Something About Cari - Ep. 5: Mother

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After Carrie Farver drove away from Little Macedonia, Iowa in November of 2012 and never returned, cops and neighbors alike seemed all too willing to believe that her bipolar disorder was to blame. She'd had some sort of break with reality. Of course, they sympathized with Carrie's son, Max, and her mother, Nancy, but what could anyone do? Detective Ryan Avis. In the small community where she's from, they all kind of believe that too, and Nancy never could stand up and argue. Nancy felt lonely indeed, until one day, three years later, Avis' partner, Detective Jim Doty, knocked on her door. I was a little bit standoffish because... Been down that road before. Right, yeah. Yeah. Finally, he said to me, he said, well, I want you to know that I don't think she left on her own. And I tell you, my attitude just changed. It was the very thing Nancy had suspected from the start. Yeah. They saw what you had seen all along. Right. So then the investigation really got going. An investigation as unusual? and convoluted as the suspected crime. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Something About Carrie, a podcast from Dateline. Episode 5, Mother. Back in the city, Liz Gallier was now eagerly playing a new role, trying to help detectives prove that Amy Flora, Dave Krupa's ex, and also Liz's rival for Dave's time and props affection, Amy was the one who'd shot Liz and killed Carrie. Of course, all the while, detectives knew that Amy was innocent, but they let Liz think they believed otherwise. Well, interviewing Liz, they even dropped hints of what to listen for from Amy so they could arrest her. Broad hints, as you can hear in this exchange. I mean, if she made anything real threatening statements or inferred that she ever did anything to Carrie, because that's like gold to me if we had something like that. And what do you know? Wonder of wonders within days Liz began forwarding detectives' emails from Amy. She said, emails that were far more explicit than anything they'd seen before. We had a voice actor read them. I shot you, Liz, to make sure Dave stayed away from you. I made a couple of those fake emails and numbers you and Dave thought were carried to get rid of you, Liz, but it didn't work too well. When they first started coming in, they were pretty vague. So Detective Doty called in Liz again and told her she was on the right track and offered further guidance. So you guys want me to try and email her back? And I'm leaving that in your court, Liz. I mean, if that's something you would feel okay doing, that'd be really helpful for us. Liz was on board, said she would do her best. Carry family from closure would be nice, Carly. Yeah, that true, get her family some closure. So Liz left, and before long reported that she had sent an email asking Amy to confirm that she really shot Liz to describe the kind of gun she used and to reveal whether she ever met Carrie Farver. And Liz lied. Amy responded. The gun was Dave's that I used. Don't worry, you didn't get it as bad as Crazy Carrie. And then Liz showed detectives this email, supposedly from Amy. So 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 chest and stomach area. I then took her out and burned her. I stuffed her body in a garbage bag with crap. Of course, the investigators knew full well that Amy did not write that email, did not send that email, and did not kill Carrie. But the content of the email? That was just the sort of detail that only the actual killer would know. A couple of days later, Dave Krupa called Detective Avis and said he'd heard something disturbing from Liz. Police recorded the conversation. She told me that the sheriff had found remains, like somebody's dead, and that they thought it was this cherry, and that supposedly they had all this evidence against Amy, you know, that she's complicit or knows something or whatever. Dave was quite understandably shaken up. The detective couldn't tell Dave much, but he did drop a big hint. I'd be damn near moved in with Amy if I were you. Okay. Since Liz did come and tell you this, I would avoid her like the plague right now. Dave took that advice, moved in with his ex-partner Amy so they could protect each other and their kids. But that outraged Liz. And she called the detectives to tell them she was upset because they had not arrested Amy. Looks like the only person that benefited was her. So she gets to shoot somebody, and then she gets to kill another person, and then she gets to move in with Dave, and she gets to be free. and you guys are arresting her. At which Detective Doty told Liz he still needed more evidence to arrest Amy. So Liz made a bold move. She agreed to give the cops access to her email account. And over the next month, the emails came pouring in. Allegedly, of course, from Amy. I got a hold of Carrie and we drove in her car. I reached over and stabbed her in the stomach. When I killed Carrie, you know, she begged me to call Dave at work. Then she begged to talk to her family before she died. All of this fairly jumped off the page. What else could it be but a confession? Even though Liz was trying to pin the confession on Amy. But the phrase, what else could it be, is generally not enough to win a murder conviction or persuade the DA