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Jordan Harbinger
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Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
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Jordan Harbinger
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Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show.
Eva LaRue
The day after filming for that year, we we jumped on a plane and we went to and we were not there 36 hours in Italy. Then we wake up in the middle of the night. You know you've got jet lag, you're exhausted. It was like 3 o' clock in the morning. Our our bedroom door opens up and you know how when there's a light behind somebody you can't see their face cause they're in shadow. I couldn't see who it was, but it was obviously a man. He didn't answer and he stood there for a few seconds and then he closed the door. In that moment, it was God's answer to me saying if I want you dead, I will get you in any country, in any city, in any room, anywhere in the world. So relax because this person came within 10ft of me and my daughter while we're laying in bed.
Jordan Harbinger
Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker. Through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers and performers, even the occasional Hollywood filmmaker, neuroscientist, or real life pirate. If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology, geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime and cults, and more that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com start or or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today's episode messed me up a little bit.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Not gonna lie.
Jordan Harbinger
When this was first pitched to me.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
I was like, all right, stalker story. Okay, not exactly rare.
Jordan Harbinger
But then I watched part one of.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
The documentary, and I immediately thought, wow.
Jordan Harbinger
This is not normal stalker scary. This is next level, deeply psychopathic nightmare fuel horror movie variety. My guests today are Ava larue.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yes.
Jordan Harbinger
From CSI Miami, a show that is still syndicated in over 100 countries, and. And her daughter Kaya. And what they went through is so disturbing that at multiple points, I had to pause the documentary and get up and, like, drink a glass of water. This wasn't paparazzi nonsense. This wasn't a creepy fan crossing the line. This is a man who wrote graphic, detailed rape and murder threats, signed them. Freddy Krueger made it painfully clear that he was not fantasizing. He was rehearsing. So today we're talking FBI profilers. Erotomania, which is like a crazy quote.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Unquote disease that some people have.
Jordan Harbinger
Hypervigilance, sleeping with weapons under your pillow, Genetic genealogy and the kind of fear that never really turns off, especially when you're trying to raise a kid. This episode is intense. It's a little bit scary. It's also a stark reminder of how vulnerable we all are. So if you've ever thought that could.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Never happen to me, well, buckle up, because Ava thought that too.
Jordan Harbinger
Now here we go with Ava LaRue and Kaia McKenna Callahan.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
When I was pitched this, I was like, okay, stalker. That's so common in Hollywood. What's unique here?
Kaia McKenna Callahan
And.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
And then I. They're like, no, no, no. Watch 10 minutes of the docu series. And I watched part one, and I was like, jen, cancel my lunch thing. I gotta watch this psychopath. Like, I can't sleep tonight unless this guy. I know this person is, like, in prison or dead.
Eva LaRue
And now he's out.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
And it's incredibly scary. You really went through it with this guy. So let me back up a little bit because I Think people are already confused, which is, you know, I take pride in confusing people in the first 90 seconds of the show. So you're one of the main stars on CSI Miami. Give me a scale of the reach of that show, because it's still syndicated in like 100 countries. You can still catch it.
Eva LaRue
At one point, it was in almost every country, and it was the most watched show in the world for. For a while there.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
So, I mean, even when we go to France, she'll get stopped. And they know it as Les Express. So we always say that to each other because they're like, oh, you're on Les Experiments. We still get stopped in Europe.
Eva LaRue
It's still playing in prime time in Italy and France and some countries. Yeah. So I don't know what it was. I think maybe it was the aesthetic of the show, like, just the visuals of the show that it ended up being more popular than the other franchises.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah, I mean, it's a good recipe, right? Everybody likes hot tan people solving crimes in 48 minutes on a beach. And it's like using all this futuristic technology which nobody had heard of at the time. I'm a former lawyer. I guess I'm still technically a lawyer. One of the things we studied in law school was how juries. At the time, this show was really popular. Juries were like, well, where's the forensic DNA evidence? And the prosecutor's like, dude, this is a shoplifting case. Like, there's no DNA evidence, bro.
Eva LaRue
That's right. They call it the CSI effect.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
You can't get a freaking conviction. It's like, that's him on the tape. And then people are like, enhanced, and it's like, that's not.
Eva LaRue
They're like, which way was the blood spatter going?
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Right? Yeah, man, this is a Wendy's in that shoplifting case. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So it became really, really hard because before it was like, yeah, that looks like a person who shoplifts guil probation.
Eva LaRue
That blurry photo looks like our culprit.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah. It's like, that's good enough. And it's like, wait a minute. You didn't run this through the special computer that matches the fingerprint eye retina thing from every person in the world. It's like, that's not real, dude.
Eva LaRue
That's not real. And that's the crazy thing. So here I was playing a DNA specialist on CSI for, you know, almost 10 years, and we're catching our bad guy in 43 minutes, not including commercials. And in real life, the FBI would not have the technology to catch our stalker for 12 more years.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Right, right. Yeah, we'll get to that. I have a lot of questions about that. Cause I think it's fascinating. Now, in the beginning of the docu series, you mentioned that when you were young, your parents divorced and your mom was actually convinced that your dad was having you followed. So that was bizarre because what a sort of full circle kind of thing. And you must have grown up feeling somewhat paranoid then as well.
Eva LaRue
Yeah, well, you know, it's weird, I don't remember feeling that. But, you know, they say that energy or circumstances tend to follow you through life until you work your way to the end of them. And who knew that that would be sort of the foreshadowing?
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah, it's an interesting parallel, I suppose.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah. I didn't even know that story for like, up until we did, till we.
Eva LaRue
Started talking about it.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah, there was a lot of things we didn't know kind of about each other, how we felt about certain things or kind of how things really took place. Once we kind of really talked about the timeline of everything. But that was something I was like, what on earth are you talking about?
Jordan Harbinger
Yes.
Eva LaRue
And then I don't know if you know this, but my sister, she was part of a serial killer case. It must have been like 2009 or something like that. And I got a phone call from my sister. She was at work and she said, a friend of mine just saw a commercial. The LA County Sheriff's Department is running a commercial with like 53 women's photos. And a friend saw it and said, I was photo number 13, but I'm at work, I can't call. Will you just call this 1-800-number and see what's up? So I call them and they say, oh, who do you know in the photos in the commercial we ran? And I said, I know number 13. And they said, is she alive or dead? And I said, she's alive. What is this? Like, what is this about? And they said, well, there's a serial killer back in the late 70s and 80s. He was a photographer and he would do the typical, I'll shoot your book for you. We'll go out into the Angeles Crest Forest, or we'll go out and shoot in Joshua Tree or some remote place. And sure enough, you know, I think he, he killed like 40 some women and he kept trinkets from each person that they killed. So. And unfortunately, in a serial killer case, because it costs so much money to run DNA on every single case, they pick the three strongest DNA cases And they only run those three. And then that's what constitutes a serial killer, is when you get three convictions. But the rest of those women, 40 some women never got closure to their stories. They never knew for sure if he was their serial killer. So the LA County Sheriff's Department had just gotten a cold case grant, which oddly enough, is how I came on CSI Miami. My character was a cold case grantee. And I started opening up all these cold cases to do my DNA, you know, analysis on. And so they got this cold case grant and they opened up this case. And my sister was number 13 in this case because when she was a teenager, we went to this weird little. They used to have these things called photo days. If you were an up and coming actress, model, and all these, you know, unprofessional photographers would come and shoot your pictures in this photo day weekend. And he shot my sister. But there were dozens of models and actresses and dozens of photographers. My mom was there with us cause we were just teenagers. So nothing happened to her. But her photos were in his cachet.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Dude, that still is really scary.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Really.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
The fact that this guy really so.
Eva LaRue
Close, like a close brush. And we ended up doing an episode of it on CSI Miami.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I love that I was in that episode though too. Like, I feel like we've always had like a weird thread of connects of different. Yeah, like that, that literally happened to your sister.
Eva LaRue
Yeah.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
And then we did the episode of it and I was in it and then.
Eva LaRue
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we need to have the, the connect stop now.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah, yeah.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
I was going to say this is the wrong kind of small world energy.
Eva LaRue
Yeah, it really is.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Going for like.
Jordan Harbinger
Like you want it to be like, oh my God.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Do you know, the guy I'm dating was actually friends with my friend Kyle in college and he says he's an amazing guy. That's so great. Yours is like, oh, did you know my sister got in brush with that serial killer in the episode you were in CSI Miami. And that person knows my stalkers FBI age.
Eva LaRue
Like, no, yeah, no, I'm good.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I'd like my connect to somehow, like connect to Meryl Streep in some way. Like, that's the only kind of connect I want.
Eva LaRue
This is connect to. To lottery winners.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
That's. Yeah, yeah.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
This is like the worst six degrees of Kevin Bacon game. So there's a. There's a. Probably a better joke in there, but we don't have time. All right. So one thing I thought was kind of funny is you buy this, you buy this amazing house and you buy it in an LL shout out to Buffy the Vampire Slayer for giving you that idea. Because then your name is not on the property in case you get a stalker. And you're like. I imagine I'm like, I'm six on.
Eva LaRue
The call sheet at csi. I'm not like, one of the stars on there who's gonna stalk me. I was. We ended up with four stalkers on that show. Emily had two, David Caruso had one, and I had one all at the same time. It was insane.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah, the David Caruso one. I read about that. Cause I was like, wait, three people on CSI at the same time had a stalker, and his was really creepy. I guess they caught her. She was in Austria. So it was like a German lady, and she had some weird shrine to him in her house with knife stab marks all over the face and head of the photo.
Eva LaRue
Like she was threatening to kidnap his daughter, threatening to blow up her school, threatening to blow up his house. It was insane. Really.
Jordan Harbinger
Literally.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
These people are insane. Speaking of insane, you get on the show and you start to get fan mail, as one does. I mean, I can kind of relate. No, not really. But how. How does. I'm probably getting different fan mail from you. In fact, I know I am because I watched the docu series.
