Dateline Originals - Something About Cari - Ep. 3: The Circle Expands

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

After Dave and Liz break up, a suspicious fire erupts at her home. She blames the mother of Dave’s children not only for the blaze, but also for all those disturbing texts and messages she’d gotten over the years. This episode originally published on December 9, 2025. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There's a proverb you've heard before, that one about the relationship between smoke and fire? As in where there's the one, the other has been busy burning something, or soon will be. And in our story, investigators believe that by the late summer of 2013, for nine months, Carrie Farver had been, metaphorically speaking, arranging the kindling, flicking a lighter, as she escalated her attacks on Dave Krupa and Liz. Gullier. And so on Saturday, August 17, 2013, at 8.14 a.m. in West Omaha, was it really any surprise? I'm wondering, police, fire, or medics? On fire, I just walked into my house, and

there's smoke rolling out of it. Somebody said Liz Gawleyer's house on fire. I don't smell any fire, but there's smoke in there. Ma'am, if there's smoke in your house, then we don't want you to go back in there. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Something About Carrie, a podcast from Dateline. Episode 3, The Circle Expans. Within minutes, the fire trucks descended on Liz's house. What's called a raised ranch, a main floor with a basement and an attached garage.

Retired Omaha Fire Department Battalion Commander Shane McClanahan was on the scene, shortly after the first units arrived. They advised me that as they entered the structure, they had what they described as a cold scene, which means there was no active fire. So they did not use any water. They did not have to do any or perform any extinguishment activities since there was no active fire. In plain English, then, the fire itself had gone out, leaving the house damaged but standing. It was just smoke now, lots of it.

and one very upset woman standing outside. Liz, that is, who picked up her phone again and called, well, who else? Dave. She was standing in the street with the fire department going to her house on a Saturday morning, and I was at work, and she called me freaking out, my house burned down. Oh, my God, it's that crazy person, Cherry stalking me again. And then fire commander Shane McClennahan found Liz,

and she told him the whole story. or tried to all rapid fire anxiety. She appeared distraught, concerned. She was telling me almost immediately upon coming up on this, you know, that she's been having problems with an individual, Carrie Farver, and that the Omaha Police Department was currently working, basically a destruction of property of vandalism case against her, and that she believed this is who started the fire at her house.

Well, we'll see, thought McClanahan. It was his job, after all, to determine how the fire started and, if necessary, who said it. And he knew his business well. He had 20-plus years of experience, finding the cause of fires. Still, the first step was to pay careful attention to whatever Liz could tell him, which was this. Liz said she was moving out of that house.

The day before the fire, the Friday, she carted out boxes and furniture and this and that, but darkness fell and she was far from done. So she and her kids bunked in at a friend's place. And then, Saturday morning, said Liz, she returned to the house to finish the move. She went up to the door, opened it, and encountered the smoke,

and called 911. So after getting those details, LeClanahan stepped inside to take a look around. There was no thermal damage or where there had been any active fire on the main floor, just a heavy soot layer, indicating that, you know, this fire had been extinguished for some time and had cooled.

But then he saw some things in the living room didn't seem to belong in such a place. a red gas can and a container lighter fluid. Obviously, that is not a normal place to find either gasoline, lighter fluid, right? So, alerted to possibilities, he continued his tour. I made my way down the stairs to the basement, and that's where I encountered my first actual thermal damage to the There was a burn pattern to a couple of stairs down towards the bottom of the run of stairs leading to the basement. Now we're getting somewhere, the fire marshal thought.

It was basically arson 101, multiple points of origin with no clear scientific reason of heat transfer and movement of fire, natural movement of fire that would explain how these multiple points would have come naturally. And as he made his way toward what he believed were the fire's points of origin, he confirmed what colleagues had already told him that the fire had been deadly. They did advise that there were pets in the basement that had succumbed to the fire conditions. Specifically, two dogs that Liz had left in a kennel and a cat and a snake. All had died of smoke inhalation. It was awful. Now, McLeanahan called in dogs of his own,

especially trained canine unit. These canines are trained to sniff out hydrocarbons, so gasoline, carousine, charcoal fluid. With this case, knowing that it was high probability, this was an arson, I wanted to use the canine to get a more precise sample collection, which we did. And sure enough, the samples' proved that the fire was set with ignitable liquids in six different spots in the basement.

