A Tangled Web

by Leslie Rule

  Shortly after that, Dave went to bed alone one night and woke the next morning to discover nearly every female on his cell phone contact list was mad at him. He stared at their hostile texts, baffled. It soon became clear they were responding to texts he had sent. Though he’d been deep asleep in his usual coma-like slumber, he’d somehow managed to start fights with some now very angry women. “I went to sleep with my phone plugged into my charger next to my bed and woke up to find that someone had texted these women on my phone and started some shit.”

  The riled-up women included Amy, and she had retorted with an angry text of her own. Apparently, he’d also texted a number of women and was “really rude and calling them whores!” Dave was not in the habit of walking or talking in his sleep, and he’d certainly never texted in his sleep. He couldn’t see what he’d supposedly written because all of his outgoing messages had been deleted, but the recipients filled him in after he sent apologies and explained that he wasn’t the one who’d texted them in the middle of the night.

  Only one woman in the bunch had become suspicious. Her name was Jane, and Dave barely knew her. They’d only recently began talking. She’d received a text from his phone, sharing a very personal thing: “I had sex tonight.”

  Jane responded: “Yeah. And? What do I care?”

  He appeared to reply: “Doesn’t that make you mad?”

  Jane didn’t care if Dave had sex, though it was weird that he’d text to brag about it. She knew if they decided to date, it wouldn’t be exclusive. They’d discussed that in one of their first conversations. The odd texts now filling up her phone sounded nothing like the guy she’d been getting to know. After a rapid exchange of messages, an outgoing text from Dave’s phone said he wanted nothing to do with her. “Fine,” Jane replied. “Fuck you.” But she wasn’t really all that offended because she doubted Dave was the one texting her. Jane had picked up on an anomaly. “There was a word I always screwed up when texting her,” Dave recollects. “And all of the sudden, I was texting it correctly.”

  While the hoopla with Jane wasn’t disastrous, he cringed when he learned some wayward texts had reached into a corner of his past, kicking up dust in a most humiliating manner. The contact info of his old high school girlfriend was stored in his phone because he sometimes texted her a friendly birthday greeting. The lady, married with four kids, had received a vulgar text.

  “We hadn’t talked in forever.” Dave points out that she no longer knew him well enough to realize he was a rational person. While she seemed to accept his mortified apology when he claimed he hadn’t sent the texts, he couldn’t be sure she believed him. “Who knows? Maybe I’m off my rocker! More than anything, I think her husband was irritated, wondering why I was texting his wife at 1:30 in the morning, talking shit. And, of course, I’m like, ‘It wasn’t me!’ He’s responding, ‘Okay, it wasn’t you. It came from your phone.’ That doesn’t fly, so, I gotta explain the whole stalking thing, and that sounds like bullshit unless there’s a news article to go with it.”

  In addition to the embarrassment and trouble caused by the rude texts, the situation gave Dave a serious case of the creeps. The stalker had come into his locked apartment and stood over him while he slept. How did she get in? Did she sit on the floor by his bed as she sent the dozens of inflaming messages?

  Dave could protect himself from any female who meant to cause him physical harm, unless she had a weapon, or he was asleep. Asleep, he was as vulnerable as a newborn infant. As he lay dreaming, the nut who’d bragged about stabbing people had been close enough to slit his exposed throat. Was she capable of murder? He didn’t know and didn’t want to find out. Days later, “I woke up one morning, and my phone was totally done. It didn’t work. It didn’t turn on.” Had the stalker crept in and broken his phone? Or had it simply conked out on its own? The only thing he knew for sure is that it never worked again.

  Dave spent Sunday afternoon, November 29, visiting his kids. When he returned, he discovered something alarming. “I went into my bedroom and opened the door to my closet, and the box my pistol resides in was hanging out over the ledge of the shelf. I grabbed the box, and there was nothing in it.” The box of ammunition was still there, but the gun had held two loaded clips. Dave reported the theft to the Council Bluffs police. His shotgun, stored next to the handgun, hadn’t been touched, and nothing else was missing.

