‘I hadn’t seen anything like this’ — Netflix’s ‘Lover, Stalker, Killer’ reveals fatal love triangle
Netflix this past week released “Lover, Stalker, Killer,” a true crime documentary about a love triangle that turned ugly.
The documentary, directed by Sam Hobkinson, tells the story of how mechanic Dave Kroupa becoming part of an internet dating nightmare, per Netflix. It involves deception, harassment, stalking, arson and, ultimately, a shocking death.
“I thought I’d seen it all,” said Detective Chris Legrow, who investigated the case and shares his experience in the documentary. “I hadn’t seen anything like this.”
“Lover, Stalker, Killer” features Kroupa, Legrow and other parties involved with the case. They tell how the case came to be, and Kroupa even reenacts some dramatic moments.
Who is Dave Kroupa?
According to Time, Kroupa moved to Omaha, Nebraska, in 2012 as a single father. As he started his new life, he tried online dating for the first time, joining the dating site Plenty of Fish.
There, he connected with Shanna “Liz” Golyar and started casually dating her, not looking for a serious relationship. He was casually dating Cari Farver at the same time; he had previously met Farver at his auto shop, later discovering she had a Plenty of Fish profile.
Both of Golyar and Farver were single mothers living in Iowa, per The Independent.
The documentary shows what happened after Farver encountered Golyar outside Kroupa’s apartment. Their brief meeting turned everything upside down.
What happened to Liz Golyar and Dave Kroupa
A couple weeks into dating Kroupa, Farver suddenly vanished in November 2012. But even after her disappearance, she seemed to be sending threatening messages to both Kroupa and Golyar, reported The Independent.
Per People, the situation progressively got worse, with Kroupa and others close to him receiving an onslaught of aggressive phone and email messages each day — all from different contacts and aliases.
Kroupa contacted law enforcement in Omaha, but officers failed to track down Farver, according to Time. They found her car in January 2013, but the fingerprint they found inside wasn’t a match to anyone in the FBI’s database.
The harassment kept escalating, with Golyar receiving the most extreme forms of it. The Netflix documentary says she got her car keyed, her window broken and her clothes slashed. Eventually, Golyar’s house was burned down, which killed her pets.
The twist
According to The Independent, there were no leads in the case until the spring of 2015, when Iowa-based investigators James “Jim” Doty and Ryan Avis reexamined the case files.
They made a shocking discovery and concluded that Farver was murdered by Golyar the same night Kroupa received harassing messages, per Time.
They alleged that Golyar was impersonating Farver the whole time, and went as far as burning her own house down in an attempt to frame Kroupa’s ex-partner Amy Flora, whom he had two kids with.
In “Lover, Stalker, Killer,” Kroupa talks about learning of their conclusions for the first time.
“My brain was spinning,” Kroupa said in the documentary. “I went to the back of the shop where my toolbox was and just leaned on it and cried. I’m trying to go through the pieces of the puzzle and put them together. … It was Liz stalking me this whole time.”
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What happened to Liz Golyar?
Golyar, according to Time, was arrested in December 2016. Investigators alleged that she fatally stabbed Farver in her car before disposing of her body, using bloodstains found during the thorough follow-up investigation as evidence.
Farver’s body to this day has not been found.
The Des Moines Register reports that Golyar was charged with first-degree murder and second-degree arson and convicted the following year on all counts.
Currently, Golyar is serving a life sentence at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women, per The Independent.