to bring charges. We had to find evidence that would match what she's telling us to confirm that what she's telling us is true. The detectives decided they needed to give another going-over to Carrie's Ford Explorer. But it turned out Nancy hadn't long ago sold it. So they tracked it down in a whole other county. Not so easy to do. And what they found? that vehicle had been used and used and used Hard to imagine any evidence would be left in there Still they got the key and they took a look Took out the passenger seat pulled off the fabric of that and there was a dark red stain right on that seat. Large stain. And when that stain was sent in for testing, DNA confirmed it was human blood. Carrie's blood. That's huge. It was. We high-fived. But we didn't really know what to do next, for sure. Except they knew they had to move quickly because they'd put a tracker on Liz's vehicle and discovered she'd been scouting a new target. We would see her circle Amy's apartment multiple times a day. So, because Dodie and Abus believed that Carrie Farber had been murdered in Omaha, where Liz lived at the time, they asked for help from the Omaha Police Department, and they got lucky. Omaha found an active warrant for Liz, a traffic citation misdemeanor. Still, it was enough to pull Liz over in her car and arrest her and bring her into the station and sit her down for an interview. You've got to hand, go so forth. Their questions were not about the ticket. They were about Carrie. Liz stuck to her story. That she, not Carrie, was the victim of this tragic tale. What do you think happened to Carrie Farber? I don't know. I don't know if what Amy's saying is true. I don't know. I'm always scared that something's going to happen to me and that my kids aren't going to help anybody. The Omaha detective dialed up the pressure. How, he asked. How did Liz's fingerprint get onto that mint tin that had been found in Carrie's car? To which Liz replied, I don't know, but I've never been in her car. I don't even know what car she drives. Liz denied everything. The finger's pointing right at you. I'm done talking, and I'm going to have my attorney, because I didn't do anything. No confession now. And within hours, Liz bonded out. Detectives took what evidence they had to the DA, that and their firm belief that Liz Gullier killed Carrie Farber. The DA asked for time. This was no straightforward case. Months passed. And during that time, Carrie's son Max remained completely unaware of any of those developments. Months before, he'd made a last effort, sending a message begging his mom to show up for his high school graduation. Now the ceremony came and went, without answers and without his mom. That was the real kind of stake in the heart. Yeah. Because... Well, God knows if there was any occasion she was going to attend, it certainly would have been your graduation. Yeah. The summer of 2016 came and went. Another winter set in. And then on December 22nd, 2016, more than four years after Carrie Farber vanished, the county attorney finally finished reviewing all the evidence. Undecided, there was enough evidence to arrest Liz Gollier and charge her with murder. The best part of it was being able to go to Nancy and tell her, we've arrested somebody for the murder of your daughter. That was a big day for her. That was what made working this whole case worth it. It would feel like driving out there to see you. Can't drive fast enough. The news came as an unbelievable surprise for Dave Krupa, too. I was blown away. Absolutely blown away. It was hard to swallow. I didn't know what to think. But with the surprise came relief. I just sat in a break room for, I don't know, a long time, trying to wrap my head around it. It was the first time I could go outside and take a breath of fresh air and say, I don't have to look over my shoulder today. Liz Gullier sat in jail while the prosecutors prepared for a trial that they knew would not be easy. Chief Deputy Douglas County Attorney Brenda Beadle. No body cases are tough, right? Yeah, and circumstantial. It was very circumstantial. Circumstantial cases can be among the most convincing to a jury, but not always. Not always. And then, as the trial date was bearing down, Dave Krupa made a trip to his storage unit, and he was sorting things. And he found something. And he knew right away, somebody had to see this. That's been sitting in my storage unit in a box for a year and a half. Boy. That was icing on the cake. Boy, there was never icing on the cake. Yeah. Butter cream. Right, right. Well, that became the cake, and the rest was icing. The End the history of Nebraska. And high above, a dome of stained glass and steel that stands as an enduring symbol of stability and law and order. Though once, early on, it watched over not stability, but chaos. Back in 1919, the place was very nearly destroyed by a white mob intent on lynching a black man accused of raping a young white woman. The lynching was completed, most terrifically, right behind that monument to justice, though the victim turned out to be innocent of any crime. And then decades later, the same building hosted the city's first civil rights sit-in. And ever since, thieves, con artists, killers, villains of every stripe have stood in its docks to face the various fates imposed upon them by the law. Until, in 2017, the