Eva La Rue’s Stalker Is Sentenced to Prison
For 12 long years, soap vet Eva La Rue and her daughter, Kaya Callahan, were targeted by a stalker. But hopefully, the ladies will now have some peace of mind that the nightmare is behind them since James David Rogers was sentenced to 40 months behind bars on September 8. According to Deadline, the sentencing was delivered by U.S. District Judge John A. Konstadt in Los Angeles after Rogers pled guilty in April to “two counts of mailing threatening communications, one count of threats by interstate communications, and two counts of stalking.”
Per court documents, the scary situation began for La Rue in March 2007, when her daughter was just five years old, and continued until Rogers was arrested in November 2019. Throughout Rogers’ reign of terror, he sent about 37 handwritten and typed letters to both La Rue and Callahan, threatening to rape, kill, and injure them. Each letter was signed by Freddie Kruger, the infamous killer from the Nightmare on Elm Street horror movie franchise known for his badly burned face and glove of knives.
Rogers didn’t stop at just writing letters, however. In October and November 2019, he called Callahan’s school, told a school employee that he was her father, and asked if she was present that day. (Kaya’s father, of course, was the late John Callahan, La Rue’s ex-husband, who passed away in July 2020.) In November 2019, Rogers called Callahan’s school again, and left a voicemail as Freddie Krueger in which he threatened to “rape her, molest her, and kill her.”
La Rue — best known to daytime audiences for her roles as ALL MY CHILDREN’s Maria and THE YOUNG & THE RESTLESS’ Celeste — told the court in a victim impact statement that she has been in therapy since the harassment began due to the fear and paranoia. Thankfully, neither La Rue nor Callahan ever had any direct contact with Rogers, but they lived in constant fear. “We didn’t know if he would show up on our doorstep,” La Rue shared. “We will think about him for a lifetime. The fear is with me forever.”
Appearing in court via Zoom, Rogers apologized to La Rue for “putting your family through this hellish nightmare” and hoped that she could someday forgive him. Calling the behavior “inexcusable,” Judge Kronstadt ordered Rogers to self-surrender on October 12, when he will begin his sentence at a federal prison in Ohio, where he resides.