A little bit later, Omaha Police Detective Chris LaGroe showed up. He'd been looking into the stalking and harassment incidents that Liz and Dave had reported. He wanted to survey the damage himself. The inside of the house was pretty charred and, you know, burned. It was serious. It was no damage. It's sufficient, yes. It really could have ended up burning down the house.

but just didn't quite get to that point. Why was that? Well, it looked like a job done by an amateur fire bug. Whoever set the fire left all the windows closed in the basement, ensuring that the fire would be starved of oxygen and thus unable to consume the entire house. As for who set the fire, neighbors across the street said they saw a woman in a car

parked outside Liz's house a few weeks before the fire. Detective Legrow showed them a photo of Carrie. The neighbor said they couldn't be sure, but said she had the same general appearance as the photo. And then further investigation turned up an email to Dave Krupa from Carrie, an email that left no doubt about who must have done it, and that Liz was the target.

We had a voice actor read the email. Nasty whore. Dave doesn't want you talking to him anymore. He wants to be with me. We're trying a new relationship. We have had sex recently. He loves me and always will. He doesn't want you back, you nasty, fat whore, Liz.

Hope you and your kids burn to death. And when the detective saw that? Once you get into situations like arson or threats to an individual's life or those around them, their children, the ex-boyfriend, Yeah. Certainly, you're going to take that much more serious.

Suddenly, the case against Kerry looked very serious indeed. But like smoke from the fire, she had vanished into thin air. What I did was try and find some way of seeing if somebody saw her. And again came up with nothing. Over and over again, nothing. But that nothing was, before long, about to turn into something even more violent, more threatening, more dangerous. It's as natural as breathing.

More. It's the reason we've survived all these millennia. We and every other species on the planet from garden slug on up. Provado aside, our instinctive response to danger is to flee. Get the heck out of there. So soon after firefighters left the blackened remains of her raised ranch home, that traumatic August morning, Liz gathered up her children and her most important worldly possessions and headed east out of Omaha across the Mormon Pioneer Memorial Bridge over the Missouri River

and into the city of Council Bluffs, Iowa. After all, the terror, the constant threats, the accusations, then the fire that could easily have killed her and her kids and did kill her pets, Liz needed to call in a favor. She needed help. And of all of her, friends, she knew there was one, one man who would do just about anything for Liz Gullier. One man she could move in with. He was an ex-boyfriend. Sort of guy who would keep the light on for you. His name was Todd Butterbaugh. I think we just kind of got long. That's Todd, big-hearted Dodd, very open, very accommodating. His past with Liz had never been one of those intense, I'll love you forever relationships, but they did live together once, a couple of years prior, for a little while.

So if Liz needed a safe space while she navigated some temporary troubles, when he was the guy who could happily provide it, then no, he didn't need a big, messy explanation. Anyway, maybe something would happen between them? Maybe. I hadn't been in a relationship for a while, so it was just, I can't say there was, like, chemistry or anything like that, but... No, turned out there wasn't. They were more like roommates, really. Didn't even see each other all that much. Todd's IT job kept him away, daytimes.

And Liz worked odd hours, a lot of evenings, trying, as she told Todd, to get her own cleaning business up and running. So she was pretty involved with that. Most of the time. And a lot of the times, according to her, most of her jobs were they could be any time. Even overnight, construction sites would hire her to come in and clean up apartments. They'd just build or something like that. So the hour is always varied. Did she take advantage?

Well, maybe. Well, she worked. Todd stayed home with her kids, built-in babysitter. I'd watch them because she had to work overnight. I'd want to leave them home alone or something. Todd loaned Liz money helped buy her cars and insurance

gave her gas money but you can't force love you can't buy it either and if Todd hoped his help would lead to something more exciting and permanent with Liz be hoped in vain there were some good times when we hung out

and stuff for the most part she would stay downstairs in her room or in the basement the kids would usually be upstairs with me watching TV or playing video games or something like that. Why was Liz standoffish? Why couldn't she just relax and enjoy Todd's company? Maybe because she hadn't told Todd everything.

All he really knew was that this woman he cared for needed help. He had no idea then that Liz had apparently been stalked for the better part of a year. Harassed, her cars vandalized, her children threatened, her home burned. Her pets murdered by a specter. Todd didn't know all about Carrie Farver. But he'd had hints. Like the one a few months before, long before the fire. What happened?

It was another one of those times Liz needed a little help with her kids, and she knew she could count on Mr. accommodating, her friend Todd Butterbaugh. She was going to work, so I was going to watch him, so typically, when that happens, read order like pizza. And that's what something odd happened. Oh, the pizza guy showed up all right, and he seemed regular enough until he opened his mouth. He kept remarking on the TV how nice it was and stuff like that.

