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Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday, me and my best friend Britt break down a new case, but not in the way you've heard before, and not the cases you've heard before. You'll hear stories on Crime Junkie that haven't been told anywhere else. I'll tell you what you can do to help victims and their families get justice.

Join us for new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday. Already waiting for you by searching for Crime Junkie wherever you listen to podcasts. Do you know if it was male or female? Female.

I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder. ♪

Today's case is the type that you wouldn't believe it if it wasn't true. Because just when you think things are going in one direction, they're completely going to then point in another. And as soon as you think, oh, okay, we're getting it, it's going to change again. I think it's probably one of the most unusual cases, Anastasia, we've ever looked into. And I think for the listener, it's going to be quite the whiplash effect by the end.

Today we're going to talk about Carrie Farver, a young mom who went missing in 2012. I had the chance to talk to Carrie's mom, Nancy, who described how she raised Carrie in small-town Macedonia, Iowa. Well, there's probably not more than 300 people in this town. And it's, you know, just like they say in small towns, everybody knows what you're doing, and that's true.

Her mom, Nancy Rainey, raised her there, and as she went off to school, Carrie Farver came back, and she became a young mother herself and raised her son Max there as well. Carrie went to school all of her life. Very smart. She went to KU the first year and kind of crashed and burned there. Early on, one of her dreams was to be in nursing, and I remember her mom talking about the fact that

She was so smart and she was so book smart, aced all the tests. But when it came to actual practical work in the surgical studio, she passed out. That's not a good sign. The doctor said, well, maybe it's the first time. Maybe you're just not used to seeing the blood and maybe the instruments may make you nervous. So let's try it again. Next time, passed out. And then the third time.

I think by that time, she realized she was not made out to be in that field. We're all built for something. And for Carrie, that ended up being computer programming. It was Y2K at that point, you know, when they were having all that scare about everything was going to shut down. They offered this class for coding. And she went to that class. In fact, she had Macs in the middle of it. She was nursing him at the time while she took that class.

You know, when she had her son, Max, she was just 23, and she was back in there taking her exam in school two to three weeks later. And that really talks about the person that she was. She was someone that no matter when things were tough for her, she was going to power through. And she found this fantastic job that was in Omaha, Nebraska. The only problem with that is that that was over an hour commute every single day.

She had this young boy at home who was now a young teenager. But luckily, Nancy, her mom, was there to really help out. And Max was with her really as a second mother a lot of that time. I think part of her interest also in going to Omaha was to branch out a little bit. And she had recently started dating someone she met at a garage who was working and fixing her car. And that's where Dave Krupa came in.

The two of them were very similar in that neither of them was looking for anything serious. He had just come out of a very serious relationship and she had all that she could handle on her hands. But once they met, really the fireworks started going off immediately. I knew she was staying with him. I did not know who he was because she had this thing about not bringing someone around that she wasn't sure about the relationship yet. She just didn't let us in on everything.

She had told her mom that she was going to stay in Omaha for the week because she had a big project, and that was not a big deal. Max was going to stay with his grandmother, Nancy. She needed to stay over, which he lived like maybe five minutes from where she worked. So I can understand her reasoning. That was November 11th, 2012. And that was the last day I saw my daughter.

Nancy, she got a text message from Carrie saying, oh, by the way, mom, I've been offered this unbelievable job in a different state in Kansas, and you're not going to believe what I'm making. And she gave this exorbitant amount of money. And Nancy said, this is not right. I thought, where did this come from? If she had a terrific job offer, she would have

come home and told me about it or she would have called me and told me about it so I could hear her voice. And then I couldn't get any, you know, any kind of answers. Then the next day and the next day. There was a real reason for Nancy to

to be concerned outside of just the text messages because coming up shortly was a family member's wedding where Max was playing a very big role. Her son was playing a very big role in that wedding and she knew that Carrie would never miss that event. Exactly. They've all been waiting for this event for months. And so Carrie keeps pushing Nancy off. I'll get there. I'll get there. I'll get there. And

And Nancy, as she told it to me, it's just, it's heartbreaking because they're waiting for her. And it's not just Nancy waiting for her. It's her 14-year-old son, Max. And poor Max was sitting there with everybody asking him where his mother was. And she said that he just kept turning his head and looking to the back of that church, just waiting for his mom. And she never came.

