Dateline Originals - Something About Cari - Ep. 2: Bait and Switch

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

Cari’s boyfriend tells investigators he has no idea where Cari is and that he and his ex-girlfriend Liz have been getting a torrent of troubling online messages from her. This episode originally published on December 2, 2025. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dave Krupa, a man raised in a strict Southern Baptist household who'd done a 180 on the subject of monogamy, hated the whole idea of it, sounded like he was almost, almost, ready to use the L word, as in love to describe his feelings for Kerry Farver. But as the mechanic told the detectives, as suddenly as a blown rod through an engine block, it all came to a sudden stop. Because? Well, on that morning of November 13th, just three hours after walking out the door in his happy haze, having hit the power ball, as he put it, with a woman who seemed to fear commitment as much as he did,

his phone chirped. Text message. It was like a needle in a big fat balloon. By 10 o'clock I received a text from her that says, do you want to move in with me? Or should we need to move in together or something along those lines? Really? But immediately I text her back. No, I'm not interested.

We've known each other two weeks. It's not going to happen. As soon as I text her back, I get a text back that says, fine, I don't ever want to see you again. Go away. I'm dating to somebody else. I hate you. On and on and on and on and on.

Weird. Very weird. Very what is going on here. But I was at work. It was very busy. I didn't have time for that nonsense. Mm-hmm. So in the back of my mind, I'm thinking,

phew, I dodged a bullet there. But Dave hadn't dodged a thing. And now he was confused. The man who liked his sex life uncommitted had apparently once again found a woman who expected way more than he was ready to give, wanted to lock him down. And now was acting like a woman scorned.

Because, he told the cops, Ever since he told Carrie she couldn't move in with him? Only eight days it followed. She'd been making his life miserable, refusing to answer his calls, responding to text messages with a non-stop staccato of angry, often misspelled messages in return. Carrie.

Now, that name, just like the old movie about the possessed prom queen from the 1970s. It sounded like Dave's personal horror show. So this is the woman from hell now? All of a sudden. Yeah. Or in the course of a couple of hours. Wow.

I'm Keith Morrison, and this is something about Carrie, a podcast from Baitline. Episode 2, Bait and Switch. Dave Krupa hadn't seen Carrie since the morning he left her at his place, eight days before, as he told those cops with their policeman eyes. Hey, man, I don't know where she's at, but I've got not to do with it. It's, yeah. I'm backpedaling as fast as I can. I don't know where she's at.

And I don't want to know where she's at that point. I just want her to go away. And to back up his claim, Dave said he had nothing to hide, showed detectives his cell phone, showed them all the texts and emails. Carrie had said him. Do you think they believed you when you said you didn't know where she was? I'm 100% they believe me.

And then, the strangest thing. One of the detectives' phones. lit up. It was a text to the cop from Kerry. We had a voice actor read the messages from Carrie. I would really appreciate if you could leave Dave Krupa out of it. What in heaven's name was going on. So what was a cop to do in this bizarre world? Reply, of course. So he typed out these words. Here's Corporal Ryan Avis. We can't stop looking into it. We can't stop looking into it. we need to locate you in the missing person, and the tree won't be taken out until someone talks you in person

to where we know you are okay. Did she respond to that? She said it was pointless. She didn't want to be found. Exactly. And then, another text, more ominous this time. I want one person to go away for destroying everything for me. Twilight Zone material.

But who? Who did she want to go away? The only thing Dave could figure was that woman who'd awkwardly showed up the night Carrie first went to Dave's place. For some reason, Carrie seemed to be blaming her for interfering somehow. Who was it? So I'd go out to the security door, and there's Liz. The woman was Liz Gawleyer. Remember her?

