A TV actor is opening up about her stalker after police caught him with the help of forensic genealogy and DNA testing.
Eva LaRue is most well-known for her role as Det. Natalia Boa Vista on “CSI: Miami”Maria Santos “All My Children.”
Unknown man terrorized actress over 12 years by sending her threatening letters and sending her little girl threatening letters.
“I had no idea where the letters were coming from. I had no idea if he lived next door to us, if he lived on our street, if he was in our town, if he knew where I lived,” LaRue said.
LaRue claims she can recall the first letter he wrote because it was hers. “came out of nowhere”It was the first time she’d ever experienced something like it.
“It was terrifying, because it detailed in five pages how he — just this gruesome debauched, evil to a whole other level, about how he wanted to kidnap my 5-year-old daughter and I and he wanted to hold us as sex slaves,” LaRue said.
All letters were signed in the same manner. “Love Freddy Krueger,”The fictional monster from “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”
“Sometimes he would stop for a couple of months and we’d think, ‘Oh my god, maybe he’s in jail. Maybe he quit,’ and then it would start up again,” LaRue said.
Things took an even scarier turn when the man behind the letters tracked down LaRue’s daughter, Kaia, at school and pretended to be her father.
“It went from just a phone, ‘Hi, this is her dad,’ to leaving a message on the school answering machine, detailing everything he had ever said, every horrific nightmarish thing he had ever said in the letters on the school answering machine,” LaRue said.
LaRue was living in fear every day, but she was working alongside FBI agents Steve Busch & Steve Kramer to develop new forensic genealogy technologies that could also be used to catch and capture the Golden State Killer.
The agents were able extract DNA from the letters that the suspect had written. They finally had a name: James David Rogers a 58 year-old Ohio nurse’s aid.
“The suspect’s DNA is, in fact, on almost all of these letters. We had it on dozens of the letters,” Busch said.
On his return home from work, James David Rogers was followed by the FBI to Arby’s where he purchased some food. After Rogers threw away his trash, the FBI took his bag and tested it for DNA. It was a perfect match to the DNA of the stalker. They got their man.
Rogers was taken into custody, and he was charged with stalking as well as mailing threatening messages.
The science used to nab LaRue’s stalker were just like the techniques used on “CSI Miami,”Ironically, LaRue was a DNA specialist in the show.
“I feel like I’ve got my life back to the point where I’m not constantly looking over my shoulder,” LaRue said.
Rogers pleaded guilty before federal court. He is currently serving a sentence of three years with three additional years probation.