woman at the center of our story, Liz Gollier, entered a courtroom for her turn in the Hall of Justice. Representing the people, Chief Deputy Douglas County Attorney Brenda Beadle. I mean, certainly we've had our fair share of homicides and bizarre cases, but this certainly, in all my experience, tops the charts for most bizarre. Bizarre and complicated was the case against Liz Goliere, a story that would be a challenge for anyone to tell in an understandable and efficient way, even Brenda Beadle. I mean, if you're at a cocktail party or something and somebody says, what are you working on? I mean, what do you even tell them? Yeah, I say, do you have an hour? Because I think this is one of those cases that if you just have a piece of the story, it's not enough and it's not, it doesn't encompass everything that you're trying to get across. You need to tell the whole story. And it's just compiled on, you know, all the details that come out and all the bizarre actions. It just mounts. and then it culminates into enough to get us to be able to charge. Prosecutor Beadle would have company at the prosecution table. This was her colleague at the time, James Masteller. The first time I was briefed on this case, my first impression was this is the story for a made-for-TV movie. And when you're thinking about this and hearing about this, you're thinking no one can believe that this actually happened. It's completely unbelievable. And so part of the challenge with our case was trying to explain to the trier of fact how this actually had happened, how this was this unbelievable set of circumstances actually had occurred and was believable. Remember, the charge was murder. Murder in the first degree, even though Cary Farber's body has not been found. Your typical murder case, you know exactly when the murder happened. You know exactly where it happened And when you don have a body you don really have a good date time or location And one more complication Liz awaiting trial raised the stakes even higher As was her right, she demanded a speedy trial. Detective Ryan Avis. She wanted to have a trial within 90 days and didn't waive that. And we then had to hit turbo mode and get everything ready, which I thought it was, but I guess there's a lot more to it after that. Well, yes. I mean, that's a very busy time for you guys, right? The attorneys more. Normally, if they need us to run something down, we'll do it. But what we did for this, I don't know if I'll ever do that type of work again. Detectives Avis and his partner, Jim Doty, as well as Reserve Deputy and Tech Guru, Tony Cotter, were essentially loaned from the sheriff's office in Iowa to Nebraska Prosecutor Beatle. Well, they needed a case whisperer, right? They needed somebody who knew it intimately. Yeah. Tony and I had met with our supervisors and asked if we could just shut down what we're doing at the office and be just dedicated to this. And they, no questions asked, said, absolutely go ahead. You know, I know that the prosecutors felt that that was a good circumstantial case, but there was a nobody case, and those are always complicated. So that was potentially a problem. Was it weighing on the two of you? It was me. That was Detective Doty, who knew there was good reason to worry without some good solid piece of evidence to connect it all. Because Doty had an encyclopedic knowledge of the case, he would sit with the prosecutors during the trial. But as they prepared, both detectives knew their search for evidence could not end. Not quite yet. And so with Liz Gollier's murder trial just weeks away, the detectives and Tony Kava circled back round to all involved, asking if any of the key players and witnesses could think of anything, no matter how minor, that might help the case against Liz. Detective Avis. Tony and I, I don't know how many times we've done it over the years, just every time we see someone involved with the case, hey, do you have any tablets, phones, computers, anything from back then? Even though you've already looked for them. Yeah, and I know I've asked the same person the same question three times. Maybe the fourth time they'll remember something. So we went back, talked to Dave. Dave is, of course, Dave Krupa, the Omaha car mechanic whose brief relationship with Carrie was like a starting gun for all that happened. The state's theory was that Dave liked Carrie. Liz got jealous, so jealous she killed Carrie, and then covered up what she did by pretending to beat Carrie for three years. sending Dave and herself tens of thousands of threatening emails and texts and Facebook messages to make it appear that Carrie was dangerous and unhinged, when in reality, Carrie was dead, and the only dangerous and unhinged person was, in fact, Liz. So then, when detectives went back to Dave Krupa asking if he had anything else to help their case, what was Dave's reply? I was like, nah, not really. Nothing I can think of. And then as they're walking out the door, I'm like, ah, you know what? I do have a tablet. He used to use it for playing them stupid app games like you download on your phone. Sure. 10-minute time wasters. That's all I ever used it for. And he was like, ah. Well, when do you get a chance to grab it? It was in my storage unit. You know, it was something I could have given to him two years ago. If