Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Lover, Stalker, Killer’ On Netflix, A Documentary About A Love Triangle Murder Case With Lots Of Twists

Lover, Stalker, Killer is a documentary, directed by Sam Hobkinson, that details a bizarre and twisty love-triangle murder case that took place in both Nebraska and Iowa, and it all started when auto mechanic Dave Kroupa found someone to date on the website Plenty Of Fish.

LOVER, STALKER, KILLER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Dave Kroupa had just moved to Omaha to be near his two kids, whom he had with his ex-girlfriend Amy Flora. He was single for the first time in years and was looking for someone to have a casual relationship with. On the dating website, he met Liz Goylar, whom he dated casually for a few months. He then met Cari Farver one day when she came to his garage to have her car checked. When he came across her on the dating site a few weeks later, they went out and hit it off. She was also looking for something casual, and, given that he and Liz weren’t serious, Dave figured it would be fine to date both.

After a few weeks, Liz encountered Cari at Dave’s apartment when she came by to pick some things up. Soon after that momentary encounter, Dave got a text from Cari saying they should move in together. When he refused, citing the whole “let’s keep it casual” thing, Cari started texting him with crude and threatening messages almost immediately. Soon that escalated to threats against Liz and evidence that she was stalking him. The Omaha police detective assigned to the case tried to catch her in the act of stalking Dave but could never find her.

In the meantime, Cari’s mother, who lived just over the border in Iowa’s Pottawattamie County, had stopped hearing from her, and filed a missing persons report. But because she was still in contact with Doug via the threatening texts and emails, law enforcement assumed she was just in hiding.

Soon Doug would get messages saying she was inside Liz’s house. The stalking and threats culminated in someone setting fire to Liz’s house; after that both Liz and Doug moved. A year later, when police detectives in Pottawattamie County took the case and really dug into the emails and texts, the case took a turn no one would have expected.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: While Lover, Stalker, Killer is a pretty straightforward true crime documentary, its plot is somewhat reminiscent of other love triangle documentaries, like Crazy Love.

Performance Worth Watching: Doug Kroupa was not only one of the main people that Hobkinson interviewed, he also participated in the extensive reenactments the director used to fill in the visuals. He actually does a better job illustrating his paranoia in the reenactments than he does in the interview segments, given his evenhanded tone throughout.

Memorable Dialogue: Tony Kava, a special deputy for Pottawattamie County’s police department, who helps the department with the digital evidence in investigations, says as he pours Soylent in his Thermos, “I don’t know if it’s clear, but I’m apparently on the spectrum. That makes sense when you see that I drink the same thing every day. I think it helps with the investigations and all that.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Like we said above, Hobkinson stuck with a pretty straightforward presentation of the case at the center of Lover, Stalker, Killer. The only style concession was the reenactments that featured Kroupa, and those were there for a reason. Whereas in other cases, a director can fill in visuals with news footage or stills from other media coverage, much of what happened in this case took place under the media radar. So the only way to illustrate exactly what was going on, and ratchet up the tension, was do these reenactments.

The story itself is so twisty, though, that Hobkinson really didn’t need to do much in the way of stylistic flourishes to keep it engaging. During the first third of the film, before the trio of investigators in Pottawattamie County — Kava, Jim Doty and Ryan Avis — take on the case, Hobkinson does a really good job of convincing you that Cari is the one stalking and terrorizing Kroupa, but giving you just enough in his visuals to foment doubt in the back of your mind. So when the twist is revealed, it hits you hard, even if you suspected that twist was coming.

Once that twist is revealed, though, all you want to do is see just how the case is concluded, and what we marveled at was just how clever the Pottawattamie County investigators were when it came to getting the proof they needed to bring their person of interest to justice.

The one thing we would have liked to have heard was a bit of self-examination from the Omaha PD detective that is interviewed, and how they seemed to miss so many details that the Pottawattamie County cops picked up on years later. But it’s a small quibble in what is otherwise an entertaining and fast-moving film.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Lover, Stalker, Killer won’t revolutionize the true crime documentary genre, but its story has so many twists and turns that it doesn’t need to.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.