Hollywood has been plagued by fan obsessed stalkers for decades. In 1989, Rebecca Schaeffer, who starred alongside Pam Dawber in the sitcom My Sister Sam, was gunned down by one such disturbed individual. Her death helped spark an anti-stalking movement, which led to several law changes and California’s passing the first anti-stalking law in the country in 1990. Now CSI: Miami alum Eva LaRue is speaking out about her terrifying experience.
For over 12 years, she and her daughter, Kaya, were being stalked by a man who called himself Freddie Krueger (minus the “y” and as in the fictional antagonist of Nightmare on Elm Street fame). Appearing in the trailer for Paramount+’s My Nightmare Stalker: The Eva LaRue Story, LaRue recalls seeing her daughter, Kaya, crying at age 12 and being devastated by this “shadow” who could be anywhere.
Eva LaRue calls the stalker’s actions “psychological terrorism”
The trailer begins with an excerpt from one of Freddie Krueger’s threatening letters:
“Dearest Eva: I think about you all the time. Once I f--- you and your daughter, then I will kill you both. I am coming for you. No one can stop me.”
According to LaRue, she feared that everything he said in the letter could become a reality. It also shook her confidence in her parenting skills and keeping her child safe. The All My Children actress later reveals it also prompted her into taking matters into her own hands, so she started sleeping with a weapon under her bed.
The stalking escalation and arrest in My Nightmare Stalker
Having received approximately 37 threatening letters, LaRue lived through this ordeal for a span of eight years (2007 until 2019) when the stalker, identified as Heath, Ohio native and nurse’s assistant, James David Rogers, was finally caught. That same year, things escalated when Rogers called Kaya’s school claiming to be her father. According to the United States Attorney’s Office, Rogers also left the school a voicemail claiming to be Freddie Krueger and called the school 18 times.
In a third letter, according to the indictment, Rogers wrote: “I am enjoying stalking you. I am going to instill fear into every part of your life.”
In 2022, Rogers was sentenced to 40 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to two counts of mailing threatening communications, one count of threats by interstate communications, and two counts of stalking. During sentencing, prosecutors wrote that LaRue and her daughter drove circuitous routes home and moved numerous times in hopes of Rogers not finding them.
My Nightmare Stalker: The Eva LaRue Story premieres Nov. 13, 2025, on Paramount+.
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