A Shot in the Dark

Summary

Podcast Summary:

Podcast: Something About Cari
Host: NBC News (Narrated by Keith Morrison)
Episode: A Shot in the Dark
Date: December 11, 2025

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Overview

In this gripping episode, Keith Morrison guides listeners through the wild, twisting investigation surrounding the disappearance of single mom Cari Farver. What begins as a missing person case erupts into a sensational saga of taunting messages, stalking, arson, and violence, climaxing in an apparent attempt on a woman’s life. But beneath the surface, nothing is quite as it seems, and as police peel back the layers of lies, they discover a heartland crime of almost unimaginable deception.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Shooting at Big Lake Park

• [00:48] On December 5, 2015, Liz Goliar—Dave Krupa’s ex—was shot in the leg at Big Lake Park.
  • Liz claims the assailant was a woman and identifies her as Amy Flora, Dave’s former partner and the mother of his children.
  • Police immediately surround Amy’s apartment.

2. Police Investigation: Amy Flora Under Suspicion

• [04:18] Officers interview Amy Flora, who is visibly traumatized and adamant she’s innocent.
  • Amy fails a polygraph test (she’s nervous and overwhelmed).
  • But evidence casts doubt—her car hasn’t been driven, and neighbors confirm she was home at the time of the shooting.
  • Detective Ryan Avis: “Amy’s afraid to even pick up a pistol, let alone handle one.” [05:43]
  • Dave Krupa also expresses strong doubts about Amy’s guilt, noting her aversion to guns [05:51].

3. Revelations and Red Flags: Liz’s Suspicious Behavior

• [06:54] Todd Butterbaugh, a friend, finds his own stolen laptop in Liz’s possession after she asks him to bring her a device while she’s in the hospital.
  • Liz’s explanation—she picked it up from a pawn shop—rings false [08:42].
• [09:26] Detectives begin to develop suspicion toward Liz, noting inconsistencies in her story and a pattern of chaos surrounding her.
• [11:33] Morrison invokes the phrase “the scales fell from his eyes,” marking the detectives’ growing realization that Liz may be orchestrating a massive deception.

4. Family Anguish: Carrie's Son and Mother

• [12:15] Carrie’s mother Nancy and son Max endure confusion, grief, and mounting suspicion that texts allegedly from Carrie aren’t really from her.
  • Max analyzes the texts’ language and believes someone is impersonating his mother [13:41].
  • Quote – Max: “We pretty much already knew that someone was just posing as my mom on there, which meant… something happened.” [14:23]

5. Detectives Refocus: The Theory Emerges

• Detectives now suspect the pattern points to Liz, not Carrie, as the perpetrator of the harassment and possibly worse.
• Amy Flora has a solid alibi and appears not to fit the behavior [16:06].
• Detective Ryan Avis: “She shot herself is what I thought.” [16:53]
• The detectives speculate that Liz might even have shot herself to further her deception [17:04].

6. Digital Forensics: Unraveling the Web

• Investigators revisit digital evidence—a photo of Carrie’s car on Liz’s phone predates the car’s discovery, indicating Liz had access while it was missing [19:15].
• More digital sleuthing reveals that Liz herself took a purportedly threatening “kidnapping” photo sent to Dave [19:36].
• Detective Ryan Avis: “We know how to pick up a phone and call Tony Kava…” [20:26].

7. Tony Kava—IT Forensics Lead

• Tony Kava, a digital forensics examiner, tackles terabytes of evidence including dozens of email and Facebook accounts [21:37].
  • Kava uncovers that Liz uploaded YouTube videos from the IP address at Todd Butterbaugh's home, implicating her further [22:03].
  • Todd, also an IT professional, is shocked to find his home at the center of the probe [22:50].

8. Physical Evidence: The Smoking Gun

• Investigators match an unidentified fingerprint from Carrie’s SUV to Liz [24:08].
  • Detective Ryan Avis: “This lady who should have had very little interaction with Carrie… now her fingerprint is in her car.” [24:18]
• The evidence points to Liz as the person impersonating Carrie, fabricating threats, and possibly responsible for Carrie’s disappearance.

