‘It seemed endless’: Eva LaRue on the years she lived in fear in ‘My Nightmare Stalker’
My Nightmare Stalker: The Eva LaRue StoryActress Eva LaRue is known all around the world for her portrayal of Detective Natalia Boa Vista on CSI: Miami. The fan-favourite character appeared across seven seasons of the show and became known for her scientific expertise and strong sense of justice.
But off-screen, Eva was dealing with an unimaginable reality. For 12 years, she lived in constant fear as she was bombarded with letters from an obsessed stalker her threatened her and her daughter.
Now, in My Nightmare Stalker: The Eva LaRue Story, Eva sits down to unravel the jaw-dropping details of her terrifying case. In these powerful interviews, she leads the audience through the shocking chain of events that led to her stalker’s recent capture and her empowering transformation from victim to survivor.
My Nightmare Stalker: The Eva LaRue Story is available now on Crime+Investigation.
Crime+Investigation got the chance to speak to Eva to find out more about what she went through and what she hopes to achieve by telling her story to the world.
When you finally learned the identity of your stalker and saw justice served, what emotions came up for you? Was it relief, anger, disbelief, or something else entirely?
It was a complete meltdown. It was a dozen years of built-up emotion coming out, and I just sobbed. It was happy tears, raging tears, relief tears, gratitude tears - it was everything. I can't even describe to you all of the emotions that I felt in that day.
This ordeal lasted for more than a decade. How did you manage to carry on with your day-to-day life while living under that constant threat?
In the beginning I really thought I was losing my mind. It seemed endless in that first year and yet I had no idea it was going to go on for 12 more years. But my friend Max offered for me to come to Italy and run away to somewhere where I could breathe again.
Within 36 hours of being in Italy, there was a break-in and this perpetrator came right into my bedroom where [Eva’s daughter] Kaya and I were sleeping, and he was 10 feet from the bed.
My immediate thought was, oh my gosh, (the stalker) followed us to Italy. Of course that wasn't the case, but that's how completely irrational and freaked out and paranoid I was. And in that moment, it was my biggest epiphany because I really felt that it was God saying to me, I’m protected, that if he wanted something this heinous and horrible to happen to me, it would’ve happened in that moment.
After that, I was able to compartmentalize it, but not completely. The threats were always looming over me. Every time a new letter would come, I was still hyper triggered, but at least I was able to put it in a compartment for the day and live in the moment and have joy and love and happiness. Both things were true at the same time.
This all began when your daughter was very young and continued as she grew older. When did you decide to tell her what was happening, and how did you approach that conversation?
When she was five turning six and it was all just starting, I had to have the stranger danger conversation with her, but it became a very pointed one. The conversation was more than just “stay away from people”, I needed her to know that she needed to always be hyper vigilant.
When she got into junior high, I made her aware that there were specific letters coming in and they were horrible and somebody wanted to harm us, but I never let her know what was in the letters because I didn't want those words and visuals to be in her head.
She found out what was in those letters when we went to court, and she heard them in the courtroom. It was horrible for her to hear.
Sharing such a personal story publicly can be incredibly vulnerable. What was it like watching your experience unfold on screen for the first time?
While Kaya and I watched it together, we had to stop and start it so many times because we were so overwhelmed. It was incredibly triggering. Watching the documentary was the first time we ever heard the stalker’s voice or listened to the voicemail he left at her school. That was really shocking and super triggering.
The documentary is deeply personal. Was there anything you learned about yourself while making it?
This ended up being incredibly cathartic. I mean, of course it was really triggering to go back and relive all these things on a very, very deep and personal level.
During this whole ordeal, nobody had really asked us these kinds of in-depth questions about how we felt about every single part of it. We had never had those conversations; I was never going to tell Kaya what my biggest fears were. I don't know if I ever really spoke them out loud to anybody.
People asked us if we had our therapist on speed dial that whole week of shooting because it was really an insane roller coaster of emotions, but we realized how truly cathartic it was for us, and ultimately really healing.
What do you hope viewers take away from watching My Nightmare Stalker, and what advice would you give to anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation?
I really hope that the takeaway is that they're not alone.
Stalking tends to be viewed as this ‘crimeless crime’ because the crime hasn't happened yet. You're being threatened with violence, but nothing has actually happened. So, after a while, you stop telling your friends and family because you feel like you're the girl who cried wolf. How many times can you tell people that you're petrified, terrified, and paranoid? You just stop sharing the information.
I think for a lot of people, you don't want to give the stalker the satisfaction of giving them the spotlight. I felt like nobody was speaking to it and nobody was talking about what it feels like, and doing the documentary was an important start to make people feel like they're not alone. There’s a lot that needs to be done in the stalking prevention space and doing this documentary is an important start.
The documentary is being released in the UK to coincide with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. What more do you think can be done to better protect women from these kinds of situations?
The heartbreaking thing is that I don’t know if there is a way to protect women. This is a mental health issue.
We also know statistically that stalking escalates to violent crimes. 86% of the women in the United States who were murdered last year were stalked first. That's a really high number.
We know that stalking is not just a crimeless crime. It is a crime that is going to happen eventually, and we have to find a way to track these people before they're able to do any harm.
We know you’re starting to do your own advocacy work around stalking. What are you doing and why is it important to you?
Sadly, there is not a lot of victim advocacy around stalking. There is for domestic violence victims, so that's a good start.
There is an organization in the US called SPARC, which is really wonderful. They have an enormous amount of information around stalking and stalking laws. They have a map on their website that you can type in your state, and it will give you the laws in your state around stalking and some victim advocates that you can contact. It has so much information on what to do, how to protect yourself, and what signs to look for.
When I went to my local law enforcement, they told me that there was absolutely nothing to be done, even though there are laws around stalking, but a lot of the first responders don't know what they are and they don't how to implement those laws. So, law enforcement is being trained by organizations like SPARC to know how to handle and help the victims.
My Nightmare Stalker: The Eva LaRue Story is available now on Crime+Investigation.
