Actress Eva LaRue says she doesn't think she and her daughter will ever feel safe after dealing with a stalker for 12 years.
“It's really a complete overhaul of your lifestyle,” LaRue said on “CBS Mornings” Tuesday. “There is no way to ever return to innocence.”
In 2007, LaRue, who starred in the film CSI: Miami, and her young daughter Kaya first began receiving threatening phone calls and letters from an anonymous person. Her story is told in a new two-part documentary called My Nightmare Stalker: The Eva LaRue Story.
“What's crazy is that on CSI: Miami we solved cases in 43 minutes, not counting commercials. In real life, we didn’t have the technology that we pretended to have on the show,” LaRue said.
The Emmy Award winner said she and her daughter had to move twice. At one point, her stalker found her daughter's high school and pretended to be her father “and told her to stand in front of the school and he was going to pick her up.”
The persecution lasted more than ten years and affected her physically, causing hair loss and hives.
“There was nowhere to hide because you don't know where he could be, so you're actually in a prison of your own making because you're trying to stay four steps ahead of what he could do, and those possibilities are endless,” she said.
“Give My Life Back”
LaRue described a moment of epiphany when a friend invited her and her daughter to Italy while CSI: Miami was filming.
“We were gone for 36 hours, in the middle of the night, it’s about 3 a.m., I’m jet lagged, I’m kind of awake and rolling around. The bedroom door opens and it's backlit,” she said, explaining that she couldn't see the person's face in the door but thought it was her friend.
The next morning she learned that it was a break-in, but not her stalker.
“All I did was pray all day and all night for months for some guidance. I really felt like it was my answer that God literally said in that moment: “If I want you dead, I will follow you to Italy,” she said.
“So at that moment I felt, oddly enough, this strange sense of peace. It was the first time I was able to take my life back.”
Stalker's arrest and movement forward
LaRue's stalker was caught in 2019 using DNA, 12 years after the threats began.
James David Rogers of Ohio was sentenced to 40 months in prison in 2022 but has now been released.
Asked if she felt safe, LaRue replied, “I don’t think we’ll ever feel safe.”
“Your brain never stops being hypervigilant,” she said of moving forward.
She said she almost didn't appear in the documentary and understands why some celebrities don't.
“They just hope it goes away, that they stop being obsessed, but obsession is a mental health issue. They just move on to a new obsession.”
My Nightmare Stalker: The Eva LaRue Story is out now. Paramount+which is part of the parent company CBS News.
