The Story That Never Made Sense (part 2)

This is part two of two, there is too much to unpack, for just one episode. If you haven't listened to part one yet, do that first, and then join us for the rest of this case here. 

In November 2012, what looked like a messy breakup in Omaha, Nebraska slowly grew into one of the strangest digital stalking cases investigators had ever seen.

At first, it appeared to be a story about jealousy. A woman who had recently dated a man suddenly began sending threatening messages. The texts escalated, the accusations spread, and people close to the situation found themselves dragged into a growing storm of harassment.

For years, the people closest to the case struggle to understand what really happened. But as investigators begin looking closer, the story everyone believed starts to fall apart.

This is one of the most baffling cases we have ever covered, it truly will have you guessing till the very end. We've kept the description vague because we don't want to give anything away in this messy, chaotic, unbelievable story. Thank you as always for listening!

To see more about this case, as well as the sources used to create this episode, visit our Blog Here.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Hi, welcome to Crime Clueless for your hosts. I'm Jenna. And I'm Lara. This is part two. So if you haven't listened to part one, head over, listen to part one, and then come join us for part two. Before we continue, let's quickly remind ourselves where we left off. In late 2012, Dave Krupa briefly dated Carrie Farber while also seeing Liz Oliar. After a few weeks, Carrie suddenly asked Dave if they should move in together. When he said, no, I don't think that's a good idea. It's too soon. Carrie got angry and ended things. But instead of a clean break, Dave's phone began filling with messages from Carrie. What started as angry text quickly turned into something much bigger. The messages escalated into threats, online accounts, and emails sent to Dave's friends, coworkers, Liz, Dave's ex-wife, everyone in his orbit. Over the next several years, the harassment only intensified. Liz's home was vandalized, Dave's apartment was vandalized, a fire destroyed Liz's home and killed her four pets. Despite changing numbers and blocking accounts, the messages never stopped. By the beginning of 2015, Dave had decided he was ready to leave Omaha and start over somewhere else. And at the end of November 2015, Dave returned home one day to discover his gun that he kept hidden in his home was gone. That is where we left off. Yes, I cannot wait to find out what happens next. You usually don't have to wait quite this long when we do a two-partner. I know. And I mean it to not look good. Yes. I did not look it up. I don't know what's coming, so I'm really interested to find out. Excellent. Now, the messages had never truly stopped. By 2015, the harassment had grown beyond texts and emails. There were new social media accounts that began appearing online under Carrie's name. Some of them looked just like hers, profiles with her name, her photos, and posts that made it appear as though she was actively following Dave and the people around him. The content, though, always quickly turned hostile. These accounts were used to send private messages to people connected to Dave. His friends, coworkers, former girlfriends, anyone who appeared in his orbit online. The messages accused Dave of cheating, lying, and manipulating women. Some posts publicly insulted Liz, calling her names and blaming her for destroying Carrie and Dave's relationship. It felt like Carrie was trying to control the narrative. The accounts would appear suddenly, post aggressively for a short time, and then disappear just as quickly. And not long after one profile vanished, another would pop up somewhere else, sometimes under a slightly different version of Carrie's name. And Dave and Liz are not dating at this point anymore. They had broken up, correct? By the end of 2015, yes, they had broken up for good. I think that happened around October. The harassment from the social media accounts no longer felt limited to private texts and emails. It was now visible to anyone online. It would appear in timelines, inboxes, and comment threads all across social media. It was as though whoever was behind the messages wanted the entire world to see the chaos. By early December of 2015, this strange and relentless harassment had been going on for more than three years. And through it all, the same name would appear at the end of those messages, Carrie. Then on the evening of Saturday, December 5th, 2015, the situation suddenly became much more intense and terrifying. That night, Liz decided to go for a walk. She headed to Big Lake Park, which is a large 190-acre park near the Nebraska-Iowa border. The park sits in a quiet, isolated area along the Missouri River with long walking paths that wind through trees and open areas. It was early evening, but in December, darkness comes quickly. By the time Liz arrived, it was already dark outside. But it was somewhere she knew well. She felt comfortable enough to take a walk along one of the park's trails. The area was quiet and calm, the kind of place people often visited for exercise or a moment of fresh air. As Liz followed the path, she noticed a bench ahead and decided to stop and sit down for a moment. She had only been there for a short time when suddenly a shadow appeared. Liz saw the silhouette of someone standing over her, and then she heard a woman's voice. The voice ordered her to get down on the ground. Liz immediately complied. She lay face down on the cold ground, unsure what was about to happen next. Then the woman spoke again. According to Liz, the voice asked her a rough question, said, So you like effing Dave? A moment later, two loud bangs shattered the quiet of the park. Gunshots. Liz suddenly felt an intense burning sensation in her left thigh. She had been shot. Despite the shock and the pain, Liz managed to scramble to her feet. Adrenaline took over as she ran as fast as she could back towards the parking area where her car was parked. That's so scary. Can you imagine? Like you're there alone. There alone and still being harassed over someone that you're not even seeing anymore. And now you've been shot because of this.