  How had the thief gotten in? There was no sign of forced entry, but there was an ongoing issue with the lock on his front door. Sometimes it didn’t work. The crazy texter who’d borrowed Dave’s phone and the gun thief could have gotten in because of the deficient lock. He suspected, of course, that they were one and the same, but he couldn’t be certain. There was no question his stalker was the mad texter, but the thief could have been a lucky burglar who happened upon a door with a faulty lock. If so, it was odd that only the gun was taken. It was as if the crook had known exactly where it was and had walked right to the closet to get it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  IN DECEMBER 2015, Detectives Avis and Doty were dying to talk to Liz. But they couldn’t risk spooking her, so they continued to investigate from afar. And then on December 4, Avis recalls, “We were given a gift.” He was stunned to see Liz, walking down the hallway of the Sheriff’s Office. He’d studied her for months, but it was the first time he’d seen her in person. “It was like seeing a famous person!”

  Avis learned that Liz had come in to file a harassment report against Amy Flora. He followed Liz to the parking lot and explained he’d been appointed to assist her. He went to her home to take the report. He knew everything about her life and all of the characters in it. He was well aware of the fact she lived with Garret, but she told him that only she and her children lived there. Twice more during the interview he asked who lived there, and each time she failed to mention Garret.

  Liz explained she was worried because Amy had been stalking her on Facebook. Avis played dumb, an act reminiscent of the clever 1970s TV detective, Columbo, as he asked her to repeat the names he knew so well and then deliberately stumbled over the spelling.

  Liz explained that Amy was Dave Kroupa’s ex.

  “Dave Cooper?”

  “Kroupa,” Liz corrected, and patiently spelled it for the detective.

  He was fascinated by the fact she was suddenly shifting the blame to Amy after years of accusing Cari. Liz told him, “Not even two days after we broke up, his apartment was broken into, and his gun was stolen. So, I told the police officer I was kind of worried since she has a key to his apartment.” She now realized it didn’t make sense for Cari to stalk Dave. “Like I said, they only dated for two weeks, and I don’t understand why a person would still be stalking him almost three years later.”

  “Cari and Dave dated for two weeks?” Avis asked.

  “Mm—hmm,” Liz answered. “I would find it much more reasonable to believe that the kids’ mom is the one that was stalking him.”

  Avis was unaware of the gun theft because the Council Bluffs Police Department maintains a separate database from the Sheriff’s Office. Liz stressed that only three people other than Dave had keys to his apartment: Amy and the kids.

  “What kind of gun is it?” asked Avis.

  Liz told him it was a 9mm Smith & Wesson, silver and black, loaded with two magazines. She was anxious to press harassment charges against Amy. If the detective needed evidence, that was no problem. Her phone was full of threatening texts. For the second time in three years, Liz signed a consent form, allowing detectives to download her phone. She followed Avis’s instructions to remove her phone’s passcode, putting it into airplane mode. The procedure, Avis explains, “preserves the phone as is, so when I return it to her, it’s like taking a step back in time. When she takes it out of airplane mode, all the messages that she was getting will start to come through again.”

  Downloads typically take between two and six hours, and the phone would first be delivered to the county’s task force office and pla
ced in a Faraday box, a strong box that blocks signals. Named for Michael Faraday, the British scientist who invented the container in 1836, also known as a Faraday shield or cage, the contraption shields items from electromagnetic fields. Detectives sometimes opt to use Faraday shields for confiscated cell phones to prevent digital evidence from being deleted or altered remotely. Special Deputy Anthony Kava, from the IT department, would handle the download.

  Avis told Liz he would speak to Dave and Amy about the harassment and gave her his work cell phone number, inviting her to call should any issues arise over the weekend. The next morning, Liz forwarded him more threatening messages, claiming Amy had just sent them. The detective acknowledged her concerns and assured her he’d speak with Amy on Monday. But by then, everything would change.

