♪ this is "nightline." >> tonight, two weeks of dating turning into three years of stalking. >> i would regularly receive 60-plus texts a day, 100 emails a day was not uncommon. >> after the relationship ends, a wounded lover seemingly lashing out. but nowhere to be found. >> a lot of people thought she'd just gone off her meds and she was, you know -- went off the deep end and left. but i knew that's not what happened. >> the chilling mystery. someone impersonating the missing stalker to cover up another crime. >> it changes from a missing persons investigation, now it's a homicide investigation. >> "nightline," "a tangled web." we'll be right back.when i s to , why are we always shown the same thing?

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♪ most homicides are dark. this one was bizarre. >> what do you do when somebody invades every space of your life? >> reporter: in 2012, dave krufa, newly single father of two, moved to omaha to start

over after separating from his long-time partner aim may. he looked online when he felt ready to start dating again. >> i didn't know how to ven tour back into the dating pool. >> reporter: the first person he met was shanna elizabeth golier, liz. she was also a single parent with kids around the same age as dave's. >> liz loved taking selfies and sending them to friends. >> she was sexy, she was bright and shiny, she was very engaging. >> reporter: dave says he was up front with liz when she met. he was dating several women and not looking for a commitment. >> i was kind of going wild, just -- you know, being free for the first time in a longtime. >> reporter: six months after being liz, another single mom walks into the auto repair shop where he worked, 37-year-old kerry farber. >> when we looked at each other, there was a little spark. >> reporter: she'd grown up in small-town macedonia, iowa. close with mother nancy. >> she had a lot of friends.

she was very gregarious. >> you noticed kerry when she walked in the room. she had a laugh, she had a smile, you were drawn to her. >> reporter: she became pregnant with max when she was 22, decided to raise him alone when the relationship with the father didn't work out. >> doted on him. >> reporter: kerry had mental health issued, diagnosed with bipolar disorder in her 20s. >> there was a couple of times when she just -- she would stop taking the medication because she said, mom, it just -- i feel like i'm just numb. >> reporter: by the fall of 2012, kerry was this a good place. she landed a job as a computer programmer in omaha. >> super excited and talked a lot about how that was going to be kind of a life changer for her and max. >> reporter: on her first date with dave, cari says she too wants to keep things casual. >> i felt like i hit the jackpot, i couldn't have wrote it better. >> one slightly awkward thing,

the night of dave and cari's first date, liz came by dave's apartment to pick up things she'd left there. >> i walked cari out the front door, she walked right by liz. they probably saw each other for 6 seconds. >> reporter: cari's office happened to be around the corner from dave's apartment. despite dating only two weeks, she decided to stay with him while she was working on a big project instead of making the hour commute from her home. around 6:30 a.m. on november 13th, 2012, dave left for work early, kissing cari good-bye. it would be the last time he'd see her. later that morning, he gets a message from cari. >> she texted me, let's move in together. which was very left field. because we had already talked about that not happening. as soon as i can, i text her back and say, i'm not interested, i can't do that. and almost immediately i get a message back that says, fine, i hate you, i'm dating someone

else, i don't want to see you anymore, go away. lots of profanity. i didn't know what to think. i was blown away. >> reporter: later that day, cari's mom also got a strange text from her saying she was taking a new job in kansas. >> so i texted her back, and she would not call me and talk to me. >> reporter: cari's son had been staying with nancy. she reports cari missing. >> a lot of people thought she'd just gone off her meds and she was -- just went off the deep end and left. but i knew that that's not what happened. >> reporter: meanwhile, dave was still getting a barrage of angry messages from cari. >> they were bad and they were just all about how bad of a person i am. >> cari's rage seems to be focused on his on again, off again ex-girlfriend, liz, who he had dated before cari. which is confusing to dave.

