Dateline Originals - Something About Cari - Ep. 6: Something… About Liz

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

A trial. A verdict. And we uncover details that raise questions about a death in Liz’s past. This episode originally published on December 18, 2025. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It has to be said, Liz Gawleyer was a fortunate woman, leaving aside, of course, the raw fact of having been charged with murdering Carrie Farber. Oh, and of trying to burn her own house down. No, her good fortune came in the person of a brilliant, charismatic, and highly regarded defense attorney named James Martin Davis. One of the preeminent attorneys in all the Midwest, according to the people who judge these things. Gone from us now, sadly. He died in 2021, heart attack, right there in the courthouse. But when Liz Gawleyer went on trial, vilified as she was by trial time, Martin was all in.

And maybe the most dangerous place around was between him and a TV camera when he stood up for Liz, as he did here, before the judge in court. I know they've got all this bizarre behavior, and they've got all this circumstantial evidence, but it doesn't show my client on that day in this jurisdiction took a knife and stabbed Kerry Farber to death. Savvy as he was, he'd recommended, and Liz agreed, that she be tried by judge alone.

No jury. Figured a jury might get caught up in the emotions stirred by Liz's long, devious campaign. But a judge? A judge would adhere to the facts and the law. And the facts before the court? Well, there wasn't even a body, was there? And for that matter, said James Martin Davis.

No case. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Something About Carrie, a podcast from Dateline. Episode 6, something about Liz. James Martin Davis seemed to revel in the defense of unpopular people. He'd made his considerable reputation that way. Everybody, no matter how nasty people might think they are, deserves a robust defense. And in the case of Liz Gawyer,

you might not like her, said Davis to the judge, but liking, or the lack of it, was quite irrelevant. Facts were what mattered. And this case, he said, was little more than speculation. You may have smart cards and you may have phones, but you don't have a body and you don't have a cause of death. from a medical examiner. What we have is their belief, their speculation, their notion that this is what happens.

That can't convict. One by one, he questioned the main players. You've already met them, of course. Carrie's mom, Nancy Farber. Carrie's brief boyfriend, Dave Krupa. Dave's ex, the mother of his children, Amy Flora. The hoodwinked, the victimized. Oh, so callously.

Fooled. Attorney Davis looked them all in the eye and put them on the spot about the alleged murder of Carrie Farver. Here's Davis questioning Dave Krupa about Liz. And she never told you she was going to assault Carrie Farber, did she? No. You don't have any first-end knowledge about what happened to Carrie Farber back in November or December any time thereafter, do you? Nope. And so it went, one after the other. Here's Davis sowing doubt as he questions Amy Flora. You don't have any first-dad knowledge that Carrie was killed or assaulted at all, right? No, I don't.

And if she was, it took place on any of those dates, right? Right. But what about that deleted photo found on an SD card once used in Liz's cell phone? The one that prosecutor said showed a decomposing human foot bearing a tattoo of a Chinese symbol, just like the tattoo Carrie Farver had on her foot, how in the world would Liz's defense explain that? Well, in the same sort of way. Even if you assume it's her foot

that doesn't tell us the cause of death, it doesn't tell us the manner of death, it doesn't tell any of us that Liz Goehler caused this death, it doesn't prove whether she was murdered at all. In the end, if you're wondering, Liz Gawyer, when asked by the judge if she wished to testify to take the witness stand in her own defense, said, no, she would not.

An answer, much preferred by James Martin Davis. And then the two-week trial was over, and the judge stepped down from the bench and retired to his chambers to deliberate. A day later, he returned. Thanks, everyone, please for seeing it. Every seat in the courtroom was filled. The room fairly bristled with anxiety.

Carrie's son, Max, waited for the words. It was nerve-wracking. And then, solemnly, in the deliberate manner of moments like this, the judge read his verdict. The court finds, after careful consideration of the evidence, the contention that the state has not met its burden, because the body of Carrie Farver has not been recovered, has been refuted and overcome by the overwhelming amount of evidence

presented by the state during this trial. Carrie Farver did not voluntarily disappear and drop off the face of the earth. Very sadly, she was murdered. The court finds, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant intentionally killed Carrie Farver with deliberate and premeditated malice on or about November 13, 2012, here in Douglas County, Nebraska. The court further finds beyond a reasonable doubt that during the defendant's twisted plot of lies, deceit,

and impersonations through digital messaging, the defendant caused damage to her residence by intentionally starting a fire. Therefore, the court finds in a judge's the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree under count one and arson in the second degree under count two. Guilty on all counts. Just a few rows behind Liz. Carrie's mother Nancy wiped away silent tears and then began sobbing. She'd finally heard the long four words from the judge. Saying that Carrie did not vanish off the face.

