James David Rogers sentenced to prison for threats against Eva LaRue

For more than 12 years, federal prosecutors said, Rogers kept his promises to Eva LaRuean actress whose credits include seven seasons on “CSI: Miami” as Natalia Boa Vista and 138 episodes on “All My Children” as Dr. Maria Santos Gray.

Only the arrest stopped him.

Rogers, 58, was sentenced last week to three years and four months in federal prison for what prosecutors called his 12-year “campaign of torment,” during which he threatened to torture, rape and kill LaRue and his daughter. Rogers pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Central California in April to two counts of sending threatening communications, two counts of harassment and one count of threatening interstate communications.

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Rogers’ “vicious and relentless harassment left emotional scars on Ms. LaRue and her daughter, the latter having endured his abuse for most of her life,” said Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. Angeles, in an email. . “We hope the victims will come to some peace and closure now that Rogers is going to jail.”

Rogers’ attorney, Deputy Federal Public Defender Waseem Salahi, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday night. During his sentencing on Thursday, Rogers told U.S. District Judge John Kronstadt that he had been abused and bullied growing up but was now receiving mental health treatment, CNN reported.

“I sincerely apologize for what I have done over the past 12 years, putting you and your family in hellish behavior,” he told LaRue, according to CNN. “I accept full responsibility. I hope you can put this behind you and at some point you’ll never think of me again.

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Between 2007 and his 2019 arrest, Rogers waged a “campaign of torment” against his mother and daughter, prosecutors said. From the beginning of this campaign in March 2007 until June 2015, Rogers sent LaRue and his daughter some 37 handwritten and typed letters in which he threatened to rape, torture and kill them, according to court records. . LaRue’s daughter was 5 years old when Rogers started sending letters.

Rogers signed his letters as “Freddie Krueger”, misspelling the first name of the fictional serial killer from the slasher films Nightmare on Elm Street.

In a 2007 letter, Rogers told LaRue that the previous “Mother’s Day may be the last.” I thought about how I am going to rape and kill you and your daughter,” the court records say. Later in the letter, he said, “Maybe I should go see you in Los Angeles.”

In a 2015 letter to LaRue’s daughter, Rogers wrote, “I’ve been the man who’s been stalking for 7 years. Now I’m watching you too,” according to court documents.

About four years later, he wrote her another letter, in which he threatened to rape and impregnate her, prosecutors wrote in a 2019 indictment.

“His letters were intended to terrify and intimidate, and [he] succeeded in that goal from the start,” prosecutors wrote last month in a memo in which they urged the judge to sentence Rogers to nearly five years in prison.

Over a period of nearly three weeks in October and November 2019, Rogers called the girl’s school about 18 times, identifying himself to an employee as her father on at least three of them and asking if she was at school, prosecutors alleged. He left a voicemail at the end of one of the last calls. In that message, he identified himself as Krueger and threatened to “rape, assault and kill her,” according to court records.

Rogers’ “threats impacted the daily lives of his victims,” ​​prosecutors wrote in court papers.

For years, LaRue did not know the identity of the person sending him the threats. She and her daughter took circuitous routes home, slept with guns nearby, and spoke to get help quickly if the stalker tried to hurt them. They moved several times over the years and avoided receiving mail at their home to try and hide from Rogers.

” In vain. Every time they moved, [Rogers’s] the letters — and the terror of the victims — would always follow,” prosecutors wrote in court papers. “And [he] I knew it.”

The FBI followed Rogers’ lead after taking DNA found on the envelope of one of his letters and running it through a genetic genealogy database, according to CNN. This gave officers a list of the suspect’s relatives and led them to a small town in Ohio where they watched Rogers. After throwing a bag of Arby’s into a dumpster, officers recovered it and compared DNA from a soda straw to what they found on the letter, CNN reported.

They arrested Rogers at his home in November 2019.

During Thursday’s hearing, LaRue thanked Rogers for apologizing, but called his harassment “beyond deviant behavior” that deprived her and her family of their basic freedoms, according to CNN. Her daughter said that after Rogers contacted her school, she feared for her life and was dogged by paranoia, a fear that continues nearly three years later. LaRue spoke of his own fear, not only in the past, but also for the future, after Rogers finished his sentence.

“I’m so worried,” she told the judge, “about what will happen when he comes out.”