CSI: Miami fans may remember the case of Eva LaRue’s stalker, but now the TV star is speaking out about that harrowing 12-year saga in the new Paramount+ documentary My Nightmare Stalker: The Eva LaRue Story, streaming on Thursday, November 13.
A trailer for the doc features excerpts from the letters LaRue’s stalker, who used the pseudonym “Freddie Krueger” in a seeming reference to A Nightmare on Elm Street villain Freddy Krueger. (Coincidentally or not, LaRue’s filmography includes a guest appearance on the 1980s TV spinoff series Freddy’s Nightmares.)
In one excerpt, the stalker threatens physical and sexual violence against LaRue and her daughter, Kaya, now 23.
“Those words and those threats were absolute psychological terrorism,” LaRue says in the trailer. “My worst fear was that everything that he said in those letters could become a reality.”
LaRue says that playing DNA analyst Natalia Boa Vista on CSI: Miami was the “pinnacle of [her] career” and that being on a primetime series “was a different level of celebrity.” But with that celebrity came a lot of fan mail — and the menacing messages from “Freddie.”
“My worst fear was that everything that he said in those letters could become a reality,” LaRue says. “The letters were coming fast and furious. … I just remember being absolutely terrified.”
Kaya is also featured in the trailer, saying she remembers seeing her mom break down in tears. “At 12, that was devastating,” she says.
“Your one job as parent is to keep your kids safe,” LaRue explains. “Like, that’s it. That’s your freaking job. And I was feeling like I couldn’t do my job. I couldn’t do my job.”
Eventually, LaRue had to take matters into her own hands, she says. “I did start sleeping with a weapon under my bed,” she reveals.
In September 2022, an Ohio man named James David Rogers was sentenced to more than three years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of mailing threatening communications, one count of threats by interstate communications, and two counts of stalking, according to The New York Times.
Court documents showed Rogers’ stalking behavior started in March 2007 and continued until his November 2019 arrest, during which time he mailed around three dozen handwritten and typed letter with threats, the newspaper reported.
My Nightmare Stalker: The Eva LaRue Story, Thursday, November 13, Paramount+