to report cyberstalking and vandalism in the following months. Though he’d hoped to help detectives locate the missing woman, he wasn’t privy to any part of their investigation and wasn’t told about Phyllips’s search of Cari’s Macedonia home, the suspicious activity on her fake Facebook page or the vicious threats against Dave’s new friend, Jessica McCarthy.
As the summer of 2013 approached, Liz complained to Garret that she was unable to pay her bills and might become homeless. She received a deep discount on the rent from the Omaha Housing Authority’s Section 8 program, and as part of the agreement, it was her responsibility to pay the utilities. Garret had already picked up so much of Liz’s slack that this time he didn’t offer to help. She fell so far behind on the electric bill that the power was turned off. She managed to have it turned back on by using an alias, but the company caught on and shut off the power for good. She knew that once the landlords caught on that she’d breached the contract by failing to pay utility bills, they could evict her, but they were required to give her a 30-day written notice. She expected to be kicked out but knew she had weeks to find a new place to live.
Though Garret wouldn’t realize it for some time to come, Liz was still seeing Dave, and she was always warmer to Garret during the times Dave pulled away from her. Dave was doing his darndest to break free from her. Suddenly, Liz was smiling more at Garret, listening more intently to him and was much more affectionate than she’d been in a long time. To Garret, it seemed like their relationship was improving, and he began to feel closer to her. When he saw how hard she was struggling to make ends meet, he not only worried about her, he was concerned for the kids. “I knew they needed a place to stay.” His roommate had recently moved out, and Garret had lots of space. When he asked Liz to move in with him, he saw it as a commitment “to take the relationship to the next level.” Around the end of June 2013, Liz and her kids moved in. She took her time moving her things out of the old place, well aware that the eviction process could take weeks. As it turned out, the eviction notice was not sent until July 30, so she had until August 30 to collect the rest of her possessions.
While Garret had expected his girlfriend to stay in his room, she immediately laid claim to the basement, and he got the sense she didn’t want him to invade her space. The warmth Liz had radiated in the previous days was replaced by cool indifference. It became painfully obvious that she saw the new situation as a roommate arrangement—one where she didn’t have to pay rent.
He was dismayed to discover that she didn’t clean up after herself. Soon her space downstairs was buried beneath heaps of dirty clothes and trash. Crumpled up fast food bags, with the leftovers rotting inside, became a permanent part of the décor. “There was crap everywhere. You couldn’t see the floor. It was a complete mess. For somebody in the cleaning business, she was not a clean person. When she moved in, I immediately regretted it. I was thinking, ‘Okay, how do I get her out?’”
But Liz couldn’t afford to live on her own. Garret figured if he helped her out for a while that she could save enough money to move out. With that in mind, he didn’t ask her to chip in for utilities. It was another generous move that he hoped would help her build her savings faster so that he could get her out of his house. But no matter how much he helped, Liz always claimed to be broke.
One of the kids stayed in a room on the main floor, and the other slept in a downstairs room “that was not intended to be a bedroom. It was essentially a storage room, so it wasn’t very big.” They switched around from time to time, and though they shared some of their mother’s sloppy habits, the children were never the problem. Liz spent most of her time downstairs. “She usually confined herself to the basement, or more specifically, to her room in the basement. She was down there roughly eighty to ninety percent of the time she was home.”