Eva LaRue will never forget the fear she felt when a stalker was trying to get in contact with her.
“The letters were so horrifying,” LaRue, 58, shared in Us Weekly’s exclusive sneak peek of the Tuesday, September 2, episode of the “Soapy” podcast. “They were all about how he was going to kidnap me and my daughter, hold us as sex slaves, try to impregnate me and then rape and chop up my daughter. … It was all about chopping us up and hiding the stuff and keeping us as slaves. It was insane. This went on for 12 years.”
At the time, the actress — who shares daughter Kaya, 23, with ex-husband Joe Cappuccio — had been working on the CSI franchise.
While her character was solving crimes every episode, LaRue said authorities were struggling to find the individual responsible for the letters that could span up to six pages.
“I was playing a DNA specialist on CSI,” LaRue told podcast hosts Rebecca Budig and Greg Rikaart. “We were solving every crime in 43 minutes, and in real life, the FBI could not identify this person for 12 years because we didn’t have the technology that we were pretending like we had on the show.”
To this day, LaRue is grateful that she listened to Sarah Michelle Gellar, who once advised her to buy a house in an LLC to keep a home address more private.
“She goes, ‘It’s a lot easier to buy it in an LLC than to move overnight,’” LaRue recalled. “My name was not attached to the house, so that’s why the letters started going to my manager. He didn’t have our exact address.”
Later on in the podcast episode, which will be available in full on Tuesday, LaRue recalled the moment her stalker found out where her daughter went to high school.
One afternoon, a call came in — supposedly from Kaya’s dad — claiming he was going to pick her up from school. The only problem was Kaya was driving herself to school at the time, and her father lived hours away.
Once LaRue learned about the call, she sprang into action by picking up Kaya from school and staying in a hotel room. The actress also alerted authorities.
“I had the same FBI agents for 12 years that were on my case,” she said before the call. “They tell me, ‘Your main FBI agent just got a promotion a couple of weeks ago and now you have two new FBI agents and they’ll call you tomorrow.’”
LaRue’s experience — and the ultimate arrest and conviction of her stalker — is turning into a documentary titled My Nightmare Stalker: The Eva LaRue Story.
“This documentary shares a deeply painful time in my and my daughter’s life — an experience shared by nearly 13.5 million stalking victims each year,” LaRue told Deadline in June when it was announced. “Stalking is a global crisis, often involving violence and lasting psychological trauma. Yet many victims are denied justice due to weak laws, limited awareness and the challenge of proving these crimes. I hope my story raises awareness and helps drive meaningful change in how authorities protect victims and pursue justice.”
The project is expected to premiere later this year on Paramount+.
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.
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