She's the check-writing, furniture-buying woman who told police where to find Dave. Except Liz swore up and down to police, she never wrote such a check. In fact, she said somebody stole her checkbook, and so the thief must have written it. Kind of made sense to police. Carrie, perhaps in the throes of a mental health crisis, steals Liz's checkbook, and then forges a check for five grand just to mess with the woman who once shared a bed with Dave Kruber. But that wasn't the only way Carrie messed with her, said Liz. When she went out to her garage to a car, she found, scrawled on the wall, the words,

whore from Dave. Well, that sealed it. It had to have been carry, all of it. Detectives are used to strange things. But this, though, this was among the strangest of all. Detectives Doty and Avis. Very out of ordinary. Yeah, like maybe she'd had to be.

a breakdown or something, a psychotic episode. That would be the only answer. Ten days after Carrie's disappearance, Liz filed a police report in Omaha, and that meant Carrie Farber was now a suspected stalker. But the stalking or harassment, whatever it was, didn't stop. It got worse. Dave told police that graffiti was sprayed on his car and on his place of work, his garage. But like all my employees knew all about it and kept a vigilant watch for Carrie around the shop and around the parking lot and the bar next door, they all had a description of her and knew who she was and the tobacco shop next to them and my apartment managers where I lived and the maintenance guys, everybody had their eyes open.

Because these texts and emails were getting much more vicious and threatening all the time. Yeah. And at the apartment complex, I lost two or three. windows and frankly they're tired of paying for them. Really? So smash windows more than once? Oh yes. Yeah. What was it like to come on and find that? I mean, would she leave a note or something? Or it just...

I would get a text or an email that said, ha ha, I did this with a picture of what happened. But back home, across the Missouri River from Omaha in Pottawatabee County, Iowa, Carrie was still just missing. And her family was very worried. Carrie's mother heard about the threatening texts, the harassment, the police report filed against her daughter, didn't sound like her Carrie, unless Carrie had some sort of psychotic break.

Nancy's protective instinct had her doubting everybody. I got a little callous towards the authorities, thinking that I didn't think they were doing quite as what they should have been doing. Did you get the feeling you just want to get in there and stormed the barricades? and make something happen. Yeah. But again, I didn't know how much I could do, and I didn't know where to start.

By that time, it had been almost two weeks since I seen Carrie. Thanksgiving was a day away. When Nancy sent her a message on Facebook, she invited Carrie to be at the usual big family dinner. She wrote this, I've got a roast in the crock pot, and we will eat about six.

We're going to dads for thanks a day. Thanksgiving and eating about noon or one. We love you, Carrie. But Carrie didn't respond to that one. Didn't show up for Thanksgiving dinner either. And then just a couple of weeks later, Nancy's ex-husband, Carrie's father, died of cancer. Carrie didn't attend the funeral. Instead, she apologized on Facebook.

I am so sorry I missed the funeral. And also made another bizarre post. on Facebook. Dave Krupa proposed to me. I said yes. What in heaven's name was going on? Nancy once again called the Pottawatomie County, Iowa Sheriff's Office. And after that, detectives called Dave.

Here is that phone call. Dave, have you heard any more about what's going on with Kerry or anything? Well, she's been steady texting and email and whatnot this whole time. Okay. She's letting everybody know that you guys are engaged now. Are you guys getting married? No, hello. I saw it on Facebook, too.

Okay. But you've still been getting text messages and stuff from her? Oh, yeah. Okay. So I try to talk to her a little bit. And 8-10 email or 8-10 text messages later gets crazy, dude. Okay. And I won't talk to her for a couple of days and I'll start over.

In fact, Dave said the hail of texts and emails seem to be getting thicker. I would get 50, 60 a day. A day? Oh, yeah. Yeah, all day long. At one point, rendered my phone completely useless. It would just be digging so much I couldn't answer a phone or send a text. But you want to change your phone number, wouldn't it?

I did that a couple of times. You did? And they still kept coming. They did? Dave did see moments of clarity, though. Occasionally, Kerry's text seemed... almost normal. I know I ruined it.

I tell myself, don't be crazy, this guy was nice to you, but something takes over. But mostly, the emails and text messages were angry rants about perceived romantic rivals,

one in particular, Liz Gawleyer. She is a whore. You shouldn't be with someone like that. I hope we can see each other soon. Really, Dave thought. See each other? Like everything was just,

normal again? Then Dave's confusion only deepened when he started noticing something else. Very creepy. Carrie seemed to be watching his every move. It was very common for me to get messages, emails from whatever, I say, oh, I see you through your window, you're doing this, and I'd go, I am doing this. Okay, great. And I'd haul a ass outside and go looking for somebody, because somebody knows what I'm doing. Even more disturbing. Carrie messaged Dave that she had taken his extra apartment key and had been letting herself in when he wasn't there. Liz got unsettling emails too.