Eva LaRue
That's good. I'm glad for you.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I'm glad.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah. So far, so good.
Eva LaRue
And mine was always good until this.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger
You know, funny, because I'm watching the.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Docu series and I'm like, I don't have a stalker. I guess I need more listeners. Yeah, I need more listeners until I find that group of. That core group of, like, really freaking crazy people.
Eva LaRue
But your listeners are all trying to solve the crime. They're fascinated with how the puzzle comes together.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
That's right. They're smarter, actually. That would be scary because they would be the scariest stalk. They'd be people who, like, know to wipe their fingerprints off of things. So I don't get any ideas, folks, but tell me how it all begins.
Jordan Harbinger
Because your fan mail's good, right?
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
You're probably enjoying, like, you sit down with a coffee and you read a couple letters, and you're like, all right, you know, getting your pedicure reading a couple letters.
Eva LaRue
Yeah, Most people just want a headshot and a autograph. And this one happened to come to my manager at the time, and he would only open probably every tenth letter or something. He wouldn't go through all the mail. He would just open every few. And he just happened to open this one and was like, oh, my God. And sent it to me immediately. And right away they started coming one right after the next. So even the first one, even though it escalated to become more depraved and more heinous and more disturbed, they started out pretty bad right away.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
So do you think I wondered about this when I watched it? Do you think maybe you just missed the quote unquote normal ones? Maybe they just didn't get opened? Or did they start super creepy?
Eva LaRue
As far as I know, they started creepy. Could have been coming longer than that. You're absolutely right. I didn't think about that.
Joe Loya
Yeah.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Honestly. Yeah. Even in the docu series, I feel like when one of the attorneys starts talking about it and how like the progression of stalking and the actual, like, mental. Where it's like, first you think you're in love with the person and then you're upset by the fact that they haven't responded and you're rejected. I wonder if there were some early, like, just purely fan base.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
That's exactly what I was thinking. I was like, wait, the psychologist on the docu series is like, well, the phase one is this, phase two is this. And I was like, homeboy just seems to have skipped a phase three. So, like, did we miss phase one and phase two, or was he just, like, in a hurry to get crazy fast? I don't know.
Eva LaRue
We just skip right to nuts. And you're absolutely right, because they would have gone under the radar before that.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
That's true. You've just been like, okay, that's nice.
Eva LaRue
That's the one thing I never thought.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Of, like, literally this whole time.
Jordan Harbinger
Yeah, they would have blended in with.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Like, oh, you looked so pretty in episode six. I really like you. And you're like, okay, next, Right? It's all the same. And then, then it becomes like, can.
Eva LaRue
I have a photo? We may have sent him a photo at some point.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Oh, my God, that's crazy. That's crazy.
Eva LaRue
If he signed it himself and not Freddy Krueger.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah. Like, it started off like such a good.
Eva LaRue
Wow, you and I never thought of that.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Well, you know what's funny is we keep saying too. People keep asking us the jump off question, usually, which is like, well, when did you know it was real? Immediately, like, when you first read that letter. It's so jarring.
Eva LaRue
You're not like, ah, yeah, just kidding, y'.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
All.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
How far? But like, in all reality, that is interesting to think. Like, oh, yeah. Did you we just miss whatever the first step was?
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
It's possible, I suppose, if you sent him a photo. It's in the evidence from the FBI. Right? It's like, the FBI would have that in their evidence trove.
Eva LaRue
No, they only have the ones that we gave them.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
No, but he's saying when he showed up, like, when they busted into the house, I wonder if there was an evidence, like, he had a signed photo of you somewhere.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Cause he had every photo of you on a hard drive from every media appearance ever.
Eva LaRue
Yeah. So, yeah. So crazy.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
But I'm wondering.
Eva LaRue
And also, the two Steves that solved the case, they said that when they combed through his Facebook and his Instagram, he had left all these lovely, flowery messages on our Instagrams, like, you look beautiful today. I love this picture. Blah, blah, blah. You know, as himself, because he was signing the letter as Freddy Krueger, so we didn't know who he was.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
One letter reads, I'm going to say this is going to be gross, and I apologize because it's probably a little bit triggering, but. Dear Eva, I think about you all the time. Once I you and your daughter, I will chop your bodies into small pieces. Like, it's so jarring, and it's actually.
Jordan Harbinger
Much worse than that.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
But I think people get the idea.
Jordan Harbinger
What'S going through your head when you.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Read that, because you're probably, like, on your living room couch just looking at fan mail. Right. You're not expecting anything like this.
Eva LaRue
Yeah.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
And that.
Eva LaRue
That was not the first letter that we got. I have to say, after about the third one that we got, I stopped reading them because that was all living in my head. And Kaya never knew.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
No. Yeah, I didn't know.
Eva LaRue
As a matter of fact, you're probably hearing that one for the first time.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I mean, not that they all sound the same at some points, but I think you get to a point where it's like you block them out.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah. They blur together.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
You can't hear it every time in different ways. Like, I can't replay it in my mind because it'll drive me crazy. But, yeah, up until I want to say he was caught, I really didn't know the extent or even honestly. When we went to court.
Eva LaRue
You didn't know the details?
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I didn't know the full details. I mean, I knew at a certain age that it was bad, that it was, you know, rape, mutilation, killing, dismembering. I knew that in a general sense, but it really. In this whole process, it's.
Eva LaRue
You never heard the words.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah, I never read the letters.
Eva LaRue
She never read the letters. I Didn't let her read any of it.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
I mean, she was like five right when this started.
Eva LaRue
Yeah.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
So, you know, so you can't let.
Eva LaRue
That live in a kid's head. I just had to be really specific about this is more than stranger danger. Like, you know, we all talk to our kids about strange, but this was an amped up version. Just, I needed her to know that somebody specific, although we didn't know who it was, you know, to always keep her head on a swivel. But she had no idea what was in those letters until she was in her later teens. Because I knew it would be living rent free in her head forever.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah, traumatizing. And it's traumatizing for you, too. I mean, what's going through your head when you read that? And what do you even do about something like that? Because most people don't know where to go or what to do with this.
Eva LaRue
I did not. I did not know at that point. You feel safe. Nowhere. There's nowhere that's safe because it's this amorphous threat, right? You don't know. It doesn't have a face or a name or, you know, it's not a corporal bot. It's just feels like it's coming from everywhere. So my hair started falling out. I broke out in hives. Like, for a month and a half, almost two months, I was like a shell. I didn't know how to protect my kid. I didn't know how to protect myself. It doesn't matter how much security you have at your house, you don't feel safe. I mean, look at the big celebrities with the endless amounts of money to secure themselves. The Brad Pitts, the Gwyneth Paltrows, the Sandra Bullock. And somebody broke into Brad Pitt's house and was sleeping in his bed.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Oh, my God.
Jordan Harbinger
That's crazy.
Eva LaRue
And then just recently, I think it was only a year ago in the last year, Sandra Bullock is hiding in her closet or in her pantry or something, and her stalkers in her kitchen. You know, people have asked me, you know, did you have security? How much? Well, yeah, but I don't have that kind of security. You know, nobody has that. And even so, I mean, somebody just ran down Jennifer Aniston's gate two months ago. Like, they just ran it down.
Jordan Harbinger
Jeez, this is. It's crazy.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
You have to live in, like, an embassy in order to be safe in Hollywood. This is actually really just super unnerving. And how many letters are you getting at this point? And I assume they're all Kind of saying a version of the same thing as before.
Eva LaRue
Yeah, they're all saying some version of the same thing. And so in the beginning I didn't know what to do. I went to local law enforcement and they unfortunately by no fault of their own. But this is just the way the laws are set up. Unless somebody breaks into your house or lays hands on you, there's really nothing that they can do. And because we don't even have a face or a name. So thankfully being on csi, one of our tech advisors, Mike Scott, he had been the chief homicide detective for LA County Sheriff's and he put me in touch with the FBI because he said, you know, these letters are interstate letters, so it falls under FBI jurisdiction, thankfully. And here's the weird thing, you know, you can't just be, hey, 1-800-FBI, hey, I got an issue. You know, you have to kind of have somebody who can connect and even if you do, they have to be interested enough to even worry about your case. And I think only because I was on CSI where they fascinated with taking it. And then again for 12 years, you know, they would, once a year our FBI agent would sit us down for lunch and say, hey, just checking in, saying hi, want you to know that your letters are at Quantico. And you know, they've run them for DNA and they run them for prints, but we're not getting a hit in codis because as you know, CODIS was the only national database for DNA for law enforcement until the advent of 23andMe and Ancestry and GEDmatch and these things. And more than 80% of the people in CODIS are already incarcerated because they've already been picked up for rape and for murder. And the rest are just John Doe rape kits that don't have a name yet. They haven't been busted, they haven't been picked up yet. So unless somebody was in CODIS and of course on CSI Miami, everyone in CODIS, right?
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
That's right.
Eva LaRue
We gotta catch, we only have 43 minutes, we gotta catch somebody somehow.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Everyone's got retinal scan?
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yep.
Eva LaRue
Everybody got a retinal scan?
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah, you can get it from like a camera phone photo that's taken from 100 yards away. Like, oh, got his retina. Good, good.
Eva LaRue
Through that red light, we got his retina.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
That's right.
Jordan Harbinger
So are you worried that this guy knows where you live?
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Cuz he's sending them at this point to who, your manager or your office or something like that. He doesn't know where your house is. Right, yeah.
Eva LaRue
He started sending them to my publicist. So then the FBI would come to my publicist, Turk's house, and pick up these letters. And Turk would have to, you know, pick them up with tweezers, but they'd already been handled a thousand times, you know, by postal people and all the things. But then he would, like, take them with tweezers. Cause we at that point could eyeball his scrawling from a mile away and know it was him. And then he'd put them in a Ziploc bag and then the FBI would come to his house and pick them up.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Gosh, what's scary is, I mean, I lived in Hollywood for a few years. Everybody knows where they film CSI Miami. Everybody. I mean, you can't miss it. Those buildings are enormous. And it's like there's a huge sign out front that says CSI Miami or something like that. Right. It's so obvious.
