Eva LaRue is shedding light on a chilling chapter of her life, detailing the harrowing ordeal that saw her endure a decade-long terror from a fan-turned-stalker. Nearly two decades after the CSI: Miami alum began receiving disturbing notes, signed by the fictitious killer "Freddy Krueger" from the Nightmare on Elm Street film franchise, her story is a testament to the psychological warfare waged against her.
LaRue, who shares her story in her upcoming docuseries My Nightmare Stalker: The Eva LaRue Story, on November 13, explains that the stalking took a physical toll on her. "My eyelashes fell out," she recalls. "I was broken out in hives all over. There was no place to hide because you don't know where he could be. You really are in a prison of your own making because you are trying to be four steps ahead of what he could do, and those possibilities are endless."
The 58-year-old actress and her then 23-year-old daughter Kaya McKenna Callahan, whom she shares with ex-husband John Callahan, had to uproot their lives multiple times due to the stalker's relentless pursuit. "We had to move twice," LaRue explains. "He ultimately found her high school and called the high school pretending to be her dad and told her to stand out in front of the school. He was going to pick her up."
The threats in the letters, which were sent between 2007 and 2015, before assailant James David Rogers transitioned to voicemails in 2019, were not only psychological but also physical. As LaRue details in the Paramount+ docuseries, "Those words and those threats were absolute psychological terrorism."
Callahan, who also features in the upcoming project, shares her own experience navigating the situation. "He could be anywhere," she says. "That's what he was to me—a shadow that I could never pinpoint." Among the threats Rogers made in his letters was that he would rape both LaRue and Callahan before killing them. In one, he vowed, "I am going to...stalk you until the day you die."
After 12 years of harassing and stalking LaRue and Callahan, Rogers was sentenced to more than three years in federal prison in 2022. The 61-year-old, who has since been released, pleaded guilty to "two counts of mailing threatening communications, one count of threats by interstate communications, and two counts of stalking." The ordeal not only affected LaRue and her daughter but also rewired how she moves through life—a full-body takeover that leaves no room for innocence.