because cari seemed to be so unaffected by her first interaction with liz. >> reporter: liz told dave cari was harassing her too. >> she wrote to liz, if you don't keep your hands and lips off my man, i will hurt you. >> i would regularly receive 60-plus texts a day, 100 emails a day was not uncommon. >> reporter: eventually, cari seemed to be flat-out stalking dave. >> on one specific occasion, i was sit in my la-z-boy, feet up, watching tv, trying to relax, and i get a text saying, i see you, you're sitting in your chair with your feet propped up, wearing a blue shirt. those things were true. >> reporter: dave and liz given to call her crazy cari. they get back together, united by their shared trauma. >> it was actually extremely common for us to be hanging out, and both of our phones were start blowing up with text messages and emails from cari. >> reporter: nine months after

cari is last seen, liz called dave in a panic saying her house has been burned down. >> fire trucks up and down the street, firemen walking around, there's hoses and they're pouring water in the place. >> luckily, her children were not home. but many of her belongings were still there. including two dogs, a cat, and a snake. and they all were killed in this fire. >> the guy that i'm seeing, he has a girlfriend and she's been stalking me. >> i felt very bad for liz because i felt like i brought this crazy person into her life. >> reporter: as weeks turn into months, cari's mom nancy becomes increasingly worried. as her daughter fails to show up for the holidays, max's birthday, and her father's funeral. >> i had a very, very, very vivid dream that dennis had come to me, and he said, nancy --

don't worry about her, she's with me. >> reporter: max decides to reach out to his mom over facebook. >> all it said was hi. and she immediately wrote him back, hey, little man, how are you? he asked her to answer three questions to prove that it was really her. and she never responded to that message. >> cari posts on foo s os on answered enough questions to prove myself, i'm not missing, i just don't want to come home. one of the things, they don't look hike they're written by cari, they're filled with spelling errors and grammatical errors. >> reporter: spring 2015, the missing person case filed 2 1/2 years earlier had gone cold. detectives ryan avis and jim doty heard about the case, volunteered to work on it. they examined the case file with a fresh perspective. doty investigating as though

cari was dead, avis trying to prove she was alive. >> cari's checking account had no activity. it's not normal for adults to just up and leave and literally spend no money, no one's seen them. it didn't make sense. >> the key to the case at this point is figuring out if cari is not alive, who has been actually sending these messages to dave and to liz? >> reporter: detective doty focuses on liz. >> all of a sudden she's the focus of harassment. her name was all over the reports. >> reporter: during the investigation of her harassment claim against cari, liz had allowed police to download the contents of her phone. they reviewed the files and found the photo of cari's car. >> we looked at the meta date of that photo. it was taken a month before police recovered her vehicle, so somehow liz knew where cari's vehicle was before law enforcement even did. another thing we found on the phone download, there were six calls that were made to cari's

resident using star 67 to disguise the number. liz was calling cari six times. we found an email that cari had sent to dave, consisted of a picture of a woman tied up. we found that picture of that bound woman in liz's phone. the meta data showed it was taken from liz's phone. >> they realized liz had put duct tape on her own mouth, tied her own hands, crawled into the trunk of a car. coming up -- >> all the investigating they had done was leading them to the idea that cari farver was dead, and liz had been impersonating her this entire time. what's inside airborne? a blast of immune support that's more than just vitamin c. it's a unique crafted blend of vitamins,

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♪ by the spring of 2015, 37-year-old single mom carri farver had been missing for 2 1/2 years. the only signs of her were thousands of menacing texts and emails. police were beginning to suspect liz galier was behind those messages and carri might actually be dead. they shared their theory with dave, carri and liz's ex-boyfriend. >> the police had said, liz is the culprit. i still hadn't seen any evidence myself. so i was either trying to ignore the whole thing or trying to

understand how this person i spent so much time with could be this other person i didn't know. >> reporter: december 5th, 2015, liz calls 911 to report an emergency. she's been shot in the thigh while taking a late-night walk in the park. >> is the stale ant still nearby? >> i don't think so. >> reporter: liz tells police she thinks her shooter was ama flora, the mother of dave's children. police don't buy it. amy had an alibi and was cleared almost immediately. >> another one of her schemes to bring dave back into her life and make herself look like a victim. >> reporter: the day before liz had asked to file a harassment charge against amy. >> all these years liz thought she was harassed by cari, but now she thought it was amy. that would make more sense, right? >> they only dated two weeks.

i don't understand why a person would still be stalking him almost three years later. >> reporter: liz allows police to extract and download the messages on her phone. they give the information to detective tony cava. he spends thousands of hours trying to determine where all the messages allegedly sent by carri were coming from. he eventually traces them to liz, not amy flora. >> liz signed up for upwards of 20 or 30 fake addresses. every account we look at, there's always a connection to an account she has, a device she as, or her house. >> cava discovered liz was using an app which allowed her to send messages and receive them at a later time. >> she was able to send messages pretending to be carri, and they'd arrive while she was sitting next to dave. from dave's point of view, liz couldn't have sent it because she was sitting next to him. it gave a perfect alibi to liz.