I'm out in your garage, so what should I do to your car? I see my handiwork is still on the wall. Included with that email? A photo of Liz's car to prove Carrie was there. And then things felt really bizarre, because in a text message to Dave, Carrie claimed that she had up the ante now by actually kidnapping Liz. You will do exactly as I say, and then I will let her go. Do it or say goodbye to her.

And there was another photo, too. A woman bound with ropes. You couldn't really see her face, but was that, Liz? Dave didn't believe it. But I had told her BS, that's crock of crap, I don't believe you, go away, leave me alone. But no. Instead, she texted she was moving to an apartment building near Dave's place. Yes, a couple buildings away. Why does that bother you? I'm only doing month to month until I find something else. Dave told the cops, of course. They went looking for Carrie. And the building number was correct, but the apartment number did not exist. So what was she up to? Carrie was still nowhere to be found.

But near the apartment complex, Dave found something that, Wonder of Wonders, he knew belonged to Carrie. It was Christmas 2012, six weeks after Carrie Farver vanished, to parts unknown. Back in Macedonia, Iowa, Carrie's now 15-year-old son, Max, had watched his birthday come and go without a peep from his mom, and now was spending the holidays with his grandmother, watching the snow gather an ever-higher piles

and wishing with all his heart that his mom would just walk back through the door and end the torture. What was it like at Christmas time about it? That was hard. That was hard. Christmas had once been a magical time of year for Max here in Macedonia,

a celebration of his amazing bond with his mother, of little things like their family's gift-opening traditions. At our house, instead of everyone just kind of going at once, we go by age and do rounds at Christmas. And just going from me to grandma just seemed wrong. Well, it was wrong. And you kind of had to bottle it up, didn't you? Kind of. It was heartbreaking, too, for Carrie's mom, Max's grandma, Nancy.

And of course, she was worried, very worried about Max. He didn't show his emotion too much to me. because he knew that I was... You were worried. I was really worried. But I found out from his girlfriend's mother that he would go over to her house after school and stuff to his girlfriend's house.

And her mother told me that he did a lot of crying at their house. That bothered me, of course. Also bothered on kicking himself daily for ever hearing the name Carrie Farver, Dave Krupa. He, the last person she saw before all the madness, he was still getting text messages from her, texts that were driving Dave crazy.

The blizzards hitting Omaha as fall slid into winter were nothing in comparison. And worse, said Dave, the skin-crawling feeling that Carrie was stalking him, spying on him. It was always like a ghost when he looked she was gone. And then one day, January 2013, about two months after Carrie was last seen. Dave was making the short drive from work to home in West Omaha.

I'm coming through the parking lot, and I noticed the truck there because it still had all the snow on it. And when I got up close, I'm like, oh, it's an explorer. Oh, it's the right color. So I called the sheriff and said, I'm pretty sure I found her truck. He had, all right. It was Carrie's SUV. The black one she brought in for him to fix when the two locked eyes for the first time.

The one Carrie's mom had reported stolen when she made the missing person report. Somehow, everyone who'd been looking for Carrie had missed her Ford Explorer. Covered by snow, as it was, bought a Wadami County Sheriff's Office, Sergeant Jim Doty. They impounded it. We had a crime scene tech, process it, and it was really clean. They did a thorough investigation. Yeah, they dusted it for prints, and they found a fingerprint inside and recovered that. That fingerprint was found on a mint container in the cup holder of the SUV.

They ran the prints through the national database. They didn't get a hit, though. Then, as winter turned to spring, in April, now five months after the craziness with Kerry began, there was a sudden bit of hope. It started with another text by Kerry, today. She texted me saying, you know, she had nowhere to go. She's homeless. She has no money.

She's downtown at a shelter. Can somebody please, oh, can you call my mom and tell her I'm here and come get me? And I'm, I didn't respond for quite a while, an hour or two, I think, because I thought it's just more crap. Finally, I thought, well, if I don't respond, then what kind of person am I? You know, maybe she's finally ready to come in. And, you know, I don't want to be the reason something bad happens. Nancy's phone rang. Terry was at this homeless shelter in Omaha and that we were to go pick her up.