of the earth and she just didn't vanish into thin air. It was just a total relief to me. But if she hoped to hear, as she sat in that courtroom, here where Liz disposed of Carrie's body, Nancy hoped in vain, that secret? Liz was able to keep to herself. And that's awful. Not knowing is the worst part.

but at least, well, and now not knowing where she is. We don't know where she went, where she put her body. Can never bury her? No. Still, Nancy and Carrie's son, Max, couldn't grieve, really, until they knew Liz would be held responsible, and now grieved they did. I'll never go away, but at least we can deal with it now. Have to deal with it.

As for Liz? The defendant is remanded to the custody of sheriff, and she can be removed from the courtroom. She was let out in handcuffs, blank of face, not a whisper of emotion of any kind. Again, her lawyer. She knew from the beginning that if she was convicted

of First Cramer, there's only one penalty in Nebraska, and that penalty is life in prison without parole. We contacted Liz Gawleyer, or tried to, at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women, where she's now 50 years old and has so far served eight and one-half years of her life sentence.

We asked if she'd care to comment. She did not get back to us. But after her trial in 2017, Liz did respond to our producers. They saved her letters, of course, and we dug them out of the file. And in those letters, Liz denied killing Carrie Farver and said that she felt bad.

for Carrie's family. She wrote, I can say in my heart that I would not have hurt her. I know all too well their pain, since I myself have gone through a loss of a child. Wait, Liz lost a child? Well, this was news to us. And given what we now knew about Liz Gawleyer, it seemed like something we should look into. Because... Right away, I felt. hunch that something wasn't quite right.

Perhaps you should think of what comes now as a kind of prequel, a sort of origin story, like the stories attached to blockbuster movies, Star Wars, or Harry Potter, Silence of the Lambs, for example, a tale to help make sense of the whole strange business that unfold so dramatically later. We titled our podcast, Something About Carrie. But really, of course, it was always something about Liz, especially this part, the prequel. Liz Gawyer had already begun serving her prison sentence of Life Without Parole in Nebraska when a novelist and author began casting around for ideas for a new book.

The author's name, Leslie Rule. I was looking for a case of a dangerous female, and I specifically searched for. or a love triangle murder, because jealousy brings out the very worst in a sociopathic female. Leslie Rule was busy earning a reputation for a keen eye and attention to detail, and also a deep empathy for victims of crime. Oh, and, of all things, not quite normal. Like the murder of Carrie Farmer and the long, cruel trail of Liz Goliard's deceit,

which she studied very carefully. and then corresponded with Liz, and finally came to this realization. I had never seen anything like this before. Liz Gollier is a statistic sociopath. She doesn't care about anybody's feelings but her own. She's violent. She manages to manipulate everybody around her. Leslie's first true crime book was about Liz.

A tangled web, it's called. But you might say true crime. crime was already in her blood because Leslie's mom was the late Anne Rule, one of America's preeminent true crime authors. Anne Rule wrote more than 30 true crime bestsellers, and she began her career with a book detailing how in 1971 she'd worked with a young man at a suicide crisis center in Seattle, a man whose name very few had heard of at the time, a 25-year-old by the name of Ted Bundy. Yes, that one.

The serial killer later executed in 1989. Anne Rose's book on Bundy was called The Stranger Beside Me. My mom thought that she could spot a sociopath. She'd soon learned that she couldn't and that nobody can because their mask is so perfect that if they don't want you to see who they really are, you won't see it unless they lift the corner of the mask. Liz Goliar's mask, of course, had long been lifted, but that mask, Leslie thought, is what allowed Liz to get away with murder for years.

But as she went about her work on this book, month after month, Leslie had a nagging itch, this feeling about Liz. So I'd been working on the book for a couple of years, and my deadline was looming, but I felt like there was something missing. I just couldn't believe that she would be bumping along in this normal life and all of a sudden commit this violent act. And I thought there has to be something in her past. It was just a hunch that Liz Gawley's past held more secrets.

