avoid her like the plague right now.”
Dave was confused. Liz was manipulative, she was possessive, and she could be extremely annoying, but Avis’s suggestion she was dangerous made him dizzy. Liz had been telling him Amy was dangerous, that she’d followed her to Big Lake Park and shot her and might have done something to Cari. The idea that Amy could harm anyone was even more farfetched than the suggestion Liz was violent. He’d known the mother of his children far longer than he’d known Liz. There was absolutely no way Amy had done the things Liz claimed.
He’d always figured Liz’s issues were due to insecurity, and he’d been patient as long as he had because he felt a little sorry for her. She was a tiny thing, and could seem so vulnerable. She’d appeared genuinely frightened when “Cari” terrorized her. Whenever Liz looked up at him with her brown eyes brimming with fear, he’d instinctively put his arm around her and tried to reassure her.
Dave didn’t realize it, but he’d been suffering from “confirmation bias.” Every human experiences this phenomenon of the mind, and most of us are unable to comprehend what’s happening until long after we’ve been set straight and have had both time and distance away from whatever influenced us to accept falsehoods as truth. Also called “confirmatory bias,” this trick of the mind is exploited by cult leaders who use it against followers to keep them in line. But most of the time, we dive in on our own. It occurs after we’ve formed an opinion about a particular subject, and it prompts us to embrace information that supports our initial belief and disregard facts that don’t. It narrows the perspective of people, no matter how intelligent, so that they dismiss anything negating their viewpoint. The longer it goes on, the harder it is for us to see the truth.
Dave’s confirmation bias had begun to take root in November 2012 when he received the first hostile texts from Cari’s phone number. For over three years, he’d been inundated daily with fake emails and texts, each one confirming his belief that Cari was stalking him. Liz had worked very hard to make sure Dave never doubted that the woman he’d once been infatuated with had turned into a monster. The longer Liz kept up the charade, the easier it was for those she’d fooled to believe the lies. The first round of detectives working the case were also influenced by their confirmation bias, but no one had been led deeper into the abyss than Dave Kroupa.
He was at work shortly after his phone conversation with Detective Avis when Detective Doty showed up. “He had a marshal with him,” Dave recalls. The two men sat him down for a serious talk. “Doty told me he was certain that Liz was the one making all the threats.” While the men couldn’t tell Dave everything they knew, they made it clear they believed Liz was extremely dangerous, that she was behind Cari’s disappearance, and that they feared Amy and his kids were in danger.
He was numb as he picked up his phone, called Amy and repeated what the police had told him. “I told you so!” Amy exclaimed. Yes, she had told him so. Again and again. He’d always known Amy wasn’t fond of Liz but figured she’d been a little jealous. The fact Amy didn’t like Liz “didn’t raise any red flags for me.” But any “red flags” waving at him would have had to have been on fire for him to take notice because he’d wholeheartedly believed Liz was a victim, and Cari was the stalker.
Dave couldn’t focus on work after learning about Liz. “I went and sat down by my tool box and did nothing for two hours.” The past he’d believed was real had been nothing more than an illusion. How had he allowed himself to be fooled? When he learned that Liz had used a LetterMeLater app, he realized that had played a large part in the deception. He’d initially been convinced Cari was the stalker, because not only were the texts coming from her number, he’d been with Liz when they both received them. He’d had no idea it was possible for a person to send themselves a text to arrive at a specific time.
When he realized the truth, Dave describes it as “like walking through a dark forest, unable to see anything, and then the sun comes out.” Suddenly everything was clear. Painfully