from your kids’mom. I am done with you, sick of her running her whore mouth to me. I feel like stabbing someone.”
Liz. Sally. Amy. The stalker seemed to detest them equally, although Liz was a favorite target. It was a big, tangled mess, and Dave had grown wary of trying to explain it to friends, family, coworkers and the various law officers he called upon to report his tormentor’s crimes. Detective Paul Prencer from the Omaha Police Department got involved that July, and Dave once again found himself reciting the long and complex horror story that had become his life.
Prencer had worked for OPD since 1999, and after a decade there, he was assigned to the Special Victims Unit. He mostly investigated crimes against children and vulnerable adults, domestic violence, and sexual assaults. Prencer frequently investigated domestic violence, crimes that include destruction of property, vandalism, harassment, assaults and sometimes burglaries. While initial reports are taken by uniformed officers, they are later assigned to detectives for follow up. Detective Prencer met with Dave that July to follow up on the report of the broken window. There was no question in Dave’s mind who had smashed the window. The vandal had contacted him, jubilantly taking credit, just as she always did.
“The victim, Mr. Kroupa, identified a photo of Cari,” recounts Detective Prencer, who was eager to talk to the alleged troublemaker. He applied for a misdemeanor warrant for the arrest of Cari Lea Farver. By the end of July 2013, the warrant was active. Now, if an officer pulled her over for speeding or some other traffic infraction, they could see the warrant in their database. Cari Farver was still listed in the NCIC as a missing person, but not a single officer had encountered her in the eight months she had supposedly been running amok, recklessly destroying property, terrifying innocent people, and sometimes flaunting her actions in full view of the public—though no witnesses had actually seen her.
Cari Farver, missing person, had not been found. Cari Farver, alleged criminal, was equally elusive. The warrant for her arrest would never be executed.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IN THE SUMMER OF 2013, two things were bothering Dave. There was the stalker, of course. And Liz. Her jealousy was becoming a huge problem. She would not let go of her suspicion that he was sleeping with Amy. While Liz was wildly jealous of her, she had no reason to be. Amy had plenty of interest from men, and she, too, was dating. Dave had become like a pal to her. “I always tell him he is one of my best friends. A lot of people think our friendship is weird, because he comes over here and hangs out with the kids. I don’t see anything wrong with it. We chat about the kids or our significant others.”
Amy remembers when he met Cari. “Dave talked about her once or twice in the beginning before all of the craziness started. He said, ‘I’m dating a girl named Cari.’ I said, ‘Oh, what does she look like?’ I was just curious because if this person was going to be in my kids’ life, I wanted to know about her. Dave was at the store where I work one day when he came in to pick up something for the kids, and he showed me her picture.”
Amy glanced at the smiling image of Cari and said, “Oh, she’s cute!” She’d been relieved to know he had met someone nice. “All I wanted was for him to find someone good for him—someone who wanted the same things he wanted. He talked kindly about her, and I was happy for him. Cari sounded like a good person who would be good to my kids if they got serious.”
While Amy had at one time been disappointed that Dave didn’t share her desire for commitment, she’d long since gotten over that. Now, she was just grateful that he was such a wonderful father to their children. “Anyone who knows me, knows my kids come first,” Amy stresses. She was determined to make her kids happy because, “My own childhood was kind of traumatic.”
When Amy was thirteen, her family was split up because her mom had some issues that made it difficult to keep her children with her. Amy and her sister went to live with their aunt, but the aunt had kids of her own, and the place soon felt crowded. “With four teenaged girls in one house, my aunt couldn’t really handle it, so we