Eva LaRue's nightmare stalking ordeal

Eva LaRue is an Emmy award-winning actress best known for her roles in CSI: Miami and All My Children. But despite her success, her life was far from the fairytale that you might think. For over a decade, LaRue and her daughter were targets of a terrifying stalker.

Coming to Crime+Investigation on 24th November, the new documentary, My Nightmare Stalker: The Eva LaRue Story, reveals the extent of Eva's horrific ordeal as she explains in detail what happened and how she managed to survive a real life horror movie.

Who is Eva LaRue?

Eva LaRue was born in Long Beach, California, on 27th December 1966. She started her acting career at the young age of six. As well as being a teenage beauty queen, she signed with the Judith Fontaine Agency and took her first steps into the world of acting.

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She played Dr. Maria Santos Grey in the American soap opera All My Children from 1993 to 1997 and then again in 2002 to 2005. In 2005, she took on the role of Natalia Boa Vista in CSI: Miami, perhaps her most famous role to date. Eva also won a Daytime Emmy Award for her work in All My Children.

The stalking begins

In March 2007, Eva started to receive threatening letters in the mail. These letters were from an unknown sender who dubbed themselves 'Freddie Krueger'. The name was a reference to the villain from the horror film series, A Nightmare on Elm Street, who invaded the dreams of school kids to murder them.

Sometimes typed and sometimes handwritten, these letters would threaten to rape, kidnap and kill Eva. They also sometimes mentioned her daughter, Kaya Callahan, who was only five when the letters started coming. One of the letters sent to Eva back in 2008 read, 'I am going to…stalk you until the day you die.'

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Between March 2007 and June 2015, Eva received 37 letters, all of which threatened her and her daughter. In 2015, when Kaya was 13, one of the letters was addressed directly to her, reading, 'I am the man who has been stalking for the last 7 years. Now I have my eye on you too.'

The attention towards Kaya escalated more so in 2019, when the stalker called Kaya’s school. He claimed to be Kaya’s father and was asking after her, saying he was waiting outside to pick her up. The first call occurred in October 2019. A month later in November, the stalker called the school a second time. On this occaision, he left a voicemail, threatening to molest, rape and kill Kaya. He once again referred to himself as Freddie Kreuger.

The arrest of James David Rogers

It wasn’t until that same year – 2019 – that the police made a breakthrough and were able to identify Eva and Kaya’s stalker. Using the science of genetic genealogy, authorities were able to retrieve DNA from the envelopes of the letters that Eva had received over the years. They then ran the DNA through a database and found a list of relatives. After pulling DNA from a discarded restaurant straw, the leads pointed to one person: 58 year old James David Rogers.

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Rogers – a nurse’s assistant at an assisted living facility in Heath, Ohio – was sentenced on 8th September 2022. He was given 40 months in federal prison. This came after his guilty plea on April 28th, 2022. Rogers pleaded guilty to one count of threat by interstate communications, two counts of mailing threatening communication and two counts of stalking.

The effects on Eva and Kaya

Eva and her daughter lived in constant fear for those hellish 12 years. When speaking to CNN about the ordeal, Eva stated that she sold her home and moved out of the country due to the fear. She lived with a friend in Italy for a few months before returning to California. Upon her return, she bought a home under a Limited Liability Company to protect her identity. Despite these efforts, the letters started showing up at the new house too.

In an attempt to feel safer, Eva and Kaya would sleep with weapons close. They also created plans on what to do if Rogers found them and drove particular routes everyday. Eva and Kaya might have some peace now that Rogers is behind bars, but the truth of the matter is that his threats are likely to follow them for the rest of their lives.

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