hoped. It was almost too easy for her to manipulate him.
The fire also bolstered Liz’s victim image, and many felt sorry for the single mother who had lost so much. In reality, she’d removed everything she wanted from that house before lighting the first match, and she’d acquired a few more items of value because of the fire. Every expensive thing Garret had loaned her was “lost in the fire,” including an iPod Touch.
With nothing to distract her, Liz had countless hours to cyberstalk Dave, and the sheer volume of texts and emails she sent him suggests that she probably didn’t sleep much. But she did not forget about Nancy. She also took the time to jab at her.
On August 28, 2013, Nancy received the following text: I’m in Omaha. I’m not hurt, Mom. I miss everyone too. I just had a breakdown, and I think I’m getting over it. I should have come to my senses sooner and realized the guy wasn’t worth it.
Nancy stared at the message. As usual, it was filled with grammar errors, and she doubted that Cari was the one texting her. Despite her reservations, she felt a rush of excitement. Her heart pounding, Nancy texted back, “Is this really you? I need to hear your voice! I’m not going to answer texts.”
The texter agreed to talk to her, typing, “Let me pull over.”
Nancy could not stop her hopes from soaring. Maybe this was Cari! Maybe her daughter was about to call her! She waited, and as the minutes passed, she knew it was once again someone playing a sick game.
Nancy, of course, had never heard of Liz and didn’t know she was the one impersonating Cari. Liz wanted Nancy to believe that Cari was driving along the highway and texting at the same time, an awkward and dangerous habit. It’s possible that Liz was driving when she decided to taunt Nancy. She seemed to enjoy causing pain. She had no qualms about her slow torture of a grieving mother and wasn’t worried that her reckless behavior might cause an accident that could harm or kill someone. Or perhaps Liz was not driving at all, but lounging in her messy basement quarters, compulsively texting away as Garret made another McDonald’s run to fetch her the greasy meal she craved.
In addition to giving Liz a place to live, he’d been helping her out with her transportation for quite some time. Her credit was bad, and early on in their relationship Garret had cosigned on a loan for a Jeep Liberty and had also put her on his insurance. Liz had ended up totaling the Liberty when she crashed it. Garret is unsure how the car was wrecked, but she claimed that the accident had happened while she was on her way to a cleaning job. She said she had clients who wanted her to clean their place in Utah, so she had followed them there on a long drive, and very early in the morning she had fallen asleep at the wheel.
She next purchased a brand new 2012 Honda Civic, partially paying for it with the insurance payout for the wrecked Liberty. Garret cosigned on that loan, too, and he continued to carry her on his insurance. “Liz loved that Civic!” he remembers. She was driving it when a red-light camera captured her ignoring a traffic light. A ticket was automatically issued to Garret because the car was in his name. The ticket arrived via mail, and he got online and followed the instructions to view the video of the Civic as it zipped through the red light. It was clearly Liz’s vehicle, though the driver wasn’t visible because the view was from the rear.
She was the only one who drove the car, and he knew for a fact she had been in the area on the day the camera caught her. When Garret told her about it, she shook her head. She would never run a red light, she insisted.
“But you did. There’s a video of you!”
“I didn’t do it!” Liz swore that it could not possibly be her, and she refused to look at the online images that proved her guilt. It was not the first time she’d failed to take responsibility for a mistake despite irrefutable photographic evidence. A few years earlier, a boyfriend who had dumped her discovered that shortly after their breakup, someone had used his debit card to take cash from his account. The bank had images of every withdrawal,