What was happening in here when you were? Oh, it just flutters. I mean, my heart was just racing like crazy. The shelter was about an hour away. Nancy, who hadn't seen her daughter or heard her voice for close to half a year, was too wrought up to drive, so she asked her brother to take her. Oh, I was so tense, and it was just, you know,

trying to catch your breath and just... Did you rehearse what you'd say? Well, she saw her. Oh, where have you been? Yeah, and I, you know, I don't care where you've been to your home. A sheriff's detective met Nancy at the shelter. He had a photo of Carrie with him. The investigator went into the...

shelter and showed the picture and wanted to know if there had been anybody there like her. And they said, no, she hasn't been here. What's that like? Well, then, you know, then your hopes are dashed again. You just think, where can she be? There's a feeling that comes with realizing you're on a wild guest chase. Yes. I went home and I thought, I can't live with this anymore. This is just too much. Nancy sat down and sent a message to Carrie saying, they came to the shelter. to find her, but where was she? No response. But, not long after,

Kerry wrote this post on Facebook. I am a grown woman, and if I feel like leaving home, I have the right. I ask my son Max to come with me, but you didn't want to. So when I am ready to come back home, I will. I love you all very much, but I need time still to sort things out. Almost rational. If a little defensive,

At least it was more like the old Carrie, her mom knew. But then, well then there were more posts like this one. Liz is the hoe that took my boyfriend away for me. Nancy's mind was skittering in every direction like a game of marvels. What if Carrie's disappearance was not what it seemed to be? What if she was being held by a kidnapper? What if somebody stole her identity? Nancy, she was desperate for answers.

asked investigators about that very possibility. And they said, yeah, well, we'll check it out, you know, that kind of thing. They said they did, but nothing came of it. And every time something would pop up online or we'd get a text or something, there was this hope that maybe she's still out there. And maybe one day soon she'd walk back in the door and explain everything. But month after month, Month after month, she didn't.

The detective seemed to have run out of new avenues to investigate, and the case grew cold. As for Carrie's teenage son, Max, he was tired of waiting. He was about to do something on his own to find the answer. Max Farber and his grandmother, Nancy, were trapped in this constant anxiety, week after week after week, helpless to do anything at all but worry.

They were expected, somehow. to go on day after day as if the more mundane things of life mattered anymore at all, the way they used to. A Herculean endeavor for a high school freshman in the spring of 2013. We knew we couldn't do anything about it, so we just kind of let it run its course and hope for the best. Carrie had been gone for half a year from their historic farmhouse in Little Macedonia, Iowa. When one day, Max Farver opened his Facebook account,

out and his stomach flipped. There was a message, a name really, that was all. And it had to be from her. That kind of got to me because the Facebook called me, the message called me Short Round, which my mom would use the nickname Short Round and Short Cake for me, just well until I got to her height, but that's what she used to call me.

And that's what it said in the Facebook Post. Yeah. So that kind of got to me. at first. So, I didn't reply for a couple days in that one. Yeah. But then Max summoned up all his nerve and tried something. He pulled out Facebook, then Messenger, found his mom's page,

and sent her a one-word message. All it said was, hi. And then he waited. Waited for hours. No answer. It wasn't until the following day that he opened it up again and there it was. Hey, little man, how are you?

Max took a deep breath, tried to tamp down panic. She had never used that nickname for him before, Little Man. So what do that mean? He waited, paralyzed, couldn't think, couldn't do much of anything. And then finally, 12 days later, Max messaged her back. The time had come to know, was this taunting online presence actually his mother?

So Max wrote that he had three questions. First question, what was his middle name? Simple enough, nearly anyone could find that out. Second question, what was the name of the first boxer he and his mom had raised? Boxer as in dog. Things only she would know. Yeah, things only she would know. And finally, Max asked his mom to name his best friend

when he was a little kid. He hit send. And then. And what was her response? Nothing. I never got a response to that one. But what did that mean? That she didn't know the answers?