So Leslie began combing through newspaper archives nationwide for any connection to Liz. And she looked and looked until she found something in... of all places, Michigan. A yellowed picture from a newspaper called the Battle Creek Inquirer. I looked at it, and I thought, is that Liz? Because there was a photo of

22-year-old Liz, and she was in court at her boyfriend's trial. Liz's boyfriend's trial? What was this all about? He had been accused of killing her five-month-old infant. It was actually the kind of thing that I expected to find

because I had sent so strongly that there must be more in her past. So Leslie began taking a closer look. The boyfriend's name was Glenn Her. She tried to reach him. No dice. So she called Glenn's mother. I was a little bit apprehensive

because I didn't know how she was going to react to the call. But Leslie was pleasantly surprised when Glenn's mom picked up the phone. Her name is Phyllis Her. And Phyllis was, as she told us. I was just shocked. I didn't have a clue. As surprised as if the angel Gabriel himself had landed on her shoulder about Liz's murder conviction and subsequent life sentence, that is. And after Leslie filled in Phyllis about the whole story in Nebraska, well, it was Phyllis's turn. And what a story that was. The one Phyllis told Leslie.

It all started, said Phyllis, back in 1998, when her son Glenn met Liz Gawleyer. Back then, Glenn was 21. Liz was 23 and had a newborn baby named Cody. The baby's dad was mostly out of the picture. Phyllis ran a foster home, so she knew a thing or two about motherhood. We had a total of 12 children at any given time in our home. And Phyllis's assessment of Liz as a parent?

It wasn't the most charitable. I have to say, at first, I was pretty sure that having this child was not on the top of her list of things she had wanted to do in her life. But then Phyllis' son Glenn had his own issues. At about 18 months old, Glenn had pneumonia. His temp shot way up over 107 degrees. We put him on medication for seizures, finally, because he was having what they call brain seizures, and his brain didn't function.

So Glenn grew up with learning disabilities. He flunked kindergarten, could read or write only to a sixth grade level by the time he finished school, according to his mom. But otherwise, he was an absolutely wonderful, happy-go-lucky kid. Phyllis said Glenn helped out with all the foster kids, grew up knowing how to take care of babies. And when he met Liz, he took care of her too, in a way.

He helped her get a job at the convenience store where he worked. And sometimes Liz and the baby stayed over with Glenn. And all seemed okay, at least. And then one day it happened. Glenn drove Liz to work, Cody in the back seat. Phyllis picks up the story. He had dropped her off and then he came and got me because he had my van. We went shopping at the supermarket.

That is when Phyllis noticed that baby Cody was not his usual self. Cody cried a lot. I mean, he was a fussy baby for the most part. And that day, he was very quiet. I took Glenn home, dropped him off. In fact, I changed the baby. fed the baby, because the bottles were already made up. And then Glenn was, said he was simply going to put the baby down to take a nap.

Phyllis Ransom Evans. And several hours later, she stopped by Glenn's house. It was just before 5 p.m. Glenn was sitting on the couch, and I went in, and I said, oh, where's Cody? And he said, taking his nap. And I said, okay, and I went in. And Cody was on the bed. I went to kick him up and realized he was not breathing.

So I said, Glenn, call 911. Cody's not breathing. And he just looked at me like, what? And I said, right now, call 911. Within minutes, a police car arrived. An officer scooped up baby Cody, headed for the emergency room, with the family not far behind. I said, we got to stop and get Liz from work.

I'll never forget because I went in and said, yeah, you got to go to the hospital. Cody is being driven to the hospital. He's having problems and complications and he may have died. And I'll never forget because she looked at me and said, I got to work. I almost got this feeling of, really? And I said, that's your kid in that police squad car, right there. you need to go now. And her boss looked at me and said, get her to the hospital.

They followed the police car to the emergency room, and at the hospital is called the baby's father, Ray Strahan. I picked up the phone, and Liz was very short and to the point. She's like, your son's in the hospital, you might want to get up here. And that's kind of how she sounded. You know, and I was like, holy crap, what the heck's going on? Ray rushed to the ER where he saw Cody. He was lifeless.

The hospital didn't have the machines to keep him alive, so they were manually keeping him alive for breathing and all that stuff. Doctors did a CAT scan, found bleeding in Cody's brain and behind the baby's eyes. Two signs doctors determined of shaken baby syndrome. Before long, no surprise, has his stature. standard in situations like this, police officers and child protective services workers showed up, and Ray heard that Glenn had been babysitting that day. I was really enraged.

