Was Cari Farver Ever Found? The No-Body Case Against Liz Golyar

Cari Farver was never found. Her body has not been recovered since she disappeared on November 13, 2012, but Shanna Elizabeth “Liz” Golyar was convicted of Farver’s first-degree murder in May 2017 and sentenced to life in prison without parole. The Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed the conviction in 2018, ruling that digital forensic evidence and circumstantial proof were enough to establish the killing beyond a reasonable doubt even without a body.¹

What Happened to Cari Farver

Farver was a 37-year-old computer programmer and single mother from Macedonia, Iowa. She had been dating Dave Kroupa, an Omaha mechanic, for about two weeks when she stayed at his apartment on the night of November 12, 2012. He kissed her goodbye the next morning before leaving for work. He never saw her again.²

Kroupa was also casually seeing Golyar, whom he had met on a dating site. Within hours of Farver leaving his apartment on November 13, text messages began arriving from Farver’s phone demanding they move in together. When Kroupa declined, the tone turned hostile. The messages did not stop for years. They came from Farver’s accounts and from new ones created in her name, targeting Kroupa, his ex-girlfriend Amy Flora, and Farver’s own family, and claiming Farver had moved to Kansas or chosen to start a new life.³

Farver’s mother, Nancy Raney, reported her missing. The steady stream of digital communications convinced authorities Farver was likely alive and had walked away from her life. The case sat cold for years.⁴

Why Her Body Was Never Recovered

The prosecution’s theory at trial was that Golyar stabbed Farver inside her Ford Explorer, wrapped the body in a tarp, burned it, and disposed of what remained in the garbage. Under that theory, there was nothing left to find in any traditional sense. No crime scene was ever located. No murder weapon was recovered. No remains were ever produced.⁵

Golyar’s years-long impersonation of Farver — an estimated 15,000 emails and between 25,000 and 50,000 text messages sent from 20 to 30 fake accounts in variations of Farver’s name — was itself part of what kept the disappearance from being investigated as a homicide. She even used scheduling software to send messages while she was physically with Kroupa, making it appear that someone else was writing.³

How Prosecutors Proved Murder Without a Body

The case broke open in 2015, when Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office investigators Sergeant Jim Doty, Investigator Ryan Avis, and Special Deputy Anthony Kava reopened it. Kava, a digital forensics examiner, analyzed roughly 12,000 emails and 7,500 text messages along with millions of other records. Off-the-shelf forensic tools could not handle the volume, so he wrote his own software to map the fake accounts back to Golyar.⁶

Several pieces of evidence pointed directly at Golyar. A YouTube video uploaded under Farver’s name traced back to an IP address at Golyar’s home. A photograph of Farver’s abandoned Ford Explorer on Golyar’s phone carried metadata showing it had been taken a month before police recovered the vehicle. A fingerprint on a mint container inside that vehicle matched Golyar.³

The Photograph of a Foot

In February 2017, Kroupa handed investigators a tablet containing a micro SD card that had previously been used in Golyar’s cell phone. Forensic examiners confirmed the link by matching 458 photographs on the card to images already extracted from Golyar’s phone in a 2013 download. Among more than 13,000 deleted images recovered from the card was a photograph of a human left foot bearing a Chinese-character tattoo meaning “mother” — identical to a tattoo Cari Farver had on her foot. A forensic pathologist testified that the foot in the image showed signs of decomposition.¹

Blood in the Explorer

Investigators then used Golyar’s own tactics against her. Posing online as Amy Flora, they drew Golyar into an exchange in which she wrote what read as a confession, describing stabbing Farver three to four times inside her vehicle and stuffing her body into a garbage bag. Detectives searched the Ford Explorer a third time, peeled back the fabric of the passenger seat, and found a large red stain underneath. DNA testing confirmed the blood was Cari Farver’s.¹

A search of Golyar’s apartment also turned up Farver’s personal belongings, including a digital camera and a camcorder. The camcorder held video of Farver recorded just two days before she disappeared.³

The Conviction

Golyar was arrested on December 22, 2016, and charged with first-degree murder and second-degree arson. The arson count related to the August 2013 fire that destroyed Golyar’s own rented house in Omaha, killing her two dogs, a cat, and a snake. Fire investigators identified six distinct points of origin and the presence of accelerants. An email sent from a Farver-linked account the night before the fire read, “I am not lying I set that nasty whores house on fire I hope the whore and her kids die in it.”¹⁷

Golyar waived her right to a jury. The case was heard in a bench trial in Douglas County, Nebraska, before Judge Timothy Burns in May 2017. Defense attorney James Martin Davis argued that without a body, a crime scene, or a murder weapon, the state had not proven a killing.³

Judge Burns rejected that argument. “Cari Farver did not voluntarily disappear and drop off the face of the earth. Very sadly, she was murdered,” he said in delivering the verdict. He found Golyar guilty on both counts. She was sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder and 18 to 20 years for second-degree arson, the sentences to run consecutively.⁷

The Appeal That Upheld a No-Body Conviction

Golyar appealed to the Nebraska Supreme Court, arguing that the evidence was insufficient to prove either murder or arson and that her trial attorneys had been ineffective, including inadequate advice about waiving her jury trial right. On November 9, 2018, the court rejected every argument and affirmed both convictions.¹

The court held that the decomposing-foot photograph, Farver’s blood in her vehicle, the complete absence of any financial activity on Farver’s accounts after her disappearance, and Golyar’s own fabricated confession emails together allowed a rational fact-finder to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Farver was dead and that Golyar had killed her with premeditation. The ruling applied the framework of an earlier Nebraska decision, State v. Edwards, which allows the corpus delicti of homicide to be established through circumstantial evidence when no body is found.¹

Where the Case Stands

Farver’s remains have still not been found. Golyar is serving her life sentence at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women. She maintains her innocence and has said she “will not stop fighting until I am set free,” but her direct appeal has been exhausted and her sentence carries no parole eligibility.⁸

1
FindLaw. State v. Golyar, No. S-17-955
2
Netflix Tudum. Lover, Stalker, Killer Release Date News
3
ABC News. Horrific Stalking Case of Jealous Lover’s Cover for Murder
4
3 News Now. Farver Family’s Persistence Highlighted at Event
5
Oxygen. What Happened to Cari Farver
6
KETV. Volunteer Reserve Instrumental in Solving Cold Case Gets Hired as Full-Time Digital Forensics Investigator
7
KETV. Lover, Stalker, Killer Netflix Documentary: Iowa Woman Disappearance and Murder
8
Decider. Where Is Liz Golyar Now