A Tangled Web Read online

  No matter the day of the week, Dave never had a single day off from the abuse. The threats and weird rantings were endless. There were so many messages that he wondered when the stalker had time to sleep. Sometimes he avoided his computer, so he wouldn’t have to see the twisted emails piling up there, but he didn’t want to turn off his phone. What if his kids needed him?

  Meanwhile, Cari’s family still waited for answers. They still received the occasional text or Facebook message from someone claiming to be Cari. None of the notes sounded like her. Nancy repeatedly told skeptical police that someone had stolen her daughter’s identity, but no one would listen, and she was discouraged.

  Where is my daughter? It was Nancy’s first thought when she opened her eyes in the morning. On April 17, 2013, approximately five months after Cari went missing, Nancy received a phone call from a man identifying himself as Dave Kroupa. “Cari called me,” he reported. “She’s at a homeless shelter in Omaha. She wants you to pick her up.” It was the best news Nancy could have imagined, but she began to tremble. After months of believing her daughter was gone forever, she was now learning she had been wrong. Cari was alive! Did this mean that Cari really did have a breakdown? Was she okay now? Whatever her state of mind, Nancy would help her heal. They would get through it together.

  According to the caller, her daughter waited for her at The Siena/Francis House. “Mark was out of town, and I didn’t think I could drive, so I called my brother.” Jeff lived nearby, and he rushed over to pick up his sister.

  Nancy called Deputy Phyllips, and he told her that he and Detective Oetter would meet them at the shelter. The thirty-minute drive felt like forever as the familiar terrain rolled past the window. She stared at the endless cornfields she’d seen a thousand times, first as a child riding in her parents’ car, and later as a mother driving her children. She knew this land so well, but today it felt surreal.

  On the last leg of their journey they crossed the Missouri River via the Grenville Dodge Memorial Bridge, eight lanes of traffic connecting Council Bluffs to Omaha. Midway across the bridge westbound travelers are welcomed by a giant, green overhead highway sign announcing, “Nebraska . . . The Good Life. Home of Arbor Day.”

  Siena/Francis House holds the record for the area’s busiest homeless shelter. It is just north of downtown Omaha, about a mile west of Iowa as the goldfinch flies. Surrounded by warehouses, factories, and vacant lots, the facility is well kept, and on the outside resembles an elementary school with its landscaped grounds, wide, clean walkways, and big rack of bicycles near the front entryway. Founded in 1975, the institution has a policy of “unconditional acceptance,” and opens its doors to everyone in need, including the chronically addicted and mentally ill. As Jeff pulled up in front of the building, Nancy glanced anxiously around, half expecting to see her daughter waiting outside.

  They had arrived about the same time as the detectives. “They didn’t want us to go in,” Nancy recollects. “They had a photo of Cari and took it in with them.” She wasn’t sure why the investigators asked them to wait outside, but she did as they requested. Jeff, too, had been devastated by his niece’s disappearance, and he tried to reassure his anxious sister as they waited. They nervously eyed the door, eager for a glimpse of Cari.

  Any minute now, Nancy’s prayers would be answered. Any minute now, her tall and lovely daughter would walk out that door and into her arms, and Nancy would hold on tight. But the detectives came out alone. Phyllips shook his head, and Nancy’s heart sank. Cari was not there and never had been. No one at Siena/Francis House had recognized her picture.

  Heartbroken, Jeff and Nancy headed back to Macedonia. The horrific roller-coaster ride of grief and then hope and then loss again left Nancy nauseous. Remembering the heartless hoax, she says quietly, “Talk about being kicked in the gut!” She was glad she hadn’t told Maxwell. She had made the wise decision to wait until she had a grasp on the situation before sharing the news with him. If there was anything that hurt more than missing her daughter, it was knowing that Max grieved for her, too. The boy was stoic around his grandparents, trying to spare them the pain of knowing he was in pain, but he grieved openly at his girlfriend’s house.

