STALKER-killer Shanna “Liz” Golyar framed her boyfriend for the murder of her infant son and was completely unbothered in the wake of the boy’s death, the mom of the man convicted has alleged.

More than a decade before she murdered Cari Farver in a jealous rage, Shanna “Liz” Golyar was one of the prime suspects in the death of her five-month-old son, Cody Golyar.

Cody was rushed to a hospital in Battle Creek, Michigan, on January 29, 1999, after Phyllis Herr, the mother of Golyar’s latest boyfriend Glenn Herr, discovered the infant wasn’t breathing.

The young boy was tragically pronounced dead within hours. Cody suffered a brain hemorrhage caused by violent shaking and his official cause of death was ruled to be shaken baby syndrome (SBS).

Golyar and Herr, then both 21, immediately became prime suspects in the case but it was Herr who would be charged.

Herr, who has learning difficulties from a brain injury he suffered as a child, told officers that he occasionally tossed the boy into the air to make him laugh.

After hours of questioning, Herr conceded he may have shaken the boy but his mom, Phyllis Herr, told The U.S. Sun she believes he got confused and was bullied into making the half-confession by police in search of a speedy arrest.

During his trial, it was revealed that Golyar called Herr at work the night before Cody’s death crying, telling him, “I dropped the baby! Get home!”

Herr’s attorney, Dan Buscher, pointed the finger of blame for Cody’s death at Golyar and claimed his client had attempted to cover for her.

But it was Golyar’s testimony against Herr that sealed his conviction.

On the stand, Golyar shared seven letters she claimed to have received from Herr while he was in jail in May 1999, purported to show Herr asking Golyar to lie for him in court.

Golyar was the only person asked to verify the legitimacy of the documents, according to transcripts from the trial, and shortly after Herr entered a guilty plea for second-degree murder.

Just over a decade later, Golyar murdered Cari Farver after learning the man she’d been seeing, Dave Kroupa, was dating both of them at the same time.

For three years, Golyar impersonated Farver in emails, text messages, and on social media to make it appear as if Farver was out to kill her and Kroupa.

During that time, she authored numerous false confessions posing as both Farver and another of Kroupa’s exes to fool law enforcement.

Phyllis Herr said there is no doubt in her mind that Golyar forged the prison letters she presented during her son’s trial to “frame him” for Cody’s murder.

She said, “I’m pretty damn sure she killed her own child, which is why she called Glenn and told her she dropped him the day before Cody died.

“And the way she acted act the funeral, you could tell […] she didn’t give two s**ts about that child.

“I’m pretty sure she set Glenn up. She knew something was wrong with him before she left for work that morning.

“Nothing bad had happened on the day he died, but nobody listened.

“They already had it down it was Glenn that did it – and they wanted to prove that no matter what.”

STOIC & ‘UNBOTHERED’

Phyllis and her son were looking after Cody on the day the five-month-old tragically lost his life.

On the morning of Jan. 29, 1999, Phyllis went out grocery shopping with the pair and later browsed dealerships in search of a new car for Glenn while Golyar was at work.

Phyllis remembers Cody – whom she described as a fussy baby who cried “constantly” – was uncharacteristically quiet that morning.

“And I mean really quiet,” she emphasized, “almost as if someone had drugged him.

“He didn’t cry why I changed him. He didn’t cry when we got him in and out of the car, and so it was odd.”

Later that afternoon, after they’d returned home, Phyllis went in to check on Glenn and Cody in a bedroom upstairs.

Glenn was asleep in the bed and Cody was lying silently in his crib.

“I looked at the baby and he was very quiet, and I just thought, ‘Something is not right,'” recounted Phyllis.

“I picked him up and realized he wasn’t breathing, so my husband did CPR and I called the police.

“When they got here they just grabbed Cody and drove straight to the hospital. They didn’t wait for an ambulance or anything, they just went.”

Within hours, Cody would be pronounced dead.

Phyllis said her son was inconsolable when the gut-wrenching news was delivered to him by doctors.

Glenn cried and cried, she said, wailing out, “I was taking care of that baby! What’s going on?”

Whereas Golyar was remarkably reserved in her reaction, claimed Phyliss.

“I’d have been a basket case, but Shanna didn’t have that reaction. She didn’t really react at all,” she said.