It was on Friday night that I ended up reporting her missing. And so I gave them all the information and of course, you know, she had been diagnosed with depression and was on medication. And of course, then they take that like she could have just taken off and decided she didn't want to come home.

So, Scott, from the law enforcement side of it, how do you treat a missing persons report when you know that the person that's missing also has a mental health issue?

So I can tell you about the many times that I've responded to these homes when I worked in uniform that someone allegedly is just missing. And as the officer who's taking down the information, you have to start developing in your mind a picture of

You know, let me set the stage here. What could this be? Could this be somebody who just wanted a couple of days away from the family? Did they have a fight? Did they want to clear their head? That happens all the time. In fact, the majority of people who are reported missing simply turn up and it's not under suspicious circumstances. It's not a crime and they do it for all sorts of reasons. And then you add the potential mental health issue.

That raises the specter for police to really believe that this does not involve a crime and that it's somebody either having a potential breakdown or someone who just needed space away from the family.

And I've had this conversation so many times over the years with victims' family, and I have to explain to them from law enforcement's side, and for us, it was normally looking at a particularly busy precinct. You know, there's only so many officers for the thousands of complaints that are coming in, including lots and lots of young people that didn't go home when they should have. They leave jobs, they leave loved ones, and law enforcement knows by the numbers that usually they're okay.

It's the danger that it's the one, the needle in the haystack. That's what Nancy kept saying. I am telling you, I know my daughter and something's wrong.

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I think there was a lot of disappointment with Nancy in the beginning with the investigation because she believed they only focused on the potential that she left because of mental health issues.

Now, even though that was the leading theory, investigators did sit down with Dave Cooper, the man she had just begun to date. And when they were talking to Dave, he did say something that was very interesting and became a key focus of the investigation early on. He says he got a message from Carrie, a text message that said, Hey, Dave, I think you're great. Let's move in together. And Dave was like, whoa, what's going on here? This is a brand new relationship.

And he responded just like everyone that just heard that. He's like, uh, no thanks. This maybe isn't going to work out. I think maybe that we're done. But that answer didn't seem to really work for her. He definitely expected her to be okay with it based on their beginning of this friendship, so to speak. But she wasn't. No, she was pissed.

In fact, she told him right in the next set of texts, I don't want to see you anymore. I hate you. That's a pretty strong language. Clearly, he dodged a bullet in his mind. But it didn't stop. He started getting text after text and email and Facebook messages. They just kept coming and they got nastier and they got more serious. And he was actually getting scared.

Now, Dave had an ex-girlfriend, a woman by the name of Liz Gollier, and she didn't know Carrie at all, yet she too was getting text messages from Carrie, things saying things like, you better leave Dave alone, he's mine. And she actually felt that Carrie was stalking her and wanted to make sure that she was out of the picture. And so you might say to yourself, well, why would Carrie do that? Liz is the ex, but...

Dave wouldn't be the first guy to leave the new girlfriend to go back to the ex. We've all heard stories like that. How many times have you heard about the new girlfriend that's jealous of the old girlfriend or wants to make sure that nothing comes in the way of this new relationship? So, Anna Seager, why do people stalk? Obsession is part of it, but there's also this need for control. And it's really a sense of entitlement.

It is someone's sense of entitlement that they have the right to follow. They have the right to look through the window. They have the right to call 5,000 sometimes in a one-week period. And it's this warped sense of reality that someone thinks that because they want something, they are entitled to it and they're going to get that person any way that they can.

In a legal sense, right, reading these text messages, where does it go over the legal line? Where does it become a crime within the context of those messages? When you start to use words like going to hurt, kill, those are some of the obvious. But when it's not there, you have to read into them much deeper sometimes. I didn't know where she supposedly these were coming from.