unknown 6:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Yawn is like so wild. It's a crazy amount of harassment. Yes. When Liz reached her vehicle, she grabbed her phone and dialed 911. The operator answered to the sound of a panicked voice. Liz told the dispatcher that she had been shot. She said, My pant leg is soaked with blood. Officers from the Council Bluffs police department were quickly dispatched to the park. When the first officer arrived, he found Liz sitting on the ground beside her car, still on the phone with the emergency operator. Her leg was bleeding heavily and she was clearly in pain. The officer began asking her what had happened. Liz told him that she had been approached by a woman in the park and shot. And according to Liz, she knew exactly who the shooter was. But the name she gave was not the one officers might have expected. It wasn't Carrie Farber. Instead, Liz told the officer that the woman who shot her was someone else entirely. Amy Flora shot me, she said. What? Okay. That's not who I was expecting either. No. And remember, that's Dave's ex-wife. Right. Okay, for a minute, let's step back in time. Because while the harassment, the threats, and now a shooting had consumed Dave and those around him all of their lives for years, there was another story unfolding quietly in the background. One that started long before the gunshots in the park. It began three years earlier on Tuesday, November 13th, 2012. That day, Nancy Rainey received a text message from her daughter, Carrie. At the time, Carrie was staying in Omaha for the week while she worked on a large project. She had been spending time with a new boyfriend named Dave, and because she expected to be so busy with work, Nancy had happily agreed to watch Carrie's 14-year-old son back at their hometown in Macedonia, Iowa. Nancy was excited to spend the week with Carrie's son. Carrie and Nancy were extremely close. They spoke on the phone almost every day. If something big was happening in Carrie's life, Nancy was usually one of the first people to hear about it. So when Nancy opened the text message that morning, it immediately struck her as strange. Carrie wrote that she had been offered a new job in Kansas and planned to take it. Nancy sat there for a moment, confused. As far as she knew, Carrie loved her job. She had never mentioned quitting, and certainly not for something in another state. The message didn't mention when this offer had appeared or why the decision had happened so suddenly. It also didn't make practical sense. Carrie owned her own home in Macedonia and had spent years building a life there for herself and her son. Picking up and moving to Kansas on such short notice seemed completely out of character. Still trying to make sense of it, Nancy went to talk to Carrie's son. She asked if his mother had ever mentioned a job in Kansas. He said that at one point, Carrie had briefly talked about possibly looking at a position there. So this eased Nancy's concern a little. Maybe the opportunity had come through faster than expected. But even with that explanation, something still didn't feel right. The tone of the messages seemed off. More importantly, Carrie wasn't calling. And Nancy knew that Carrie was really busy with the project she was on. But at the same time, if she were leaving that job, she should have time to call. And that was the part that bothered Nancy the most. Normally, if something big happened in Carrie's life, the two of them would talk about it on the phone. They would go back and forth about the decision, talk through the details, maybe even laugh about how unexpected it all was. Instead, Nancy was receiving short text messages. And it just didn't feel like Carrie. At the time, Nancy tried to tell herself she was overthinking it. There was another reason, though, that she expected to see her daughter soon. Carrie's half-brother was getting married in just a few days, and the entire family would be there. Nancy assumed that whatever was going on with the Kansas job, they would sort it out in person at the wedding. But the wedding came and went, and Carrie never showed up. Missing a whole wedding with your whole family, and you were supposed to go back. You're just MIA. Yeah, it's really interesting. That turned Nancy's unease about it into something much heavier. Days had passed, and no one in the family had actually seen or spoken to Carrie. Everything they knew about her supposed move to Kansas was coming through text messages and online posts. Eventually, Nancy decided she needed help and she contacted police. And she was supposed to go back and be with her son, but she never came back after the week. When an officer spoke with Nancy, the response was cautious rather than urgent. From their perspective, Carrie was an adult. Adults are allowed to leave town if they want to. They're allowed to take new jobs, change their routines. They're even allowed to cut off contact if they choose. And Carrie was still communicating. Text messages were still being sent. Social media was still active. For example, on November 21st, a message appeared on Carrie's Facebook page announcing quote, moving to Kansas for a great job will miss family and great friends. To investigators, that post suggested that Carrie had made the deliberate choice to start a new chapter somewhere else. And just abandon her son. Yep. That makes no sense. You would think there would be something in that aspect of it that they could try to get her, right? Right. Absolutely. That yeah, that doesn't make sense that she would just would go for a week to spend time on this project and then never come home again and just move to a different state. Yeah. And then police are like, no, she can do that if she wants. Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. Sometimes it's hard enough to get them to investigate a missing person report when there's no text, no social media, no communication at all. And they still say they can disappear if they want. So this is like, no, she's clearly fine. She's still texting you. What are you worried about? Yeah. Nancy tried to explain to them why the situation felt so wrong. She told them Carrie was happy, energetic, fun-loving. She told them how often they spoke on the phone and that hadn't happened. She mentioned Carrie's son and how Carrie wouldn't just pick up and leave. But she also mentioned something from Carrie's past. About 10 years earlier, Carrie had gone through a difficult period and had eventually been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. When officers heard that detail, it caught their attention. They had seen cases before where someone struggling with bipolar disorder stopped taking medications and made sudden life decisions. Quitting jobs, leaving town, cutting off contact with family. To them, that seemed like a plausible explanation. The officers documented the report and officially listed Carrie as a missing person. But because there was no evidence of violence, because messages from her phone and social media accounts were still appearing, the case was not treated as an emergency. At that moment, it simply looked like a woman who had decided to leave town and start over somewhere else. For Nancy, though, the feeling that something was wrong never went away. This feeling was amplified as Carrie's son had sporting events that she never attended. She was his biggest fan and missed event after event. Nancy continued caring for her son and worked hard to fill the space that Carrie's absence created. Okay, so the first half, you're like, what is going on with Carrie? And now you feel so bad. I feel bad for her because I'm guessing something bad happened to her. When you look at it from her family perspective and like, yes, somehow these two things didn't really come together because they are still looking for Carrie, but they're looking for her to get her to stop stalking Dave. They're not looking for her like maybe something happened. Right. Yeah, I spent the whole first episode not being her biggest fan, and now I feel really bad because that's really sad. Yeah, there is that whole side of it though, where that's how a lot of people felt because they were being harassed by Carrie. Right. So it was supposedly coming from her. There's more. Before Carrie's departure to Kansas, her father had been really sick with cancer. He had actually been in the hospital and she'd been visiting him frequently. When she texted that she was moving, she never came to see him again. And a month later, he unfortunately passed away from his illness. Nancy so sad. And Nancy tried to let Carrie know what had happened. She sent the funeral service information, but Carrie didn't attend. As the weeks turned to months, Nancy began noticing something else that didn't feel right. Carrie continued to send the occasional text message, but the tone was different now. And not just emotionally different, the writing itself felt wrong. Carrie had always been meticulous when she texted. She was the kind of person who paid attention to spelling and grammar, even in casual messages. But suddenly the texts Nancy was receiving were sloppy, rushed, filled with strange spelling mistakes and missing punctuation. It didn't sound like her daughter. Then one day, another message arrived. This one said that Carrie had sold her bedroom furniture online and needed Nancy to let the buyer into the house so they could pick it up. Nancy E stared at the message in disbelief. Carrie's bedroom dresser wasn't just any piece of furniture. It was an antique that had belonged to her great-grandmother, something that had been in the family for generations. Nancy couldn't imagine her daughter just casually selling it to a stranger on the internet. To demonstrate that she had indeed found a buyer, another message followed with a photograph of a check. It was made out to Carrie for$5,000, supposedly from the buyer, but it still just felt wrong to Nancy. Nancy sat there for a moment, then typed back the only response that made sense to her. She said, I need to hear your voice first so I know it's really you. The reply came quickly, and it wasn't what Nancy expected. Instead of a phone call, an angry message appeared from Carrie's number, accusing Nancy of being controlling and calling her a bad mother. Nancy was stunned. The hostility didn't sound like Carrie at all either. Then, a couple months later, Nancy was scrolling through Facebook when she noticed a new profile under the name Carrie Farber. The profile picture was a photograph of Carrie standing beside her late father. At first glance, it looked like Carrie's Facebook. But as Nancy started looking more closely, a couple things didn't add up. One post in particular caught her attention. It mentioned Dave, the man Carrie had been dating shortly before she disappeared. Nancy had heard his name, but she had never met him, and she had no way of contacting him directly. The police by this point had told her that Dave was actually the one being harassed by Carrie. According to investigators, Carrie had left town and was now relentlessly sending him threatening messages. But the post that Nancy was looking at told a completely different story. It claimed that Carrie and Dave had recently gotten engaged. Attached to the post was a photograph of a hand wearing a diamond ring. Nancy stared at the picture. The hand in the photo was short and thick with stubby fingers. Carrie's hands looked nothing like that. Carrie had long, slender fingers. And at that moment, Nancy felt something settle in her chest. When was this post? Because wasn't she supposedly threatening Dave online and all these things? And here she's posting there engaged. Yep. Right in the middle of all of the harassment. Yeah. Wow. A little bit of whiplash there. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. The picture was not a good cover. Like, I'm curious if this picture was supposed to convince Carrie's friends and family that because she was engaged, she was, yeah, fine, living her best life, not harassing Dave. Like, don't worry about me. I know. It's so strange. So strange. For people that knew Carrie really well, all it did was convince them even more that this wasn't Carrie. Because looking at that picture, it did not look like Carrie's hand at all. I wonder how this person also knew about the bedroom dresser that Carrie had. That is such a weird thing. If it was Amy, which I'm assuming she was planning to go pick it up from them and steal it from them. Yeah. Such a how would she even know that she had something like that? Maybe she'd been in her house. Yeah. It's really the only thing that I can think of that makes sense. Yeah, because I can't think of anything either. Unless she was looking up pictures. Maybe she had pictures in her phone or something, or she had stolen her computer. Maybe there was stuff on there. Oh, probably both. I don't know. Probably. She might have had a picture on her Facebook that showed the dresser in the background. Maybe. Wow. So random. Like the dresser is random. Yes. Like, I need that. I need that in my life. I think I'll steal that from these people after everything. And make them think I'm buying it. Yeah. Yeah.

