letters—that they would think she had harmed Cari. Even if they knew she was innocent, Amy didn’t want Cari’s family to have to picture the things described by the killer. Not ever. And yet, there they sat, in the front row of the gallery, waiting for Amy to read words that would hurt them.
Everyone in the courtroom seemed to be holding their breath. It was so, so quiet, and when Amy began to read, she hated how her voice cut through the silence. She wanted it to be over, and without realizing she was speaking too quickly, she read, “My last email got deleted, just so you know it’s me—”
“Whoa! Whoa!” JMD interrupted.
“Sorry,” Masteller apologized to Amy. “The court reporter is going to have to type everything you say, so you’re going to have to go really slow.”
It was bad enough that she had to speak such horrible words! Now she had to read slowly! “I did meet up with Cari at a local place here in Council Bluffs. I have a family that won’t let me go to jail. So, when I met Crazy Cari, she would not stop talking about Dave and him being her husband.”
“Let me stop you right there,” Masteller interrupted. “Is it hard to read this email?”
His question was about the misspellings, not about Amy’s state of mind. She knew what he meant and replied, “Yes, the spelling is terrible.”
“Yes, please continue.”
“She tried to attack me, but I attacked her with a knife. I stabbed her three to four times in the stomach area. I then took her out and burned her. I stuffed her body in a garbage can with crap. She was carried out to the dumpster, probably when Dave took my garbage out for me. So be glad I did not do you that way, Liz. I will never admit to Dave or police, no one. Maybe I’m drunk now and just telling lies to you. Dave will always take care of me and protect me, so I will never go to jail . . .”
While Cari’s family and friends understood that Amy had not written the emails, they realized that much of what Liz had written had actually happened. One line in particular would forever haunt them. “When I killed Cari, you know she begged me to call Dave at work, and she begged me to talk to her family before she died.” As Amy read, she heard Cari’s mother cry, and it broke her heart.
Though Judge Burns had warned spectators they could be ordered to leave if they showed a reaction, he did not reprimand the grieving mother. Her pain was raw and real, and she obviously had no control over her anguished sobs. If a jury had been present, he would have been forced to consider the effect Nancy’s reaction could have on them. Emotional outbursts from the gallery can influence a jury, sometimes causing mistrials. But Burns was a professional and would not let emotion influence his ruling.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
ANTHONY KAVA, the State of Nebraska’s star witness, took the stand in mid morning on Thursday, May 18. No one else had his grasp on the complex digital evidence tracing Golyar’s covert activities. It was not only difficult to comprehend, it was difficult to explain, because IT terminology can almost sound like a foreign language to laymen. But Kava was not only brilliant, he had superior communication skills. He’d prepared a PowerPoint presentation with thousands of slides to illustrate his testimony. A rudimentary understanding of the cyberworld and vocabulary associated with it was necessary for the evidence to make sense. Everyone in the courtroom got a crash course in digital forensics.
Over his next three days of testimony, Kava painted a vivid picture of Liz’s crimes, describing everything from the fake emails she created in Cari’s name to how she used proxy servers to hide her location. He explained how he revived the deleted evidence from Liz’s cell phone, and he showed the images she thought she’d destroyed.
Perhaps most telling was the activity on Cari’s Facebook account on the morning she disappeared. Kava determined that someone had logged onto Cari’s page from Dave’s apartment at 6:42 A.M. That would have been a legitimate log-in by Cari. The next Facebook log-in was at 9:54 A.M., and Dave Kroupa was unfriended. That, investigators maintained, was Liz invading Cari’s Facebook page, probably after she’d attacked her. The pings from Cari’s phone, the unauthorized use of her debit card at Walmart, and the curious Facebook