A FORMER mental patient was convicted yesterday of stalking and harassing Uma Thurman for more than two years, showing up on her doorstep and film set and sending the actress frightening love letters.
Jack Jordan, a 37-year-old unemployed lifeguard and pool cleaner, faces up to a year in prison.
He was convicted of stalking and one count of aggravated harassment, and acquitted of two other harassment counts.
The verdict comes after a tria
l that featured evidence from the actress, who told the jury she had been "completely freaked out" by Jordan's behaviour.
Prosecutors say he had stalked her since 2005, when he showed up at her doorstep and on the set of her film My Super Ex-Girlfriend, and sent her a series of bizarre cards and letters – including 20 of them posted while he was being held in a mental institution.
Jordan testified in his own defence, saying he now understands how Thurman could have been frightened by his attempts to see her, and by the letter in which he said that her two children did not exist, that they were "an illusion".
"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. I had this feeling of longing for Ms Thurman and I was trying to explain it," he said. "I was not trying to scare her in any way."
Thurman told the jury her story of how the stalking frightened her so badly.
A card Jordan delivered to her trailer while she was filming 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."
The defendant admitted that he told Thurman and her family he would kill himself if he could not meet her.
Jordan, who lives with his parents in Gaithersburg, Maryland, said he was involuntarily committed to a mental facility 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.
The full article contains 401 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
