Dateline: Scorned - A complete timeline of the Cari Farver case, revisited 

In Dateline's episode titled Scorned, we learn how Cari Farver went missing from her home in Iowa while she was living a typical life as a single mother in 2012. After years of searching for Cari and attempting to piece together her whereabouts and what occurred during that time, her friends, family, police, and eventually the public became aware of multiple accounts of odd messages sent through these various channels that appeared to belong to her.

When Cari's actual whereabouts were eventually revealed, those who had followed her story were astonished by the truth, as was the Dateline team. The team chose to reinvestigate this case not only because it demonstrates how digital form messages can be manipulated to mislead or control others, but also because of how one individual was able to maintain a deceptive story for more than three years after the abduction of Cari Farver.

This mysterious case features Cari Farver as the central figure. Before her disappearance in November 2012, Cari was living an ordinary life as a single mother. She was also dating a man named Dave Kroupa. However, at that time, her relationship with Dave was only a few weeks old. On November 13, 2012, after spending the previous night with Dave in Omaha, Nebraska, she was never again seen by her family in Iowa, nor did they or Dave ever have any knowledge of her whereabouts during the time she was missing.

After three days had passed since her last sighting, Nancy Raney (Cari's mother) reported her daughter missing, as she had failed to arrive to pick up her son on November 14. At the same time, Dave received odd texts from an individual who was claiming to be Cari. The messages were angry, frightening, and very unusual for her. One message even said,

"I hate you so much that I want to drive a knife in your heart."

Another message said,

"I will destroy your life and take your happiness."

Dave found these messages to be very unsettling, to a greater extent as they continued over a period of about three years, during which things would become increasingly intense. He received tens of thousands of messages, and even though he tried to stop receiving them by changing both his number and email address, nothing worked.

Liz had also been receiving the same type of messages from Cari while she was dating Dave at the time. Liz reported that she was afraid of Cari as a result of the emails and also indicated that she was receiving emails from Cari, who had stated that Liz was also receiving threats from her. Liz's home caught fire in August of 2013, and all of her pets were killed in the blaze. The emails, apparently from Cari, claimed that she was responsible for the arson.

At the same time, Cari's mother was also getting strange messages from accounts that looked like they belonged to Cari. These messages told her mother not to look for her. Even though the messages kept coming, the police still had no sign of Cari herself. There was no proof that she was alive, and there was no proof that she was dead. Everything looked very confusing from the outside. This was the reason Dateline later revisited this case in Scorned, because the truth was hidden behind technology for years.

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Reopening the case of Cari Farver and the search for the truth

In 2015, detectives from the Pottawattamie County Sheriff's Office in Iowa took a fresh look at the case. The team included Sgt. Jim Doty, investigator Ryan Avis, and digital forensics expert Anthony "Tony" Kava. They went through every old file, every old phone, and every message. They studied the phones of both Dave and Liz that had been checked years earlier.

Tony Kava soon noticed something important. He found that many of the messages that were supposed to be from Cari were actually linked to Liz. He found that Liz had created many fake email addresses that used Cari's name. He also learned that she used different apps and tools to hide her location. She even used a website that allowed her to send messages at times when she was physically with Dave so that both of them received messages simultaneously. This made it look like Cari was still out there somewhere when she was not.

One big breakthrough came when Tony traced an IP address from one of the threatening messages. The address connected directly to the house that had burned down, which was Liz's house. This gave the detectives a stronger reason to believe that Liz was pretending to be Cari the entire time.

The case became even stranger in December 2015. Liz told police that she had been shot in the leg by Dave's ex-wife, a woman named Amy Flora. She said Amy was the real stalker. But the detectives believed Liz had shot herself and was trying to blame someone else. They pretended to believe her story so they could gather more evidence. Soon, Liz forwarded emails that claimed to be written by Amy, but the police traced those messages back to Liz again.

Investigators later found blood from Cari Farver inside her own car, which had been found long ago. They also found Cari's camera and camcorder inside Liz's home. One video showed Cari talking just two days before she disappeared.

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The final break in the case of Cari Farver and the court's verdict

In 2017, investigators found another big piece of evidence. Dave gave them a tablet he had owned since the time he dated both Cari Farver and Liz. On that tablet was a memory card that had once been inside Liz’s phone. Tony studied thousands of deleted photos from it. One photo showed a human foot with a tattoo of a Chinese symbol meaning "mother." Cari Farver's mother confirmed Cari had that tattoo. A medical examiner said the foot in the photo belonged to someone who had died.

This photo confirmed what investigators had feared for years: that Cari Farver had been killed back in 2012. In August 2017, Judge Timothy Burns found Liz Golyar guilty of first-degree murder. He said Cari Farver did not disappear on her own. Liz had staged the messages, the threats, and all the harassment. She created a long web of lies that fooled many people for years. Liz is now serving a life sentence in a Nebraska prison. Cari Farver's body has still not been found, but her name has been cleared.