they'd have asked and I'd have thought of it. So I gave it to him the next day. Gave it to Tony Cava, actually, the tech guru. And I took it back to the lab, and I really didn't expect to find much. But then, as he poked around in the tablet's history of time wasters, as Dave called them, he came across something he didn't expect. There was a memory card in the tablet. And that memory card, when you put it in the computer, it's been formatted. In 2014, somebody cleared it off. So it looks empty. Blank, or so it seemed, until he took a closer look. But when you look through the unallocated space, you look at things that have been deleted that were on there. I found right away evidence that this memory card was actually used in Liz Golier's phone back in 2012 and 2013. And on the SD card, deleted, but yet still visible. And as I dug deeper, I was able to recover thousands of photographs, including hundreds of selfies that Liz took. Certainly getting interesting now. Tony scrolled through the photos, carefully examined every one. The selfies? Not so useful, really. But then, what was this? Two of them showed tattoos that we had never seen before. These were not tattoos that Liz had. When I saw the first photo, I wasn't actually sure what I was looking at. Wasn't sure because it was so unusual. I saw a Chinese symbol. I didn't know what it meant, and I didn't know what was going on there. A Chinese symbol? Well, how could Tony Cobb know everything? How could he know about something that happened nearly two decades before, something deeply personal for someone? Do you remember? When Carrie Farber gave birth to her son Max in 1997, she got a tattoo. On the top of her foot, it was the Chinese symbol for mother. We talked to Max about it back at the beginning of our story. A tattoo was for you. Yep. She reminded me of it, too. But when Tony Kava saw the photo of that tattoo, it wasn't just a symbol that jumped out at him. The coloring on it was interesting. Kava showed the photo to Detectives Doty and Avis. Avis described it. There were dark lines in the picture. Dark lines? If you look more closely, those lines were veins on what looked like someone's foot. Someone's deceased foot. Thus the odd color. Avis called Carrie's mom, Nancy. Nancy was able to email a few pictures, and sure enough, Carrie has that same tattoo on her left foot. Wow. Identical. It was like finding the Rosetta Stone. The key they didn't know they'd been looking for all along. One look at that picture was all it took. Here was the key to the murder case against Liz Gaulyer. Tony Cava. It was exciting because this, I think, was about as close as we got to having a smoking gun in this case. Why in the world would Liz take a picture like that? Prosecutor James Masteller. My first thought was that this defendant had taken a trophy or trophies of the person she had killed. And now, new evidence in hand, the state of Nebraska put Gollier on trial for the murder of Carrie Farmer. If you ever needed to be persuaded that bad things can happen anywhere, then take a journey with us. From compelling mysteries to in-depth investigations, our Dateline episodes are available as podcasts. You can hear the latest stories every Tuesday. For more, follow Dateline NBC on Amazon Music or just ask Alexa. Play the podcast Dateline NBC on Amazon Music. Great storytelling with a twist from the true crime original. Hey, it's Kate Snow, NBC News anchor, host of the podcast The Drink with Kate Snow. I sit down with all kinds of celebrities, musicians, athletes over a drink of their choice for candid conversations about how they made it there. With actor-comedian host Joel McHale, I could barely stop laughing. You know Joel from Community or The Soup, his new show Animal Control. He asked for four bottles of Washington State wine for our interview. He has news about whether there's a community movie coming. He tells the story of how he got one of his first big acting gigs by lying about his height. And you have to stay through the credits. He's so funny. We have behind the scenes bloopers and outtakes from our conversation. Hope you listen and follow the drink wherever you get your podcasts Hey guys Willie Geist here reminding you to check out the Sunday Sit Down podcast On this week episode I get together with one of the biggest stars in all of music Nick Jonas, to talk about his new album, Sunday Best, and his rise to fame with the Jonas Brothers. You can get our conversation for free wherever you download your podcasts. It was August 2017 when Prosecutor Brenda Beadle stepped to the podium to make her opening statement in the murder trial of Liz Gollier. This is a bizarre and twisted case of a fatal attraction. It's about an obsessive woman that would stop at nothing to get what she wanted. And she spent her days, her weeks, her months, her years, tormenting many lives during this, spinning the web of deception to keep Carrie alive so she wouldn't get caught. The lengths that she went to accomplish that are really unfathomable. But the prosecutor did not explain it to any jury. Liz had made an unorthodox decision. She'd waived her rights to a jury trial, so it was a judge who listened carefully as Beatle piled up the evidence, one piece at a time. Carrie's blood in her Ford Explorer. Liz's fingerprint on the mint container found in