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Jury Convicts Uma Thurman's Stalker
NEW YORK — A lovesick former mental patient was convicted Tuesday of stalking and harassing Uma Thurman for more than two years, showing up on her front doorstep and movie set and sending the actress a series of creepy love letters.
Jack Jordan, a 37-year-old out-of-work lifeguard and pool cleaner, faces up to a year in jail. He was convicted of stalking and one count of aggravated harassment, and acquitted of two other harassment counts.
The verdict comes after a weeklong trial that featured riveting testimony from the Academy award-nominated actress, who told the jury she was "completely freaked out" by Jordan's behavior.
Prosecutors say he had stalked her since 2005, when his crush on Thurman become so intense that he just had to be with the "Kill Bill" and "Pulp Fiction" star.
He showed up at her doorstep and the SoHo set of her movie "My Super Ex-Girlfriend" and sent a series of bizarre cards and letters to Thurman, including 20 of them while he was locked up at a mental institution.
Jordan testified in his own defense, saying Friday he now understands how Thurman could have been frightened by his attempts to see her, and by the letter in which he said her two children didn't exist, that they were "an illusion," among other bizarre statements.
"In a misguided way I was trying to give her an opportunity to meet me and give myself an opportunity to meet her," Jordan testified.
"I was feeling distressed," said Jordan. "I had this feeling of longing for Ms. Thurman and I was trying to explain it. I was not trying to scare her in any way."
Thurman testified for three hours on Thursday, captivating the jury with her story about how the stalking frightened her so badly.
She testified about a card Jordan delivered to her movie trailer in Manhattan's SoHo area where she was filming "My Super Ex-Girlfriend." It bore a drawing of an open grave, a headstone and a man standing on the edge of a razor blade. A spiral of random words referred to "chocolate, mouth, soft, kissing" and declared, "My hands should be on your body at all times."
"I was completely freaked out," Thurman, 38, said of the drawing, which was on a religious confirmation card. "It was almost like a nightmare; it was scary."
The defendant explained the drawing this way:
"I felt I was walking on the razor's edge," Jordan said. "I felt that it reflected this relationship that I unfortunately imagined that we had. ... This cartoon was meant to amuse her, to endear me to her."
The defendant also admitted that he told Thurman and her family he would kill himself if he couldn't meet her. He said it "was a clumsy and poor way of expressing my emotions for her. I wasn't feeling suicidal, but I was expressing a depth of feeling that was very distressing."
Jordan said he was "humiliated" by the trial and by the fact that his private affections for the actress had become so public.
Jordan said he first developed a crush on Thurman in high school after seeing her in the 1988 Terry Gilliam movie, "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen." His feelings for her intensified, he said, after he saw her in the Quentin Tarantino-directed "Kill Bill" in 2003.
Jordan, who lives with his parents in Gaithersburg, Md., said he was involuntarily committed to a mental facility in late 2005 after being questioned about his obsession with Thurman.
He was eventually released, and started repeatedly showing up at her apartment last year. At the time of his arrest, he was living out of his car and working part-time as a lifeguard and pool cleaner.
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SAMUEL MAULL | May 6, 2008 12:01 PM EST |
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