For more than 12 years, Eva LaRue and her daughter were subjected to dozens of menacing letters and packages, with the sender threatening to rape, torture, and kill them. Now, "finally, we know where he is," the All My Children and CSI: Miami actor told NBC News on Friday, after her stalker, 58-year-old James David Rogers of Ohio, was sentenced Thursday in the US District Court for the Central District of California. Rogers was given 40 months behind bars in federal prison, as well as three years of probation. A Justice Department release details the harassment that began against LaRue and her then-5-year-old daughter in March 2007, via about three dozen handwritten and typed letters that were signed "Freddie Krueger"—a misspelling of the Nightmare on Elm Street character. "I am going to ... stalk you until the day you die," one note read.
The letters continued through 2015, with threats of rape, molestation, torture, and murder. LaRue termed them "next level heinous evil." In late 2019, Rogers even started calling the school of LaRue's daughter, alternately pretending to be the girl's father and leaving threatening voicemails. LaRue and her daughter moved several times, including at one point to Italy, to escape being under their stalker's eye, yet he always found them—even when LaRue bought a home under an LLC's name. The two "drove circuitous routes home, slept with weapons nearby, and had discussions about how to seek help quickly if [Rogers] found them and tried to harm them," prosecutors say. Using the same technology they'd used to find the Golden State Killer, a former FBI special agent and attorney were finally able to track down Rogers, who was working as a nurse's aide at an assisted living facility, by lifting DNA from the envelopes that were sent, per CNN.
After a database spat out a bunch of names, they were able to trace the DNA to Rogers after testing a straw he'd used at an Ohio Arby's, then thrown out. Rogers' case is said to be the first federal one that genetic genealogy has solved. (Coincidentally, LaRue played a DNA analyst on her CSI spinoff.) Rogers was arrested in November 2019 and pleaded guilty last April to stalking charges, as well as to charges on mailing threatening communications and threats by interstate communications. Rogers apologized to LaRue and her now-20-year-old daughter at his Thursday sentencing, noting he'd been bullied as a child and grown up in an abusive environment. LaRue told Rogers she forgave him, but she also noted to the judge, "I am so worried what will happen when he gets out." (More stalker stories.)
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