Carrie's Ford Explorer. The thousands of emails supposedly from Carrie, but traced to Liz's phone that read like confessions. The vast trove of digital forensics. The detectives had even tracked down two purchases made on, it turned out, Carrie's bank card in the week after she vanished. Sergeant Doty took the stand to describe them. We noticed two transactions that were posted on November 19, 2012. One was for a family dollar, and one was at a Walmart. And what did the Walmart receipt show? One of the items was a shower curtain. And that shower curtain looked familiar to us because in that phone dump that we did in 2013 of Liz's phone, there's a picture of that shower curtain. They found that shower curtain in Liz's apartment. They found a photo of Carrie's driver's license with a large knife next to it. That was emailed to Dave. Dave thought it was a threat from Carrie, but the evidence showed it was sent by Liz. Yet, of course, they showed the judge the pictures of what they believed to be Carrie's dead foot with the Chinese symbol, tattoo, that meant mother. All these pieces together made a big difference. And all in, said the prosecutors, they told the story of how Liz Gollier murdered Carrie Farmer. She must have done whatever she did to Carrie on the morning of November 13, 2012, right after Dave Krupa left for work. Carrie was at his place, working on her laptop. Prosecutor must tell her. We know by examination of Carrie Farber's known Facebook that she logged into her Facebook at 6.39 a.m. that morning. Carrie was supposed to go to work that morning, but she never made it. She was intercepted. Something happened. That something was the defendant. I don't know exactly what Liz did to Carrie, said the prosecutors. But whatever it was... It didn't take her too long, because at 9.54 a.m., Carrie Farber's cell phone is being used to access Facebook. And at that very moment, records showed Carrie unfriended Dave. The fact that they had the temerity to actually be Facebook friends, this is one of the very first acts the defendant takes to actually eliminate that Facebook friendship. And that, said the prosecutors, is when Liz became Carrie. online. All for the purpose, for the reason of convincing people, her friends, her family, relatives, everyone, that she was still alive. Carrie's mom, Nassie, was in court every day, and she heard the details of what happened to her daughter for the very first time. When I heard all of this, what this person was doing in her name, it just made me so angry, because Carrie, she didn't deserve that at all. So, strong case? The prosecutors hoped so, though no body cases are so tough to prove. The motive, said Brenda Beadle, was a very old one. Jealousy. It was really all about Dave Krupa. She did it because she wanted this man. Jealousy makes people do strange things, but that's just... Why so much? What? Why? I think it snowballed. I think once she did it, she couldn't stop. She had to make Carrie look like she was still alive to keep the heat off of her. And it just went on and on and on for years. From his seat in the courtroom, Dave Krupa heard it all and finally understood. I mean, it makes sense now at the end, you know, but the Tarantino movie always makes sense at the end. You know, it doesn't make any sense getting there. But of course, it wasn't the end of the trial, no. To defend her, Liz had hired a man known as one of the best attorneys in town, James Martin Davis. And Davis agreed with Dave Krupa. It was like a Tarantino movie, he said. But remember, those movies, though perhaps based on actual events, were fiction. And so was the case against Liz Goliere. It's difficult to convict somebody of murder without a body. Because you can't show that there is actually a death. And then you can't show that there's a cause of death. In the next episode of Something About Carrie... You don't have any first-hand knowledge that Carrie was killed or assaulted at all, right? No, I don't. It was really happy and really sad at the same time. I looked at it and I thought, is that Liz? is there was a photo of 22-year-old Liz, and she was in court at her boyfriend's trial. And right away, I felt a hunch that something wasn't quite right. Something About Carrie is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Shane Bishop and Jessica Devera-Lappet are the producers. Brian Drew, Marshall Hausfeld, and Greg Smith are audio editors. Brittany Morris is field producer. Molly DeRosa is assistant producer. Adam Gorfain is co-executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Rich Cutler. Hey everyone, Craig Melvin here from today. The 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Cortina, are finally here. And as we gear up for the games, the Today Show is celebrating the athletes who define what it means to push for greatness on our podcast series, The Road to Milan. NBC News correspondent Stephanie Goss sits down with athletes at every step of the Olympic journey from seasoned veterans like Lindsey Vonn and Michaela Schifrin to newcomers like Isabel Lovito and Jordan Stolls who are stepping onto the world stage for the first time ever. It's a great way to get to know the athletes who are about to give it their all as the world watches. Listen on the Today podcast feed or search The Road to Milan wherever you get your podcasts.