And I knew it wasn't Carrie doing it because the way she talks. Carrie was very meticulous in her spelling and grammar, even in text messages. And I had told the police about that. I said, "It's not Carrie doing this." I kept trying to tell them that. And Max was getting messages also. She was threatening to come pick him up at school and take him to Kansas. And we got nervous for Max's safety. You know, she was teasing us for the three years she did.

And that's it. I mean, we're not talking about days or weeks. This went on for years. Propensity of violence, as investigators would find out, because Dave would be text a photograph of a woman bounding gagged in the trunk of a car that appeared to be Liz. But luckily it wasn't because Liz was very alive and well when police went to go speak with her.

When this whole thing started, I thought it was weird because they had dated for like two weeks is what they said. And I don't understand how a person that dated him for two or three weeks would stalk me. Like break out my windows and spray painted horror across my garage. And you could tell by the types of questions detectives were asking Liz, to them, Carrie was the suspect.

But then the mystery continues. Who was that woman in the car? And two, why was Carrie texting that if it wasn't true?

You know, obviously they thought at a certain point that Carrie was really upset with Dave and that she really did want more than Dave wanted in a relationship and that maybe she felt like Liz was really standing in the way. But you go from this threatening, really kind of freaky email about the fake kidnapping, and then it really did get violent because Liz came home one night and there was smoke coming from the roof of her house.

And she went inside or started to go inside, and that home was on fire. Not only was it on fire, she had pets. She had a snake. I think she had a cat and dogs. And they were actually killed in this fire. So it really did now start to take a real violent turn. And police were involved, but now in a different way than certainly Nancy had planned, because now there was an arrest warrant, but for Carrie. ♪

Carrie was the prime suspect in this arson case. But no one could find her, no matter how much they tried. Until one day, Dave walks out of his apartment and sees Carrie's SUV parked in his parking lot. This is the woman that you think has been stalking you and stalking your ex-girlfriend. And all of a sudden, she may be waiting for you in her car in your apartment complex. ♪♪

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But when that car was looked into, Carrie was not inside. No trace of her anywhere. So, Scott, how would a car be processed in a simple stalking case? Not thoroughly. You're not going to have crime scene come out to the recovery of a vehicle like that and process the car unless there's evidence that an actual crime took place. Blood evidence on the vehicle, something within purview of the officer stepping up to the car, seeing inside the car,

That would probably lead them to just process the car with the officer responding. That SUV is processed by police. They go through the interior cabin of the car, and they do recover a small mint case with a set of fingerprints on it. When they ran them through NCIC, they determined that those fingerprints were not only not Carrie's, they also didn't come back to anybody else's.

And we certainly know in this business that fingerprints can tell you who was there, but they can't tell you when they were there. So for all we know, this was some friend she'd had months before. We don't know if it's anything sinister at all. But at the same time, they also don't know that it isn't. But then something else happened. Hello?

So the 911 operator in Council Bluffs, Iowa, dispatches officers and ambulances and they find Liz Golier on the edge of this bridge, shot in the leg.

That is not something that happens every day over there. How many people were there?

And then she's asked who it was and the name she gave. It wasn't Carrie. It was Amy. Amy Flora.

She is yet another spoke in the wheel with Dave at the center of it because she actually has a child with Dave. She was his significant other for years before any of these other women came about. So she says that it was Amy that walks up behind her. She didn't see it coming. Boom, shoots her and then runs away. So now the police heads are turned in a completely other direction. So yeah, maybe someone's trying to keep Liz and others away from Dave, but it's not

Carrie, maybe it's Amy. So, Scott, what stands out to you as suspicious about Liz's story? Well, first, Anastasia, as a detective working this shooting, I would be asking myself, is her story even feasible? Here is why I say BS. So imagine you're on this bridge and it's so, so quiet.

that you can hear fish turning up and down on top of the water. For someone to be able to sneak up, walk up on foot and not be heard, I say impossible. And by the way, if I'm alone, I'm not going out into this secluded place in the wetlands by myself to clear my head. I mean, it just makes no sense right there. From a woman's perspective, no.