Eva LaRue
Right. But, you know, when we would go out on location, no one knew what our location was going to be that day. And you know when you're driving around LA and you see like an upside down yellow sign with like, just letters on it, and that's so that if you're on that particular show, you know what those letters are and you know you're shooting in that neighborhood. But if you're just like a passerby, you would have no idea what show is shooting in that neighborhood until you pull up and, you know, maybe you see something. But whenever we were shooting out on location, there was no way. But, you know, Emily Proctor's stalker would always show up on location.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Oh, my God.
Eva LaRue
First thing in the morning.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah. Which is crazy that they didn't do anything.
Eva LaRue
She's like, who's leaking?
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yes, someone is leaking the information, probably for money or something like that. That's really scary. Gosh. And. And then, of course, he doesn't have to barge into the location. He could just like, follow you home. The FBI agent said that this was scary in particular because it was very personal, very specific, and very violent. Which is like a trifecta of let's take this seriously. I mean, he's saying this other letter reads, I will stalk you, punish you, and finally kill you, you bitch. I'll make your life a living hell. It's so weirdly personal from a guy who doesn't know you, which we'll get. You know, you mentioned earlier that he's, like, personalizing everything. And the way that he says he's going to torture and kill you is so graphic. Again, I won't share it here, but the behavioral psychologist in the documentary, she says something terrifying, which is that the letter writer's thoughts and writing are clear and coherent, which means that he's much more dangerous because he could actually make good on the threats. And that gave me goosebumps. Right. When I heard that if you get a crazy letter and it's written in, like, crayon or something like that, upside down letters, you're like, okay, sure. But then this guy is, like, very calm, very specific, very personal. And, yeah, he signs them all Freddy Krueger, which is just extra gross because that's like the guy who shows up in nightmares, right? So he's definitely deliberately trying to be as scary and crazy as possible, but is also not so unhinged that he, like, doesn't know what day it is or where he lives or something. This is like a semi functional human being, Right?
Eva LaRue
And there were a few letters in there, too, where he said, well, you're on csi. You're a detective. Come find me. Come find me if you can.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I mean, and he had a job. He had a job in a memory care facility. That's something that you actually do have to be functional to be able to do so. Yeah, like, it definitely was scarier knowing that he was a functional man that really could have made, like, good on his promise.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah, yeah. I'll talk more about him in a little bit. But is there a part of you being an actress on csi? Were you thinking, like, at first? Anyway. Oh, good, they're going to take the DNA, the fingerprints. Like I said earlier, y' all enhance at some camera footage, find this guy, you know, at a Walgreens.
Eva LaRue
Do it myself. I know how to do it myself.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
I've yelled enhanced before it screens. I know how this is done. Just get.
Eva LaRue
Let me get a hold of all the equipment that we have. We have the real equipment on set. I'll figure this out. If you can't figure it out, because.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Basically, all the same tech that you're pretending to have on csi, it's like.
Jordan Harbinger
Oh, was there a moment where you.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Were like, wait, this isn't real? I thought this was real.
Eva LaRue
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I just assumed. I didn't even know, having been on the show, even for those few years, I didn't know that everybody wasn't in codis. Assume that all bad guys were in codis. But, you know, if you're not caught being a bad guy beforehand, then you're not in codis. And not only that, but you can have A criminal record. And if you don't have a murder or a rape record, then you're still not in codis.
Jordan Harbinger
Oh, I see.
Eva LaRue
You're only in APHIS because APHIS is the national database for fingerprints. But here's the other interesting thing. When we go to get our fingerprints done at the dmv, everybody, if you have a driver's license, your fingerprints are in your state. The states don't share fingerprints.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
I see.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I didn't know that.
Eva LaRue
Yeah, there's a national database for fingerprints, which is aphis, but that's only if you are a criminal. But if you're not a criminal and you just went to go get a driver's license, only your state has your fingerprints. They don't share it across state lines in case you're criminal, which they normally are, is mobile and goes from state to state.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Do they use it though, in the state, if you like?
Jordan Harbinger
Probably.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
I don't know. It's a good question. But probably, yeah. There might be constitutional issues with that, right? Like, I'm giving you my fingerprints so that I can prove who I am. And it's like, well, maybe it's not constitutional. Just. I will get a thousand emails about this. Your hyper vigilance must have been off the charts, right? He's saying things like, be prepared for my arrival. I'm coming for you around the corner.
Eva LaRue
I can see you.
Jordan Harbinger
So let me ask you, are you.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Coming out of Erewhon with your bougie smoothie after a yoga class? And like a random guy like me is behind you a few paces in the parking lot? Are you in the back of your mind thinking like, is this the guy?
Eva LaRue
First of all, you and I don't Erewhon.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
We do not.
Eva LaRue
It's only for. It's only for insta fluencers. And yeah, like, it's so ridiculous. Who's buying a $25 smooth? I mean, you gotta be an idiot. I'm sorry.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
I know people.
Eva LaRue
I know people. Do I have friends that go to Erwan, but we don't Erewhon anyway. But yes, you're always looking, oh my gosh. In a parking.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Oh, yeah. Still to this day, I mean, I'm, you know, I mean, not only as a woman, do you in parking garages and places, you are alone. Are you hyper vigilant? But it really was like. And still is where I'm like, could it be anybody? You know, someone could recognize something? Someone could, you know, you just. You never know. And I feel like, especially for you, that whole scene too, in the docuseries, when they're talking about, you know, you're going to events still, paparazzi's there. You're actively signing things to people while you're walking. You don't know if you're quite literally signing something and they're looking you down in the face and it's him. Like, you don't know who it is. It could be anybody at any time.
Eva LaRue
And now they're this close, and now they could stab you, or now they could shoot. You know, it's interesting. Cause at the end, when people saw the picture of him in the second episode, so many people said, well, were you relieved when you saw his photo and when you saw a video of him and he's this, you know, big dude who's got a limp and is, you know, barely getting along? And they said, you must have been so relieved that he, you know, couldn't make good on all that. And I said, of course he could still make good. All he needs to have is a gun.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah.
Eva LaRue
He doesn't have to run up on me to be able to, you know, incapacitate me just by shooting me in the leg or whatever. And I can't get away.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I also feel like, too, a lot of people started being like, oh, well, you must have been so less scared. Like, way less. And I was like. I was like, well, we didn't find him still for 12 years. So for 12 years, I did not know what he looked like. Like, I very much thought he was gonna be a Ted Bundy type. I thought he was gonna be, you know, athletic, handsome, blend in with the crowd. Well, and he wasn't. I was like, that is a man you notice in a crowd.
Eva LaRue
Yeah. For all the wrong reasons.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
That is true. I will say, if I get a stalker. Nobody who's not an eight or above, please.
Eva LaRue
Yeah, I know. Kaya's romantic.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I don't even know what he. Well, I was like. I was like, well, damn.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah. Spoiler. The guy's across between Jabba the Hutt and Archie Bunker. Like, this is not a sexy movie.
Eva LaRue
That's the perfect. Yeah, that's the perfect.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
He is the biggest, like, turd. He's exactly who you would expect from somebody who has all day to write crazy letters to somebody they see on tv. He's. It's quite on the nose.
Eva LaRue
Plus, he has, like, what they always say, what they always describe as beady little eyes, you know, And I was always like, what are beady little eyes? This dude actually has beady little eyes. It looks like he has no whites of his eyes. They're black all the way across. Like a demon. Like it's really creepy.
Jordan Harbinger
You are going to die a slow, painful death when you hear about these amazing deals on the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. This episode is also sponsored in part by BetterHelp. Sometimes February makes it look like everyone else has their love life totally dialed in. And no matter where you are, married, dating, single, it can mess with your head. But in reality, nobody's got it all figured out, even the people who look like they got it all together. And yes, that includes me. Shocking, I know. And yes, that's where therapy can be really useful. It's a way to get clear on what you actually want, what's been feeling heavy, and how to take some pressure off yourself, whether you're working on a relationship, recovering from one, or just trying to stop replaying the same unhealthy patterns. That's why I use and recommend BetterHelp. BetterHelp therapists work according to a strict code of conduct. They're fully licensed in the us Just fill out a short questionnaire so they can pair you with somebody who fits your needs. They've been doing this for 12 plus years and their match fulfillment rate is industry leading, so they usually get it right one of the first few times. And if not, you can switch therapists anytime from their tailored recommendations.
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Jordan Harbinger
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Jordan Harbinger
About our newsletter, Wee Bit Wiser comes out every Wednesday. It's a two minute read. It's a letter where I do not threaten to dismember you and cut you into little pieces or anything of the sort. In fact, it's practical advice that you can apply to your life right away. It's a great companion to the show and you don't have to call the FBI. Once you start receiving this in your inbox, JordanHarbinger.com news is where you can find it. Now Back to Ava LaRue and Kaia McKenna Callahan.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
The fear must have been seeping into Kaya as well, right? Because even though she was five when this started, you want nothing more than to protect your kids. But we had a recent break in and we were home when it happened. And I chased the guys kind of off the property. I didn't follow them or anything, but oh my God.
Eva LaRue
Was it more than one dude?
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
It was three dudes, but they were like, I think they were just gonna rob us. They thought we weren't home. I went like polar bear and just like charged because I didn't. I couldn't see them. I just saw the glass break and the curtain blow inward from the wind and I felt the cold air at night. And we don't have trees in the yard. So I was like, I know it's not a tree. This is funny because this all happens in like half a second, right? I was like, something hit the window. It's broken. Was it a tree? That doesn't make sense. We don't have trees. What could have fallen? Nothing could have fallen. There's obviously a person out there. Or I'm overreacting. But I'm still going to go psycho and yell and scream in charge because if I'm wrong. It's mildly embarrassing, and nobody's here but me, but if I'm right, I'm charging somebody who's trying to break into my house. And my kids were in the next room over sleeping.