unknown 21:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

Uh Nancy wasn't the only one who thought someone was pretending to be cute. Harry, her son felt the same way. And when this started, I believe he was 14. So old enough to have a Facebook, old enough to understand more of what's going on than if he had been, say, five or six, right? Yeah, for sure. Like his grandmother, he could not believe that his mother would just simply walk away from him. And the longer these strange social media accounts, it doesn't seem like Carrie was harassing anyone in her own family, maybe sending messages that didn't make sense or to try to put them at ease, but nothing negative. But on Facebook, they can see more from like an outside perspective. Yeah. One day, Pete's received a message from a new Facebook account using his mom's name. He opened it and the message read, Hey little man, how are you? This immediately made him feel uneasy. His mom had never called him little man, not one time. He didn't reply. But a couple weeks later, he had an idea. He opened Facebook and sent a message back to the account. He decided to ask a couple simple questions, but ones that only his mother could answer. He asked, What was the name of our first boxer? Who was my best friend when I was growing up? Relatively simple questions, the kind of thing a parent would know instantly. Her son waited for an answer and waited, but no reply ever came. For Nancy and the rest of Carrie's family, the conclusion became impossible to ignore. They believed that something terrible had happened to Carrie. Now it's all making sense how they kept getting Dave's new numbers and everything, everything like that makes sense now. Someone in his orbit, right? Yep. Yeah. Someone who would need to have his numbers. And he changed his number. He would have to give it to this person. He must have been so confused on how they always seem to get his number. Yes. I was. Like, how do they keep doing this? My new email. Yes. Finding his address when the gun was stolen. Yeah. Yep. All of that. Carrie's family believed that she was the victim of foul play. The problem was they had no way to prove it. And at the time, investigators weren't convinced that anything criminal had happened to Carrie. They weren't listening. They were focused on finding Carrie, but because they thought she was doing something criminal. Police did try to ping Carrie's cell phone towards the end of November 2012. It pinged in Omaha, but they weren't able to find the phone or Carrie. Okay, so now we're gonna jump back to December of 2015, back to when Liz was shot. So one day before the shooting in Big Lake Park, Liz had contacted police with a new theory. For years, everyone involved had believed the same basic explanation for the harassment, that it was coming from Carrie, the woman Dave had briefly dated back in 2012. But by this point, even Liz had started questioning that idea. On December 4th, 2015, Liz told investigators that the situation no longer made sense to her. The harassment had been going on for years. Thousands of messages, threats, awful incidents like the house fire had kept escalating. She told police that she had begun to doubt that a two-week relationship could realistically produce that level of sustained anger and obsession. Yes, agreed. Yes, completely agreed. Instead, she wondered if someone else might be responsible. Liz suggested a new name to investigators, Amy. According to Liz, Amy could potentially be behind the threatening texts and emails that have been circulating for years. The idea caught investigators' attention. Up until that point, the case had been viewed almost entirely through the lens of Carrie's supposed harassment. But Liz's suggestion opened the door to a different possibility that someone else could have been involved all along. Police considered the theory plausible enough to take another look. Liz agreed to let investigators download the data from her phone again, allowing them to review the messages from a fresh perspective and see if anything new might emerge. The officer handling the investigation told Liz that he would follow up on the lead and planned to speak with Amy the following Monday. Early the next morning, on December 5th, Liz sent the officer additional messages she had received. And then that same evening, the shooting happened. When officers arrived at Big Lake Park and heard Liz's account of what had taken place, the situation suddenly became urgent. Now we have actual violence happening. Yeah. And Liz had identified that it was Amy that shot her. Police moved quickly. Officers went directly to Amy's home. Amy opened the door to find multiple officers standing there with their guns drawn. She had been inside the house with her two-year-old son when the officers arrived. Investigators with somebody else now, right? Having and she's still doing all this to her ex-husband. Wow. Yeah. That's what investigators thought. Investigators immediately began looking for signs that Amy might have recently left the home. But one of the first things they noticed was her car sitting in the driveway. When they touched the vehicle, it was cold to the touch, suggesting it hadn't been driven recently. Amy cooperated with officers and answered their questions. Nothing about the scene immediately suggested that she had just returned from a violent confrontation in the park. After the shooting, they had checked the park with they had dogs there searching for whoever did this, and they had helicopters looking to see if they could find the person as they fled the situation, and they didn't find whoever had done this. Two days later, on Monday, December 7th, investigators obtained permission to download the data from both Amy's and Dave's cell phones. When analysts began examining Dave's phone data, something interesting appeared. Many of the emails that he had received from accounts that were claiming to belong to Carrie were not coming from Kansas. Instead, the messages were linked to a specific internet protocol address, often referred to as an IP address. An IP address functions much like a postal address or a device connected to the internet. Whenever a phone or computer connects to Wi-Fi, that connection can often be traced back to a location providing the internet service. In simple terms, if a device connects to a home's Wi-Fi network, the activity can often be traced back to that residence. When investigators looked closely at the data, they discovered something else. A digital forensic analyst working for the PD examined it. And the IP in question belonged to a man whose name had not come up in the investigation before now. One of the detectives reviewing the situation began considering a possibility that hadn't really been explored before. Up until that point, the assumption had always been the same. The harassment, the threats, the emails, all of it was coming from Carrie Farber. But now we have another name floating around, Amy. And after Liz was shot in the park and identified Amy as the shooter, investigators started wondering if she might be connected to more than just that incident. At one point, a detective even said something to Liz that captured the shift in thinking. Quote, if Amy was bold enough to shoot you, he told her, she could have easily been bold enough to have done something to Carrie. The idea