I think it's also interesting to note where she shot. She is shot in the fleshy part of her leg. I think it was one.

where it would probably cause the least amount of damage, not take any arteries out. So now for me, I'm thinking, wait a second, something is wrong with this story. By the way, if you're going to shoot someone out there, you want them gone. Like, oh yeah, boom, this is what I've got for you. But out there, if someone is going to sneak up on them to fire at them, I'm expecting you're going to have a homicide, not an assault for really a flesh wound.

But we do have a fresh crime scene, and we have her IDing the shooter. So investigators had to act quickly. So they go to Amy's house. They knock on the door, and surprisingly, Amy answers. And Amy says, I've been home all night, but you can search my house. I don't own a gun. I don't have a gun. And talk to my neighbors. They know I've all been home.

In this case, everything that she said rang true. Neighbors said she was home. They found no weapon in the house. And they started to really, really develop a whole new theory in this case. I love seeing what police did next in this case because what they did with Liz is really what I thought the genius in it all was.

Hi, I told you I was looking into a missing persons case briefly on the phone. Right. The case is regarding Carrie Farver. Are you familiar with her? Like I said, I barely even know her. Yeah, yeah. I ran into her one time and we were going into Dave's apartment to pick up my stuff. Okay. So my first question is, when is the last time that you saw Carrie in person?

That evening when they started dating. Her and Dave? Yeah. Just kind of walk me through that just real briefly. I just know the night that I called him, I had called him and told him that I thought I left my work keys in one of my...

scrub shirts at his apartment. - Okay, yeah. - So I went over and she came out and I was going in. And she made a smart comment to me. - What'd she say to you? - Called me a . - Okay, okay. - And it wasn't a big deal. I didn't really care at the time. I just wanted to get my stuff. So I just went in, got my stuff and I don't know. He was talking to her on the phone while I was getting my stuff and then I left and went home. - Okay, that's the only time you've ever seen her in person? - Nope. - Okay, you haven't seen her in person since? - Nope. - Okay.

is there anyone that you think would want to hurt carrie i didn't know her long enough to know if anybody wanted her well just out of you know all the you know i read the case file another just made a lot of drama with all this stuff but see anybody can think of that would have any ill will towards her amy amy his kid's mom that's amy flora yeah she was with him for 12 years

And she still goes in and out of his life all the time, so... Yeah. So you think she could have been a person that did some of that stuff to you? I'm just saying, as another person who would be possessive of Dave, it would be her. So, I mean, I wouldn't put it past her. Mm-hmm. Makes sense. I'm going to tell you some stuff here that I would hope would stay in this room, okay? We've had a pretty significant break in the case, okay? Okay.

Now they haven't found Carrie at that point, but they just want to see her reaction. So with this new break that we've had in this case, my mind kind of leads to if somebody would be bold enough

to shoot at you if that was Amy. It doesn't take a lot of steps in your head to go completely be bold enough to do something to somebody else, possibly Carrie. Right. Has Amy ever sent you any messages talking about wanting to harm Carrie? Maybe something that was vaguely referencing the news she had or maybe saying she knew where Carrie was. You get what I'm saying? She's always said that she wants to be

I guess I was just trying to hopefully, I was hoping that maybe you had a message or something or received something that she said, hey, you know, I'm going to do you in like I did Carrie or, you know, I'm going to.

do this to you like I did Carrie or something like that. And it was planting that seed that they really need her help. They need her to be in touch with Amy to see if Amy will tell her what she has really done. If you do receive any messages from her that are like that, because I'm thinking, hey, you know, we're starting to stir the pot with this, starting to talk to people. Maybe she gets a little bit more bold with what she starts messaging people, you know.

