In a “12-year campaign of harassment” against actress Eva LaRue and her daughter, which included threatening to torture, rape, and kill them in letters he signed as a fictitious serial killer, an Ohio man was sentenced to nearly 3 1/2 years in federal prison.
Nearly three years after his arrest for following the “CSI: Miami” and “All My Children” actress and her adolescent daughter since March 2007, James David Rogers, 58, a former nursing assistant, was sentenced on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
Rogers started threatening LaRue’s 5-year-old daughter at that age, and on November 7, 2019, he allegedly called the girl’s school while posing as her father. Additionally, he left the school with a voicemail in which he introduced himself as Freddy Krueger from the horror movie franchise “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and threatened to “rape her, molest her, and kill her.”
Two weeks later, federal authorities obtained a five-count indictment against Rogers. A total of 37 threatening letters that Rogers sent to LaRue and her daughter were discovered during their investigation, including one in June 2015 that began, “I am the man that has been following for the previous 7 years.” I’m now also keeping an eye on you.
“They tried to anonymize their addresses as much as possible by avoiding receiving mail and packages at their actual address. To no avail,” Assistant U.S. attorneys Sara Vargas and Amy Pomerantz wrote in their memo. “Each time they moved, defendant’s letters — and the victims’ terror — would always follow. And defendant knew it. ‘I am back to stalk you,’ he wrote.”
Rogers, a nursing assistant from Heath, Ohio, works in a facility for seniors and people with disabilities. He was released from custody pending trial on his own recognisance. All accusations against him—two counts of sending threatening letters, one act of making threats through interstate communications, and two counts of stalking—were accepted as guilty pleas in April.