lingered. If Amy had truly attacked Liz in a public park, then perhaps she had also been capable of harming Carrie years earlier. Investigators asked Liz to forward along any future messages she received from Amy. They also downloaded the contents of Liz's phone so they could review the messages she had already received herself. And then just days after the shooting on December 20th, an email appeared in Liz's inbox. She immediately forwarded it to investigators. The message was long. It was disturbing. When Detective Jim Dottie of the Sheriff's Office in Iowa opened the email, he read carefully through the text. The message appeared to have come from Amy. Part of it read, When I met Crazy Carrie, she would not stop talking about Dave and him being her husband. She tried to attack me, but I attacked her with a knife. I stabbed her three to four times in the stomach area. I then took her out and burnt her. Later, it described disposing of the body. It said, quote, I stuffed her body in a garbage can with wrap. She was carried out to the dumpster, probably when Dave took my garbage out for me. And then the final line, quote, so be glad I did not do you that way, Liz. If the message was real, it was essentially a confession. They asked Liz to forward any additional emails, and over the next few months, she did forward more emails with similar confessions. But investigators had learned by now that nothing about this case could be taken at face value. So they turned their attention back to evidence they already had. In spring of 2015, two detectives, Jim Dody and Ryan Avis, had heard about the case and found it really interesting. So this is spring of 2015, and the shooting was December of 2015. A woman had gone missing while also being the center of a stalking case. They requested to have the case moved to them, and the request was granted. Up until this point, Carrie's case had been treated as an adult choosing to leave town on her own. And this was in large part due to the large volume of communication coming from Carrie. However, as these two investigators began tracing the digital communication tied to the harassment, they realized something important. Before they could understand who had been sending the messages, they needed to revisit a much more basic question. What had actually happened to Carrie Farber? That question had first surfaced back in November of 2012 when Carrie's mother had reported her missing. And at the time, the sheriff's deputy tried to contact Carrie directly using her phone number. He received a response in the form of text. He actually got several text messages that came through from Carrie's phone. One of them read, I don't care about this missing person report, but I would really appreciate it if you would leave Dave Krupa out of it. I will be leaving the state. My mother overreacted. At the time, the message seemed to confirm what investigators believed that Carrie had chosen to leave town and simply didn't want to be found. But years later, these two detectives, looking back at the case, started asking a different question. What if those messages weren't actually coming from Carrie? The two men decided to approach the case from opposite directions. So Detective Avis would investigate the case as though Carrie were still alive somewhere, sending these messages. Detective Dottie would investigate it under the assumption that she might be deceased. The idea was simple. Follow both possibilities and see where the evidence led. That's an interesting way to go about that because from what they found out, they know one of these has to be true. So really interesting. That's a good investigation technique. Yes. What's the word I'm thinking of? It is. That's really interesting. It's a bummer that it took so long. Yes. If that had happened two years earlier, maybe not all of this would have happened. Right. Well, besides what had already happened. But maybe if they had done this two years earlier, could have saved Dave a whole bunch of mental exhaustion. When Carrie's family and her family and everybody. As the two started reviewing the case history, one detail stood out almost immediately. After November 13th, 2012, there was almost no physical trace of Carrie anywhere. No verified sightings. No confirmed phone calls. No employment records. Nothing. The only activity tied to her name came through electronic communication, texts, emails, online accounts. Even her financial activity abruptly stopped. Bank records showed that the last time money had been used from Carrie's accounts was on November 16, 2012, just three days after she was last seen. That day, her debit card was used to make two small purchases at discount stores in Omaha. After that, the accounts went completely untouched. For detectives reviewing the timeline years later, that detail stood out. People who start new lives still need money. They still buy groceries, they still pay for housing, they withdraw cash, but Carrie's accounts had remained frozen in time. As investigators continued examining the evidence collected early in the case, they also revisited data from the phones belonging to Dave and Liz. Back in early 2013, both of them had agreed to allow police to download the contents of their phone as part of the investigation into the ongoing harassment. Now detectives were reviewing that with fresh eyes. As they filmed through thousands of messages, call logs, photographs, several details caught their attention. In early November 2012, roughly a week before Carrie disappeared, Liz had made six specific calls to a specific landline. That number belonged to Carrie's home phone. The calls had been made on November 6th and 7th. Each one was brief. The longest lasted only 33 seconds. The calls raised an immediate question. At that point in time, investigators had no evidence that Liz and Carrie even knew each other. So why had Liz been calling Carrie's house repeatedly? Jenna, when did Carrie and Dave go on that first date when she October 29th? Okay, so she had seen her and Liz had had that passing at that time. Yes. So about a week or so before that. Good question. Very interesting. Yeah. Little by little, pieces of the story that had once seemed unrelated were beginning to line up. And the picture they were forming pointed somewhere investigators had never seriously considered before. Now we mentioned that the IP address pointed to a man investigators didn't even know about. We're going to call him Fred. And like I said, his name hadn't come up to investigators before, not even on their radar, which is what makes this part even more mind-bending. The internet connection where many of the emails originated wasn't registered to Dave, and it wasn't registered to Liz either. It belonged to someone, like I said, we're going to call him Fred. At first, that name didn't mean anything to detectives. He had never appeared in earlier reports. His name hadn't come up in interviews with Dave. As far as investigators knew, he wasn't part of the story at all. But as they dug deeper, they realized something surprising. Fred had actually been a part of Liz's life for years. Fred met Liz in September of 2010 through an online dating site. The two started seeing each other and continued dating for about five years up until spring of 2015. From Fred's perspective, the relationship was serious and exclusive.