Eva LaRue
God.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
And stuff. So. So. But anyway, the point of this story is that afterwards, my daughter, who was three, was like, there's bad guys, and I'm gonna chase them away because I'm a ninja. And it's like, you can't hide stuff from kids when it happens. They just know. They get it. Of course, it didn't help that the cops came through the house with their guns and stuff. And she saw all of this. Right. So she knew something was going on. But. And for months after that, even now, she's still like, I don't like any bad guys. There's no bad guys allowed in my house. You know, she's four. It's almost been like a year.
Eva LaRue
It's stamped. It's imprinted.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yes, it's imprinted. Right, exactly.
Eva LaRue
It's really kind of embedded.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Because I was so young, and I feel like with your daughter, it's one of those things that you almost just grow up with it. You don't know when it starts. But the memory for me, that really sticks out where I was like, oh, this is serious. And there's. You remember a feeling more than you remember words or an actual moment. And it was the moment when the news. I think it was ABC or cbs, had showed up at our doorstep after the whole gate. Gate incident, and they had come in, and we were not only packing to move because obviously he had found our actual address, but then on top of it. And, you know, as a child, you're looking to your parents for guidance, being grounded, and what their emotions are reflected. And so for me, I think that was a moment where I was like, oh, my mom is afraid. She can't hold her fear back from me anymore because it's at our doorstep. It is quite literally pounding on our door with a camera and lights as we're, like, shuffling and packing things up. And so for me, that was a moment where I was like, I need to be afraid because my mom is standing here so scared, shaking, like, I don't know what to do. So, yeah, it definitely seeped through a lot of all of my life. I don't know a before. And it's always interesting when people ask, like, you know, do you think you'll ever feel back to how you felt before or what life was like before? And I'm like, I Don't know what my life was before. Being afraid and being paranoid and being aware. There is no before. There's only going to be an after. And I don't know what that looks like.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
That's sad. And interesting as well, because. Right. You were so young. You mentioned earlier the psychologist thinks this person is. And I looked this up. It's called an erotomaniac, which is a weird term for this person, because there's nothing erotic about this.
Eva LaRue
Nothing erotic about it. Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Kind of the opposite. But this is a disorder, a very weird disorder, where the person believes that somebody, usually someone of higher social status, is deeply in love with them. And I actually had a buddy who had a stalker like this. He's a famous author, and this woman that he had dated just literally, like, decades ago. When we first became friends, she was like, oh, we have to be together for this karmic reason, or something like that. And he got married. And I'm like, oh, surely she's leaving you alone now. And he's like, no, she wrote to my wife and was like, I'll share him with you. And it's like, what?
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Share?
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Share? It's like, no, you're not getting any piece of this. I haven't talked to you for 15 years. And so basically, these people, I look this up, they connect dots that are just not there. Like, you're wearing a blue ribbon in your hair during a media appearance.
Eva LaRue
You knew it was my favorite color.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
She did this for me because I love blue. And she knows I like blue. And it's like, no, she doesn't know who you are, you freaking psychopath. And people do this occasionally. I have a little diet version of this. People will say, hey, Jordan, I'll get a DM on Twitter. And they'll be like, I know you're talking to me. And I'm like, yeah, I'm talking a lot of you. What's going on? And they're like, no, no, I know that. That thing you said on that episode with Ava LaRue, like, when you said the blue ribbon thing, you met. That's our code. And I'm like, what are you talking about? They're like, the CIA is watching both of us, and this is how you're talking to me. And I'm like, well, then why are you DMing me on Twitter, dude, if. Why don't we just talk on Twitter?
Eva LaRue
You're just ruined.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Safe. Yeah, let's just stick with this.
Jordan Harbinger
None of it adds up.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
And then a few weeks later, they're like, no, you're also in the CIA and you're trying to control my brain with your codes. And I'm like. And block. Right. Because none of it makes any sense. And they're schizophrenic or something like that or have some sort of other delusions.
Eva LaRue
You know, this criminal psychologist was talking about, oh, rotomania bar. Why don't we talk about what he really has? But I don't know if that's legal. I don't know if your therapist can come forward and be well, but can't they, if you are a criminal, can't they say, this person has been diagnosed schizophrenic, diagnosed sociopathic, can they not? Because it's your therapist. But if you're a criminal, can't they.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I don't think it's like your personal therapist, but it's probably like a professional can diagnose, but I don't know if it's like their personal therapist can break code too.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah, I mean you could probably try to subpoena stuff like that. It would be very difficult because there is a confidentiality thing. But if they're threatening to murder someone.
Jordan Harbinger
The therapist has to report that.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Now he probably just didn't tell his therapist those things were happening.
Eva LaRue
Well, he tried to. He only had a therapist after was caught. He was trying to, you know, plead that he was, you know, insanity. And they're like, yeah, no, you had a job like you said you were. You were functioning in the world. You were.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
You're unhinged, but you're hinged enough where you knew what you were doing.
Eva LaRue
Yeah. You could still take care of some lovely old people. Lord knows what you were doing to them in the dark.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
I know, that freaks me out too. Yeah. He worked at like an old folks home and it's just like imagine he's watching CSI Miami with some 90 year old and he's like, okay, all right, Deborah, good night. And then he goes home, he's like writing this creepy letter to you. Like, I watched you today. Like, it's just so weird to think about.
Eva LaRue
No, but worse. Here was where my mind went. I was. Because he was working at a memory care facility specifically. So what were these 80 year old people who didn't have a memory? What was he then doing to them at night when no one's around, you know what I mean? Like, and they wouldn't be able to remember and, or tell.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Right. Oh, it's so creepy.
Eva LaRue
You know, the whole thing is just beyond. Because if he's that depraved Yeah, I.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Mean, he might also be a total wimp in real life. And this is just like him sort of larping this. Well, who knows? So there are different phases of erotomania and the stalking part that goes with it. Phase one, they're super in love with you. Phase two, they start getting jealous or they start resenting you. Phase three, which is what it seemed like you just straight skipped to, is anger and rage. And this stuff is all reflected, or at least the latter phases are reflected in the letters. And it's like this rage that their love is unfortunately requited. And you started sleeping with a weapon under the bed. I'm wondering, what's your weapon of choice?
Kaia McKenna Callahan
A machete. No, I'm a dead serious. Yeah, yeah.
Jordan Harbinger
What?
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Really?
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah, no, dead serious. We have a machete.
Jordan Harbinger
Oh, I thought you would have had.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Like a firearm or something.
Eva LaRue
Well, we did for a long time. Like, especially when I was married, we.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Had so many firearms we just locked those up, but we had machetes under the bed.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Okay. Wow. Dang. That is. That's okay. Did you train with it?
Eva LaRue
Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Oh, my God.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I learned how to shoot a gun when I was 8. I shot my first shotgun in Montana and we were doing skeet shooting and then we went to the gun range and I shot Glocks.
Eva LaRue
Yeah, I was 8 and I learned to shoot on CSI Miami. So they trained us. And then I used to go with my ex husband. We used to go to the shooting range a lot. That's when he. He taught Kai how to shoot. And so we're pretty proficient. Because unfortunately the statistic is against women who have guns, who keep guns in their room under their bed. The majority of women are killed with their own firearm by an intruder.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
I see. They get disarmed.
Eva LaRue
Yeah, they get disarmed or they hesitate to shoot or whatever, they get disarmed.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Which makes sense.
Eva LaRue
I wanted to make sure I was proficient.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah, same here. And I'm glad I am because I feel very comfortable holding a firearm, safety wise. Doing what? You know, it's heavy. I mean, when you really hold like when you hold a gun, a handgun in your hands, you're like, this is a lot heavier than you think. And that's. This is legit. Yeah. So I mean, I'm grateful that I know how to safely use it.
Eva LaRue
And here's the thing. We're not.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
We're not even gun people.
Eva LaRue
We're not even gun people.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
No, I get it. I mean, you kind of had to become gun people.
Eva LaRue
We're not like card carrying, NRA people or anything. Not that you know anybody who's watching. If you love it, you love it. I don't care. I don't care what you do.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
It just wasn't your hobby.
Eva LaRue
Love what you wanna love. It's just not mine, you know.
Jordan Harbinger
Tell me about Italy, because this was.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Creepy as hell on theme. Creepy as hell.
Eva LaRue
Yeah. So it was the last three months of that particular season for csi. There isn't even a word beyond terrify. You know, the threat I felt like was coming from everywhere. And I know this is not like all that relatable actors are a miniscule amount of people in the world that are stalked. Because there's like 13.5 million people just in the United States that are stalked. Men, women and children. And actors are like this many of them. And I know this doesn't sound very relatable that I happen to have a friend who has a villa in Italy. But he said, you know what? As soon as the show goes on hiatus, come and stay for the three months of hiatus, just come stay in Italy with me. And I thought, yeah, I don't know how to stay safe here. So I did. The day after filming for that year, we. We jumped on a plane and we went to. And we were not there 36 hours in Italy. Then we wake up in the middle of the night. You know, you've got jet lag. And Kaya rolled over and she was like.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I remember it was the mosquitoes too, that kept us up. There was like mosquitoes just buzzing in our ears. We were trying to like hide under the pillows. We were exhausted.
Eva LaRue
We were exhausted. It was like 3 o' clock in the morning. And she was like, mama, are you awake? And I said, I am. Let's try to go back to sleep. About 10 minutes later, our bedroom door opens up. And you know how when there's a light behind somebody in a darkened room, you can't see their face? Cause they're in shadow. Cause the light's behind them. So I couldn't see who it was, but it was obviously a man. And I said, max, Max. I was trying to be quiet because Kaya was hopefully back asleep. And I was like, max, Max. He didn't answer. And he stood there for a few seconds and then he closed the door. So I thought, okay, well, Max is up too. I'm gonna thank God. I got up and I went to the bathroom first. Took a few minutes in the bathroom, and then I thought, I'll go out in the house and see if Max is up. Cause we're obviously both up. I went out into the house, and all the lights were on, and I thought, well, that's kind of weird. And I walked around. I didn't see Max anywhere. I didn't yell up the stairs. But I was like, max. Cause his room and his mom's room were upstairs.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Nothing.