So, of course, the next day, when it goes missing, that was our first thought. That thought being that the pizza guy must have returned the next morning when the kids were at school and both Liz and Todd were out. and made off of the TV and Todd's laptop, by the way, and a bunch of electronic gear, too. Todd called 911, reported the burglary,

but nothing came of it. So, yes, Trouble continued to follow Liz. Trouble, she told the police, if not Todd Butterbaugh, that had to be caused by a nemesis named Carrie Farver. Meanwhile, back across the board, in Omaha, Carrie's harassment left Dave Krupa existing, existing barely in a permanent state of

hypervigilance, felt like he was hanging onto a tripwire. After month upon month of threats and texts and emails and bricks being thrown through his windows and graffiti splashed on his shop and his car. Dave was on overload. That Carrie woman was driving him mad. It had even escalated to this point. Dave had two children who lived over in Iowa with their mom, and Carrie had threatened them. And when Dave's ex found out about that, she refused to let the kids cross the river into Omaha

to visit Dave because of Carrie's threats. What did she say when she threatened your kids, for example? Oh, well, something along the line is slit your children's throats. Wow. Yeah, that's pretty hard to read. And you bought a gun? Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Why? For my safety, my children's safety, for just protection in general. All Dave Krupa wanted to do was escape Carrie. And finally, two years into the unrelenting nightmare he did. Or tried to certainly didn't mean to make it worse. Dave followed in Liz's footsteps and essentially fled, moved across the river from Omaha to council.

Bluffs, which had the added benefit of getting him more time with his kids. But that meant that Dave Krupa would, of course, also spend some time in the presence of the mother of his two children. Her name was Amy, Amy Flora. And Amy was about to find out what life was like in Carrie's crosshairs. I'm a single mom trying to raise two kids and work and provide for them, and then I have some crazy persons sending me all these messes. You know, threatening my kids, telling me they're watching me.

It was scary. There had been a time when all Amy Flora wanted was to be the only woman in Dave Krupa's life. Sure, he could be a little stoic, a little lockdown emotionally. But Amy and Dave had met while they were both in their 20s, working at a truck stop. She a pretty petite, blonde waitress and Dave a mechanic, and they'd fallen in love, had two babies. and moved to Wisconsin together. But then Amy wanted to return to Iowa to be closer to her family.

And Dave just wasn't on board. He eventually followed, but he didn't want to be tied down in a relationship. I didn't want to split our family up or whatever. And, I mean, after 12 years, you would think there would be some kind of a proposal or something, but he's kind of emotionless. He really didn't want to get married.

No. And I wanted to eventually be married, you know. I mean, every girl does. Everybody wants their fairy tale wedding. Sure. We had two kids together for the second. You'd live together for over a decade. Right.

Kind of makes sense. Well, you would think so, yeah. Yeah. But that's, I think, kind of a lot of the reason why we both wanted different things. And I, you know, part of it was I wanted to come home. And we were, our relationship wasn't going to go any further than, you know, just being his girlfriend and not getting married or whatever. Still, even after the split, Amy thought the world of Dave,

especially as a father, he was solid, caring, kind, generous. Even so, Amy didn't regret her decision to keep the kids out of Omaha, even if it meant they couldn't spend overnights with their father. But now with his decision to move to Council Bluffs, everything should have been just fine. So Amy relaxed the rules. The kids were happier. Steve seemed happier and she, well, it was good to see Dave again.

Or it was until Carrie found out. And the text messages started coming. I started getting threats to me. I guess she felt threatened by our relationship. So she would tell me that Dave wasn't going to be with me or the whore Liz. Just, I mean, it was crazy. It's hard to remember because there were so many of them. How many did you get?

I would get 50, 60 a day just while I was at work. For how long? Over a period of several months until I finally changed my phone number. And then it would stop for a while. And then somehow... She phoned your number? I changed my phone number, yeah. But, I mean, she found out what the new one was.

Every time she found a new phone number. I guess I was kind of scared because I don't know how she got my number. And surprised, or she said? Yeah, and surprised. like I didn't understand how she got my number. I just changed it, you know, for the fact that she was sending all these messages to me. What did you do to protect your own safety?

Well, after things escalated after a while, I'd have to have managers or other employees walk me out to my car or watch me walk to my car to make sure I got into it. I would have neighbors make sure that I got home okay. They'd be watching for me to come home. I'd text them and tell them I was on my way home. I had friends follow me home at one point to make sure that I got home okay. Yeah, I was constantly looking over my shoulder.

Why did you think Carrie was targeting you? I think because of Dave and I's relationship. The fact that you had a continuing friendship. Yes. Huh. Just that. I mean, you had no intention of becoming more romantic with him, right? No.