SPEAKER_01 39:13

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

Over the years, he invested heavily in Liz and her family. He helped her pay her bills when she needed assistance, helped her purchase a car, and even opened his home up to her and her two children. Wow. Remember in July of 2013 when Liz and her kids were in the process of moving because she didn't feel safe in her home. She was moving in with Fred. Oh, wow. Fred cared about them deeply. He helped take care of the children and tried to create a stable household for all of them. But there's a lot happening in Liz's life that Fred knew nothing about. In January of 2013, not long after the strange messages surrounding Dave had begun, Fred himself started receiving texts and emails. The messages appeared to be from Carrie. In them, Carrie explained that she was a friend of Liz's. She told Fred that Liz had given her his contact information in case she ever needed an emergency contact for Liz. At the time, it sounded reasonable enough. Still, Fred mentioned the messages to Liz, and Liz confirmed she told him Carrie really was a friend of hers and that she had shared his contact info for that exact reason. With that explanation, Fred didn't think much more about it. Over time, he continued exchanging occasional messages with Carrie. Most of their conversations revolved around Fred's relationship with Liz. Casual discussions about how things were going between them. Wow. This is really interesting. Isn't it so twisted and turning? So twisted. Yes. It was like a full-time job to keep it all straight. Right. How do you have time for all of this? I oh wow. I just can't. Fred didn't know that Liz had been involved with anyone else during their relationship. He didn't know the name Dave Krupa. He'd never heard it. Fred only learned about Dave years later when police downloaded Liz's phone the second time as part of their investigation. That was the first time Fred heard Dave's name. When he asked Liz about it, she told him she had dated Dave before meeting Fred and that they had remained friends afterwards. And meanwhile, life inside Fred's home continued. Liz and her children lived there from July of 2013 until late 2015. They eventually moved out either the end of December 2015 or early 2016. During all those years, while all the messages, threats, and chaos surrounding Dave were escalating, Fred says Liz never told him she was being harassed by Carrie or Amy or anyone else. To him, none of the story existed. But what did exist inside the home was something investigators would later find very important. While living there, Liz had access to Fred's Wi-Fi network, and she regularly used several electronic devices in the house, including a laptop and an iPod. These devices were connected to the same internet address investigators had just traced those emails back to. Fred and Liz had broken up in October of 2015, and the messages had been going for years. Fred had no idea how deeply his home and his internet connection would soon be tied to one of the most confusing investigations local police had ever seen. So they broke up in October, but they kept living there until December or January. Yeah. I'm guessing. Yes. Super nice. And maybe while she looked for a place, and he, like you said, super kind to let her stay that long. Yeah. And then she's shot, so he can't tell her she has to move. Yeah. She's been attacked by somebody. Right. I wonder what she told him about that part of it. Maybe I don't know. Maybe part of that was to pin it on Amy and to have him feel bad for her so she wouldn't have to leave. Very possible. I wonder if that was right around the time we were breaking up. When was Amy shooting? December 5th, 2015. Okay. It was after. Maybe it was so she could stay a little bit longer. One more month without being rent. One piece of evidence had been sitting quietly for years. Carrie's Black Ford Explorer. Back in 2013, when the vehicle had been discovered, abandoned outside Dave's apartment. When it was originally processed, investigators had noticed something unusual inside the car. An empty mint tin that had a fingerprint on it. At the time, the print had been collected, but it didn't connect to anyone. Now, our new investigators revisited it. And by late 2015, they learned something significant. The fingerprint on the mint tin belonged to Liz. That discovery prompted investigators to take another look at the Explorer itself on December 8th, 2015. That's the Tuesday after the shooting. The same crime scene technician who examined the vehicle years earlier was asked to process it again. So they didn't still have the vehicle, right? Because they had released it back to Carrie's family. Exactly. They had to track it down. They had to go find the new owner because Carrie's family had sold it. So that took some work on its own. So they learned the fingerprints were hers in September. At that point, September 2015, they learned the fingerprint was Liz's. But they still were exploring the possibility that maybe Carrie and Liz knew each other better than anyone thought. Something to that effect. No, not until December 4th. Okay. I'm guessing after they realized the fingerprint was Liz's and they're finding more and more of this, they started trying to track it down and they were able to look at it again on December 8th. Okay. So much. It's so twisted. There's so much. And like the back and forth is a little confusing. Yeah. On December 8th, 2015, the same crime scene TED who had examined the vehicle years earlier processed again. And like we said, they had to track it down. It had a new owner at this point. Originally, when they found it in early 2013, it was just thought to be a stolen vehicle. So they looked for fingerprints, but they didn't process it or treat it as a crime scene. This time now in December, she was looking for any extra evidence in there, but they didn't find anything. And the vehicle sat in evidence for a little bit longer. Years earlier, when investigators first downloaded the contents of Liz's phone, they had done so under a very specific assumption. Liz was a victim. At that time, detectives believed that Liz was another target of this harassment campaign. And because of that, the forensic extraction performed on her phone had been very basic and limited. Investigators had conducted what is known as a logical download. That type of extraction collects the data that still exists on a device, the text messages, emails, photos, and other files that are currently visible, but it does not recover material that has been deleted. Now though, they're looking at it differently. The situation has changed. With all of the new questions, having found the fingerprint and their investigation that started in the spring of 2015, when she had told them about the threatening messages from Amy, she Liz had agreed to have her phone downloaded again. And this time, investigators performed a much deeper download. When the forensic specialist began combing through the recovered information, their results were startling. They're pretty lucky she didn't get a new phone over this time frame. They really are. And I wonder how the cloud helps with that, like moving it from phone to phone, if that keeps it, or if the deleted stuff doesn't. Might have to look into that because I'm not exactly sure. Or if we were still moving physical SIM cards at that point, which would maybe keep it even if you have we could have been. I don't remember. And I think that would keep the information too. Yeah. When the forensic specialist began combing through the recovered information, the results were startling. Hidden within the data was evidence that an application called Texty had been installed on Liz's phone. The app had later been deleted, but its traces remained. Texty allows users to send messages and emails through multiple phone numbers and accounts, effectively masking the sender's real identity. It also allowed messages to be scheduled in advance. That discovery suddenly explained one of the strange details that investigators had noticed over the years. The fact that Dave and Liz had received threatening messages from Carrie at the exact when they were sitting together. Oh, yeah. Now made sense. Yes, that's very interesting. Yeah. The forensic analysis uncovered other things as well. Liz had been using virtual private networks or VPNs to disguise the location of her internet activity. A VPN routes internet traffic through servers located elsewhere, making it appear as though messages are coming from entirely different places. When investigators combined these findings with the IP address evidence they already had been mapping, the scale of this operation began to come into focus. The messages had not been coming from Kansas, they had not been coming from Amy. They had been generated much closer to home. That also makes sense how she would have all his new emails and phone numbers because she was still seeing him during all this time. Of course, he would give them to her. Yes, exactly. It makes sense that she would try and pin it on his ex-wife because same situation. Yeah, right. How would Carrie have gotten new phone numbers? How would Carrie have gotten your new address? Yeah. Access to your house. Yeah. And know people you were dating and all these things too. Yeah, exactly. According to the forensic analyst reviewing the data, the amount of communication involved was staggering. Over the years, Liz had sent tens of thousands of texts