>> reporter: investigators bring liz in for an interview, telling her they're looking into the disappearance of kerry liz points to amy flora as the culprit. >> sitting across from liz, i knew most likely she was a murderer. i knew in order to solve this, she was going to have to believe i genuinely thought amy was responsible. >> reporter: investigators know amy is innocent, but they tell liz they need her help in getting amy to confess to carri's murder hoping liz will incriminate herself in the process. >> it took a few days for liz to play into their hand. >> reporter: liz starts forwarding emails she says were from amy. investigators press her to give specifics how carri died. >> when i met crazy carri, she would not stop talking about dave and him being her husband. she tried to attack me but i attacked her with a knife, stabbed her three or four times in the chest and stomach area, took her out and burned her, stuffed her body in a garbage

can with crap. >> reporter: in another email allegedly written by amy, liz reveals the crime scene. >> she writes, i really did kill cari and i did do it in her own car. >> reporter: police then search carri's war. >> we opened up this door, pulled out the passenger seat, pulled off the fabric off that seat, that's where we found that big red stain. the positive test for human blood. >> reporter: a dna test of the blood showed it was a match for carri farver. >> a huge moment. it changes from a missing persons investigating, now it's a homicide investigation. >> reporter: omaha police arrest liz for an unpaid traffic citation. allowing them to question her directly about her involvement in carri's case. >> you have a lot of questions you need to answer. a very important question. you're in a serious position. her phone was at your house right after she disappeared.

i want to ask you how you can explain that. >> she's never been to my house. >> she definitely was giving me the evil eye. >> for years and years, people have been sending emails under cari's fictitious accounts. the ip addresses show up to whose house? your house. >> i haven't had internet at my house. >> you definitely see a woman who thinks she's smarter than the police, who doesn't recognize that she's in a mouse trap. >> reporter: the detective confronts liz, telling her he knows she wrote the so-called amy confession email. >> the finger's pointing right at you. >> i'm done talking and i'm going to have my attorney. i didn't do anything. >> okay. >> reporter: meanwhile, detectives obtain a search warrant for liz's home. finding a camera and camcorder that belonged to cari. the camera had a video of cari taken two days before she died, last known images of her alive.

>> apparently somebody here decided max's explorer was not the right color. we're going to see if we can fix that. >> reporter: she was documenting vandalism, something investigators believe was done by liz. >> somebody thought they were quite the artist. >> reporter: armed with this evidence, investigators obtained a felony arrest warrant for the first-degree murder for liz golier, december 22nd, 2016. liz retains defense attorney james martin davis, who waives a jury trial, making the judge the fact finder in the case. a few months before the trial started, dave remembered he's had a tablet in storage and gave the tablet to detectives, who discovered that the sd card in the tablet had once been in liz's phone. it contained thousands of deleted images investigators were able to restore. >> i came to a photo that no one

had seen before. it was reddish. i wasn't sure what i was looking at first. it turned out to be a human foot. human foot with a tattoo. >> and the foot was decomposing. so this person was dead. >> reporter: the tattoo was the chinese symbol for "mother." the exact tattoo cari had had on her foot. >> this photo, it was shocking. it made me realize that liz golier killed cari farver and she's taking photos of her body. >> once he had this, i felt confident. >> reporter: in may 2017, the case went to trial with no body, no witnesses, and no murder weapon. >> it's a hard case to prove. it's a hard case to make. it's even harder to get a conviction. but the web miss golier was weaving, she got caught in it. instead of being the spider, she became the insect. >> reporter: the judge found liz golier guilty of first-degree murder. she was sentenced to life in

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♪ that's "nightline" for this evening. you can watch all our full episodes on hulu. see you right back here same time next week. thanks for the company, america. good night.