That she didn't want to play Max's little game? He was maddening, demoralizing, certainly for Max and his grandmother. But the Long and fruitless investigation had warned down Carrie's longtime friends, too. Like Amy Long. We shared everything. Amy met Carrie in high school. They'd been fast friends for more than 20 years. She was the one person that I was never afraid to share my secrets with, and she was the same with me.

We'd laugh together, we'd cry together. unconditional love and support. And so during those months when Carrie was missing, Amy tried everything to get Carrie to talk to her. I'd send messages to Carrie's cell phone. I'd send her Facebook messages. And most of the time I didn't get a response. Every now and then there would be a response

that would say, I'm taking a break right now. Don't worry. I just need my time right now. But was that Carrie's decision? Or was it some controlling guy pulling her strings? Amy knew that Carrie sometimes used dating websites to meet men. They had talked about that. She'd warned Carrie.

Carrie sometimes didn't listen, which raised all kinds of very unpleasant possibilities. I was always afraid that she was going to come across the wrong person. Dating websites have always scared me. But what Amy and other friends didn't know was that the man Carrie had actually met on that dating site, Dave Krupa, had cooperated with police in every conceivable way. And in fact, David had become a victim himself. He had been sent dozens of harassing texts and emails every day.

He was being watched. He had been sent photos to prove it. Woke up one morning to find a message scratched on his car in huge letters. Dave loves fat whores. There was no doubt who did it, because Carrie took credit in an email. I keyed your fucking car.

Let people know you like fat horrors. Gary followed that up with... I should cut your heart out like you did to me. In the months since Gary disappeared and started this untethered behavior, Dave, the easygoing car mechanic from Omaha, and become a bundle of nerves. What did that do to you personally?

Locked me down socially. I would certainly not go out of my way to talk to people in general because I didn't know who was going to be who knew her. For all I know, I go have a drink at the bar and I'm talking to you and you're fronting for Kerry and getting my information or whatever. And, you know, I was exceptionally paranoid. I was looking around every corner, you know. Drinking more?

Yeah, for a while there, I was drinking heavily, which is not me. There's never been a time in my life where I was a real drinker, and I spent... Did your weight change? Did your weight change? I gained 30 pounds, 35 pounds? Oh, my God. In about three months. I was drinking until I, until the bar closed and going to work at 6 o'clock in the morning.

Wow. There was, however, one habit that Dave continued, despite his experience with Kerry, he was still casting about for dates on those dating sites, where he found a woman named Angela Manor. Within a day or two of meeting online, Dave and Angela became friends on Facebook. And that is when the harassment started. In Facebook messages from, as she could clearly see, Carrie Farver to Angela.

Blocking the person who was sending them to me was not working, she would just make new accounts. And from those accounts, threats to Angela's young children. I had to talk to my oldest son about safety. He was no longer allowed to walk to and from the bus stop by himself. I lost a lot of sleep. If Dave came with that kind of baggage, Angela felt she had no choice. And then within that same day of me unfriending Dave on Facebook, the messages stopped.

Just like that. The strangest part, Angela endured all this and never once met Dave Krupa in person. But Angela was not one of Kerry's primary targets. That person is someone you've met before, someone who knew all about harassment. Oh, we'd spend hours talking about it, showing each other texts and emails we got. Who else would understand, right? Exactly, nobody else did understand. But understand what was going to have.

What happened next? Unlikely. Very unlikely. Coming up in future episodes of Something About Carrie. The first time I was briefed on this case, my first impression was this is the story for a made-for-TV movie. 911, do you need police, fire or medics? Fire. I just walked into my house and there's smoke rolling out of it. It was basically arson 101. People do things like that? And in our line of work, we're never surprised by what people can do. It sounds like you're in the middle of a horror movie or something. Yeah.

Did it feel that way? A little bit, yeah. I was blown away. Absolutely blown away. I didn't know what to think. He felt like the rug got pulled out from underneath them. I'd say that's probably pretty close, so literally true. Something About Carrie is a production of Dateline and NBC News.

Shane Bishop and Jessica DeVera Lapid are the producers. Brian Drew, Marshall Housefeld, and Greg Smith are audio editors. Brittany Morris is field producer. Molly DeRosa is assistant producer. Adam Gorphine is co-executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Rich Cutler.