FBI reveals disturbing items they found at stalker’s home after harassing CSI: Miami star Eva LaRue and her daughter for 12 years
Warning: This article contains discussion of abuse and rape threats which some readers may find distressing.
When the FBI finally captured Eva LaRue's sick stalker, they couldn't believe what they found in his home.
The CSI: Miami star, who shot to fame in the early 1990s as Dr Maria Santos Grey on All My Children, has revealed in a tell-all documentary that she was stalked by an obsessed fan for more than a decade.
The harrowing letters from the anonymous man, who took on an alias as 'Freddy Krueger', the fictional villain from the horror series, A Nightmare on Elm Street, went into graphic detail of his depraved fantasies, which included murdering and raping both LaRue and her daughter, Kaya.
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Yet even with DNA evidence, it took the FBI years to track him down.
In My Nightmare Stalker: The Eva LaRue Story, the 58-year-old actress recalled that it all started when she landed her dream job on the CBS cop show and moved to the 'quintessentially Los Angeles' neighborhood, Glendale.
'Why would anybody wanna stalk me?'
LaRue's former co-star, Sarah Michelle Gellar, famously known for her role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, advised her to buy her home in an LLC - in case of a stalker.
"At the time I thought, why would I end up with a stalker? I'm not the star of the show, why would anybody wanna stalk me?" LaRue said.
However, in March 2007, the first horrific fan mail from 'Freddy Krueger' landed in the studio.
The letters came thick and fast after that, and more violent and descriptive as time went on. They detailed that he planned to 'rape her until her nose bleeds', cut off her breasts, torture her and even attack her then three-year-old daughter.
After efforts with the police proved futile, the FBI escalated the case and assessed the DNA on the letters. Sadly, they failed to get a match. The only piece of evidence they had was that the mail was sent from Ohio.
LaRue said: "I wish there were words to describe how I felt at that time when those letters started coming right after the next because terrifying doesn't fit that bill, it is a full body takeover.
"There’s nowhere to hide. Outside of work, off set, that was when I was most hyperaware. Because I was afraid there could be someone waiting just off the studio lot, kind of lying in wait.
"He would write in the letters that he was always watching me, just around the corner. You don't know who it is, there's nowhere to hide from an amorphous threat.
"Those words and those threats were absolute psychological terrorism and they turned our lives upside down."
A tough conversation
When Kaya turned five and the letters didn't stop, LaRue had to have a 'delicate conversation' with her about stranger danger.
The twisted stalker continued to fixate on the young girl, vowing to make Kaya his 'sex slave' while promising to stalk LaRue 'until the day [she] die[s]'.
The mom lost her hair and eyelashes and struggled to eat, suffering a mental breakdown from living in 'terror' trying to protect her and her daughter.
"My body had a visceral reaction to the overwhelming fear," she said.
LaRue built a 'fortress' around their home - but the city council took issue with her 6ft tall gate and, during the hearing, announced her address publicly on a livestream.
"What Sarah Gellar said kept us safe all this time," LaRue said in the doc, adding that paparazzi swarmed her home the next day, forcing them to move out under the cover of darkness within two days.
In June 2016, she said her 'worst nightmare' came true when a letter landed in their mailbox - and was addressed directly to Kaya.
In summary, it detailed taking the high schooler hostage, impregnating her, making her his child bride and eventually dismembering her body, like he planned to do to her mom.
A terrifying phone call
Things escalated in October 2019 when the stalker broke another boundary by calling up Kaya's school and pretending to be her father to collect her that day.
He then left 19 terrifying voicemails on the school's answering machine, asking the school to pass on the message from 'the man who is going to rape her, molest her and kill her'.
Eventually, the FBI used new technology to trace DNA using genetic genealogy - and they had a match for their Ohio man, 58-year-old James David Rogers, whom they arrested from his home in November that year.
When searching his home, the FBI agents recalled in the documentary how they made some disturbing discoveries, with several devices and a computer containing a 'lot of images of Eva' on them.
However, one officer said he found one particularly harrowing item - Rogers' cellphone.
On it, he said the stalker only had two contacts in his phone.
"One was his mom, and the other was Kaya's high school," the officer revealed.
The 'infatuation'
Meanwhile, Rogers' stunned mom told cops that she had fond memories watching All My Children with her son, recalling how he would watch it 'over and over and over again'.
"I couldn't help but think to myself, 'This is where he first became infatuated with Eva,'" the agent said. "And mind you at this point, the mom did not know that Eva LaRue was the person we were there for."
Rogers eventually admitted to all the charges against him, including two counts of mailing threatening communications, one count of threat in interstate communications and two counts of stalking and violation of federal law, which landed him a three-and-a-half-year jail sentence followed by three years probation.
'He didn't get what he deserved'
That's what LaRue said of her stalker, adding: "Only three and a half years? After tormenting us for 12? That's it? That's all our life was worth, that's all our traumatization was worth?"
Rogers was released early in the fall of last year, serving just 24 months of his sentence.
LaRue concluded: "Even though he's on probation and he’s on a restraining order, that doesn’t guarantee your safety.
"You’re not allowed to treat other human beings like this, you're not allowed to mentally terrorize someone.
"It's a crime, it needs to be prosecuted as a crime and I'm hoping that with this documentary it gives stalking victims some kind of hope and maybe some kind of unity in moving forward and making sure that those laws do get set in place so that this doesn’t happen anymore."
My Nightmare Stalker: The Eva Larue Story is available to stream on Paramount+ now.
If you've been affected by any of the issues in this article, you can contact the VictimConnect Resource Center on 1-855-4VICTIM (855-484-2846), available weekdays.
Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV, Mental Health, US News
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