WHEN CHEROKEE MONTOYA HEARD that her friend had been shot, she was stunned. The violence occurred on December 5, 2015. The 911 operator took the call at 6:41 P.M., and she soon dispatched emergency vehicles to the scene, Big Lake Park in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Most people called Shanna Elizabeth Golyar by her nickname, Liz, but to Cherokee she had always been Shanna. Cherokee was not surprised to hear that Shanna had gone alone to a deserted park after dark. “She was trying to clear her head—trying to gather herself together. It’s what she usually did, quite often. She would just go somewhere silent, so she could think.”
Cherokee is still unclear about what occurred that night. “I don’t have all the facts,” she admits, and there is a hint of bitterness in her voice as she describes what happened, exactly as it was told to her. “She saw the shadow first. They told her to get on the ground. If she didn’t do it, they were going to shoot her,” she explains, adding that Shanna got down on the cold ground as instructed. “They shot her anyway.”
Cherokee and Shanna had met while working in a distribution warehouse about a year earlier in Omaha, Nebraska, and had hit it off immediately. Though Shanna was about a decade older than Cherokee, they seemed to have a lot in common. Both were mothers, and she noted that Shanna appeared to work as hard as she did. “We met, and we bonded really quickly. We just started hanging out. She’d come over and watch my kids, and I’d watch her kids.”
She has no problem recalling the good times, but Cherokee is still bewildered by the shooting and the craziness that led up to it. "I don't watch the news," she confides. No one can blame her for being confused about the dark sequence of events that led to crimes to complex that they confounded seasoned detectives. And no one can blame her for turning away from the news. Friends had told her bits and pieces, and that was upsetting enough, especially because Cherokee blames herself. "I didn't stop it. I didn't see it. I could have said something..." Her voice trails off, as she shakes her head.
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| Author Leslie Rule |
In reality, there was nothing she could have done to prevent the horror that tiptoed so quietly into the lives it ruined that no one saw it coming. It, in fact, began long before Cherokee entered the picture.
Dave Kroupa liked women. He made no secret about that, and he made no apologies. He was upfront with every woman he met. He was not looking for a commitment, and he made no promises to the contrary.
He had, after all, recently ended a twelve-year relationship with Amy Flora, the mother of his two children, and he was just getting used to being on his own again. Both Dave and Amy had tried very hard to make it work, to hold their family together for the kids' sake. In the end, they came to the painful realization that they just weren't meant to be together. They agreed to remain friends and to work together to make the transition as easy as possible on the children.
The summer of 2012, Dave was still smarting from the breakup and a little bit lonely. He was glad to have regular visits with his kids, but he was otherwise alone. He lived in a barebones Omaha apartment in a huge complex near Hyatt Tire, the shop he managed. At age thirty-four, he was healthy, attractive, and faced years of empty nights if he didn't make an effort to socialize. He realized very quickly that it wasn't hard to meet women. They were as close as his laptop computer, and with the press of a key, he could bring up the profiles of hundreds of attractive females who were hoping for friendship and romance.
Most computer-savvy singles looking for companionship are aware of the many dating websites they can join. Match.com, Coffee Meets Bagel, OKCupid, eHarmony, Tinder, and Plenty of Fish, are among the more popular sites where those seeking romance can view the profiles of thousands of others looking for the same.
Dave was drawn to Plenty of Fish, a website claiming to be the largest dating venue in the world. Founded in 2003, the site boasts 80 million members, with 14 million daily visitors, 60,000 new people joining each day and over a billion messages exchanged between singles each month. A basic membership is free, and visitors to the site can search for new friends by gender, age, ethnicity, and location, and then scroll through the results like a kid leafing through a toy catalogue, though no one is for sale, of course, and the interest must be mutual before arrangements for dates are made.
Each profile features a photograph, a nickname, and whatever general information the poster is willing to share such as: Non-smoker with average body type, born under the sign of Gemini, Caucasian, no kids, works in the service industry or Curvy single mother, loves to dance and eat chocolate, just looking to have some fun on Friday nights when the ex has the kids.
As with any dating website, there are risks. There is no guarantee that the poster's information is accurate. There is no guarantee that the attractive, seemingly charming individual with the enticing description is not a dangerous felon. While the majority of people seeking dates are harmless, not everyone is truthful. Most of the fibs are benign — a few years or pounds shaved off or a photo that was taken last century represented as recent. Sometimes those trolling for romance are married, pretending to be unattached.
