doubt is making me doubt that this can be accomplished. ’ Maybe I went into it naïve. I knew it so well, that I thought there was no way people wouldn’t believe it.”
If they moved too fast and arrested Golyar before there was enough evidence to convict, she could get off scot-free. She had a constitutional right to a speedy trial, and could be prosecuted only once for Cari’s murder. If Liz was found not guilty because of lack of evidence, there would be no do-overs, no matter how compelling evidence found in the future might be. Beadle and Masteller weren’t confident they could successfully prosecute. They didn’t have enough evidence. Not yet.
Homicides without bodies are notoriously difficult to prosecute. But they couldn’t wait too long for remains to be recovered. Liz’s rage was building. Her regular loops through Amy’s parking lot made everyone nervous. Brenda emphasizes, “Amy is lucky she wasn’t another victim.”
Anthony Kava was working every possible minute to gather more digital evidence to prove that Liz was the stalker and that she had been impersonating Cari for the past four years. Kava’s new evidence, together with the blood in the SUV, Cari’s possessions found in Liz’s apartment, and the confession emails made their case strong enough that the State was finally ready to go forward.
Thursday, December 22, 2016, was the day investigators had been waiting for. “I was at work that morning when I got the call we had an arrest warrant,” Kava remembers. “By 11 A.M., Avis and I were in position watching Liz’s apartment.” Doty, Schneider, and Ambrose arrived with a Harrison County deputy around noon. Six cops to arrest one small woman! The men filed up the narrow stairway to Liz’s apartment. When she opened the door, it was obvious they’d woken her. She didn’t resist or even appear surprised to hear she was under arrest for first-degree murder. Kava remembers, “Doty put the cuffs on Liz, and he later notched them as a memento.”
Liz was in the most serious trouble of her life. She was eligible for a public defender but wanted Omaha’s best. She asked JMD to defend her, assuring him she could afford it. “She showed me her tax returns,” he says wryly. According to the form, Liz had earned a huge sum of money via her cleaning business and was expecting a hefty refund. It was another of her forgeries and probably never filed. But it convinced JMD that she was good for the money, and he agreed to wait for payment. He laughs now, admitting she stiffed him.
Most of Liz’s deceit had played out in cyberspace as she hid behind her computer screen, but she could hide no longer. Inquisitive eyes watched as she took center stage at the Douglas County Courthouse. The Omaha landmark on Farnum Street is a stately beige structure built in 1912 in French Renaissance style. Designed for justice, it has also seen injustice, most notably in September 1919 when an innocent man was denied his day in court. Willie Brown, a black man falsely accused of assaulting a white woman, was attacked by vigilantes who stormed the courthouse and abducted him from the fifth-floor jail. The mob also set fire to the building and hung Mayor Edward Parsons Smith from a lamppost when he tried to intervene. The mayor was cut down before he was strangled to death, but poor Willie was murdered by the mob. The old courthouse still bears the scars of the horror, though few who pass through the grand entryways are aware of the bullet holes in the marble walls. The interior of the six-story courthouse is stunningly ornate with enormous murals depicting scenes from the city’s past and a central rotunda reaching 110 feet high to a domed stained-glass skylight. But Liz was probably not appreciating the beautiful architecture that day. She listened quietly as the judge set bail at five million dollars.
Murder defendants are rarely allowed bond, and JMD told reporters the judge’s decision indicated the State had a weak case. “How can you charge somebody with first-degree murder when you don’t have proof of death, you don’t have a body, you don’t have murder weapons, and you don’t have eye-witnesses?”
The prosecution, too, realized that the judge was sending a message that he had little faith in their case, but they’d known from the get-go it was convoluted and difficult to explain. They didn’t blame the judge for failing to comprehend it in the brief time he’d had