A tangled web : a cyberstalker, a deadly obsession, and the twisting path to justice. / Leslie Rule.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

You know the #1 New York Times bestselling author Ann Rule, "America's best true-crime writer" ( Kirkus Reviews ), from her unforgettable classic The Stranger Beside Me , now get ready to meet the heiress of her True Crime legacy, her daughter, Leslie Rule.

It was a bleak November in 2012 when Cari Lea Farver vanished from Omaha, Nebraska. Cari, thirty-seven, was a devoted mother, reliable employee, and loyal friend--not the type to shirk responsibilities, abandon her son, and run off on an adventure while her dying father took his last breaths. Yet, the many texts from her phone indicated she had done just that.

It appeared that Cari had dumped her new boyfriend, quit her job, and relinquished custody of her son to her mother--all by text. While Cari's boyfriend, Dave Kroupa, and her supervisor were bewildered by her abrupt disappearance, they accepted the texts at face value. Her mother, Nancy Raney, however, was alarmed and reported Cari missing. Police were skeptical of her claims that a cyber impostor had commandeered her daughter's phone and online identity.

While Nancy was afraid for Cari, Dave Kroupa was growing afraid of her, for he believed Cari was stalking him. Never seen or heard, the stalker was aware of his every move and seemed obsessed with his casual girlfriend, Shanna "Liz" Golyar, often calling her "a fat whore" in the twelve thousand emails and texts he received in a disturbing three-year deluge.

How did the stalker know Dave's phone numbers immediately after he changed them, the names of his lady friends, even what he wore as he watched TV? He and Liz reported death threats, vandalism, and burglaries, but the stalker remained at large. The threats were vicious, vile and often obscene, sent mostly via text and always in Cari's name. There was some truth in the messages, but all of them contained one big lie. The culprit was not Cari, but had killed and planned to kill again.

With mesmerizing detail and compelling narrative skill, Leslie Rule tracks every step of the heart-pounding path to long-awaited justice--from a sociopath's twisted past to the deadly deception and the high-tech forensics that condemned the killer to prison.

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Booklist Review

Leslie Rule was only 17 when she began working as a photographer and assistant to her mother, prolific true-crime writer Ann Rule. Now a best-selling author herself, her first foray into her mother's genre is an investigation into a bizarre story of jealousy and stalking in the heart of the Midwest. The real people behind online dating profiles are often not whom they seem, but for recently single father of two, Dave Kroupa, one woman's misrepresentation led to years of harassment via text, email, and social media, impacting almost every aspect of his life. When a short but budding romance ends with Cari Farver's disappearance, Dave and her family are baffled by her sudden departure and an apparent change in personality, including rampant cyberstalking of Dave and his girlfriend, Liz Golyar. Rule's pedantic descriptions of technology are distracting, but the story is intriguing, as is Rule's telling. She moves beyond the sensational aspects to investigate the lives, families, and histories of everyone involved, from Dave, Cari, and Liz to the law-enforcement officials involved in unknotting this "tangled" case.