  When Dave Kroupa was questioned about his call to Nancy, he was surprised. He had not phoned her for any reason and certainly not to tell her that Cari was at a homeless shelter. Nancy was thoroughly shaken. Had the phone call been nothing more than a twisted prank? Or had Cari actually planned to meet her at the shelter? Had she asked a man to call Nancy? If so, why did he say he was Dave? What if Cari was behind the phone call? If that were the case, then why did she reach out only to dissolve back into the mist?

  Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to make people believe that Cari was at the shelter. As it turned out, not only had they phoned Nancy, they had also relayed the same message to Deputy Phyllips. And when Nancy later checked her Facebook page, there was another note, apparently sent before the call from “Dave.” It was from impostor Cari: Mom, I don’t have a phone anymore. I need you to come get me at the Sienna House in Omaha, please. I have no money, no car. I need help. I asked Dave to call you, but not sure he will help . . . Mom, please, I need you.

  It was a heartbreaking plea. Nancy’s child did need her—if she were still alive. If Cari was no longer on this earth, Nancy imagined that there had been a moment near the end when her daughter had made that plea. What kind of a person would type those words and send them to a grieving mother? It seemed the hoaxer had a heart of ice.

  Deputy Phyllips wasn’t sure what to make of the disturbing wild goose chase. On Monday, April 22, Mark Raney gave him permission to search Cari’s home. The Raneys hadn’t found anything there that could tell them what had happened to their daughter, and they hoped that Phyllips could find answers.

  While most missing adults are quickly located, Cari had not been seen in over five months. “This was a little beyond the norm from somebody being gone for just a few days or weeks, so I wanted to take a look at her residence and see if there was anything that stood out that could help us find out where she may have gone,” the detective explains, adding that the text messages allegedly from Cari indicated she’d moved to Kansas. If that were true, he expected to find evidence of Cari’s plans in her home.

  With the power shut off, it was hard to see, so the deputy pinned back the curtains on all of the windows to allow the sunlight in. To prevent thieves from taking advantage, the Raneys had put some of Cari’s valuables into storage. Maxwell had moved most of his things to his grandparents’ house. Otherwise, Cari’s home was pretty much as she’d left it. Her yellow coat still hung on the back of a dining room chair, and personal items were scattered over her dresser. It looked as if she had stepped out to run an errand and had not planned to be gone long.

  The “systematic search” called for each room to be photographed from various angles. Phyllips followed procedure and opened each closet door and every drawer, documenting everything with a camera. He photographed the full wardrobe of clothing, the rows of neatly rolled socks in a drawer, and the toiletries and medications in the bathroom medicine cabinet. In one drawer he found an empty box for a silver Nikon Coolpix S4100 camera, and he photographed it along with an empty box for a tripod.

  He didn’t know if the images would prove to be useful. He realized that Cari’s family feared something horrible had happened to her, but he wasn’t ruling out the possibility that she’d left willingly. Still, he was meticulous in his documentation. There was no telling what might turn out to be significant, so he recorded it all, everything from a deck of cards to crossword puzzles to a small, round container of breath mints.

  In addition to taking photos, Phyllips collected potential evidence. “I took a checkbook log, a 2012 day-planner, and a resume she had typed out,” he says, adding that the resume had handwritten notes that might provide a clue. He also collected receipts from Hyatt Tire, and a plastic bag of medication, prescribed to Cari. “All items w
ere secured in the investigations division at the Sheriff’s Office.” Despite his careful combing of the home, he’d found nothing to indicate where Cari had gone. His efforts were not in vain, but it would be a long time before he realized that.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ON THE THIRD OF MAY, 2013, Maxwell mustered up the courage to send a message to his mother’s new Facebook page. He knew his grandmother believed that the page belonged to an impostor, and he was inclined to agree with her. But what if it didn’t? What if this was really his mom’s page?

