went to her garage, and there, scrawled on the wall, she found the words, whore from dave. had to have been cari. all of it was so strange thought the detectives. very out of the ordinary. reporter: like maybe she d had a breakdown or something, like a psychotic episode, and that would be the only answer. reporter: to the police in omaha, cari was now a suspected stalker, but back home in pottawattamie county, iowa, she was still a missing person with a very worried family. cari s mother heard about the threatening texts, the harassment, the police reports filed against her daughter. to her it didn t seem like cari at all, and it made her wonder, how serious were the police about finding her daughter? i got a little callous towards the authorities, thinking that i didn t think they were doing quite as what they should ve been doing, but reporter: did you get the feeling you just wanted to get in there, and storm the barricades, and make something happen? yeah, but a
that crazy woman could be. so she gets to shoot somebody, and then she gets to kill another person. and then she gets to move in with dave, and she gets to be free. and you guys aren t arresting her. reporter: she? who was she, that furious woman scorned? and what horrors was she capable of to eliminate her rivals? to win or punish the one man she so desperately wanted, the man who didn t want her? it began, as these things often do, on an innocent and ordinary day in omaha, nebraska, three years earlier. the fall of 2012. i m workin , i m behind the counter, i m doin ten things. reporter: it happened in an auto repair shop, to a mechanic named dave kroupa. she walks in, i see her, we meet eyes. and just for a moment i kinda stop. and i go, well, hello. reporter: he was working. she wanted her s.u.v. repaired. and, you know, in the back of
that he did a lot of crying at their house, and that there had been a little bit of hope after she was missing. it was a man. he said cari was at a shelter in omaha and we needed to go pick her up. what was happening in here? just flutters. her daughter was too distraught to drive, but i told my mirror lamb yum.
about a month after nancy went to the shelter in omaha, max sent his mother a message on facebook. hi, and that was it. the next day cari responded, hey, little man, how are you? max messaged back. max asked, one, what is my middle name? 2. two, what was the. and what was the response? nothing. i never got a response from that one. many the messages kept coming, like this one, with doctor ari s
did she have some sort of mental breakdown? cari quit her job in omaha, sent her company a text to let them know and texted her mom that she was taking that job in kansas and moving away and had sold her furniture. she attached a photo of a check from the buyer. cari wanted nancy to let the buyer pick it up out in macedonia, and take it away. and i said, absolutely not. i said, either you call me, you come see me. i m not doing anything until i hear you. and that s when the nasty texts started coming. reporter: what did she say then? that i was a bad mother. she said, i m gonna take max. you re gonna we re gonna leave. reporter: cari texted max too and let him know. you re coming with me. you have no choice. i m the adult here and my what i say goes. reporter: just trying to imagine what it was like to be you in the middle of that situation. it was a bit scary because we all thought that someone might