One dissatisfied member of Plenty of Fish recently lashed out online, complaining, “I was guaranteed a single man. The company did not screen this person well! I am very angry! This site needs to do better!” The grumbler clearly felt betrayed, but she was naïve to think that website managers had the capability to screen out liars. It is simply not possible to vet 60,000 new members each day. Even if thousands of website employees worked around the clock to try to verify information supplied by members, they would fall short. It is far too easy to create fake profiles in online venues.
Females are particularly vulnerable when it comes to dating strangers met online. Many women refuse to meet a first date anywhere but a public place, and some even snap photos of the license plates on the cars of their new beaus, sending the images via text to friends, a somewhat morbid precaution should they go missing. Dave Kroupa understood why women were cautious. He couldn’t really blame them. He had heard the news stories about women attacked by men they met on- line. He didn’t argue when the women he was interested in suggested coffee in a public place for their first dates.
It did not occur to Dave that online dating could be hazardous for him. A former member of the National Guard, he could take care of himself. “I don’t think of myself as really bad ass. But I’m not going to hide under a rock. You do what you do, and hopefully it turns out alright.”
Dave knew some of the ladies he chatted with had jealous ex-boyfriends. Were any of these men so possessive that they would resort to violence to eliminate the competition? It was not something he worried about. He saw nothing risky about online flirting.
For every online dating horror story, there are thousands of ro- mantic connections so successful they result in marriage. According to a June 2013 article in the New York Daily News, a study by re- searchers working with Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that more than one-third of marriages in the U.S. began with online dating. But marriage was the furthest thing from Dave’s mind. “I wanted to have a little fun,” he confides. “I did my thirteen, fourteen years. I was never married, but it was as good as. We had the house, and the two kids, and the white picket fence.”
Few breakups are not painful, and Dave had barely begun to process the end of his relationship when he made the decision to start dating. He wanted to cut loose and enjoy the company of like- minded women. He found lots of profiles for attractive women on the Plenty of Fish website, and he dated his share of them. Sue. Pam. Joanne. Kelly . . .
Not in his worst nightmares could Dave have imagined there would come a day when an attorney in a murder trial would rattle off the names of the women he had met that summer of 2012.
Mary. Cathy. Joyce. Beth. Margaret. Sandra . . .
If the chemistry was there, and the woman was willing, Dave was more than happy to explore a sexual relationship, but he had stan- dards. “I wouldn’t say I have exceptionally high morals. I’m not against hooking up or booty calls, but I like to know the woman.” Not everyone subscribing to online dating sites has manners, he notes. “A couple of times I responded to somebody I met online, went over to her house, and immediately she was jumping on me. That’s a little off-putting for me. I’m crazy. I’m kinky. But I’m not that wild.”
Jenna. Diane. Megan. June. Lori. Tracy . . .
When the names are read from a list, it seems like Dave has had a lot of dates, but it was not as if he had sex with all of them. In fact, in most cases it was only a coffee date. The chemistry just wasn’t there, and they quickly parted.
Females are drawn to Dave. He exudes the kind of masculine confidence that comes with humility. At his core—even if he does not consciously recognize it—he is so sure of who he is that he has no need for arrogance, and the self-effacing comments come easily. He is attractive with or without the beard he sometimes allows to grow. With his intense blue eyes and the kind of wavy, blond hair that women are tempted to rake their fingers through, he gets his share of looks from the ladies, but it may be his laugh that is most endearing. He likes to have fun, and his laugh is rich and warm and frequent.
While Dave had a healthy sex drive, he wasn’t seeking casual sex with a large number of women or a monogamous relationship. He was looking for something somewhere in between. Ideally, he would date several women he enjoyed spending time with, and none of them would put demands on him. They, too, would be as free as he was, and it would be none of his business what they did when they weren’t with him. Unfortunately, few women seemed to be seeking this type of arrangement.
Dave did not want to hurt anyone, and he made it clear to the fe- males he met that he was not looking for a commitment. Despite the fact he tried to be careful not to hurt the ladies’ feelings, sometimes they got hurt anyway. He hated it when they cried. He was upfront about his desire to maintain his bachelor status, and most of the women had nodded and smiled, seeming to understand when he laid down the rules. But when he pulled away after a few dates, they were too often offended. Did they think he was playing hard to get when he insisted he wasn’t looking for a commitment? Did they think he was playing a game? Dave was not playing a game. But someone else was.
A very dangerous game, indeed.