I had so much anger built up because I already knew at that point that he was the one that did it. Did it? Meaning said Ray that he, Glenn, caused the injuries that put Cody in the hospital. And Ray was even more upset when he saw Liz clinging. ringing to Glenn. Why are you hugging him? It just angered me even more. Cody was sent to a neonatal intensive care unit,

a half an hour away. Liz and Ray went. Glenn and his parents did not. The baby fought for his life through the evening. And then a doctor appeared in the waiting room. It was flying on 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning. He came out and he said, I'm sorry to say I've pronounced him dead.

So, and then he gave us an opportunity to go in there and see Cody before they were to pull him off the machine. And just watch your son's body just completely relaxed. It's like he, it was so awful. You know, I wouldn't wish that on anybody, even my enemy. And then the doctor said something else. Something about what happened to Cody, something that made Ray's blood boil. He said, Cody's death was. It's clearly a case of shaken baby syndrome.

And he said that what had happened to him was the equivalency of what the greatest boxer of all time, Muhammad Ali went through in his boxing career. Your son went through in about 30 seconds. You know, the brain slapping against the skull, basically turning it into mush is what it did, bleeding all over the brain. You can imagine it was a quiet ride back to Battle Creek. where Ray dropped off Liz back at Glenn's parents' house. Phyllisher, Glenn's mother.

She came in, and she simply said Cody passed away. Glenn was in, the living room, and she went in and sat on the couch, and she told him then, also, and that was about it. There wasn't a lot of emotion, just very to the point. But before that night could end, the night of Cody's death, someone would have to answer a few questions. Questions about what police were calling. A case of murder.

The police car pulled into the dark driveway just before 5 a.m. Baby Cody had been dead only four hours. But officers from the Emmett Township Michigan Public Safety Department wanted to talk to Liz Gullier's boyfriend, Glenn Hur. The interview took place in the back of a squad car. It lasted 37 minutes. In it, Glenn repeatedly said he would never harm a child and denied shaking Cody. But then the officer said that he was thinking that Glenn was probably tired and stressed and that Glenn got angry when Cody cried and that Glenn shook the baby without realizing how hard he had shaken him.

And then the officer asked this question, quote, You shook the baby, didn't you, Glenn? End quote. Well. The interview transcript said Glenn started crying then and said, quote, Yes, I broke and I shook him, but no, I did not mean to kill that child, end quote. And before the sun even rose in the Michigan sky that cold winter morning, Glenn Hur was arrested and charged with second-degree murder.

After, Glenn's mom Phyllis talked to the officer about arresting her learning disabled son. I thought, are you crazy? This kid would no more shake a child to the extent that it would take to end a child's life than anything. No, this is wrong. They could have asked him a thousand questions and especially if they push things

and he would have got confused easily and thinking that he was saying all the right things. This is what they want me to say. say. This is what they want to hear, and then I'm out of here. And that's not what happened. Two days later, the autopsy came back. Liz Goliur's baby Cody, the pathologist found, died of acute intracranial hemorrhage due to shaking. It was indeed a homicide. Glenn Hurst sat in jail for 10 months, awaiting his day in court. And when his trial began in December 1999, Cody's father, Ray Strahan, listened to the judge's opening remarks to the jury.

He came out and said, Mr. Glenn Hurd is on trial for a second-degree murder of a five-month-old baby. And every one of the jury members' jaws just hit the floor. And I was thinking to myself, this guy's going to fry. But Glenn's defense attorney, in his opening statement, said a thing that sounded explosive. There was evidence, he said, that Liz caused Cody's death. Liz and not Glenn. Because, he charged, Liz dropped Cody the night before he died while Glenn was at work.

Here's Glenn's mom, Phyllis. Glenn had gotten a phone call to go home because Liz told him that she dropped the baby. So he left and took off. His boss said, yeah, go, go. But prosecutors go first, of course, to present a case, that is, one of the first to testify for the prosecution was Liz. And Liz made quite an entrance.

Author Leslie Rule. Liz was the star witness in the case against her boyfriend. And she showed up in a long skirt that kind of dragged on the ground and a wig. She was in disguise because she was wanted. She actually had a warrant out for her arrest for the... unlawful use of her roommate's car. The judge, however, having been informed of the circumstances, assured Liz she would not be arrested if she testified and told the truth about what happened to little Cody.