Eva LaRue
So I went back to bed. And the next morning, Max comes racing into our room, and he says, the house was broken into. Oh, my God. They took the car. They took our jewelry off the bedside stands in our room, in my mom's room. And then in my room, we were completely robbed. Did you hear anything? Did you see anything? And I said, oh, my God. He was in our room. He came right into our room last night. I thought it was you. And he goes, no, it wasn't me. I was asleep. So in that, for me, I know that this is a jump, but. Because I had been doing nothing but praying for my life and my daughter's life for three months and praying for some sort of guidance and some kind of hope in that moment, said to me it was God's answer to me saying, if I want you dead, I will get you in any country, in any city, in any room, anywhere in the world. So relax. Because this person came within 10ft of me and my daughter while we're laying in bed. So it's not that the fear went away, but I was able, after that, to compartmentalize it.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
That's interesting. It's like a turning point. Yeah, I suppose. And it wasn't the stalker. It was just a random robbery. Right, Right.
Eva LaRue
But in that moment, we were like, oh, my God, the stalker followed us here. I mean, completely irrational. Of course. You know, he didn't. But, you know, in that moment, just like you said, in a matter of seconds, you're like, the glass broke. Was it a tree? Was it a thing? You start to run through all the things, and you're like, oh, my God, the stalker actually came into our room.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Did the. Did the police. Did the Italian police impress you?
Eva LaRue
Not in the tiniest.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah, except there are Armani suits. There are Armani suits.
Eva LaRue
And they're all like, yeah, they were hot. Yeah, the cops there are hot.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I love that you were pissed, that you were like, why aren't you taking fingerprints?
Eva LaRue
Why aren't you doing food? Why aren't you taking fingerprints? Why aren't you doing. I was like, do I have to do this for you? Give me your tools. I can figure this out. They. They came in and they were Touching everything. I was like, stop touching things. Stop picking things up. What are you doing? You're contaminating the scene.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah, it's like, ma', am, our tools are unfiltered cigarettes.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
We're not unfiltered cigarettes. And an espresso. Like, can you give us a minute? Maybe we'll work by, like, two.
Eva LaRue
Yeah, we're going to be back when I go on break.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
That's so funny. Yeah, like I saw in the docu series. It was like, don't touch the crime scene. There's fingerprints on the windows. And they're like, look, we're just going to look around and contaminate the crap out of this and then leave and write something for your insurance company, man. Reality comes crashing into your Hollywood image of what police are. So back to la. You build a fence around your house. It's six feet. And unfortunately, in Glendale, it can only be five, eight, or something like that. And you have to go before city council. And these geniuses give your address out on live television.
Jordan Harbinger
How pissed were you?
Eva LaRue
Oh, my God. I don't know. Like in the documentary, you can see my face. I had just said I had a stack like this in a Manila. I said, here are all the letters from my stalker. This is why I have a security gate and a security fence. I'm just trying to get a variance for the. For the three inches that I am above the code right now. And I said, here are all the letters. You guys have copies of them. But I can give you these ones. If you don't have them on you, I can give you these ones right here to look at. I'm scared to death for my daughter. Blah, blah. I go through this whole thing, blah, blah, blah. The next thing they say is, literally, okay, well, we need to state your name for the record. And I said, Eva LaRue. And they said, Eva LaRue at 1149 Blah, Blah Blah street in Glendon. I was like, oh, my God, it's on public tv.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
It's literally on the color from your face. I feel like, literally you went pale.
Eva LaRue
I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Unbelievable. Like, absolutely the dumbest. I mean, look, they probably run on autopilot, but, like, hello, man, get a clue, right?
Eva LaRue
And I do think it was just autopilot. I don't think it was malicious. God, I would hate to think it was malicious. I think it's just what they do.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah. I think it was just their job is boring as hell. And they were like, all right, here's what we do. But also, like, maybe pay attention for this one.
Eva LaRue
Just so you know, like, three of the idiots from that particular council went to jail.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
No, they did not.
Eva LaRue
Yeah, they were skimming money, taking bribes for variances, and taking bribes for this. Oh, yeah, Three of them went to jail.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Oh, so we could have bribed them.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
You could have just bribed them. You didn't even have to go to the meeting.
Eva LaRue
Would have been nice to sue for having to move.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Oh, I didn't know we could have just done that.
Eva LaRue
At that point, you're not thinking about any of those things.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah, like, next time, just start with the bribe.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Start with the bride.
Jordan Harbinger
So the paparazzi, of course, shows up.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
The next day, and I assume you're thinking of. Great. Now if they can find me, he can find me. Paparazzi are basically just stalkers with cameras and a profit M.O. right?
Eva LaRue
So we moved in three days.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
At this point, you're in this new relationship with this new fiance. Did you feel guilty? You know, like, he's getting the letters now?
Eva LaRue
He started getting the letters, and they started out, dear Mr. Capucho. That's how they're addressed. Dear Mr. Capucho, please pass this letter on to your wife, who I would like to rape and kill and dismember and love. Freddy Krueger.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah, it's not your fault, but I feel like I would have felt guilty. Like, I would have still felt bad about that. I'm sure you did.
Eva LaRue
Yes, I felt horrible about that and horrible for his employees that opened the letters at the office, because now they're scared to death that he's gonna come to the office looking for Joe and find them. Like, you know, everybody's scared.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Right.
Eva LaRue
Turk, my publicist, he has his address. He's. Oh, my God. What am I supposed to do here? Everybody was afraid.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
And so, of course, he finds the house. He starts sending letters to the house addressed to you. Kaya. What year are we in of these letters coming, by the way, at this point?
Eva LaRue
When they started coming to you, they started in 2007. When they started coming to you. It was around 2009.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I thought I was, like, a teen or I guess you just let.
Eva LaRue
No, you never knew. Yeah, you never knew. You know now, right now.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah.
Eva LaRue
Yeah. Today you are this many years old.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Like, yeah, today, years old. Yeah. So you're in high school, Kaya, at that point, Right? This must have been so stressful. You're already in. You're a teenager, you're in high school, and you're worried about, like, boys and exams, and it's like, oh, and my psycho stalker who might murder us.
Eva LaRue
Yeah.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I mean, even you referencing where it's like, do you feel guilty? Do you feel bad? Especially just for her husband at the time, it was a very similar feeling for me in the way that I would make friends. You know, starting a new middle school, starting a new high school and trying to make friends and then always having in the back of my mind being like, I have to let them know at some point. But I obviously don't want to start my conversation with, hi, I'm Kya, I do cheer, and let's be friends, and I'm funny. And by the way, what comes with being friends with me is like, you might want to look over your shoulder a little bit because I have a stalker. Like, how do you enter a relationship at 16? Like that? And every relationship thereon. I mean, even now in dating, it's interesting because I am in a relationship and my boyfriend's dad had to say to him, or, you know, obviously, this is all coming out at the same time. And he was like, well, do you feel safe? And you know, what if he comes back and what if he starts finding you? And it kind of freaked me out. I was like, oh, my God. Yeah, it's such a burden to put on people because now you're scared by association and, you know, you can't be public with people and friendships. I had, you know, in high school, it's all about social media, and my friends were posting about each other and we were all tagging each other and tagging our high schools. And I always had to make it very clear with my friends, you cannot tag me. You cannot put your location, and I will not tag you. And I'm like, I don't mean to, like, you know, obviously, it's almost like.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
A. Yeah, you're not snubbing them.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah, exactly. Cause at the time, yeah, as a teenager, you're like, oh, you're not gonna tag me? But it's like, I'm doing this actually for your protection. Because with association and anything connecting me to you and digging deeper, like, you know, it's all connected. So, yeah, that was always the back of my mind thought throughout high school.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
And you were right to do that because he was looking at your. You mentioned earlier, he was looking at your social media leaving little emojis, and you're like, ah, random dude, whatever. But it's like, nope, he was looking at who you were associating with and who you were friends with. And what you were doing and like it looked at all your photos. What is the cadence of the letters? Are you getting them every week? Are you getting them every month? Because it seems like it's not like a regular thing.
Eva LaRue
No, there was no sort, no sort of regularity to it. We would get a flurry of them. I would just assume that he went on a little psycho spin out and we would get them every day for a week and then we wouldn't get them for three weeks. And then sometimes for a while there, when the show ended, when CSI ended, I thought, oh, thank God, like maybe he'll just be off of it. And for about six months we were enjoying no letters at all. And then all of a sudden they started again, like fast and furious.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
This is so weird. It's like on his meds, off his meds kind of stuff.
Eva LaRue
We're like, I don't think he was ever even on meds. Well, he told us when we were sitting in court, in his pathetic speech to us, he said, oh, I wish that I'd had a therapist sooner because he had a court appointed therapist now and he was on court appointed meds. And he said, and I wish I'd been on meds sooner because I don't think any of this would have happened. We're like, yeah, we wish both for you as well. But so there's. I think that's why he would just go into weird spin outs. And then his mom told the FBI that he was a huge All My Children fan and he used to record it and then play episodes on repeat again and again and again and again, like obsessively. It was obsessed with All My Children. So I think the obsession definitely happened from back when I was at All My Children and then escalated. But that's the other thing that we found out since all of this happened is that of all the women that were murdered in the United states last year, 86% of them were stalked first. So we know that stalking escalates to rape and we know it escalates to murder. And that's why the laws around it are so ridiculous. Because if that's the statistic of escalation, the law needs to be, you're not allowed to menace, period. I don't care if you didn't break into their house or you didn't lay hands on them. If you are menacing someone, that needs to be against the law.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah, I mean, it's harassment, but that's. It doesn't reach the level of like what it is. Right. It's also harassment. If I call you names a bunch of times and you tell me to leave you alone.