But then what she comes back with is supposedly these emails that she has now received from Amy, having Amy now confess to what she supposedly did to Carrie in Carrie's car. What does Amy say in her emails to you? Most of the time it's just about Dave living with her, just nonsense like that. Oh yeah? And then a few of them was, I think back in January, she sent a long one that said that she had killed Carrie.

And she goes through the scenario of having Carrie captive in her car and pulling out a knife and stabbing Carrie as she's there in the passenger seat multiple times. And when detectives look at this, when we look at this,

That is a confession right there. Although it's supposed to be Amy, it's really Liz talking about what she herself did. What they had to do here was continue connecting the dots. At that point, they wanted to get something very important out of that SUV. And within that SUV, they reprocessed the front passenger seat of that car.

Scott, so they're going back a second time to look in this car. What's going to be different the second time around? Three words, fine-tooth comb. That's when investigators and crime scene investigators are going to look at every inch of

of that vehicle, using all sets of different tools to search that vehicle, spraying luminol throughout the vehicle, using a black light to try to detect any blood evidence that may be in the car. So it's treated like a full-blown homicide scene. So the first time, really, it's like, with your eyes, what can you see? And now it's really a forensic deep dive. 100%. And in within the foam of that front seat, under the fabric...

of that front seat, they found a large red stain, tested that stain and whose blood was it? It was Carrie's. Want to connect with more family and friends and their native language is in English?

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That's rosettastone.com slash N-A-T-O-M-Y. Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday, me and my best friend Britt break down a new case, but not in the way you've heard before and not the cases you've heard before. You'll hear stories on Crime Junkie that haven't been told anywhere else. I'll tell you what you can do to help victims and their families get justice. Join me in a conversation with Ashley Flowers,

Join us for new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday, already waiting for you by searching for Crime Junkie wherever you listen to podcasts. Now there is evidence that something indeed really sinister has happened to Carrie. And that was the piece now that prosecutors needed to tie it all together. They may not have had Carrie's body, but they had her blood. And that was now enough.

Well, my name is Dave Schneider. I work with the Omaha Police Department, the homicide unit, okay? Do you want some follow-up in conjunction with the Potta County Sheriff's Office? Okay. For a person who's been missing since 2012. Yeah. And who's the missing person? Carrie. Carrie? I'm not sure on the last time. Did you ever see Carrie's car? I mean, as you know, when we go into an interview room to interview a potential suspect...

We normally never go in there not knowing what the answer to our questions is going to be because it's our way of trying to catch them in a lie. So they had a plan. And I agree with you. It was ingenious. You ever seen it? No. But you never actually saw Carrie in that car? No. And you've never seen that car? You don't know what kind of car it was until it was for it? It was a black Ford SUV.

Have you ever been in her car? Like Dave was never driving it or he never drove it. No. I'm scared. I don't go anywhere now. I won't let my kids go anywhere. I don't go anywhere. My son had to move in with his dad. I don't know if what Amy's saying is true. I don't know. I'm more scared that something's going to happen to me and then my kids aren't going to have anybody. Like what? What do you mean?

Because the emails that she sent, they're pretty graphic. The reason why you're in this chair right now today is because you have a lot of questions that you need to answer for me. Very important questions. You're in a very serious position here. For, what, four years almost now, this woman's son hasn't had her mom.

from, you know, a mom. I know. That's why I'm concerned too because I'm just like, she's missing her family. It's a very tragic case. They're all tragic. Someone will kind of touch home a little more, you know. We have a mother here that doesn't, you know, a kid who doesn't have his mom. And a mother who lost her daughter. The reason why I want to talk to you specifically is her phone was at your house right after she disappeared.

In my house? Yeah, her phone when she went missing was at your house. The location data shows it specifically at your house. I want to ask you how you can explain that to me please. I don't. She's never been to my house. Exactly. So after she's gone disappearing, her phone's at your house. When her vehicle's located, guess what was found inside the vehicle? Your fingerprints are inside her vehicle. You've never been inside her vehicle.