But did she? Here was her story. Liz told the jury that when Glenn dropped her off at work that day, with Cody in the car, Cody was just fine. And then Liz produced six letters. she said she'd received from Glenn while he was in jail. Letters presented as evidence, or, if you will, a series of jailhouse confessions.

Though knowing what you now know about Liz and Carrie and all the lying, the subterfuge, the murder, will you hear the following as confessions or something else altogether? In one letter to Liz, Glenn wrote in part, I need you to come back up here and tell my attorney that the reason you call me home from work was because you had dropped Cody from about four feet, which then caused Cody to stop breathing. So then you shook Cody, not to do any harm, but to get him to start breathing again.

Then, in a second letter, supposedly also from Glenn, different tone altogether. There was this. Hi, honey. Hey, what I said in the letter to you about what to say that you dropped Cody, forget about it. That is wrong of me to ask you to say something like that. I'm just so scared. And when Glenn's mom, Phyllis, heard what was in those letters? I said, I don't know who wrote that letter,

but my son can't even spell those words, let alone write those words. I said, I don't even think he knows what most of those words are. Given his longstanding learning disabilities, that is. But as author Leslie Rule couldn't help but see. No expert was called into court to verify that the handwriting on those letters was Glenn's. In fact, the prosecutor asked Liz to verify that Glenn had written the letters. And Liz testified that, yes, the handwriting was indeed that of her boyfriend, Glenn Her. Glenn's attorney looked at the faces of the jurors, and as he later told reporters, I knew it was over.

Glenn was sitting beside him, and Glenn didn't speak up. Glenn didn't say, no, I didn't write those letters. I don't think Glenn even understood the significance of those letters. So when he and his attorney went on a break and discussed Glenn admitted to guilt, he didn't object to that. Even though the trial was only in its second day, Glenn Her pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. and went to prison, where he spent nearly nine long years. He got out in 2009.

We wanted to talk to Glenn about all of this. Of course we did. But his mom explained that Glenn didn't want to talk to us. He said, you know, I have to deal with other issues. Prison was not a fun place. And he said, when I have to think about that, then I have nightmares and other issues. If I don't have to think about that, my life goes on.

And he wants his life to go on. And I understand that. But given what we now know about Liz Gawleyer, we were not quite ready to let it go. And so we said about learning things. First, that diagnosis that got Glenn convicted of murder, it isn't considered subtle science anymore. Not at all.

The theory of shaken baby syndrome was this, if a child showed three symptoms swelling in the brain, bleeding on the brain, and bleeding behind the eyes, also known as the triad, there was only one cause, violent shaking. And remember, Cody had two of those three,

just no brain swelling in his case. But in any case, over time, certainty about the whole thing, shaken baby syndrome idea has crumbled. And as Dayline reported in our recent podcast, The Last Appeal, while shaking a baby can obviously cause catastrophic damage, new research proved that triad of symptoms could be explained by other things, too, like a fall, an infection, a loss of oxygen.

And that new research has led to new definitions. Here to explain is Dr. Ashley Sosier, a physician in Louisiana, Louisiana, board certified in pediatrics and pediatric emergency medicine. In 2009, the AAP American Academy of Pediatrics released a statement that said, you know, we're not going to use the term shaken baby anymore. We're going to use the term abusive head trauma. Cody, said Dr. Saucie, had certainly suffered a serious head trauma. quite possibly when Liz, as Glenn's family and defense attorney claimed,

dropped Cody the night before his death. The head injury that Cody sustained the night prior to his death, I think absolutely could have contributed to this happening. But Dr. Sosier reviewed Cody's hospital records obtained by Dateline and found other possible explanations for his death, Possibilities like a bleeding abnormality or an infection that triggered sepsis. I find it upsetting that only one diagnosis was made and that was shaking so that this intracranial bleed was only the result of shaking. Next, we wondered about Glenn Hurr's interview with the police before his arrest.

Remember, Glenn said, quote, I broke and I shook him, but not. No, I did not mean to kill that child. End quote. We asked Stephen Drizen to read the transcript of Glenn's police interview. Drizen is a clinical professor of law at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law in Chicago. He's testified in courts across the country. He is one of the nation's leading experts on false confessions. To begin with, the first thoughts you had when you read through that transcript of the interview.