  * * *

  It was late Saturday afternoon on December 5, 2015, and Amy Flora was at her apartment, settling in for the evening. Her two older kids were spending the weekend with their father, so she and little Mason were alone. Though it wasn’t quite 4 P.M., night comes early in Iowa in December with the sun setting by five. Soon it would be dark, and it was cold outside. It had been a long day, and Amy was tired and glad to be home in her cozy apartment. She’d been out to lunch with her friend Dustie, and the ladies had shopped for Christmas presents afterward.

  Mason had conked out in his car seat on the way home, and she’d carried the sleeping boy inside and tucked him in for his nap. She showered, pulled on her flannel pajama bottoms and a tank top, and got comfortable. With a full-time job and three kids, she didn’t often have time to relax. There was only one thing she felt like doing. “I sat on the couch, playing games on my iPad.”

  About three miles southeast of Amy’s apartment, Garret Sloan was at home, watching TV with the kids when Liz announced she was going to Walmart. Garret stared at her, surprised she’d bothered to inform him of her plans. “Typically, Liz never told me where she was going, and I never cared enough to ask,” he says, adding that she often insinuated he had an obsessive need to know her whereabouts. It wasn’t true. Frankly, he didn’t care what she was up to, as long as it didn’t involve him.

  Liz watched Garret expectantly, waiting for him to acknowledge her plan to go shopping.

  “Okay. Whatever,” he said, and she went out the door.

  * * *

  Council Bluffs’ Big Lake Park is not normally viewed as a place of mystery. The 163-acre park is a rolling terrain of grassy hills and grand old trees. Features include three lakes, tennis courts, playgrounds, and a hiking trail that loops around Gilbert Pond, a tiny lake stocked with rainbow trout for those who fish off the dock. Few visitors are aware of two strange incidents that frightened some folks away. Each occurred on a chill December evening, and each involved lights in the sky—though the first incident began with lights, and the second incident ended with them.

  On December 17, 1977, at quarter to 8 P.M., a peculiar thing appeared in the sky over Big Lake Park. Eleven people witnessed it, and their descriptions were somewhat varied. Some insisted it hovered for a moment before rocketing toward the Earth. One witness described a ball of fire, while another said it resembled a shooting star. Still another said the object had rotating lights. They all agreed on one thing. It did not remain in the sky.

  The Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) crashed to the ground near Gilbert Pond. Firefighters rushed to the scene, shocked to find a mass of metal, melted and boiling and running down the edge of the embankment. After the largest pieces had cooled, the firefighters gathered them up and whisked them away.

  Authorities were stumped. Where had the thing come from? What in the world was it? Experts at Iowa State University examined the molten fragments and determined they were a mixture of metals, including iron, nickel, and chromium. The largest chunk retrieved was approximately fifty pounds, but some UFO enthusiasts suspect that the pieces scattered near the lake were just a bit of rubble from an alien spacecraft. The ship itself, they theorize, plunged into the water and sank to the bottom of the lake. Skeptics insist it was nothing more than space debris, but that contradicts eyewitness testimony of a hovering ship with rotating lights. The mystery remains unsolved.

  The woman at the center of the second incident had been just a toddler in 1977 when the Big Lake Park sighting earned Council Bluffs a spot on UFO maps. She probably had never heard of the freaky occurrence and was not pondering spaceships and aliens when she went to the park “to think” on the night of December 5, 2015. Creatures from outer space or not, few women would not be wary of visiting a deserted park alone after dark. Liz Golyar, however, was unexpectedly bold, especially for someone who’d just reported a stalker was after her.

  The park is a peaceful place to walk or jog in the daylight but creepy after sundown. Two large parking lots sit on opposite ends of the grounds, and neither is lit. At night, the park is awash in an inky sea of darkness. It was 6:41 P.M. when a 911 operator was alerted to trouble at Big Lake Park. The caller gave her location, and she sounded scared. “I’ve been shot in the leg!” she cried.

  “Where are you in the park, ma’am?”

  “I’m in one of the parking lots on the, um, left hand side. I have a little red Toyota, and I’m laying next to it.”