Eva LaRue
Right, that's one thing. But when you are menacing somebody like men, like, I'm going to harm you, I'm going to hurt you, I'm going to lay hands on you, that's different than I'm going to sue you. You're a butthole. Like all the things. Yeah. You know, like calling names and whatever is different than I am menacing.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yes. This is on a totally, totally different level. And in fact, tell me about the close call at school.
Eva LaRue
Yeah, I mean, that's where it all dovetailed.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Obviously, this is something with 12 years, but you can't live with it at the forefront of your mind every day. So for me, I was just a normal day at high school and I was at the cafeteria and I get an overhead call being like, kai Callhan, come to the front office. And I immediately am like, oh, great, what did I do this time? I'm like. I'm like, I know I cheated on at least three tests in the last week. You know, it's finals week.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Busted.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
And so I'm going to the front and they tell me, hey, you know, your dad called. And I love my dad, but, you know, my dad lived in Palm Desert at the time, and he was two hours away, and so he was never like the first to contact ever. And so they didn't really know what he looked like or sounded like. So they were like, you know, go on your phone and you can stand right here, but, you know, contact your dad. And so I'm texting my dad and then I'm texting my mom.
Eva LaRue
But they also said, your dad said he's gonna pick you up after school. Stand out in front of the school. He's gonna pick you up from school.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah, but they were. They were kind of suspicious too. They were more like, just double check with him on your own. And so I'm texting you, being like, hey, yeah, dad called the school saying he was gonna pick me up. Have you heard from him? I mean, he would have called you first. I'm texting my dad, hey, dad, are you picking me up? And so she's like, no, I haven't even heard from him. That's weird. Da, da, da. And I'm just kind of standing there, and the moment my dad texted me saying, no, I never called the school, I hadn't thought about the stalker in the forefront of my mind, but all of a sudden it was immediate, where I was like, oh, my God, the world just came at a close in and I just was like, oh my God, it's my stalker. It's my stalker. And so I'm freaking out to the poor front office lady at my school and she's like, go back to class, you're fine. I don't even know what you're talking about. I was like, you need to call the FBI. You need to call my mom. We need to get the FBI on the phone right now. So my mom, I had the chance to call my mom and so she comes rushing over and is coming to pick me up. But yeah, I mean, and then the FBI showed up and tapped the phones. And the next day or overnight, he had left 19 voice messages detailing basically everything he had said in the letters, but directly to my school. So that the poor front office woman had to start her morning at 6am Listening to those.
Eva LaRue
And how he would kill any administrator or teacher or kid that got in the way. A student that got in the way of a team here. The fact that he didn't get more time just for that, for threatening a school is really pretty unjust.
Jordan Harbinger
All right, we'll pause right there because apparently threatening to rape and murder someone.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
And their kid is a great place.
Jordan Harbinger
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Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
He's threatening teachers, students and someone in particular and administrators of the school. And he's going to kidnap somebody from his school and rape them and kill them and torture them. Like that alone is three years.
Eva LaRue
Seems okay. That's fine.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah. No, it's crazy. He gets. He ends up with such a light sentence. So the FBI gets back to you after a while. Here the new agents are the guys who helped catch the Golden State Killer. We had Paul Holz on the show, actually. He's one of the guys who was involved in that.
Eva LaRue
Yeah, I know Paul. He's a guy.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
He's really good. Episode 725. That story is crazy, right? The. The genetic genealogy.
Eva LaRue
Well, and here's the interesting truth about that story. Paul Holes had been on the case for like 20 something years and he was getting ready to retire. And the two FBI agents, well, specifically Steve Kramer, who had been a lawyer for the FBI, he was just fascinated with the Golden State Killer case, why it hadn't been solved. And so he called Paul Holes at one point after listening to Michelle McNamara's podcast and reading her articles on the Golden State Killer. And he called Paul Holz and he was like, hey, I'm with the FBI. I'm just a lawyer with the FBI. But how can I help? Like, are there any tools that we have that we could help? I'm just fascinated with why it hasn't been solved. So they kind of create this ragtag team. It was Steve Kramer who created forensics genealogy. He was never allowed to take credit for it because he was with the FBI. And the FBI said to him, murder is not an FBI jurisdiction. Murder is local law enforcement jurisdiction. And it's only FBI jurisdiction if it's part of a RICO case or part of some other, you know, that makes sense, FBI jurisdiction sort of case. So the FBI said to Kramer, you gotta do this on your weekends. Don't be messing around doing this on FBI time if you're doing this. This is a hobby for you. So 2 FBI, they did not ever get to take credit for it. Then the FBI, when the case got solved, Paul Holes and one of the other guys from Colorado, I can't remember his name right now, they took all the credit for solving a case that he literally didn't solve for 25 years by himself. Although he's a lovely guy and he did help do the stuff. It was Kramer who created the technology. And then when Kramer came back to and Bush, at that point, Steve Bush came back to the FBI and said, we think we created a brand new technology. The FBI, God bless them, were like, yeah, it's a one off, it's not replicable. Sit still. So they kind of went behind their back. And our FBI agent at the time, Richard Alexander, was, had just gotten a promotion and was leaving our case behind. Somebody else was gonna be taking it over. And they just happened to be chatting inside the FBI offices and they said, look, we're looking for another DNA heavy case because we need to kind of quietly prove that this is a technology, like on our weekends, basically. And Richard said, please, please take this case. These are my girls that I've been trying to solve their case for 12 years and I haven't been able to do it. It would be amazing. Please take the girl's case. And so our case was the very next case that the guys took after Golden State. Our case proved that it was a replicable technology and our case ended up being a precedent setting case for the FBI. It was the first ever adjudicated case with forensics technology.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
So genealogy, essentially, if they don't have the DNA match in the database, right. They have something, let's say off of a postage stamp or off of a murder weapon, they might not have Anybody in the database, but they can go to, I don't know, 23andMe or something like that, a DNA site, and go, is anybody here registered who would be a relative of this person? And so with the Golden State Killer, I'm going off memory here, but basically Kramer and Paul holes, they found that this person's brother had registered and they were like, oh, we found a DNA match for a brother. Or maybe it was a cousin or something like that.
Eva LaRue
It was like a fifth cousin.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Okay. Oh, it was really that far off. Okay.
Eva LaRue
Because when they first started uploading the DNA from Golden State Killer into these other entities, GEDmatch and Ancestry and all these things, there wasn't even enough DNA in those companies in the beginning to get a match at all. So they had to wait, it was almost like three years or four years that they kept uploading, waiting to get a match. And then they finally ended up getting a match to a fifth cousin. And then they did the gumshoe old fashioned detective work and basically knocked on doors and they said they never had a problem knocking on doors saying, hi, FBI, you're related to a serial killer. Can you help us out?
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
I mean, I would be like, oh, I bet I know who it is.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Eva LaRue
Oh, it's Uncle Tom, isn't it?
Kaia McKenna Callahan
It's like my second cousin, you know, killed that cat one time. I definitely bet it was him. Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
What a freak. Yeah. But of course it makes sense because then you narrow it down from every human on earth or every male or whatever on earth to in Ohio to, oh, okay, it's somebody who is related to this person. There's a lot of those. But are they all.
Eva LaRue
Are they all men? No, we get down to the last 10. And then how many of them live in Ohio? Then how many of them follow us on social media? And there was one.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah, there was one guy following you.
Eva LaRue
On social media from that family branch.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
And the id, the guy. Yes, he follows both of you on social media. He was in Ohio, where the letters were postmarked. So they knew that they had him, the classic out of shape white dude, lives with his mom. Because of course I always, I always.
Eva LaRue
Felt like he lived in the basement in his mom's basement.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
You did always say he lived in his mom's basement.
Eva LaRue
I was always like, he lives in his mom's basement.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
It's very predictable.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
He didn't live in the basement.
Eva LaRue
But, you know, and then they still have to match the DNA. So they can't just say, okay, we have a high Probability that on that family tree branch, of all the leaves on that branch, this is the only one who is. A man, happens to be from Ohio, follows us. That's still not enough. They have to stalk him, and they have to wait for him to throw out something with his DNA on it. And so he threw out an Arby's cup and they got his DNA off the straw.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
That's amazing. I mean, that must have been. These guys must have been pretty stoked, right? They're watching some idiot throw away a fast food bag, and they're like, please don't be a waste of time. And they get the DNA off the straw, and they're like, boom.
Eva LaRue
Yeah. And they. I think they knew it wasn't a waste of time because they knew they had the. They knew they had their guy, but they just had to. But the crazy thing was they. They followed him. He pulls up to his house, he walks across the street and puts his Arby's trash bag, the bag of Arby's stuff, in a public dumpster across the street, which is weird. He didn't, like, take it into the house and throw it away. And when he went into the house, the guys who were there, it wasn't Steve Bush yet, were like. It was one of those ones where it's just got a chute. Like a big, huge public trash can with just a trash chute and the rest of the thing is locked down. And they're like, oh, God, now we gotta, like, go call the city. We got a dumpster dive. We gotta do like. And so he tells a story about how he went. He was like, well, let me just go see. So he goes over and he opens up the little chute, and he said, thankfully, somebody had thrown out some blinds, and the blinds were sticking up inside the chute. And so the bag of Arby's was hanging on the blinds halfway up the chute. So all they had to do was like, reach in and grab it. And then they ran it for DNA. Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
That's amazing because that's one of those things where you feel like you could almost like, oh, we called the city. But between when the guy arrived the empty, the dumpster and it went to the landfill, and we couldn't get it, and then da, da, da. Like, what? And then the guy saw us and he got freaked out and he went to ground for a year and a half. Like, it's just. It could have gone totally different. And this was scary. There was a scary moment in the documentary where this FBI agent says, once People are no longer afraid of being caught. That's when they're the most reckless and when victims are the most at risk. And they thought kind of he was getting to that point, right? Because he was like, I'm coming for you. I'm calling this school now. Like, I'm clearly just not worried.
