"Right off the bat, Tony was able to point out that Liz was posing as Cari," Doty tells A&E Crime + Investigation. "But the evidence didn't tell us what happened to Cari or where Cari was."
Between 2012 and 2015, Golyar had done a good job at hiding her electronic trail, using applications and digital proxies to conceal her IP addresses, making it more difficult to trace her online and phone activity to a place she lived, Kava says.
"When we picked up the case, [Golyar] had learned how to get better and better at hiding her trail," Kava says. "For instance, she was using a website that allowed her to send emails and text messages on a certain day and time when she was with [Kroupa]. They would both receive messages at the same time from Cari."
Kava also found Golyar had set up more than two dozen fake email addresses that all had some variation of Farver's name. Using a program he developed, Kava was also able to narrow down a list of top IP addresses linked to the threatening emails Kroupa and Golyar received. One of them traced back to the house that burned down.
"Being able to trace an IP address to a place [Golyar] was actually laying her head was like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack," Kava says. "It turned out to be a lucky break for us."
More Evidence Confirms Farver's Murder
In December 2015, the investigation took a bizarre twist when Golyar was shot in the leg. She told police officials that the assailant was Kroupa's ex-wife, Amy Flora, who had allegedly stolen her ex-husband's gun. Golyar also told investigators she was now convinced Flora had been pretending to be Farver, and she was the one sending the harassing messages, Kava recalls.
"For years, Liz pretended she was the victim and Cari was doing all the stalking," Kava says. "Then all of sudden, it's Amy who is doing this to Liz."
The investigators suspected Golyar had taken Kroupa's gun, shot herself and was trying to pin the shooting and Farver's demise on Flora, Doty adds.
The detectives pretended to believe Golyar even though she was their main suspect. They convinced Golyar to help them get Flora to incriminate herself. Soon, the detectives received emails purportedly from Flora that they traced back to Golyar. She forwarded them emails in which "Flora" confessed to stabbing Farver in her own car.
Investigators also found traces of Farver's blood in the passenger seat of her car, which had been recovered about a month after she had disappeared. During a search of Golyar's residence, Doty and his team recovered some of Farver's belongings, including a digital camera and a camcorder that contained a video of Farver talking about how someone had vandalized her car. The clip was time stamped two days before she went missing.
A year later, Golyar was arrested and charged with Farver's murder. Her defense attorney told the Des Moines Register that his client denied killing Farver and noted that police had not found Farver's body or the murder weapon.
Before Golyar's non-jury trial began in 2017, investigators caught another break when Kroupa provided them with a tablet he had owned since he had started dating Golyar and Farver five years earlier. Kava found a memory card in the tablet that had also been in Golyar's phone around the same time Farver disappeared.
Kava meticulously scanned through thousands of thumbnails of deleted images in the memory card. He found one image of a human foot with the tattoo of a Chinese character for the word "mother." Raney, Farver's mother, confirmed that her daughter had the same tattoo on her foot. A medical examiner also determined that the foot in the photo belonged to a deceased person.
On August 15, 2017, Judge Timothy Burns found Golyar guilty of first-degree murder.
"Cari Farver did not voluntarily disappear and drop off the face of the earth," Burns said, according to a video of the proceedings. "Very sadly, she was murdered."
A year later, Golyar lost an appeal. She is currently serving a life sentence in a Nebraska state prison.
Farver's body has yet to be found.
"I don't think we will ever have another case like this one," Kava tells A&E Crime + Investigation. "None have been as challenging in terms of complexity and scale."
In addition to Golyar facing justice, their investigation also restored Farver's name and reputation, Doty says.
"Cari was from a small town in Iowa," Doty says. "Everybody had heard about this case. It totally tarnished her image and reputation. Our investigation set the record straight that it wasn't Cari sending the harassing messages. It was Liz pretending to be Cari."
