A new Netflix documentary follows the twists and turns of what appears to be a very deadly love triangle…
It was November 2012 when a concerned mum contacted the police to say her daughter was missing. Nancy Raney hadn’t seen Cari Farver, 35, and she was getting increasingly worried.
Cari’s dad was terminally ill, and her 12-year-old son was missing his mum too. Nancy was adamant Cari wouldn’t have just upped sticks and she hadn’t laid eyes on her daughter for weeks.
‘You know, mothers and daughters always have their ups and downs,’ Nancy says in a new Netflix documentary, Lover, Stalker, Killer. ‘…And we did, but it was just so puzzling to me when I couldn’t get through to her.’
Cari had supposedly contacted her mum to say she needed some space and was starting a new job in Kansas, 450 miles from their Iowa home. She’d asked her mum to look after her son, Max, but she only ever heard from her daughter via Facebook and messages and soon, those messages started to get nasty.
Nancy just wanted to know that her daughter, who suffered from bipolar disorder, was OK, especially as she’d been on a few dates with a new potential love interest.
That love interest was Dave Kroupa, then 35, who was separated and had two young kids. Adevoted dad, he worked in the automotive industry and had been looking for some fun online.
First, he’d met a woman called Liz Golyar. ‘It was my first date in years and years,’ he says in the Netflix programme. He said Liz was ‘very smiley, energetic and full of life’. They’d both liked sci-fi, motorbikes, heavy metal and both had two kids.
They’d been on a few dates and Dave had made it clear from the start he wasn’t going to be tied down. So, when he’d seen Cari on a dating site – after she’d gone to his workplace with car trouble – they’d been on a date too. He said she was ‘smart and sexy’ and into computers.
When they’d gone back to his apartment following a date, they’d bumped into Liz who had come round to collect something from Dave’s. They’d an awkward conversation and Liz had left.
For weeks, Dave continued to date Cari and she’d told her mum about him. Neither Dave nor Cari wanted anything serious, so when he’d left his apartment at 6am in November 2012, he’d kissed Cari goodbye.
But later that morning, he’d received a text from her saying she thought they should move in together. He’d replied saying they’d talked about not moving too fast, to which a barrage of nasty texts followed… You’ve ruined my life.
It quickly escalated to more messages, then emails and threats. Eventually Dave spoke to the police.
It was around the sa