Eva LaRue
He was excited. 19 messages overnight in one night.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah. He's manic.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah. Because then you have a real location in the same way, you know, like, it's not just LA anymore. It's. I know where she's gonna be every single day, all day. Yeah. And that was. That was terrifying. I mean, I didn't go back to. Thank God. It all timed out, right? Because I think I was only out of school for, like, three days. But when I look back, I was like, I would have had to switch schools. In all honesty. I would have. You know, obviously Covid happened, I think, a few months later, but I'm like, I wouldn't have been able to go back to school. I would have had to switch. I would have had to completely change so many things about my life once again, just to be safe. And thankfully, I think it was, yeah, three days later, and they were like, we've got him. We're not gonna arrest him yet. We're waiting on the DNA, but we've got eyes on him. Like, you are good. Yeah. That was so relieving to be like, oh, my God, like, the first time in my whole life to feel like I a. Was like I could be safe and that I was safe to go to school.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
And of course, as you predicted, he lives in his mother's basement, essentially, Right. His mom has no idea, but says, oh, we always watch Davis shows over and over and over again. Creepy.
Eva LaRue
Weird.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Af.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah. The creepiest fact for me is, is when they went in and they were checking his phone, and the only two numbers programmed into his phone were his work and my high school.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yes, I wrote that down. The FBI goes in, they're raiding this guy's house, right? And he. First of all, he has every photo of you from every public appearance that you've ever done on hard drives and laptops or whatever. And yet there's a cell phone with two contacts in it. One his mom and the other your high school.
Jordan Harbinger
Not work, not relatives, not neighbors, Just.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
His mom and your high school.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
So weird.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
So weird.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
So creepy. Like, I can't even imagine, had this gone on longer, how many more times he would have called the school, how much more he would have done? I mean, when I went Back to school. I felt really bad for the front office woman that was working there because. Not that I yelled at her that day, but I was, like, panicking, and she very much was like, I, like, go back to class. Like, I don't. I think she kind of thought I was trying to, like, get out of school early.
Eva LaRue
She even said to me, as. When I called the school and I said, I'm coming to pick her up. And she's like, well, do you have a doctor's note? And I was like, lady, if you get in the way of me picking up my kid, I'll run you over. Like, literally, you won't be worrying about the stalker.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah.
Eva LaRue
Worrying about me.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
But when I went back and I checked in for some reason, and she, like, looked at me and, like, almost took my hand and was like, I am so sorry. And I was like, for what? And she was like, I heard the messages. Like, you know, I'm the one who answered. And she was like, I just can't even imagine. And I'm so sorry I didn't take it seriously. And da, da, da. And I just was like, oh, my God. Like, it was one of the first times I realized, not that it was gonna be public, but where I was like, oh, my God. Other people are knowing without me being the one to sit them down and tell them. And this is like, I felt really guilty and, like, that burden to share that, you know, it's almost. You must feel ashamed. Which is weird, because it's not. It's not our fault. It's not my fault. But at the same time, you feel so ashamed to have this.
Eva LaRue
You're sharing a burden.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
And sharing a fear. Because at some point, you get to the point where you're like, well, I can handle it.
Eva LaRue
Not only that, but when you tell people that you feel afraid, the other person is not feeling afraid with you. They're sad for you. They don't really feel the visceral feeling of fear. But when somebody listens to a message that's aimed at them, I'll kill any administrator or teacher or student. Or suddenly the fear is embodied. Now you're one of the people that's being targeted. And now you're like, oh, my God. Like, then it becomes super real. Not that nobody cares when we tell them, but.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
But it's like you're crying wolf, you know? How many times can you say, I'm scared.
Eva LaRue
I'm still scared.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
You know?
Eva LaRue
It's 12 years.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah. How are you doing? It's like when someone has Cancer. And you don't want to bring up to the person, you know, how's your cancer doing? But you're also kind of waiting for them to tell you, but then you. You don't also want to bring into a conversation when you're having a good day with somebody being like, oh, yeah, my cancer is da, da, da, da, da. It's still.
Eva LaRue
Still here. Still cancer.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah. You know, it's kind of like this conversation you don't ever really want to have. You don't want to make a bad day worse, and you don't want to make a good day bad, so you just kind of don't talk about it.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
How did you feel when you heard he'd finally been arrested?
Eva LaRue
Relief and disbelief, I guess, because after 12 years, I just. I had stopped hoping that he'd ever be caught. It was very surreal. The whole thing was. And the timing was so surreal that he had just found your school. And the story was so crazy. Like. And then to top it all off, the poor woman in the administration office, the school or the admittance office or whatever, she was like, well, when does FBI Agent Steve Bush come back? Because he's hot.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
My school loved themselves. They'd say their husband. They literally be like, our husband.
Eva LaRue
Our FBI husband.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah, but it was. Yeah, but it was like a whirlwind of emotions. I mean, yeah, everything.
Eva LaRue
TV show, but we weren't on the TV show. It was really crazy.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
What was it like seeing this guy face to face in court, so to speak? I mean, actually, I know you did it remotely, because what was the reason for that? They didn't want to give him the.
Eva LaRue
We did it remotely, but we had to lobby for that.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Oh, because they were trying to fly him out to la.
Eva LaRue
They had to fly him to LA to be in the courtroom with us. He'd never been in proximity to us, and we're like, we don't want to suddenly be in proximity. Can you have, like, a tiny bit of sympathy for the victims? Like, hello? And so finally, like, three days before, they told us, okay, we're going to have him via Zoom. But, yeah, we had to beg our US Attorneys who had our case to.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah. To lobby for him.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Gosh, that's crazy. I mean, at least they caved on that because, I mean. Yeah. That he would love nothing more than to be in a room with you guys after all this.
Eva LaRue
And we said, if you guys bring him out, we won't be in person. We'll be Zoom. Because it doesn't make sense. You're Gonna give him a free trip to la and then what? Leave him here? Then what happens? I don't know.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
What's it like giving a victim impact statement?
Jordan Harbinger
What goes into those?
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
First of all, I don't even really know what those are.
Eva LaRue
You weren't even gonna give one?
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I wasn't gonna give one at all. I mean, you sat and wrote yours prior, which was just kind of detailing more. Just detailing everything you've been through, everything you've felt, and really laying it all.
Eva LaRue
Out to give the judge an idea of, hopefully you're trying to influence sentencing at that point. And I don't even really remember what I said other than, yeah, just laying it all out and what it had meant for us and how many times we moved and how this.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
How it deeply affected us, I guess, in our daily lives. Yeah.
Eva LaRue
Just. Yeah. How we'll be affected forever. And then he gave his statement.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Well, he gave his first.
Eva LaRue
He gave his statement first.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I mean, I wasn't going to speak. I was very adamant about not wanting to stand up and speak at all. But he had gone first. And one of the things he said was, I hope you can let this go. I hope you can just Forget the last 12 years, everything that's happened, because now I'm on meds and now I'm in therapy, and now I feel bad. I hope you can let this go and move on with your life. And in that moment, I looked at my mom and I was like, I'm going up first. I was like, not only am I gonna speak, I'm going up first. Because I was like, this is insane. What do you mean, let this go? And I felt compelled. Where I was like, the judge needs to know. I would love to let this go, but I actually can't because A, B, C, D, E, F, G, the entire Alphabet.
Eva LaRue
Well, it's rewired your brain completely.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah.
Eva LaRue
We will never not be hypervigilant. How do you go back after 12 years to. And he's out.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah, he's out now.
Eva LaRue
So how do we just go, oh, he's fine now I'm sure he's totally sane because people go from insane to sane.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Right. He gets three years and then three years of probation, which is crazy to me. I mean, three years is. It's a long time for a bunch of traffic violations or a bag of weed, but it's nothing for somebody who spent a dozen years threatening to kill you in the most brutal ways possible. And your daughter. It just doesn't make any sense. What do you think he should have gotten.
Eva LaRue
In your opinion, the max he could have gotten was seven in this case. And I think he should have gotten three and a half for her and three and a half for me. And the thing is, I mean, maybe he would have gotten more if Joe, my ex husband, had been part of the case. But his letters had a statute of limitation on them. It had already been seven years since he had gotten letters, so he could not be part of the case. But there was also people that did not step forward. There's another girl from another soap opera, from One Life to Live. And I won't say her name. Cause it's her story and not my story. But her mom called me at one point and said, my daughter is getting these letters. He references you in the letters and says, if you don't believe me and what I'm gonna do to you, just ask Eva Larue. And they were signed for anything, Krueger. So I don't know how long she was getting the letters. I never heard from them about it again. And when the FBI reached out to her, she wouldn't respond. So I think probably what happened was he was off of her. You don't ever want to do anything to reignite their obsession with you. So that's probably why she didn't come forward again. I'm just. I'm just guessing that he stopped writing her at some point.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah, that makes sense. Gosh, it's scary because restraining orders and things like that are just paper, right? And this guy's out of prison. I think you're lucky that he's kind of older and not physically able. But like you said, he just needs a weapon, right? It's scary, man. I'm glad you guys are okay. How often do you think about this? Aside from doing promo for the docu series? Every day. Right?
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I try not to think about it.
Eva LaRue
Yeah, we try not to.
Jordan Harbinger
Well, I don't blame you for that.
Eva LaRue
It definitely comes up, you know, for.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Me, I feel like at least. At least twice a week for me.
Eva LaRue
Yeah.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Where I'm conscious about it.
Eva LaRue
You know, at night, you're always. You know, when the house is quiet and you're always.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I think it's just intertwined with everything, you know? Like, there's almost no separation where you're specifically being like, oh, my God, Remember, I had a stalker today. It's just in every way you.
Eva LaRue
It's how you move through the world.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
It's how you move. Yeah, it's how you move. Everything's intertwined with it. And the Fear and the paranoia and, you know, the year two of the fact that this was one man. It doesn't mean it won't happen again.
Eva LaRue
I mean, how are you feeling now that this happened to you? Somebody broke into your house. Like, there's no way you're not thinking about this every night now.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah.
