107: Fatal Attraction & the Kidnapping of Brooke Hart

Dave Kroupa thought he’d hit the jackpot. He’d just met Cari Farver, a beautiful, intelligent woman who wasn’t looking for a long-term commitment. The two dated casually for a little while, but all of a sudden, Cari became much less easy going. She dumped him, via text and abruptly left town, leaving her son to fend for himself. For years afterward, she sent Dave countless verbally abusive texts. But over time, Cari’s family became suspicious. Had she really up and left?  Then Kristin tells us about an old timey kidnapping that took the state of California by storm. Brooke Hart had it all. At 22 years old, he was good looking, athletic, and wealthy. Really wealthy. His family owned the beloved Hart’s Department store. He was next in line to run the family business, but that all changed on November 9, 1933.  And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases. In this episode, Kristin pulled from: The book “Swift Justice” by Harry Farrell “Bay Area mob lynched kidnappers 75 years ago,” by Carl Nolte for the San Francisco Chronicle “Brooke Hart” entry on wikipedia.com In this episode, Brandi pulled from: “Scorned” episode Dateline “How investigators used technology to solve the mysterious disappearance, murder of a Macedonia woman” by Brian McCormack, Daily Nonpareil “Cari Lea Farver” iowacoldcases.org “Cari Lea Farver” charleyproject.org