9. Changing the Narrative: Liz Becomes the Key Suspect

• Detectives and family now believe Carrie is a victim, not a perpetrator.
  • Dave Krupa, Amy Flora, and Carrie’s family realize that for three years, Liz has been orchestrating a criminal campaign—including setting her own house on fire and potentially murdering Carrie.
  • Detective Ryan Avis: “Liz impersonating Carrie for years, sending thousands of texts and emails in her name…” [28:55]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Detective Ryan Avis on Amy Flora:
  • “Amy’s afraid to even pick up a pistol, let alone handle one.” [05:43]
• Todd Butterbaugh about Liz’s suspicious story:
  • “Should I believe this? At this point, no, I wasn’t believing it.” [08:42]
• Liz describing the only time she met Carrie:
  • “She came out and I was going in and she (Carrie) failed. Smart comment to me.” [31:40]
• Detective Ryan Avis on the fantastical nature of the case:
  • “So suffice to say, now everything… is taking a wild movie-like twist.” [06:54]
• Detective Ryan Avis on digital evidence:
  • “It might take her five minutes to create a fake email account. It might take me… 15 hours to prove that it’s actually her.” [21:57]
• Keith Morrison (narrator), on the twists in perception:
  • “It's about to dive right through the looking glass. And on the other side, well, hard to believe.” [24:46]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:48] Shooting at Big Lake Park
• [03:15] Liz claims Amy Flora is the shooter
• [05:43] Amy fails polygraph; detectives doubt her guilt
• [06:54] Todd discovers his stolen laptop in Liz’s room
• [14:23] Max and Nancy discuss suspicions about who was messaging
• [16:53] Detectives consider that Liz may have shot herself
• [19:15] Forensics—evidence on Liz’s phone predates car recovery
• [21:37] Tony Kava details digital forensics efforts
• [22:50] Todd is investigated as a result of Liz’s digital trail
• [24:08] Liz’s fingerprint found in Carrie’s SUV
• [28:15] Missed family events lead detectives to conclude Carrie is dead
• [29:20] Detectives suspect Liz’s motive is jealousy
• [30:54] Detectives set up a ruse with Liz to gather more evidence
• [31:40] Liz recounts her only meeting with Carrie
• [33:22] Liz agrees to help frame Amy, unwittingly playing into detectives’ hands

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Tone & Style

The episode is narrated with Dateline’s signature blend of empathy, suspense, and a hint of noir—Keith Morrison’s delivery is wry and humane, moving from dry observations to poignant reflections. The interview subjects (detectives, family, friends) speak candidly, trying to make sense of a chilling, increasingly bizarre chain of events.

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Conclusion

“A Shot in the Dark” masterfully shifts the narrative of the entire case: what appeared at first as a missing person story with a mysterious stalker evolves into a tale of astonishing deception and psychological manipulation. As evidence mounts, the episode leaves listeners breathless, poised at the edge of a new revelation—was Liz Gollier, the purported victim, the architect of all this chaos and violence?

Next time: The investigation veers deeper into uncharted territory—where a horrifying truth finally comes into focus.

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For those new to the series, this episode is a pivotal turning point, unraveling years of misdirection and deception and shedding light on the terrifying power of obsession and impersonation.

Transcript

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

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[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

December 5, 2015 More than three years after Carrie Farber disappeared, it was the day after Liz Golia visited police to turn the case on its head by telling the police that the stalker terrorizing her and Dave Krupa was not Gary Farver at all, but Dave's ex girlfriend and the mother of his children, Amy. As Liz said later, she needed some time alone to think. So late afternoon she got in her car and drove to the park by the river. Big Lake park, it's called. And then she got out and took a walk along the trail there and sat down on a bench. It was quiet. Liz was alone in the gathering cold and dark of a December evening. And that was when the silence was snapped by the deafening bark of a gun.

And the pain tearing through her thigh. I'm Keith Morrison and this is Something About Carrie, A podcast From Dateline.

Episode 4 A Shot in the Dark.

[Todd Butterbaugh]

I've been shot in the lake.

[Amy Flora]

Is the assailant still nearby?

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

I don't think so.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

I took on burning.