Eva LaRue
Like that they might come back. Every sound. I'm sure.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
I don't think about it that much. Surprisingly, we made some changes to our security system. I should probably bounce those ideas off you. You probably have a fire alarm system. Like, we have, like, new lighting and new sensors and new locks everywhere and stuff like that. And I've got some other surprises should they get further than that.
Eva LaRue
All home alone.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah. Little home. Yes. I have little toy cars with nails sticking out. I have a. I have a pet tarantula I'm going to put on their face.
Jordan Harbinger
I don't think about it every day.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
But you know what? My wife does and I know my kids do. I don't know if it's every day. I know they think about it a lot because again, 10, 11, whatever. We're at almost 12 months. 11 months later, my daughter will be like. I'll be like, what are you drawing? She'll be like, oh, it's a sign that says no bad guys. And I'm like, ugh, these freaking guys.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
So it's sort of in the back of her head somewhere. And then my son will be like, hey, dad. And I'll be like, what? And he'll go, do bad guys. Are they just like everywhere in the dark? And I'm like, no, they're not. And he's like, okay. You know, it's just sort of. So that. That actually is the thing that pissed me off the most. My feeling of, like, having. Being a little bit violated my home, you know, the glass broken, the property damage, dealing with that. That. That was like. That's like not even making the top 10 list of things that upset me about this. It's my family being upset about it or my wife going, I always set the alarm when we go somewhere. And I'm like, we're going across the street. And she's like, I don't care. You know? And she's right. But it's also like, oh, I kind of miss the days where she was like, oh, I didn't set the alarm. Ah, it's our fine. We're only gone for the weekend.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah, my brother's home.
Eva LaRue
Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
That kind of stuff.
Eva LaRue
No, you're hyper vigilant forever. When your Brain is traumatized like that, and your brain is shocked like that. I don't know if you can ever not have that vigilance. You know what I mean?
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
It's tough. I mean, maybe it fades with time or something like that. I guess we'll see.
Eva LaRue
I'm sure it fades with time. And I don't know, for us, as long as this guy is alive, I don't know that it'll really be able to fade for us.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
What's something you can never do anymore and something that you always have to do now?
Eva LaRue
I mean, now I feel like we've really kind of taken back everything we kind of.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I feel like I can never. I mean, I have like a travel content Instagram, and so I feel like I can never post my exact location about things. I always post for safety. I was in London a week ago now, and I'm just posting about it.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
I do that. Yeah. I don't post in real time.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah. I feel like I can never post in real time and a lot of my friends do because who cares? And I can't. And then what would I like to do? Was that.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
That. What's something you always have to do now or you feel like you always have to do now? Like with me with the alarm system.
Eva LaRue
Yeah, it's definitely our security system.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
I feel like I always have to. If someone's following me for too long, you know, like, you happen to be going the same way. I always make four lefts just to make sure they're not.
Eva LaRue
Four left turns. Yeah.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Or I. I'll pass my house or I'll. You know, I'll do.
Eva LaRue
Because no one's making four left turns. That isn't following you.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Right. Exactly. Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger
Unless they're lost.
Eva LaRue
And we know where all of the police stations are in.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah, in my area. Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Jeez.
Eva LaRue
And on the way to wherever we need to be going, like, wherever. You know, the work is.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
What freaks me out is that, like, guys like this just exist. And they're, like, working at Chipotle.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Right.
Eva LaRue
They live next door to you. They're like, here. They're right around you. Yeah.
Jordan Harbinger
Like, oh, the guy who lives with his mom and he's kind of a weird guy, but he's.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
He's so nice. He cut his. He cuts the lawn and he brings flowers for her on Thanksgiving. Oh, and he threatened to rape and murder this couple that lives five states away that he watches on tv. What?
Eva LaRue
Yeah. I mean, even the gold. The Golden State Killer. He's got two daughters. One of them's a doctor. She went to Stanford. He was like a soccer dad.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Yeah.
Eva LaRue
It's like a normal dude that people, you know.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
He's bringing oranges to the soccer games for the kids.
Eva LaRue
You know, it's his week, but he's killed 43 people.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
It's so crazy. And in, like, brutal ways. I remember researching that, and it was like he would put, like, plates on the guy. He would, like, humiliate the guy guy by putting plate, like, making him watch the whole thing. It was crazy. Gross. True monsters. Really true monsters. And you dodged yours. Well, thank you again. I'm so glad you're both okay.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Thank you.
Eva LaRue
It was so great talking to you. Thanks for having us.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah. Thank you so much.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Thank you for coming on and braving LA traffic. You're brave in so many ways, ladies.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
So many ways.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Thank you.
Eva LaRue
You're such a great interviewer.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
Yeah. That was amazing. I really appreciate it.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Thanks. Nice to meet you guys. Take care, and safe travels.
Kaia McKenna Callahan
So good to meet you.
Jordan Harbinger
You're about to hear a preview from Joe Loyev, a man who robbed 30 banks across California, but says the real crime scene was his childhood, where his Pentecostal preacher father beat him over a hundred times before he turned 15.
Joe Loya
For 14 months, I robbed 30 banks, sometimes several in one day. I lost all sense that my life was going to be long at all. I just wanted to grab the loot and get the hell out of Dodge as fast as possible and go spend it and have fun. That was my ethos. And so I did, because all the crimes I did and all the violence I did, and starting with my dad, when my mother died, we had received a lot of love from her and everything like that. It's just too much for him. And when he gets angry now, he gets brutal. Like, he may have socked me, he may have choked me. He may have done all those things, beat me with a bat. He wants us dead. He's using the deadline language. He could kill us or I could kill myself. But this is like, it's just a tough time for me to try and process the grief myself. And beyond being brutalized, I don't believe I have a future. So there's nothing inside of me like, oh, I got to protect my future. I better get a job. I start. Better start saving money for the future. None of that. Because a trauma is so intense, you're only looking at surviving the next day in front of you. You know, in fact, I'm not made for society. They have all these moralities, but they're too timid for me. I've seen past the curtain. Like I become in my heart like a little sociopath. Looking at like you guys are falling for the Okie Doke. And I'm not the guy who falls for the Okie Doke. I'm the guy who stabs the Okie Doke and says, get the hell out of my way. I'm not buying it. Right. Once upon a time, Joe Loya couldn't handle his emotional shit. And so now I'm a criminal. I'm a bad guy.
Jordan Harbinger
In this episode, Joe unpacks the unsettling rapture he felt in the middle of a robbery. And the exact moment seven years in solitary forced him to confront what he'd been running from his whole life. And the turning point that finally redirected everything. It's not what you'd expect. Check out episodes 1264 and 1265 of the Jordan Harbinger Show.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
Well, I have to say I am.
Jordan Harbinger
Genuinely relieved that these women are both okay. Wow. What really stuck with me isn't just the fear. It's what never goes back to normal. The things you can't do anymore. The things you always have to do now. The fact that even after an arrest, after prison, after restraining orders, there's still that quiet awareness in the background. Maybe not so quiet that a piece of paper doesn't really stop anyone. This story is horrifying, but it's also a rare look at how these cases actually work. How slow they are, how messy they are, and how much of the burden falls on the victims just to stay alive. Eva Kaya, thank you for trusting me.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
With this and for sharing something so personal and so unsettling here on the show. And I feel like we had fun doing it, if we can say that. And if you haven't watched the documentary yet, prepare yourself.
Jordan Harbinger
Go and do that. Links and resources, of course in the show. Notes, advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show, all@jordanharbinger.com deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Also, our newsletter, once again we Bit wiser, Very Practical will have an immediate impact on your decisions. Psychology relationships in under two minutes every Wednesday, jordanharbinger.com news is where you can find it. Don't Forget about our 6 minute networking course as well. Over at 6minutenetworking.com I'm Orden Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn in this show. It's created in association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tatasalauskas, Ian Baird and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who is interested in sort of true crime ish or scary stories like this, definitely share it with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn and we'll see you next time. I've Got Homes.com is a sponsor for this episode. Homes.com knows when it comes to home.
Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
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Jordan Harbinger
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Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
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Jordan Harbinger
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Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
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Jordan Harbinger
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Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest commentator)
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Jordan Harbinger
So when it comes to finding a home, not just a house, this is everything you need to know all in1place.homes.com we've done your homework.
Episode 1283: Eva LaRue & Kaya McKenna Callahan | 12 Years Hunted by a Stalker
Date: February 10, 2026
Host: Jordan Harbinger
Guests: Eva LaRue & Kaya McKenna Callahan
This gripping episode dives deep into the harrowing 12-year ordeal endured by actress Eva LaRue and her daughter, Kaya McKenna Callahan, at the hands of a persistent stalker. Covering the psychological, personal, and legal difficulties they faced, Jordan Harbinger draws out both pragmatic takeaways and emotional truths, offering listeners sobering insight into the hidden trauma of stalking. Key topics include the realities behind high-profile stalking cases, law enforcement limitations, genetic genealogy breakthroughs, persistent hypervigilance, and the profound long-term impact on victims.
Not Another Hollywood Stalker Story:
Early Threatening Letters:
Toll on the Victims:
Hypervigilance:
Eva’s Role on CSI Miami:
The CSI Effect on Juries and Investigation:
Immediate Threat and Psychological Profile:
Escalations and Adaptations:
Law Enforcement Limitations:
Innovative Investigation:
How It Worked:
Long-Term Hypervigilance:
Burden of Shame and Relating to Others:
Notable Shared Moments:
Frustrations with the Law:
Restraining Orders Offer Little Protection:
The episode delivers a raw, detailed look at the realities of living under the threat of a determined stalker for over a decade—detailing the ongoing anxiety, the failures of existing laws, and the bleak knowledge that abnormal vigilance may now permanently color every aspect of life. Eva LaRue and her daughter, Kaya, share stories that lay bare the hidden toll of fame and the inadequacy of society's protections against predatory individuals. Advanced genetic genealogy finally brought their stalker to justice, yet—as they make clear—the scars from those years will always linger, and no sense of normalcy will ever fully return.
If you’re interested in true crime, legal systems, or psychological resilience—and especially if you presume “that would never happen to me”—this episode is a wake-up call.