Dave felt defeated. He hardly recognized his own reflection. He’d gained forty pounds, and dark circles had formed beneath his eyes. In the past, he’d been a casual, social drinker. “I had one drink that lasted me four hours.” Months of vandalism and nonstop threats had made him jittery and depressed, and now he drank to numb his anxiety. “There was a bar between the shop and my apartment, and I got to the point where I knew all of the regulars, and I knew the owner real well. I knew what day of the week it was by who was coming through the door! I spent too much time there. Too much time and too much money.”
As the one-year anniversary of his first date with Cari approached, Dave remembered how thrilled he’d been to meet such a lovely and brilliant woman. Now, he could hardly believe it was the same person sending him twisted messages.
On November 1, 2013, an email arrived at 7:54 P.M., sent from [email protected] Lea was Cari’s middle name, and he assumed she’d combined that with his last name to make it appear she was his wife. The email began, “To my husband, David Kroupa.” She claimed she’d purchased a knife and had been creeping around “in your building.” The attached photo showed a large knife, Cari Farver’s driver’s license, and an envelope for a bill with her name on it. Was she attempting to prove it was really her tormenting him? He’d never doubted the identity of his stalker and didn’t question it now. Was the photo of the knife supposed to be a threat? Once again, he escaped to the familiar bar and grill and drank more than he knew he should.
* * *
It was hard for Cari’s family and friends to accept that a year had passed since she’d disappeared. The holidays were upon them again, and they went through the motions, but none of them felt much joy. It was a difficult time for Cari’s friend Amber. After months of disturbing texts from someone claiming to be Cari, Amber could take it no longer. It had become clear that whoever was texting her was definitely not Cari. “My main problem with it all, was she never once mentioned my child. She was so, so, so excited about my pregnancy,” she explains, adding that her friend couldn’t wait to “be Auntie Cari.” Amber changed her phone number.
Cari’s birthday came and went, uncelebrated on November 30. If still alive, she was now thirty-nine. December 10, was Maxwell’s sixteenth birthday, another huge milestone that he knew his mother would not have missed if it were within her power to be there. The little house Cari loved had sat vacant for too long. Her family packed up her possessions and moved them to a storage unit. Nancy didn’t like driving past the house. It appeared cold and dark and so obviously empty that it gave her a lonely feeling in the pit of her stomach. They rented it out to a nice young woman, Marina Estes, and she moved in that December. She would take care of the place, and it was somehow comforting to see the windows lit at night. The family had little hope that Cari would ever return, but if she did, her home would be in good shape.
December 12, 2013, was the one-year anniversary of Denny Farver’s funeral. It was also the day that Police Officer Tim Huffman was dispatched to Dave’s apartment at 1:10 P.M. Huffman had been with Omaha Police Department’s Uniform Patrol Bureau since July 2000. He handled crimes reported via 911 calls and had started his shift that morning at 6:00. The dispatcher advised him that a break-in had occurred in the first-floor unit of a large apartment complex. Officer Huffman went to the scene where he was greeted by Dave and Liz.
Liz told him she’d left earlier that day and returned to a shocking mess. “She said she was at the apartment until approximately 10 A.M.” Huffman recollects. Liz said she’d returned “sometime around one o’clock in the afternoon. She found a screen to a bedroom window on the floor and then some items that were destroyed and writing on the wall.”
It appeared an intruder had crawled through the window, tracking in the leaves that littered the dresser top. Liz pointed to a pile of clothing, slashed with a sharp instrument and dumped in a heap on the floor. An angry message, clearly aimed at Liz, was