[Amy Flora]

Do you know if he's male or female? Female.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

It was just after 6:30pm when the Council Bluffs PD roared out to Big Lake park and found a wounded and bleeding Liz Goliar and packed her off to the hospital. While a chopper trained down a searchlight and cops on the ground scoured the paths and bushes for the shooter, a detective checked on Liz at the hospital. His name is Matthew Coleman.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

You could tell that she, you know, she was in pain. Yeah, obvious wound to her leg.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

But Liz was lucky. When the bullet went clean through her leg, it missed bones and arteries an inch or two. One way or the other, she could have bled to death in minutes. She told the detective what happened.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

She says she came out here to clear mind, and she walked out to a bench and sat down. And then a female stuck a gun to her back, told her to get on the ground, and then shot her in the leg and then ran off.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Who was this shooter? The woman who had tried it seemed to take Liz's life, but ended up only wounding her. Liz said she knew. She knew, all right. Was it Carrie Farver? No, said Liz. It was not. Not Carrie at all. It was, she said, the same woman who'd recently been stalking her. The mother of Dave Krupa's children, his former partner, Amy Flora.

A little later, a city police task force surrounded Amy's apartment.

[Amy Flora]

And I kind of seen somebody leaning against my building. And I said, who's there? And all I heard was, open up, police. And what was that like? Traumatizing. I was freaked out. I didn't know why the police were at my door and tell me to open my door. I had no idea what was going on. So I opened the door. And they had two officers with guns drawn and pointing at you? Yes. Yeah.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

What did they say to you?

[Amy Flora]

They had said that I was accused of shooting Liz. I thought that I was gonna go to jail. I would lose my kids. I wasn't really sure what would happen. But, I mean, I guess if you're accused of shooting somebody, I mean, first thought in your mind is, you're going to jail. You know, I've never been in trouble my whole life, so I really. I mean, that was my first thought.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

And somebody would come and take your kids away?

[Detective Ryan Avis]

Yeah.

[Amy Flora]

I didn't know what would happen to my kids if I had to go to jail.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

You know, the police came right into Amy's house. They searched it, and later they sat Amy down in an interview room and hooked her up to a polygraph. They strapped you into a machine?

[Amy Flora]

Yep.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

What did it feel like in there?

[Amy Flora]

Horrible.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Officers asked her questions, like this one, among others. Did you go to Big Lakes park that day?

[Amy Flora]

No.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Amy denied that she shot Liz over and over and over again. But he failed the lie detective test.

[Amy Flora]

Yeah, they told me that I didn't pass it. All I could do was cry, like. Because I know I didn't do this. I didn't shoot her. And I knew that, but this test was saying I did. And all I can remember is the detective just kept yelling at me, telling me, there's something you need to tell us. And I Didn't know anything.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Still, something didn't add up. For example, when investigators arrived at Amy's place right after the shooting, one of them felt the hood of her car. It was ice cold, hadn't been driven for a while. And during the canvass for witnesses, a neighbor insisted that Amy was home all afternoon. So was Amy so nervous she blew the polygraph, or was something else going on? Amy's ex, Dave Krupa, when he heard Liz had named Amy as the shooter, he could barely believe it. Now, at that point, my thinking gets pretty twisted because I know Amy didn't shoot her. Amy's afraid to even pick up a pistol, let alone handle one. So suffice to say, now everything is what I believe was going on for three and a half, four years, is taking a wild movie like twist. Back at the hospital, Liz was well enough to pick up a phone and call Todd. Remember him? The helpful hope?

Liz told Todd about the shooting.

[Todd Butterbaugh]

First question is, when I found out where it happened, why are you down at big lake after dark? Nobody goes down there in their right mind. That's just not a place to go. It's not safe. To which Liz responded, why are you questioning me? I'm sitting here shot. I'm hurt.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

In fact, Liz would have to stay in the hospital for several days, and the police had confiscated her cell phone. So she had a request for Todd.

[Todd Butterbaugh]

She asked if I could go home and get her a tablet, something she could use while she was out there. But she was bored. So I went to her room to look for one, and lo and behold, I see, barely sticking out from under the bed, this laptop. So I grabbed it because I knew what it looked like. I flipped it over.

And lo and.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Behold, Todd realized what he had in his hands. It was one of the many electronics that he had reported stolen from his house those many months before.