No, not at all. But she just didn't want you to be anywhere near. No. I don't think she wanted me to be part of his life. A few miles from Amy's place, multiple law enforcement agencies were working on various aspects of the investigation of the whole Carrie affair. But those agencies were not always in sync. At the Potta Watamie County, Iowa Sheriff's Office, the missing person's investigation of Carrie Farver was by then more office-chatter than active case, but office chatter. is sometimes a good thing. Because that's how Detective Sergeant Jim Doty

and Corporal Ryan Avis got hooked on Kerry. We'd heard some stuff, you know, just, you know, water cooler talk, I guess, about the case. And it was something that... You got this strange, crazy woman. Yeah, it was interesting. It piqued her interests. And so we requested to take a look at it.

That was nearly two and a half years after Carrie's reign of terror began. The file was huge by then. A bizarre, digital house of... mirrors. And so, Detective Doty and Avis came up with a plan. It began with a question. It was so counterintuitive that turned the entire investigation on its head, one that police had never really asked before, though Carrie's family certainly had. Was Carrie Farver really the vengeful woman she seemed to be? Or did she even exist? Detective Doty. I thought the smart idea was not to have tunnel vision on any direction.

So Ryan worked it as if Kerry's still alive. And he was going to work it until he came to a dead end. I was going to work it like she was not alive. Because there's things that would lead us to maybe both conclusions. You know, she's still active and sending text messages, sending pictures. Certainly seemed to lie. So maybe she's alive, but she's also missed so many significant events and hadn't physically been seen by anybody.

So there's stuff that would lead us down both paths. So we didn't want to have tunnel vision down one. So each of us took one. And we started from scratch for reading... Reviewing all the old material. Reading all the reports. Listen to any interviews that had been recorded, just diving in. Of course, they'd spoken to Dave Krupa.

No doubt in Dave's mind, Kerry was very much alive and totally crazy. He was transparent. He gave us access to his whole email account. 11,000 emails that he had saved over the years, ish, could be more. Wow. But that wasn't all they had. Right there in the file was a wholesale dump of material from Liz Gawyer's cell phone.

Because, it turned out, she and Dave had allowed all the data to be offloaded from their phones more than two years before. So the detectives had been learning quite a lot about both Dave and Liz. They'd been immersed in all that for months, but hadn't interviewed Liz yet. And purely by chance, they were in the sheriff's office one day when they ran into, or just guess. I was in the hallway talking with a county attorney, and another investigator was walking down the hall with Liz to his office. Wow.

And to me, it was like I saw a famous person, because, because I knew everything about her, and she was there to file a harassment report. But, this was odd. Liz's complaint was not against Carrie. She was at the Sheriff's Office to file a harassment report against someone else. Someone you've met.

Amy Flora? That's the mother of Dave's children. Wait, Amy? Not Carrie? First, Detective Davis did a kind of psychic double-take, and then he asked if he could be the one to interview Liz. And his superior said, yes, yes, he could sit down with Liz. Are you going one home?

Yeah. The interview started slowly, with the detective doing his best imitation of the famous TV detective Columbo, in other words, playing dumb. Who's your sports club? Big Cuba. D-U-B-A-8. And she has kids with Amy for him. Liz told the detective that her on-again, off-again relationship with Dave was off again.

But she said that ever since their most recent split, Dave's ex, Amy, had been stalking her on Facebook. And Liz said she was very worried because... Tommy mentioned age and grown up, his partner has broke me in tune. It's got a little stalk. So I told the group off, so I was kind of worried that, that she had key to his part rent. The detective checked, and sure enough, Liz was right. Dave Krupa did report his guns stolen the previous week.

But then, Liz told detectives, she'd recently had a eureka moment, as in she suddenly realized that she and Dave had both been played for fools. For three years, Liz believed that Carrie Farber was the woman behind all the threat, threatening messages, the harassing graffiti, the deadly fire that killed Liz's pets. But suddenly it was like a light went on, said Liz. It wasn't Carrie at all. That scary, awful, online villainous, the woman responsible for all the trouble, was just impersonating Carrie.

The real culprit, Liz said, had to be Dave's ex, the mother of his children, Amy Flora. Diabolical. But think about it, Liz said. Amy was the one who so desperately wanted Dave, and she had the motive, much more so than the woman named Carrie. Like I said, they only dated for two weeks, and I don't understand why a person would still be stalking him

almost three years later. Carrie and Dave dated for two weeks? Mm-hmm. And she... Supposedly the one stalking for three years. I would find it more reasonable to be. believe that had kicked on. Detective Avis took some notes, told Liz he'd do what he could to help her out.

But the very next day, the case would take a turn that was, well, call it the beginning of the end of the vanishing of Kerry Farmer and the start of something altogether different and very devious. Coming up in future episodes of Something About. Carrie. I've been shot in the leg. A female stuck a gun to her back, told her to get on the ground, and then shot her in the leg, and then ran off.

All I can remember is the detective just kept yelling at me, telling me, there's something you need to tell us, and I didn't know anything. 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 Sennie. 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.