“Later, I remember Shanna was making calls about Cody’s death in the hallway of my home when my son and his wife – who didn’t know yet – came in and asked her if everything was okay.

“Yes just told them, ‘Yeah, everything’s fine.’ And didn’t tell them anything.

“I don’t know about you, but as a parent, if I had just lost my only child and my a mother my age who has a child asked me that, I’d have been bawling my eyes out in her arms. But she just said nothing was wrong.

“I remember she went out the door and I just thought, ‘No! Your child just died. You should be a basket case!’

“I’d reach out for comfort and I’d tell everyone I’d just lost my child, especially family members, but she had very little reaction.”

NO MATERNAL INSTINCTS

Two days after Cody’s death, Phyllis ran into Golyar at a local Walmart where the recently bereaved mother was shopping for a new wardrobe.

She described Golyar as being in an upbeat and even excitable mood, seemingly unphased by Cody’s passing 48 hours earlier.

The strange run-in confirmed unsettling feelings Phyllis had about Golyar shortly after they first met in 1998.

Nobody ever thinks a mother could do something to hurt their child. I’ll tell you what, I was a foster parent for 15 years, and the things I seen mothers do to their children would curl your hair.

Phyllis Herr

She told The U.S. Sun she can’t remember how Glenn first came to meet Golyar, but when he introduced her to the family, she took an instant dislike to her.

Phyllis tried to persuade her son to break up with Golyar, labeling her toxic, pointing out her various perceived shortcomings, and highlighting strange elements of her personality – but her pleas fell on deaf ears.

Glenn, who had recently had a child of his own, felt responsible for Golyar and Cody, Phyllis said.

Breaking up with her would’ve left the pair nowhere to turn, and Glenn was determined to look after and provide for them.

“He didn’t react when I told him,” said Phyllis. “As a parent, you can only say so much and he didn’t recognize what was wrong with her.

“She has just had a baby, was in a bad situation, didn’t have any money, and he’s the kind of guy now that would give you his last dollar.

“It was a shock he wanted to be with someone like that, but he didn’t have a lot of experience with girlfriends, and he was kind of naive and gullible, so I think he felt like he was helping her out more than anything.”

Over time, Phyllis’ opinions of Golyar changed little, if at all.

One thing that strikes her in hindsight as particularly concerning was Golyar’s glaring lack of any sort of maternal instinct.

Reiterating that Cody rarely stopped crying, Phyllis said it was her son who would race to comfort the boy.

Phyllis explained, “She didn’t do much. She wasn’t the one going over to pick up the baby, everybody else did it.

“She was a hands-off mom. She just didn’t have that motherly instinct – and I think the baby could sense that around her.

“When a mother picks their child up, they should be comforted. But whenever Shanna did the baby just bawled.

“And I thought, ‘What the hell?’ Because I’ve had six kinds and tons of grandchildren, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen a child that won’t soothe in its mother’s arms.”

A FORGED BOMBSHELL?

After Cody’s death, Phyllis said never for one second did she believe her son was capable of harming a small, defenseless child, despite the second-degree murder charges filed against him.

Neither did more than 70 of his close friends, family members, associates, co-workers, and even the mother of his biological son, who all wrote to the judge to express he was a loving and kind person, and a doting father.

During the trial, Herr’s attorney argued the boy’s death may have been caused by Golyar dropping the child.

“Society doesn’t believe a mother can do this to their own child,” said Buscher, per reports in the Battle Creek Enquirer. “But don’t put the blame on someone who didn’t do it.”

Golyar, who had been living out of state at the time, was brought in to testify against Herr.

When she was brought into the courtroom, everyone apart from the jury was sequestered outside.

Curiously, she was smuggled in wearing a disguise because she had outstanding warrants for her arrest in Michigan in an unrelated car theft case.

But Golyar was never arrested after issuing her testimony.

Instead, she was permitted to leave and go home after presenting to the jury a handful of letters she’d claimed to have received from Herr in May 1999, while he was in jail.

The letters, sometimes written in flowery and dramatic prose, included various damning passages purported to show Herr trying to convince Golyar to lie for him in court.

“As my wife-to-be, I need you to come back up here and tell my attorney that on Thursday, the 29th of February the reason you called me from work at eight-thirty p.m. because you had dropped Cody from about four feet, which then caused Cody to stop breathing,” one of the letters read, per court records.