  “Is the assailant still nearby?”

  “I don’t think so. I took off running.”

  “How many people were there?”

  “Oh, I, I don’t know,” the victim stammered. “I only heard one.”

  “Do you know if it was male or female?”

  “A female.” The caller sounded certain of that.

  “Is there more than one wound?”

  “Um, I think it’s just one. They shot out a couple of shots. They only hit me with one, I think.” Clearly distressed, the woman cried, “Um, my, my pant leg is filled with blood. Oh, Jesus.”

  The Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office is one-tenth of a mile from Big Lake Park and can be seen from the south parking lot where Liz Golyar waited for help to arrive, but the first responder was with the Council Bluffs Police Department. Officer Dave Burns, a ten-year veteran with CBPD, pulled his cruiser into the dark lot and noted a single vehicle, a small car, in the northeast corner. The driver’s door was open, spilling light onto the woman who sat on the ground, her back to the door jam. She held a cellphone to her ear as she talked to the 911 operator. Burns observed no one else in the vicinity as he approached the injured woman. Shot in her left thigh, she was obviously in pain. Burns reassured her that medics were on the way and asked, “Who shot you?”

  “I don’t know.” Pale and distraught, she was going into shock. Was the shooter still in the area? For all Burns knew, somebody could be hiding behind a tree, watching them, planning to shoot again. Despite the fact the parking lot had no lights, tonight it was somewhat brightened by the moon and the light from the victim’s car and the police cruiser.

  “Where were you when you were shot?” the officer prodded.

  She indicated a bench, about 100 yards north. “I went there to think,” she volunteered. Suddenly her fuzzy memory cleared. “It was Amy Flora! Amy Flora shot me!” She told Burns she’d been lying on the bench when someone named Amy had suddenly appeared and blurted, “So, you like fucking Dave?” After asking the crude question, the assailant had shot her and vanished into the night. She said she hadn’t seen the shooter leave and had no idea where she went. Officer Burns wrote down her description of the incident, including her assertion that she and this Amy had been involved with the same man.

  Medics and another officer soon arrived. Liz was rushed off to CHI Health Mercy Hospital while police cordoned off the crime scene. Officer Burns and other police searched the park for the shooter, and Omaha PD sent their Able-1 Helicopter team to assist. If the armed attacker was on foot, she couldn’t have gotten far. Anyone else she encountered could be in grave danger.

  People driving by the park on nearby North 8th Street were startled by the jarring clatter of the chopper and its gl
aring spotlight as it scoured the park from above. For just a flash of a second, one passerby admits, he mistook it for a UFO and feared aliens had returned to Big Lake Park. Some Council Bluffs’ residents had been frightened back in 1977 when they read the newspaper reports on the bizarre thing that had burst into flames over the park. Now, news of the shooting was about to make local headlines, and some people would once again be wary of visiting the beautiful park.

  There was no sign of the attacker, and it didn’t seem possible that the shooter could have fled on foot and exited the park before the Able-1 team swept in. The helicopter crew aimed their infrared camera at the dark park below. The device detects body heat, and sure enough, they got a hit. They radioed the location to the team on the ground, and officers rushed to the scene with guns drawn but encountered only startled homeless people, camping in a tent they’d pitched near the park. The camera detected no other warm bodies, no one trying to flee. It seemed the shooter had melted into the shadows.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  IT WAS ABOUT 7 P.M., and Amy was still sitting on her couch, playing games on her iPad, when she was startled by noises outside. It sounded like someone was bumping up against her door. “Whose there?” she called out.

  “Open up! Police!”

  She opened the door and was stunned to see three police officers with guns aimed at her. “I was terrified!” she confides. “One of them told me that Shanna Golyar had been shot, and it took me a minute to realize who that was. I knew her by Liz, but I’d heard she went by Shanna.” Once she realized who the cops were referring to, Amy had just one question, “Is she all right?” It was the most frightening moment of Amy’s life, but her first concern was for the woman who’d been making her life miserable.