optimistic, but even if the NPA’s percentages are correct, that means that at least one in ten times, the results are wrong. Some honest people, including Amy, can appear to be deceptive, while some liars outsmart the machine.
Despite the fact she failed the polygraph exam, Amy was quickly eliminated as a suspect. Her neighbors verified she’d been home all evening. And within minutes after the shooting, a cop had felt the hood of Amy’s car. It was ice cold. It was clear she’d not driven for hours.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
WHEN MOST PEOPLE THINK of Anthony Kava, the first word that comes to mind is “genius,” but his official title in December 2015 was Information Technology Supervisor. He’d been working that full-time job for Pottawattamie County since 2003 and is also known as Special Deputy Kava, toiling countless hours for the Iowa Crimes Against Children Task Force, but it isn’t the extra pay that motivates him. He earns one dollar per year for that second full-time job. “Iowa Law prescribes that reserve peace officers be paid at least a dollar per year to make them formal employees of a law enforcement agency,” he explains, adding that this allows for legal benefits such as qualified immunity. He is driven by the fact that victims need him. Most often, those he helps are children. Imagine, he says, if “the worst moment of your life is captured and replayed over and over again.” The cyber exploitation of innocence via Internet videos is rampant, but thanks to Kava’s investigations, multiple pedophiles have been arrested and countless children saved.
Deputy Kava’s expertise in digital forensics was essential to nabbing Liz Golyar, who had used electronics to both commit and conceal her crimes. But even with his extensive skills, it was no easy task. Like Detective Ryan Avis, Deputy Kava was also a married father with young children, and there were not enough hours in the day to be a perfect father and husband and do all of the work necessary to get justice for Cari Farver. It was a frustrating dilemma for investigators dedicated to their work, and they constantly struggled to create a balance but admit their families were shortchanged.
When Liz walked into the Sheriff’s Office on December 4 and handed over her phone for download, she was unaware deleted data could be recovered. Back in January 2013, a logical download of her phone had found only existing data, but now Deputy Kava performed an all-encompassing physical download and soon found himself staring at incriminating evidence that Liz believed was gone forever. She had used an app called Textie, tying it to fake email accounts she’d set up in Cari’s name and then sent hundreds of threats to Dave while pretending to be Cari. Liz had deleted those messages, but Kava revived them. When he realized what he had, he immediately stopped searching and asked Avis to get a search warrant, so he could legally scan the phone’s data for evidence to use against Liz in the murder of Cari Farver. The warrant was in place within a few days, and he resumed his search.
Liz’s voluntary 2015 phone dump was “the major development that opened doors for us, in terms of probable cause to get dozens of search warrants,” says Deputy Kava. The investigators submitted warrants to sites used by the Cari impostor, including Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, PayPal, MeetMe, OKCupid, Twitter, Etsy, Pinger, Amazon, Pinterest, and LetterMeLater. They sought information on IP addresses, associated email addresses, and the dates accounts were created. The warrants were sealed to prevent them from becoming public record, and the investigators added a second seal to prohibit managers of Facebook and other sites from tipping off their suspect. Without that extra seal, users of social media sites are often warned about pending warrants and immediately rush to delete evidence. Detective Doty stresses, “We were working the case on the downlow because we didn’t want her to know we were looking into her.”
Liz Golyar had no idea that the investigators were on her tail, and they wanted to keep it that way. She believed she could outfox detectives, perhaps because she’d so far managed to troll the Web unfettered while hiding her identity and Internet Protocol (IP) address. An IP address is a unique identifier, assigned to each device engaged with the Internet and contains a string of numbers, separated by periods. Liz often used proxy servers to conceal her IP address, and also Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to make it appear that