[Todd Butterbaugh]

I was like, this is my laptop. But to confirm, I double checked. When you look at the bottom, there's two stickers. There's the one with the serial number, and there's the one with the operating system license, which had been ripped off. I had kept the box the laptop originally came in, and all boxes that computers come in have serial numbers on them as well. So I grabbed the box and I compared the two, and they were the same exact serial number.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Well, well, Liz had stolen his computer. Todd reeled. He'd have to confront her, of course, which he did later when Liz got her phone back via text. And Liz responded this way.

[Todd Butterbaugh]

I get this text and it's Sorry, I didn't know that was yours. I picked it up from a pawn shop. Okay, whatever. You know, at this point, no, I wasn't believing it.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

But was it true? Strange events and odd coincidences fell down like rain on a picnic some days, especially whenever Liz was around. Detective Avis, investigating the shooting, went to see Liz at the hospital, his recorder rolling.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

I feel like it's just written on the wall, but it is. It's Amy shot you. Dave's gone, isn't it?

[Amy Flora]

Pretty much. That's what I'm thinking. They still don't think so.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Seemed like the friendly cop.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

Or the dumb one. I'll be whatever she wanted as long as she kept telling us information.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Why? Because Ryan Avis and his partner could not help but scratch a suspicious itch. A truly shocking idea. Something beyond twisted, beyond deviant. Something that sounded crazy. But crazy had long been the only way to describe this case. Except the detectives hadn't seen the half of it.

[Amy Flora]

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[Commercial Announcer]

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[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Let us turn now to the Bible. The New Testament. Book of Acts, chapter 9, verse 18. Stay with me a moment. The story concerns the Apostle Paul, blinded on the road to Damascus, before quoting here, there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he received his sight. Or as the great crime novelist Agatha Christie put it, many, many, many years later, the scales fell from his eyes. Meaning, in her case, some baffling mystery suddenly fell away to reveal the deadly truth.

Sadly, in real life, the truth all too often remains hidden. Those scales stay firmly affixed, as they had in Omaha, Nebraska, and Little Macedonia, Iowa, for three long years. Blinded by hope, perhaps, that Carrie Farver could be persuaded to reveal and explain herself, except in the troubled minds of a young man and his grandmother, something was beginning to poke through. All hazy and half seen and quite terrible.

Carrie Farber's mother, Nancy, and her son Max, were coping with the most confusing set of emotions imaginable. Emptiness, fear, gnawing uncertainty, just to name a few. Nancy had sent Carrie so many pleading messages, asking her to please, please come home. Writing, for example, carrie, you're my daughter, and I'll always love you no matter what. We just need to see you, to hear your voice, know where you are. Carrie never called, never responded in any way. For a parent, for a mother.

I don't know how. How do you characterize this episode in your life? How do you talk about those feelings and make sense of them?

[Amy Flora]

There was no making sense of it.

Total loss.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

As for Carrie's son, Max, he had by this time formed a suspicion, tentative at first, but held onto for years. And it was stronger by the day, week, month. As he poured over those messages from his mom, the wording, the phrasing, the spelling. Max couldn't help but wonder if the person sending those texts was actually his mom or was not Carrie Farver at all. But if that wasn't her, well, then, what did that mean? Max and his grandmother tried to stay positive. It wasn't easy.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

So what heaven's name did you think happened to her? Someone was. Well, we pretty much already knew that someone was just posing as my mom on there, which meant. Which meant something happened.

We knew she didn't just run away. We knew that.

We all kind of hoped for a while that at least she was okay.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

But we all knew by the end of 2015, scales were beginning to fall away elsewhere, too. Sheriff's investigators in Council Bluffs, Iowa, had come to suspect that maybe they and detectives at many other agencies investigating all these different cases involving Carrie and Liz had been bamboozled, played for fools, lied to. Why? Well, after Liz's shooting, detectives had questions. For instance, why did Liz decide to hang around a Dangerous park after dark on a cold winter night alone. Made no sense. Why when police got to that park in no time flat, why couldn't they even find a trace of the shooter?

But maybe the reddest flag was this. Remember for years Liz had been claiming that the woman stalking her, making her life hell, was Carrie Farver. But now she was saying the woman who shot her in the park was Amy Flora. Crazy as Amy had told them.

[Amy Flora]

I didn't even know what to think at the time, like why I was being accused of shooting somebody.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

The detectives checked out Amy's alibi, of course, and it was rock solid. And when questioned, well, Amy was nervous, yes, but seemed absolutely befuddled too.