  He wasn’t sure what to say, so he kept it simple. Two letters. H and I. Hi.

  He soon received a response that he admits “freaked me out a little bit.”

  Hey, little man. How are you?

  His mother certainly had never referred to him as a “little man.” It was demeaning, the kind of endearment someone might use when addressing a small boy—not a robust fifteen-year-old football player. He stared at the breezy greeting, sent by someone he was almost positive had to be a stranger posing as his mom. Thoroughly spooked, he could not bring himself to reply. He waited a week or so before he attempted to get the truth. Then he typed three questions: What is my middle name? What was the name of our first boxer? Who was my best friend when I was growing up?

  “Anyone could figure out my middle name,” Maxwell acknowledges. “But only my mom would know the answers to the other two questions.” Max’s middle name could be found in an online search, but nothing on the web would reveal the identity of his childhood friend or the name of their boxer dog. If this were really his mom communicating with him, she should be able to easily answer his questions, and there was no reason why she shouldn’t.

  There was no reply.

  Though the stalker didn’t answer Max, they were so active that May 2013 it was hard to believe that just one person was creating so much havoc. Threatening emails and texts popped up faster than Dave could read them, and much of the time he didn’t. What was the point in reading all of those ugly things? She had favorite words and used them repeatedly. Whore. Fat. Ugly. Kill.

  At first Dave had scrutinized it all for clues, but his harasser was too clever to give away her location. While she came right out and said she was Cari, she never told him where she was, not until she had moved onto the next place. She was always one step ahead of him. The messages continued to express a peculiar animosity toward Liz and made her the focus of most of the threats. Sometimes Liz’s children were mentioned. On one May night, Dave received an email from KroupaCari@gmail with an attached photograph of Liz’s kids: These are the ugliest kids, just like their whore mom. They should die with their whore mom, so I don’t have to see their ugliness anymore. No one wants her and her bratty kids around.

  The image showed the kids inside of Liz’s home, and the picture was apparently taken by someone outside, shooting through a window. Liz told Dave that it made her very uncomfortable to know that someone was watching her children. How in the world did the maniac manage to photograph her kids? Had she been creeping around in the bushes outside of Liz’s home like a paparazzo shooting celebrities for the tabloids? How did she manage to be everywhere, yet never be seen?

  While Liz was the favorite victim, the harassment wasn’t limited to her. If Dave sent a brief message to a female he met online, it created trouble. That May, he met a pretty woman on the Plenty of Fish dating site. Jessica McCarthy had two young sons, and while not technically single, she was separated and free to date. Jessica was drawn to the photo of the good-looking father of two. Though she was a decade younger than Dave, they had things in common. Both lived in Omaha and were hardworking people and devoted parents.

  “My acquaintance with Jessica lasted about two hours,” says Dave. “I forget which one of us approached the other, but we communicated on the site, messaging back and forth, for about an hour.” Then Jessica suggested that they “friend” each other on Facebook. Once “friended,” they could not only message each other privately, they could also comment on each other’s posts.

  All Facebook members can view the contents of the pages of other members, including their photos and their lists of Facebook friends unless steps are taken by individual users to make their pages private. Most people are unaware that clicking on the arrow in the top righthand corner of their pages reveals a settings option that opens a page where privacy adjustments can be made. But it didn’t matter what steps Dave took to block the intruder, she always found a way around it. His stalker was ever present. She knew things about him that she should have had no way of knowing. She managed to see and hear so much, yet she was never seen or heard.

  When Jessica became Facebook friends with Dave, she was stunned to realize she’d also made a Facebook enemy. On Friday, May 10, at 4:39 P.M., Jessica received a startling Facebook message. It appeared to be from a woman named C. Lea Farver, and it got right to the insulting point. So, you must be Dave’s new whore. He has herpes from the whore he was dating. I would watch out for him, the message began, and continued on, sprinkled with crude words and threats. “C. Lea” vowed to find Jessica and vandalize her car as she had “the other whore’s car.”