My first thought was this could very easily be a false confession. There's a certain script that we see again and again in shaken baby cases. And so that's the script that police officers used in this case. So what do you mean by the script? So the first thing that police officers do is they suggest that the science has proven that this child, died by being shaken. The next thing they do is they say science also proves that the injuries that the child suffered occurred within a few hours of when the child was shaken. And because in this case, the suspect was the only adult caring for the child in that time frame, the evidence, the evidence

proves that he was the one who shook the child. And so he begins to think about, well, how might I have shaken this child? And police officers provide answers to that question. You were tired. You hadn't slept very well the night before. The baby was crying. You didn't mean to hurt the baby.

You were just trying to calm the baby down. And all they need in this case, is for the suspect to say, I shook the baby, so that when they get into court, prosecutors could say he was minimizing the way in which he shook the baby. He must have shaken that baby harder, and the case against him is sealed. Drizen said his research has shown that false confessions happen in shaken baby cases more than almost any other kind of criminal case. I mean, you have a beautiful baby who dies, you know, despite your efforts to do everything you can to revive that child. And, you know, you want to provide some answers to the family.

And shaken baby diagnosis enabled doctors to provide an answer. Unfortunately, that answer may have resulted in hundreds, if not foul, thousands of wrongful convictions. We're just beginning to understand how many people have been affected by that faulty diagnosis. Finally, given Liz's predilection for impersonating others

and also attempting to frame them for her crimes, we wondered about those letters Liz gave prosecutors to introduce at Glenn's trial. Did he really write them? Or did Liz write them? We found copies of the letters in a Michigan police file. We gathered them, along with those letters that Liz wrote to Dateline back in 2017, as well as a handwritten statement that Glenn gave to the police,

and we sent them to a certified forensic document examiner and handwriting expert named Wendy Carlson. Carlson has testified in hundreds of court cases. She examined the letters and found. My opinion in this case, I'm completely confident that Glenn did not write those documents in question. Glenn's handwriting is more crude than what the handwriting is in the question documents. So, if in Carlson's opinion Glenn did not write the letters, we asked, then does she believe the letters were written by Liz? Liz's writing tends to be more in line with the writing in question. Liz tends to be very verbose and writes out a lot of words,

and the documents in question have a lot of words per line. She squeezes everything in that she can, and that's something that I found in both Liz's handwriting and in the question document. So given the questions about the letters, Glenn's written confession, and shaken baby syndrome itself, law professor Drizen believes Glenn's conviction is questionable.

If you gave an umbrella statement about what bothers you most about this particular case, what would it be? You know, everything bothers me about this case. The road to reopen this conviction is extremely difficult, but not impossible. But it's not going to even get reopened unless Glenn wants it to be reopened. and he may not want to revisit, you know, the worst moments of his life. Because if he is innocent, and again, I'm not saying he's innocent. I'm just saying there are a lot of red flags here.

He shouldn't bear the burden of a murder conviction for the rest of his life. Glenn Herr is now 48 years old, married with two children and a granddaughter. But even a decade and a half after his release from prison, Phyllis Herr tells us that a felony murder conviction has made it tough for Glenn Hur to find a decent job. By the way, the deputy prosecutor in charge of Glenn's case told Dateline, she continues to believe Glenn was responsible for baby Cody's death. But behind it all, the question lingers.

Did one successful manipulation lead to another? Did Liz Goliar's testimony that questionable evidence she presented, condemn a boyfriend while ensuring that she avoided blame for the death of her own son? We know that years later her subterfuge besmirched the reputation of a woman she murdered. That was the story that took us to a tiny Nebraska town called Macedonia, where Carrie and Nancy her mother and Max her son had made a happy plan to drive to a family wedding and encountered instead a nightmare three years long.

And now it's been eight years since we spoke to them for our story. It was important, said Nancy, to finally set the record straight about her daughter, a loving mother, and a good woman who never abandoned anyone. And I think it would have been important to Carrie, too, because she would have wanted people to say, this was not me. And Carrie's son, Max, he's a software engineer now,

like his mom. She was the one that really got me to understand computers. I'll never type as well as she could. But she's definitely a big influence. there. And inspired your love of them. I think she'd be pretty proud of you. Something About Carrie is a production of Dateline and NBC News.

Shane Bishop and Jessica DeVarra 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.