[Amy Flora]

I couldn't harm a fly.

I know. It was just very traumatizing.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

And that is when the scales fell from the eyes of Potawatoma County, Iowa Sheriff's detectives Ryan Avis and Jim Doty. Was Liz Goliar creative enough, crafty enough, cruel enough to have concocted every bit of this years long harassment scheme? And if she was, was she diabolical enough to shoot herself through the leg and then invent a second villain? Not Carrie now, but Amy?

[Detective Ryan Avis]

Detective Avis, she shot herself is what I thought.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

She would be so thoroughly into this con and cover up that she would be prepared to put a bullet through her own leg. That was what you thought?

[Detective Ryan Avis]

And burn her own house down?

Vandalize her own car? Wow.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Well surely that was enough to go out and arrest her.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

Couldn't prove that she shot herself.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

So detectives Doty and Avis decided to leave the shooting case to other investigators and stay in their own lane. After all. Their assignment was to find Carrie Farver missing all those three years.

They had come on board to put fresh eyes on the case and to test the prevailing theory, which had always been this, that Carrie suffered some sort of mental health break and then launched a long term covert campaign of harassment against her ex, Dave Krupa and Dave's ex girlfriend, Liz. But they had come to suspect that they could not believe anything that Liz Gollier told them. And now they believe Liz slipped up big time by shifting the bullseye from Carrie to Amy.

And the detectives now thought they knew why Amy had suddenly become Liz's target. Dave Krupa had moved out of Omaha back to Council Bluffs. And that was the same town where Amy and their two children lived.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

Dave and Amy were starting to kind of spend some more time together. They were maybe talking about possibly moving in with each other.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Oh boy. But if Doty And Avis were going to confirm all their suspicions and build a criminal case against Liz. They needed proof. So they went back to the one thing that never lies. The digital evidence. And that cell data that Liz had allowed police to collect off her phone back at the very beginning. That was more than three years before. They'd been working on it the whole time. They'd gone through much most of the data on that phone, and they found something. It was, well, confusing. First, on that phone, three years before, Liz had uploaded a photo of Carrie Farver's black Ford Explorer, which didn't make any sense at all because we looked.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

At the date that was taken. It was taken on Christmas Eve of 2012.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Wasn't that when her car was actually missing? Yeah.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

Hadn't been recovered till January of 2013.

So we thought that's. That's weird that the police couldn't find it. Dave didn't know where it was, but somehow Liz was able to take a picture of it.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Strange. All right, but that wasn't all. Remember, at one point, Carrie sent Dave a threatening photo of a woman bound and duct taped in the trunk of a car. Kidnapped. Maybe. Dave guessed that Carrie took the picture, suggesting the woman in the trunk could be Liz. Some kind of Carrie invented threat. But when investigators got hold of Liz's phone, they discovered she took that scary picture. It wasn't Carrie at all. Which made them wonder, was it possible all those wild and scary texts and emails, those thousands of them, all sent in Carrie's name, were actually sent by Liz? Tricky, even for a computer whiz to nail that bit of jello to the wall.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

It's beyond our expertise. And that's when I was gonna say.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

How well do you know computers and social media and all of that nonsense?

[Detective Ryan Avis]

We know how to pick up a phone and call Tony Kava and tell him that he's got a lot of information to look at.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Tony Kava? Who's he?

Well, Tony Kava is what you'd call an IT superhero.

[Tony Kava]

I work in the county's IT department, where I manage, I guess, a team of seven IT geeks. And I also work in the sheriff's office. I'm a special deputy, which is a reserve deputy in the sheriff's office. I'm a digital forensics examiner. I don't have a degree for any of this. I pretended to go to college for about two weeks, and I wasn't very good at that. I wasn't a very good student. I've never been a good student, but I do. I love Learning. So I guess I found my calling, though, because I went straight to work and started doing technical work. And that led to where we're at.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Today and where Tony Kava was at in 2015. When detectives Doty and Avis needed him to do a forensic deep dive on Liz. Goliar's electronics was at the ready, ready to spend hours and hours and hours on the case. I mean, how much stuff did you have to go through?