“So then, you shook Cody, not to do any harm, but to get him to start breathing again. Please, Shanna, this is what will set me free because they are trying to pin it on me […] I love you with all my heart and soul”.

Golyar was the only person asked to certify whether the handwriting on the letters matched Herr’s, court records show.

Phyllis Herr knew nothing about the letters until she was contacted in 2019 by author Leslie Rule, who wrote a book about Golyar called A Tangled Web.

Phyllis believes Golyar forged the letters to force her son into a confession.

She said there is “not a chance” Herr wrote the letters because his brain condition means he struggles with even basic reading and writing.

During her testimony, Golyar even tried to point a finger of blame at Phyllis, claiming she’d admitted to dropping Cody days before his death, something Phyllis emphatically denies.

Found in the room near Cody was a parenting magazine that contained an article about SBS.

On the stand, Golyar told the prosecution the magazine was Glenn’s but admitted to reading it.

Cody’s biological father, Raymond Strahan, told The U.S. Sun he still believes the magazine is evidence of Golyar’s involvement in his son’s death.

He likened Golyar to cult leader Charles Manson, claiming she was adept at bending people to her will and may have used her powers of persuasion to trick or influence Herr into doing her bidding and killing Cody.

A FALSE PLEA?

After Golyar’s letters were revealed to the court, a recess was called and Herr entered a guilty plea. He was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison.

Herr’s attorney told local media that Golyar’s letters completely destroyed his case.

“You could tell by the look on the jurors’ faces,” Buscher told The Enquirer. “You could tell it was all over.”

Phyllis said she believes her son pleaded guilty because he felt backed into a corner and entering a plea was likely to get him a more lenient sentence.

She later quizzed her son behind bars as to why he admitted guilt publicly, while privately protesting his innocence.

Recounting that conversation, Phyllis said, “He said that he felt that it would be easier if he went to prison because they had offered him a four-year sentence originally, and that it would be easier for him to enter prison than it would be for Shanna.

“I think if he had known how long he was going to spend in jail he wouldn’t have done it, but part of me understands why he said he did it is because she didn’t have family.

“She didn’t have friends. He had people that believed in him. You know, and it is sometimes easier for a man than a woman in jail, but that’s the type of kid he was brought up to be.

“You step up to the plate to protect a woman, so that’s why he did it.”

Like Herr’s attorney, Phyllis said she believes investigators and the prosecution were simply unwilling to believe a mother was capable of hurting her own child.

“We still believe that mothers are good and the dads are deadbeats, that’s without boyfriends coming into this,” she said.

“Nobody ever thinks that a mother could do something to hurt their child. I’ll tell you what, I was a foster parent for 15 years and the things I’ve seen mothers do to their children would curl your hair.

“But until I became a foster parent, I would have never ever blamed the mom – I would have assumed just like everybody the boyfriend did it.”

‘BURN IN HELL’

Since his release from jail, Herr has married, raised two children, bought a house, and held down a steady job as a delivery driver.

Golyar, meanwhile, is serving life behind bars for the murder of Cari Farver.

She stabbed Farver to death inside her car in a jealous rage after learning a man she was dating, Dave Kroupa, was seeing them both at the same time.

It’s unknown where and how Golyar disposed of Farver’s remains.

To cover up the killing, Golyar impersonated Farver in messages and on social media for more than three years, sending more than 15,000 emails and 50,000 texts to Kroupa, herself, and Farver’s family members.

She even burned down her own house, killed her dog, and shot herself in the leg to sell the lie that Farver was out to kill her.

Phyllis said justice has finally been served now that Golyar is behind bars, where she belongs.

However, it’s a tragedy that it took another innocent life to be claimed before she was finally caged.

“She should’ve been locked up 20 years ago,” said Phyllis.

“Unfortunately, a woman had to die for her to finally be locked up, and I feel very bad for that woman’s family. And part of me thinks, had justice been done for Cody the right way, maybe that woman might still be alive. It’s very heartbreaking.

“Glenn says he knows he can’t get back the time he spent locked up, but now Shanna’s in prison for life he feels justice has been served.

“He’s out now,” she added. “He’s got a family and for him, life goes on.

“It’s gone on since the day after he got out because everyone rallied around him knowing he didn’t do this.

“So my message to Shanna would be: it took God a long time, but now our prayers are answered.

“You will remain in prison for the rest of your life – and you will burn in hell.”