predator in this account used a different kind of web to commit cruel crimes. The World Wide Web! The majority of us using the Web today are still in awe of the fact that billions of people around the globe have the ability to connect instantaneously with a soft tap of a finger on a computer keyboard—that we can access an electronic system interlinking millions of information venues sooner than we can inhale our next breath.
Invented in 1989, the Web has become an integral part of most Americans’ lives in only the last two decades. As of this writing, it is still so new that most of us are too naïve to realize the extent of the myriad ways it can be used to set traps designed to deceive us. We often fail to recognize the predators that prowl there, intent upon stealing our money and sometimes our lives. The killer in A Tangled Web developed an expertise in the electronic world and used it to assist in not only committing crimes, but in the concealment of them. Like the rare spider caught in its own web, the human counterpart in this tragedy spun deceptions so complex that they eventually became trapped in a web of their own making. Unfortunately, it was not before blood was shed and many hearts were broken.
CHAPTER ONE
WHEN CHEROKEE MONTOYA HEARD that her friend had been shot, she was stunned. The violence occurred on December 5, 2015. The 911 operator took the call at 6:41 P.M., and she soon dispatched emergency vehicles to the scene, Big Lake Park in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Most people called Shanna Elizabeth Golyar by her nickname, Liz, but to Cherokee she had always been Shanna. Cherokee was not surprised to hear that Shanna had gone alone to a deserted park after dark. “She was trying to clear her head—trying to gather herself together. It’s what she usually did, quite often. She would just go somewhere silent, so she could think.”
Cherokee is still unclear about what occurred that night. “I don’t have all the facts,” she admits, and there is a hint of bitterness in her voice as she describes what happened, exactly as it was told to her. “She saw the shadow first. They told her to get on the ground. If she didn’t do it, they were going to shoot her,” she explains, adding that Shanna got down on the cold ground as instructed. “They shot her anyway.”
Cherokee and Shanna had met while working in a distribution warehouse about a year earlier in Omaha, Nebraska, and had hit it off immediately. Though Shanna was about a decade older than Cherokee, they seemed to have a lot in common. Both were mothers, and she noted that Shanna appeared to work as hard as she did. “We met, and we bonded really quickly. We just started hanging out. She’d come over and watch my kids, and I’d watch her kids.”
She has no problem recalling the good times, but Cherokee is still bewildered by the shooting and the craziness that led up to it. “I don’t watch the news,” she confides. No one can blame her for being confused about the dark sequence of events that led to crimes so complex that they confounded seasoned detectives. And no one can blame her for turning away from the news. Friends had told her bits and pieces, and that was upsetting enough, especially because Cherokee blames herself. “I didn’t stop it. I didn’t see it. I could have said something . . .” Her voice trails off, as she shakes her head.
In reality, there was nothing she could have done to prevent the horror that tiptoed so quietly into the lives it ruined that no one saw it coming. It, in fact, began long before Cherokee entered the picture.
* * *
Dave Kroupa liked women. He made no secret about that, and he made no apologies. He was upfront with every woman he met. He was not looking for a commitment, and he made no promises to the contrary.
He had, after all, recently ended a twelve-year relationship with Amy Flora, the mother of his two children, and he was just getting used to being on his own again. Both Dave and Amy had tried very hard to make it work, to hold their family together for the kids’ sake. In the end, they came to the painful realization that they just weren’t meant to be together. They agreed to remain friends and to work together to