[Tony Kava]

It was terabytes worth of information, maybe about three dozen email accounts, dozen Facebook accounts, and a number of different apps.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

And so, in his tiny office, Toni Kava sat, hour after hour, hunched over his workstation late into the night, deciphering enormous amounts of digital data.

[Tony Kava]

It might take her five minutes to create a fake email account. It might take me, you know, 15 hours to prove that it's actually her.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

And among those many Internet Inventions was a YouTube account to which Liz uploaded personal videos. And what did Tony Cabot discover about the IP address where Liz's YouTube videos were uploaded? It was linked straight to the home of Liz's new live in boyfriend, Todd Butterbaugh. Tony Kava did a double take, maybe two of them, because Todd Butterbaugh is also an IT guy who worked in the same department as Tony. In fact, Tony was Todd's boss. Crazy. Bizarre, but apparently true. Here's Todd Butterball.

[Todd Butterbaugh]

I got pulled in the office until I'm being put on administrative leave because you're being investigated and they need to come to my house and search. Serve a search warrant. Because of the fact that she was living with me and that I worked at the county, they needed to remove any. Any potential perception that I had access to anything and I could do anything. Plus, they also had to make sure that I wasn't involved.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Todd told them, of course, that he knew nothing about these videos uploaded from his home while Liz lived there. And he told investigators about Liz stealing his laptop. Here's Tony Kava.

[Tony Kava]

So again, it was another arrow pointing at Liz.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Painstakingly, arrow by arrow, Kava compiled a quiver full of evidence. His conclusion? Every single one of those YouTube videos, threatening emails and texts and Facebook posts came from Liz Gollier. And he could prove it. Meanwhile, Detectives Dodie and Avis busied themselves with good old fashioned earthbound evidence. Remember that one unidentified fingerprint found on a mint container in Carrie Farver's otherwise spotless Ford Explorer? Again, Detective Dovey, we asked our crime.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

Scene tech, hey, can you compare that fingerprint to the known Prince of Liz? See what you come up with.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

It was a match.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

This lady who should have had very little interaction with Carrie should had no reason to ever be in her vehicle, only met her in passing one time. But now her fingerprint is in her car.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Proof of Liz and Carrie's suv Proof of Liz impersonating Carrie online. There was no logical explanation for any of it.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

Unless we think Liz may have been involved with making Carrie disappear.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

It seemed this case was about to dive right through the looking glass. And on the other side, well, hard to believe.

[Commercial Announcer]

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[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

By the time those two county sheriffs started looking into the strange case of Carrie Farver and what seemed to be thousands upon thousands of jealousy fueled texts and emails and threats, even arson. Nearby, in the small town of Macedonia, Iowa, Carrie's son Max was getting ready for high school graduation. He hadn't seen his mom in three years, though she, or someone pretending to be her, had contacted him on Facebook occasionally. But ever the optimist, Max overcame his doubts and decided one more time to reach out to her.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

I was at that point it was just a last ditch effort, just hoping something would happen.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Max wrote to his mom. Quote if this is really you, please come back. I want you to be at my graduation. End quote. When she didn't respond, how did that feel?

[Detective Ryan Avis]

I wasn't really surprised because, like I said, I knew it wasn't her.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Max and his grandmother Nancy, Kerry's mom, suspected that all those digital rants were not actually from Kerry. They just didn't know that detectives Jim Doty and Ryan Avis had come to the same conclusion, that they, in fact, had proof that Liz was impersonating Carrie online. But the detectives also suspected something much more dreadful.

Remember, their investigation began with one basic question. Was Carrie Farver alive or was she dead? One clue to finding the answer involved Carrie missing major life events.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

Her father died, and she didn't go to the funeral, missed her son's birthday. All these things. I mean, it didn't take Ryan very long at all to come to a dead end where he. He couldn't find anything to show that she was alive.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

So Carrie Farver must have been the victim, not the villain. And the woman who'd claimed to be the victim, Liz Goliar, was the prime suspect in Carrie's disappearance.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

Because why else would you disguise yourself as Kerry if you weren't responsible for it? Why would you be in Kerry's vehicle if you weren't responsible for it?