and emails. Many of them directed at Dave, others, like we know, directed to people in his orbit, and a large number have been sent to herself. Based on the volume of activity recovered from the phone and related accounts, the experts estimated that Liz had likely spent 40 to 50 hours every week maintaining the illusion that Carrie was still alive. Oh my gosh. Full-time job. She has kids. I'm sure she works. Two kids. Yes. Two kids. I think she ran her own cleaning business. Why is it why are you getting that much energy into this? Right. How? How and why? Yes. That's how and why. I yeah. 40 to 50 hours. And you're in a committed, serious, exclusive relationship with somebody else. Leave this poor man alone. Someone who loved you. And like you don't have to love him, but he thought you did. You also kept up the illusion that you were part of this committed relationship that you had completely checked out from. So not only is she running her own business, taking care of two children, maintaining a relationship with two separate men, and keeping that completely separate and apart from each other, and now maintaining the life of somebody else. That's exhausting. Wow. I can't even imagine. Imagine. I same. Same. Wow. Wild. Pictures had been captured using Liz's phone, and they showed Carrie's Blackboard Explorer. That detail was strange for another reason. Those photographs had been taken weeks before Dave later reported spotting the abandoned Explorer near his apartment, which meant someone had access to this vehicle before it was discovered in January. But the most unsettling piece of evidence appeared when detectives continued examining the images stored on Liz's phone. Among the files, they located a photograph that played a role in the harassment campaign years earlier. It was the image, and we didn't talk about this before, but Dave had received an email that showed an image of a woman tied up with duct tape in the back of a car. And at the time the photo had been sent as a threat. The threat warned that if Dave didn't break up with Liz right away, something awful would happen to Liz. Dave had been getting so many threatening things, and nothing at this point had happened because this is still the end of 2012. Yeah. And so he tried calling Liz when this happened. She didn't answer, but he also didn't feel like it was real. You couldn't see the person's face in the picture. And the next day he called again, thinking that if she didn't answer, then he would respond. But his whole thing up into that point had been no attention, no response back to Carrie sending these messages. But the message had claimed that Carrie had taken that picture of Liz. Now, when detectives are examining the file metadata, they realized something they hadn't before. The image had been taken using Liz's own phone. And that wasn't the only unusual discovery. Investigators also found a series of photographs taken on December 24th, 2012, more than a month after Carrie had disappeared. And the first download that they did because they were looking at the two of them as victims, it shouldn't have shown things that were deleted. Yeah. Okay. And it didn't have nearly the same metadata tied as they can get from the other kinds of downloads. Gotcha. It was deleted, it didn't pull through on that time, but this time it did. Mm-hmm. As detectives continued examining the digital evidence, they made another discovery. There was a YouTube video that had been uploaded under Carrie's name. A short clip showing Dave's apartment building also contained hidden technical information. That video had been uploaded from an IP address registered to Liz's home. For investigators who had already begun mapping the digital trail behind the messages, the significance of that detail was impossible to ignore. The picture is becoming clear, but they still need something stronger. They don't have anything that directly ties Liz to Carrie's disappearance. They know she's the one stalking and using Carrie's name, but you know, technically a lawyer could say, yeah, but maybe Carrie just left and Liz did this, and Carrie's still off living her life. You can't say anything happened to her. So they tried something unusual. Instead of confronting Liz with their suspicions, they chose to play along. On December 14th, 2015, nine days after the shooting in Big Lake Park, detectives asked Liz to come in for another interview. She agreed. During the meeting, Detective Dottie explained that investigators had recently made a discovery. Human remains had been located, he told her, and there was a possibility they belonged to Carrie. The remains were in the process of being tested for DNA. Liz listened closely as the detective continued. He explained, all investigators needed was a little more evidence to complete this case. We need something that might show that Amy had harmed Carrie. Liz nodded, then she left. Within days, the detective's inbox began filling with emails. Liz had started boarding messages she claimed were coming from Amy. The messages grew increasingly disturbing. One email described the shooting at Big Lake Park, which was tied to herself, of course. Another claimed responsibility for killing Carrie. Over the following weeks, additional messages arrived describing in graphic detail how Carrie had allegedly been attacked and how her body had been disposed of. Detectives quietly collected each message as it came in, but they were also thinking ahead. They knew Liz had a long history of reacting emotionally when Dave became involved with other women. So investigators decided to try something that might provoke a response. They contacted Dave and they shared their suspicions about Liz, which was mind-blowing for him. He had not thought Liz had anything to do with this. I mean, he'd been sitting next to her when they'd both gotten threatening, harassing texts at the same time. Yeah, and she was being harassed, her house was being debased, her house was sent off fire. Like her pets were killed. Yeah. Yes. I saw you make that connection just now. She did that. She killed her own pets. Isn't that horrifying? And now she should. I'm sure she claimed insurance on that. Maybe they can get her on that too. Insurance fraud. All the other things. Arson. Yep. They suggested to Dave that he move back in with Amy and their two children. Partly, they said, for Amy's safety. But detectives also had another reason for making the recommendation. They believed seeing Dave reunite with Amy would push Liz to make a mistake. And it worked. When Liz learned that Dave was staying with Amy, she quickly contacted Detective Avis demanding to know why Amy had not yet been arrested for shooting her. The detective apologized and told her the investigation simply didn't have enough evidence connecting Amy to Carrie's disappearance. Only a few hours later, more emails appeared. Of course. These messages contained details that immediately caught investigators' attention. They described a yin-yang tattoo on Carrie's thigh. They also included specific information about the layout and furnishings inside Carrie's home. And one message described where Carrie had supposedly been attacked inside her Black Ford Explorer. So investigators tried to examine one more time. On February 18, 2016, after all of these emails that confessed that it had happened inside her own vehicle, investigators removed the seat covers from the vehicle's interior. Under the front passenger seat, the forensic tech saw something. A large red stain was embedded in the foam of the passenger seat. The stain was collected and sent for testing. When the results came back, the DNA matched Carrie Parker for the first time for her family. Her son, mom. And they've honestly, not purposely, but been told that Carrie's doing this horrible thing. Yeah. Stalking, threatening, harassing, burning down homes, and not missing. She just doesn't want anything to do with you. Yeah. And that's fine. That's her right. We're trying to find her, but only so we can get her to stop stalking Dave. It's really awful. Really awful. Investigators finally had physical evidence that something violent had likely happened inside her vehicle. For detectives examining the vehicle again, the detail is impossible to ignore. On February 25th, 2016, while Liz was at work, detectives executed a search warrant at her apartment. At the same time, officers were sent to her workplace. They approached Liz under the pretense of questioning her about several traffic violations. And instead, they brought her in for questioning because investigators believed that Carrie had most likely been attacked at Dave's apartment in Nebraska rather than in the Iowa County where she had been reported missing. Detectives from Omaha joined the investigation. During questioning, Liz denied knowing anything about Carrie's disappearance and she quickly requested a lawyer. Meanwhile, inside Liz's apartment, investigators were searching for evidence. Among the items discovered, they found a black and white shower curtain with this distinctive floral pattern, which was one of the few items they knew was bought with Carrie's card after she went missing. That's not very smart. No, I can't believe she kept that. Yeah. As investigators were continuing to build this case, they took a closer look at Liz's internet activity. While she had been living with Fred, she had regularly used the Wi-Fi network inside his home. We knew that. And that alone might not have meant much, except for one