How would your fingerprints be inside her vehicle? But I've never been in her car. I don't even know what car she drives. You told me what car she drives. No, all I told you was what I was told. A Ford. That's it. An SUV. That's what I was told. That's it. You know, when you give permission to download your phone, they can extract deleted data from those things. There is a picture of Carrie's car that you had deleted on your phone.

A picture of her car with her plates, her Explorer, is on your phone. I've never seen her car. For years and years, people have been sending emails under Carrie's fictitious accounts. The location data on that sometimes is masked by different apps, but we have ways around that. A lot of times it wasn't masked by different apps. So the IP addresses show up to whose house? Your house.

Liz, this is where I want you to think hard, okay? About what direction you're going here. Are you gonna sit in this chair and be remorseful? Are you gonna sit in this chair and be cold-blooded? Because right now, we have your parents in the car, her phone at your house, you using multiple email accounts, creating all these different social media sites, profiles for years, seeing tens of thousands of messages. After four years, this family's been looking for answers.

So, Anaseka, how do you think that Liz was able to impersonate

carry through all those text messages, emails, Facebook messages. I've seen it many times. And all the forensic technicians will tell you that there are so many different computer programs out there and ways to do this that it is sometimes simple as knowing the app to put on your phone. And that's exactly what happened here. They were able to trace the IP address, which is the physical address of where the computer is.

that said this was absolutely not Carrie, that every time they looked, she was sending it halfway around the world, but all of it came back to one person, and that was Liz Gollier. And it really is one of the amazing things about technology and what we've seen, where it used to be you'd have to take a physical computer somewhere or be on someone's physical computer. Now it's just a question of the program and the apps that you have. Let me just give you a heads up. The PodCast Sheriff's Office has...

So now they knew the who committed it. Could they prove that there was the actual crime? Well, there's no body, right? With the absence of a body, it's always difficult to prove a crime has occurred.

But they have circumstantial evidence. And any prosecutor can tell you it doesn't need to be direct evidence. Circumstantial evidence can be just as good and sometimes better. It's a different type of evidence. But no prosecutor will ever say that we have enough. We always want to have as much as we possibly can because it just takes one on that jury to not get it. And what happened just a week or two before the trial really was a game changer in this case.

So within the search warrants that were issued for this case, police were able to collect a camera that Liz had at her home. And in within that camera, an SD card. Tony Cava, the forensic technologist that looked through all this data, he was going through hundreds, thousands of pieces of information. In one of those photographs, he saw a foot, but it had tattoos engraved

Liz is clearly stalking from the beginning. She is watching. She knows every move Dave makes. This is the first time that he had ever dated Carrie, so she was calculating and methodical every step of the way.

And here, her conniving got the better of her, and she made a lot of mistakes in the end. The judge found her guilty, and she got life in prison without parole. The reasons that she did it was just so stupid. And I lost a friend, too. To this day, Nancy and Max have moved on as best they can. That hole will never be repaired again.

But they still don't have her body. And there is something in that. Everyone that you've spoken to who has unfortunately been in this, they say they want to lay their loved one to rest. And Nancy and Max have never been given that opportunity. And what about for Max? He's getting married in June. Oh, he is? Yeah. Yeah.

To hear that...

I mean, it just, it brings this smile to my face right now because having seen Nancy and knowing the pain that these people have been through, Nancy will see her grandson walk down the aisle and start his own family. That to me is something that Carrie will be smiling when she's looking down on them for it and that they can smile because they're going to feel her with them every step of the way. Closure? There's never closure, but it's a bright line along that walk. ♪

Tune in next Wednesday when we'll dissect another new case on Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original, a Weinberger Media and Forseti Media production. Sunit David is executive producer.

Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday, me and my best friend Britt break down a new case, but not in the way you've heard before, and not the cases you've heard before. You'll hear stories on Crime Junkie that haven't been told anywhere else. I'll tell you what you can do to help victims and their families get justice.

Join us for new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday. Already waiting for you by searching for Crime Junkie wherever you listen to podcasts.