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

All of that is so counterintuitive and so bizarre that, you know, you wouldn't be expected to believe such a thing. No, it was stunning, really. Liz impersonating Carrie for years, sending thousands of texts and emails in her name. But now investigators had a bigger question and a much bigger problem.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

I guess part of the worry was if, even if we could prove that it's Liz sending all this stuff out as Carrie. Well, that doesn't prove murder.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Murder, yes. Detective Sergeant Doty and Corporal Avis were now firmly convinced that Liz had killed. Killed Carrie out of jealousy simply because Carrie had started dating Dave. Krupa impersonated Carrie in order to win Dave back, and then tried to frame his ex partner, Amy Flora, for everything, even going so far as to set her own house on fire and kill the family pets, shoot herself in the leg.

Wild stuff. But could they prove it?

[Detective Ryan Avis]

We didn't need something more. So we still weren't quite sure how to get to that point.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

And then Liz herself, by accusing Amy of shooting her, gave detectives their big idea. Liz had already met Corporal Ryan Avis, but she had no idea who Sergeant Jim Doty was.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

And that's when we introduced Jim to Liz. Well, Investigator Dodio, working for the sheriff's.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Office a little over a Week after the shooting in the park, Liz limped into the sheriff's department.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

I told you I was looking into a missing person states.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Briefly on the phone, Detective Doty had good news for Liz. There had finally been a break in the case of the missing Carrie Farver.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

There have some. Benson remains had been located.

[Todd Butterbaugh]

Okay.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

It was a ruse, of course.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

We're waiting on the lab results to make a positive ID but the initial indication that these remained are Carrie. Okay.

[Todd Butterbaugh]

Okay.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Well, they waited, said Detective Doty. He was hoping Liz could help them establish a firm timeline of Carrie's disappearance. Like, when was the last time that Liz saw Carrie? Well, that was easy, said Liz. They'd had only one brief encounter when Liz showed up unannounced at Dave Krupa's apartment back in 2012 and found Carrie and Dave together.

[Amy Flora]

I didn't know he was dating anybody else at the time. So she came out and I was going in and she failed. Smart comment to me.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

What she say to you?

[Amy Flora]

Call me A.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

Okay.

[Amy Flora]

And it wasn't a big deal. I didn't really care at the time. I just wanted to get my stuff and then I left him at home.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

Okay. That's the only time you've ever seen her in person? Okay. You haven't seen her in person since?

[Amy Flora]

Nope.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Liz told Detective Doty that it was Dave who blamed Carrie for all those harassing messages over the years. So she just assumed he was right. But just as she had told Detective Avis earlier, Liz said she now believed that Dave's ex partner, Amy Flora, was really the one behind it all.

[Amy Flora]

She was with him for 12 years, and she still goes in and out of his life all the time. So.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

Yeah. So you think she could be the person that did some of that stuff?

[Amy Flora]

I'm just saying, as another person who would be possessive of Dave, it wouldn't be her. So, I mean, I wouldn't put it past her.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Detective Doty pretended to agree.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

I'm thinking if she was bold enough to go and then shoot you, okay, she could easily be bold enough to have done something to Carrie.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Of course, Dodie told Liz he would still need to prove it.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

We had messages from her saying, hey, I did this or I did that. You know, I could easily start building that case. Right? I told her, hey, I. I believe you. I believe Amy's after you. And we want to build a case against Amy. We want to get Amy thrown in prison, which we were hoping was music to her ears.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

And apparently it was. Liz agreed to help with the investigation and then limped out of the office and she became a little deputy for you. Yeah. No telling what Liz might come up with next.

In the next episode of Something About Carrie, when a tangle of lies will collide with a whole other tale. And that one, though hard to believe, will will be true. I was blown away. Absolutely blown away. It was hard to swallow. I didn't know what to think.

[Amy Flora]

I always call it divine intervention.

[Detective Ryan Avis]

My first thought when I saw those photographs was that this defendant had taken a trophy of the person she had killed.

[Narrator (Keith Morrison)]

Something About Carrie is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Shane Bishop and Jessica Devera Lapid are the producers. Brian Drew Marshall Housefeld and Greg Smith are audio editors. Brittany Morris is field producer. Molly derosa is assistant producer. Adam Gorfin is co executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer and Liz Cole as senior executive executive producer. From NBC News. Audio Sound mixing by Rich Cutler.

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