unusual detail. Fred worked for the Pottawamy County's IT department. Even more lucky for investigators, he reported to the same digital forensic expert who had been helping detectives analyze the electronic evidence in this investigation. Because Fred's computer system was tied into the county's network, investigators were able to review long-term records of the household's internet activity. Those records allowed detectives to map in remarkable detail the online activity that had taken place anytime Liz was connected to Fred's Wi-Fi. And this strengthened what investigators already knew at this point. A lot of this harassment campaign had been carried out inside Fred's house. It took until the end of 2016, but finally detectives believed they had enough to act. On Tuesday, December 27, 2016, Liz was formally charged with first-degree murder in the death of Carrie Barber. Prosecutors also added a second charge, which you guessed, second-degree arson connected to the fire that had destroyed Liz's home years earlier. Liz's attorney quickly pushed back in the media. Without Carrie's body, he argued, investigators had no proof that she wasn't still alive somewhere. Finding the blood on the seat isn't definitive proof that something had happened to her. And for a short while, that argument hung over the case. But we have one more discovery that changes everything. For months, detectives had asked Dave if he had any other electronic devices that Liz might have used while they were dating. Each time, Dave had said no. Then in early 2017, he remembered something. There was an old tablet computer sitting in storage. Years earlier, Liz had occasionally used it when she was spending time at his apartment. Dave retrieved the tablet and turned it over to investigators. When their forensic team examined the device, they discovered that it had a micro SD memory card in it. The card had also been previously used in Liz's cell phone. At first, the card appeared to be empty, it had been wiped. But digital forensic recovery often allows investigators to restore data that has been deleted but not fully overwritten. So because she had wiped it, but then they hadn't kept using the iPad, they could pull the data from it. Is that right? Yep. Exactly. Interesting. They had to use special software. And the department's IT expert, it was a lot of work to reconstruct the files that had once been there, but they were able to do it. Slowly, the images began to reappear. And I guess the reason they knew to try that is because whatever device it was didn't have texting capabilities on its own. So they realized it had to have some kind of like SIM card in it to be able to do what she had been using it for. Yeah. There were thousands of photographs. They scrolled through them one by one. Many were ordinary selfies of Liz, pictures of her children, photos that looked like they had been taken during everyday moments. But then they found photographs that showed a blue and gray tarp spread across the ground. The object beneath it couldn't be seen clearly. There was another image that showed what appeared to be skin. On the skin was a familiar symbol, a yin-yang tattoo. As they continued scrolling, another photograph appeared. This one showed Chinese characters tattooed onto what looked like discolored flesh, and the discoloration suggested decomposition. When investigators had another forensic expert review the image, the conclusion was immediate and disturbing. The photograph was of a human foot in early stages of decomp. Detectives then contacted Nancy, Carrie's mom. They asked if her daughter had any tattoos on her feet. Nancy told them she did. Carrie had a tattoo on her left foot, the Chinese word for mother. When investigators compared Nancy's description to the image from the memory card, the characters matched perfectly. For detectives who had spent years untangling the mystery surrounding Carrie's disappearance, the photograph was the final piece of proof they needed. When the defense learned about these recovered photographs, their strategy changed. Liz waived her right to a jury trial twice, which she then appeals, choosing instead to proceed with a bench trial where a judge determines the verdict and the judge alone, not a jury. During the proceedings, Liz's attorney chose not to present any evidence. Liz herself did not testify. The prosecution's case, on the other hand, was extensive. Over the course of the trial, investigators presented testimony from numerous witnesses. They introduced massive amounts of digital evidence, emails, text messages, internet records, and forensic analysis that documented years of online impersonation. The evidence showed how accounts had been created in Carrie's name, how messages had been scheduled and sent through various apps on her phone, and how the harassment campaign had been maintained for years. And finally, the photographs recovered from the memory card were introduced, and they provided something the defense had insisted investigators did not have. Proof that Carrie had not simply vanished. On Wednesday, May 24th, 2017, the court delivered its decision. Her full name was Shanna Elizabeth Bolyar, but she always went by Liz. Liz was found guilty of first-degree murder. She was also convicted of second-degree arson. The judge sentenced her to life imprisonment for Carrie's murder, and an additional 18 to 20 years was added for the arson charge, with the sentences to run consecutively. As the verdict was read, members of Carrie's family reacted with relief and emotion. For years they had waited for answers. Liz, meanwhile, showed little reaction. According to those present in the courtroom, she turned red, closed her eyes, and remained silent as deputies escorted her away. I want to know the why. Like, why would she do that and carry it on for so long? So sad. Red in a tangled web part of that talked about some very disturbing things in Liz's past. Partly that she had stalked other people she had dated in the past using a lot of the same techniques. And there's a whole story about how she had a first son and she had him really young. And she started dating someone who was younger than her. His name was Neil. He was 21 years old. She had started dating him, and she had a five-month-old baby named Cody. While he was watching the baby, he was a really colicky baby who would cry a lot. His mom was helping him because he's young. He doesn't have experience with kids. She noticed that he wasn't making as much noise as usual. And they went to check on him and realized that he wasn't breathing. They called for an ambulance, and Cody had passed. It's really sad. Really, really sad. The cause of death was found to be a serious brain injury from Cody being forcefully shaken. Neil had an intellectual disability and was grilled for hours by detectives. And he ended up admitting to them that he liked to, you know, play with the baby. It would throw Cody up and catch him. And they were like, You must have done it too hard. You must have dropped him. And he was like, No, no, maintained his innocence for a long time. But eventually said, maybe it's possible I threw him too hard one time. He was charged with killing Cody. Most of the people in Liz's life didn't believe that she had absolutely nothing to do with this. But Neil was found guilty and spent eight and a half years in prison. He now understands that it wasn't him, thankfully, and he's doing well in life. There are people like Leslie, who now knows so much about Liz that has worked really hard to get his conviction overturned. But I believe that's still an ongoing process. There was a lot in Liz's past that investigators did not know about at the beginning of all of this. Yeah. But the why is still, I mean, for years, this is above and beyond. And killing Carrie just for going out for too much. Jealousy. I wonder if she saw that she was there and thought that he was letting her move in after only two weeks. And I wonder if she had killed her before she sent the message to him asking. Entirely possible. Because I wonder if she was just so jealous because maybe she had wanted more with him, and he always was like, No, we're gonna not be exclusive, it's just casual. And then she sees this woman living there, even though she was just staying while she was working. And I wonder if that just set her off, you know. It's possible because Carrie should have left for work between 7, 7:30, and never did. At 9:54 that morning, Carrie's Facebook unfriended Dave's. And at 10, she sent the message asking to move in, to which he said no. But it's entirely possible that she had already done something horrific in that span of two hours. And that's what I'm thinking. If she just saw and thought that's what was happening, and he was already being serious with this girl that was new, and it was only two weeks, and he had been telling her all this time it's just casual, and she just lost it. Yep. Yep. Something to carry on this campaign for so long after she asked if they should move in together. And he said, No, it's too soon. I'm not looking for that. I guess to cover up. And there were times that it would escalate. Like her being shot happened not that long after her and Dave had ended things for good. And he had moved. Also, Fred had moved. Right. And Fred had broken up with her in October. Yeah. So being close to Amy makes sense that she was shifting it to Amy. Maybe she wasn't worried about keeping up the illusion of Carrie being alive anymore. Yeah.

