activity had all occurred in Omaha. That evidence was crucial to establishing venue.
Liz had used Cari’s phone the first time she’d logged onto Cari’s Facebook page. Cari’s computer was never recovered. Cari had a very long password she’d guarded jealously, and Liz had probably discarded the laptop when she realized she couldn’t crack her code. Kava traced Liz’s steps in her creation of the Sam Carter and Amber Mildo fake Facebook profiles she’d used in her attempt to lure Cari into her trap—a clear indication of premeditation.
Sam Carter was a made-up name, but the photo was real. It belonged to a doctor who lived on the East Coast. He had no idea a killer had borrowed his handsome face to use in her twisted games. As for Amber Mildo, Liz had created her years earlier and had used her many times in online deceptions. Kava’s investigation revealed that around the time Cari vanished, Miss Mildo had tried to friend 15-year-old Max on Facebook but had accidentally sent the request to the wrong Max Farver.
While Kava’s testimony was the most comprehensive, the most shocking revelations came from the State’s last witness. On May 22, Omaha forensic pathologist Dr. Michelle Elieff testified she had performed over 2,500 autopsies and had seen bodies in every stage of decomposition.
The startling photo Kava had found appeared on the screen, and Eileff was invited to step down to point out the features consistent with a foot. “This is the top part, or what we refer to as the ‘dorsum’ of a human foot, and it includes several blood vessels—the greater saphenous vein, an arch, and the lesser saphenous vein; and digital and branch vessels that come out to the toes and the distal, or farthest away from the body, toe area of the top of the foot.”
The photo had been taken when decomposition was underway, and few people could have glanced at it and understood what they were looking at. Masteller asked, “Now, in your experience of bodies that you’ve examined postmortem, in which the bodies had tattoos on them, when the skin sloughs off of a portion of the body that actually contains a tattoo, does the tattoo itself slough off?”
“It does not.”
“Why is that?”
“The tattoos go into the deeper layers of skin, and it’s the superficial or top layers of skin that get sloughed off and may get very discolored. Sometimes when the body is undergoing skin slippage or blistering of the skin on top of a tattoo, that area can be wiped off, and the tattoo can be clearly visualized.”
JMD requested a voir dire examination and established that it was Dr. Elieff’s opinion that the tattooed foot in the photo belonged to a deceased human. The doctor could not say with absolute certainty that the image in the photo was a foot, Liz’s attorney stressed. “I object to any opinion.” He was overruled.
Liz Golyar had photographed her victim’s body, according to prosecutors, so that she could have a “trophy” of her vicious crime. When she deleted that photo, she had no idea it would come back to haunt her.
Closing statements began a little after 9:30 on Tuesday morning, May 23, and Jim Masteller brought up Liz’s sick souvenirs. The tattoo photos weren’t the only keepsakes important to her. There was also the shower curtain she’d purchased with Cari’s debit card. It, too, was a trophy. Investigators had found nude selfies of Liz, posing in front of it. She had taken it with her each time she moved. First to Garret’s home and then to Persia. The prosecutor pointed out, “They’re not particularly expensive. They get dirty, of course. Why wouldn’t you just leave it?”
It’s hard to imagine the kind of dark thoughts that emerge from a killer’s mind, but Masteller may have had a perfect grasp on it as he explained what the shower curtain meant to Liz. “This is something she’s proud of, something she’s able to look at every single morning and think about how she killed Cari Farver and got away with it. It’s hiding in plain sight.”
In his closing statement, JMD started by congratulating the prosecution for doing an impressive job but then pointed out that their case was built on circumstantial evidence. He referenced email exchanges between Dave and his client where she seemed to calmly accept that they were “going to take a break” from their relationship. She certainly hadn’t behaved as if she were planning a murder. “Dave Kroupa’s a nice guy, but who can say