that not only had their suspect tried to take Cari’s job, she’d also tried to steal her furniture. She’d been so confident she wouldn’t be caught that she’d blatantly linked her own name to both schemes, signing the check without attempting to disguise her handwriting and applying for the West Corp position under her real name.
It was as if Liz believed she could slip into Cari’s shoes and take over her life. Though they’d yet to prove it, the detectives suspected Liz had stolen Cari’s phone and had set up numerous social media and email accounts in her name. While she hadn’t succeeded in stealing Cari’s job or furniture, Liz had managed to steal her boyfriend. But Liz could never hold onto Dave for long. The detectives realized Liz was fixated on him, desperate to make him commit. Had Liz’s obsession driven her to kill? Evidence suggested that, but all of it was circumstantial. They had no body, no crime scene, no murder weapon, no confession and no witnesses.
The January 2013 downloads of Dave’s and Liz’s phones had produced endless pages of data, and the investigators stared at it till their eyes watered. If the evidence was there, they were determined to find it. But there were not enough hours in a normal work week to sift through everything. Detective Avis estimates he put in an extra 500 unpaid hours, often taking work home, and though his wife, Angie, was understanding and supportive, he knew he wasn’t giving his family the attention they deserved and confides, “Our marriage was suffering drastically.”
On Memorial Day weekend of 2015, the Avis family took an out-of-state trip to visit relatives. It was supposed to be a relaxing getaway, but Ryan Avis was obviously distracted. While his family slept, he sat up until 2 A.M., studying Liz’s phone data. Something caught his eye. Liz had made six calls to a landline, five on November 6 and one on November 7, and each time, she’d first punched in star 67 to block caller ID. The calls had been made to Cari Farver’s home! Liz had called Cari about one week after she’d interrupted Cari’s first date with Dave and about a week before
Cari vanished. The longest call had lasted thirty-three seconds.
The 2013 phone download had also captured pictures Liz had taken, including one of a Ford Explorer, identified as Cari’s car, via the plate number. Investigators felt a chill as they noted the date. Christmas Eve, 2012. That picture was snapped while Cari’s car was still officially missing, two weeks before it appeared in Dave’s parking lot. Very interesting, but not proof of murder. They needed stronger evidence to make a homicide charge stick.
As Detective Doty studied the report on the recovered SUV, he was intrigued by the unidentified fingerprint on the mint container. He contacted Katie Pattee and asked her to compare it to Shanna’s known prints on file. Pattee soon reported back that the prints matched! It was an exciting find but no smoking gun. A defense attorney could argue that Dave might have picked up the container and carried it to Cari’s car. It was more circumstantial evidence. Each piece was weak on its own, but collectively, it was gaining strength.
Meanwhile, Liz had no idea detectives were closing in. She had other things on her mind. Garret, wary of her games, had asked her to move. She refused, claiming she couldn’t afford it. While she continued to live in his home, their romantic relationship ended in the autumn of 2015. Convincing Liz to move wasn’t easy. Gabe told Garret, “Dude, I’ll come over and kick her out.” Garret could kick her out as easily as Gabe. Getting her out wasn’t the problem. It was what might happen afterward he feared. He wasn’t afraid Liz would harm him, but he worried about what she’d do to his home.
Dave, too, became fed up that fall. Liz’s jealousy was wearing him down. The tension escalated on Thursday, November 26, Thanksgiving Day, a holiday she’d asked him to spend with her. He’d agreed, but their plans were derailed. “There was a blizzard, and Amy asked me to drive Mason to the emergency room.” The baby had a respiratory infection with a fever of 103 and was having difficulty breathing. Amy was afraid to drive on the icy roads, but Mason needed immediate care. Liz was not pleased when Dave ran to the rescue, and she picked a fight with him. He was disgusted by her selfishness. How could she expect him to sit down and eat turkey when Mason was so ill? He would have dropped everything to help any child who needed help, and this was his kids’ baby brother. Dave told Liz it was over, and this time he meant it.