unknown 1:15:38

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:38

And maybe that's when she chose also when he moved to be closer to Amy when she thought maybe I'll put it on him. She got jealous of Amy now. Exactly. And it's just so elaborate and horrible. Yeah. But I do think it was to make it seem like Carrie was still alive. So they weren't actually looking for what happened to her or where she was. Yeah, probably. Yeah. For Carrie's family, the decision, the verdict, the trial, everything brought something they've been waiting for since 2012. Answers. Carrie's mother, Nancy, had known from the very beginning that something wasn't right. Long before investigators began piecing together the digital evidence. Carrie's mother, Nancy, had known from the very beginning that something wasn't right. Long before investigators began piecing together the digital evidence. But knowing something is wrong and proving it are two very different things. For years, Carrie's family had lived in this painful kind of uncertainty. Messages continued to appear under her name. Social media accounts popped up, pretending to be her, and investigators initially believed that Carrie was responsible for the harassment. All the while, Nancy and Carrie's son were left with the same question over and over again. Where was she? The trial finally confirmed what they had feared for years. Carrie hadn't simply abandoned her life. She hadn't moved to Kansas to start over. She hadn't disappeared by choice. She had been taken from the people who loved her. But even with the conviction, there was still one thing that had never been recovered: Carrie's body. For her family, that absence leaves a space that no verdict can fully fill. They were denied the chance to lay her to rest, to say goodbye in the way families are meant to. And yet, through everything that's happened, Carrie's family has never stopped speaking out about who she truly was. They describe her as a bright, funny, and deeply devoted mother to her son. She loved technology and problem solving, which made her career in IT a natural fit. She was someone who enjoyed life, someone who laughed easily and cared deeply about the people around her. And most of all, she simply loved being a mother. And that's one of the worst things with this, too, is Liz completely ruined Terry's memory. I mean, how long did she pretend to be her making her look so bad and like this stalking, jealous person? Burning the house down, she wasn't at all. And it's so awful. And you know, Liz's kids now have lost their mother. And I don't know what their relationship was with her, but that's gotta be hard for them too. She destroyed their lives too. Yeah. And so many people's lives. She destroyed Dave's life. He couldn't do anything for years because she was causing this issue with everybody he knew. She probably made problems for his business because she was attacking his business too. So many things is just so wild. Is so far-reaching the amount of pain she caused. Yes. And like you mentioned, Dave, he had no idea that it was someone so close to him, that it was Liz. For a long time, he believed it was Carrie. Learning the truth to him meant revisiting years of confusion and kind of having to go back through it from the beginning. It's a realization that forces someone to re-examine really every moment of the past four years, five years.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:52

Dave played an important role in helping investigators unravel what had happened. So without the device he eventually turned over and the evidence that came from it, some of the most important pieces of the case might never have been discovered. In the end, the story of Carrie became one of the most disturbing examples of digital impersonation investigators had ever seen. So when we remember this case, it shouldn't just be for the twists of this crazy digital trail that investigators followed. It should be for Carrie Barber, a daughter, a mother, a woman who loved her family and built a life for herself and her son, a life that should have continued. The truth about what happened to Carrie, thankfully, was eventually uncovered. And her story, her real story, was finally heard. That is the case of Carrie Barber. That is so crazy. I totally did not expect it to end up that way at all. I think part of that comes from when you hear that her house is burned down with her pets inside. When you hear that her and Dave are getting messages at the same time. And she's being attacked. Like her house is being and her garage is being written on. It's prey painted and she's being attacked and all these things. You never expect that someone would do that to themselves. No. But when she flipped it to be Amy, I was like, Oh, that makes sense too. Yeah. She was very smart about all of this to play it off for so long. I feel like Carrie's family knew. But Dave couldn't have known he didn't know Carrie for that long, unfortunately. Right. He could have thought that switch flipped. And unfortunately, when you bring in Carrie's struggles with mental health for investigators, it kind of gave them a piece of it that made it make more sense. Yeah. It's unfortunate from the beginning, too, when they were trying to find her, that they didn't look at her bank records. They didn't look for employment history to try and track her down. Because they said she had moved to Kansas. Why not try and look at employment records to see where she's employed at now? Why not see where she's making purchases, where she could be at when they're searching for her? And they would have seen that she hasn't done anything for a year. The only thing I can think of is that they must have thought she was doing piecework on the side or something and had set up a new account. I don't know why you would leave your home and all of your money and abandon your car. All over. So bizarre. Yes. It's if only they had tried to track her down through maybe those types of things. Try and find out where she was, especially when she's setting houses on fire and being violent and all these things. It's really sad. It is really sad. It is a case that even people in the middle of it did not see ending the way that it did. Which no, I did not see that. Sometimes you can see it from the beginning, and it almost feels like it's, you know, the way that it comes together. We're pulling in the important pieces. But this one is not like that. It is truly baffling. At first, when it was the whole thing with Liz, and she was trying to get something from Dave's apartment when he was there with Carrie. I thought it was gonna be something about Liz, but then everything happened with Carrie, and I was like, Oh, it's totally not what I expected. It was Carrie instead, but no, it was Liz. It was Liz. From yeah, from that first time when she interrupted their date with like the flurry of text messages and phone calls. And yeah, I thought it was gonna be something with her, which it was, but I didn't see it for a long time. Yep. I think that that one instance of that happening, Dave could brush off as whatever she needed was important, and that was a one-off. And especially when she's leading this other life with another man, she can get back to him. Like, can you believe that too? That poor guy. She's living like three full-time lives, basically. Absolutely. I just imagine it makes me tired. I know. Yeah. Let us know what you think about this case and who you thought it was all along. I would love to know. And if you want to read that book, A Tangled Web by Leslie Rule, it's great. You can find that as well as the other sources like the court docs and you know, Liz's appeals saying she didn't actually want a judge doing it and that she had ineffective counsel and all of her other appeals over the years that have so far been denied. You can find all of those resources on our blog, which is on our website, crimeclueless.com. You can connect with us on social media. We're on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Just search for at Crime Clueless. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this case. If you enjoyed these episodes, please take a moment to rate or review and/or share our podcast. It's a fast free, easy way to help out Crime Clueless, and your support helps us reach more listeners. You can find Crime Clueless on all streaming platforms wherever you get your podcasts. And as always, remember, we've used to be clueless, careless, or caught off guard. Not today, murderers. Bye, everybody.