KILLER OBSESSION

DAVE KROUPA MET CARI FARVER IN OMAHA, AND THEY DATED BRIEFLY. THEN HE THOUGHT SHE WAS TO BLAME FOR STALKING HIM. THE TRUE CULPRIT WAS ALSO A MURDERER 

- CORIN CESARIC

Leaving for work around 6:30 a.m. on a chilly fall morning in 2012, Omaha auto repair shop manager Dave Kroupa said goodbye to Cari Farver, a single mother he had been dating for two weeks. Farver, who planned to head to work at a telecommunications company, had made it clear that she wasn’t looking for a serious relationship. So later that morning when Kroupa received a text message from her—“Do you want to move in together now?”—it came as a puzzling surprise. “I was like, ‘What the hell?’” recalls Kroupa, 47, who was busy at work and wrote a dismissive reply. That apparently uncorked a well of anger in Farver, who replied: “I hate you.” “You ruined my life.” “I never want to see you again.”

“All morning my text messages were pinging, pinging, pinging, and it’s all this nasty stuff,” says Kroupa, who was annoyed but also relieved to have discovered so quickly that Farver—whom he would never see again—was not the woman for him. “I’m thinking, ‘Wow, I dodged a bullet.’”