  Jessica asked Dave about “C. Lea Farver.” It wasn’t his first choice of topics when he was just getting to know an attractive woman, but he told her about the crazy person who’d been making his life miserable for the last six months.

  What about the claim Dave had herpes? He had not been diagnosed with herpes, a contagious virus plaguing up to sixty-five percent of American adults, though many are unaware they carry it because they’ve never had a blistering outbreak. Most have the less-severe strain that commonly appears on the mouth and is referred to as cold sores, but one in six adults are infected with the severe strain, usually contracted through sexual contact and found on both the mouth and genitals.

  It was obvious to Jessica that “C. Lea Farver” was so obsessed with Dave she’d say whatever it took to scare away the competition, even if it meant lying about a sexually transmitted disease. Jessica tried to shrug off the hostile message, but another arrived two hours later: So, whore, I’ll keep messaging you. He has been with me for five months. I will run off any woman who tries to be with him. He is sleeping with three people I know, and I got rid of one whore.

  At 9:42 P.M., the next message hit her like a fist in the gut. Guess you’re not learning by what I’m telling you, it began, followed by profanities before delivering the threat: I will come kill you and your fucking kids. I have killed a dog owned by Dave’s last whore he tried to be with . . .

  Jessica was shaken. It was bad enough that she was a target, but when her kids were included in the threat, it both frightened and angered the young mother. Had this person really killed a pet? Jessica had refused her tormentor’s friend request and blocked her, but that didn’t help. The stalker had created many Facebook accounts, most in some variation of Cari Farver’s name, and she continued her attack.

  At 11:53 P.M. another message began by noting that Jessica had failed to cut ties with Dave. The bully knew that she and Dave were still Facebook friends. When Jessica read the next line, she felt sick.

  I will cut your kids’ throats and yours while you sleep.

  The thought of someone hurting her sons, Benjamin, age eight, and Christopher, two, was more than she could stand. At 8:29 the next morning, the next threat contained no profanities but was every bit as chilling.

  I know where you live. I will be coming for you and your son.

  The message at 10:47 A.M. was brief and to the point: I will kill your whole family. Two hours later, the stalker’s message was chatty: You divorced now? Or do I tell your husband you’re messing with someone else’s man? See that picture of the car? I did that to another whore who wouldn’t leave Dave alone. A photograph of a vandalized car was attached to the message. While Jessica certainly didn’t want her car damaged, threats to her vehicle were far less disturbing than threats to her children.

  The stalker tried every angle
she could think of to hit a nerve. She’d tried scaring her with the herpes lie, threatened her car, and then her children. Now, she’d gone back to the vandalism threats and was hinting she’d tell Jessica’s estranged husband she was cheating on him. Jessica was free to date, but she was not dating Dave. They’d never even met. He seemed like a nice-enough guy, but she wanted nothing to do with the drama, and had decided not to meet him. At 11 A.M. a new message popped up: Well, keep going whore, and you won’t have a family any more. I will take everything from you.

  Jessica reported the harassment to the Douglas County Police on May 11. “She was threatening my children. Any good parent will do anything they can to protect their children, and I was terrified that something would happen to them.” Now there was a police report, but the cops couldn’t stop the threats. The police had tried for months to find the stalker and gotten nowhere.

  Another message arrived at 3:41 that afternoon with escalating rage: You dumb, stupid whore. You’re like the rest. I can find whoever I want. If you don’t stop talking to Dave, I will kill you, your kids and whoever else. It’s not hard to find people. I will kill you. Stay away from Dave, and if you talk to him, stupid whore, I will come for your family and you, just like I did the other whore.

  All that day, the messages continued to pop up. The last one that night came in at 10:45 P.M. . . . You must be a worthless mom like the whore Dave tried to get with, but I nipped that. I control Dave, and he will leave whoever I tell him to . . . Am I at your place? See, I find everyone.