Uma Thurman testified Thursday in Manhattan criminal court that her accused stalker alarmed her on numerous occasions and made her fear for her own safety and that of her children.
The 38-year-old actress testified in the trial against former psychiatric patient Jack Jordan, a man who allegedly stalked her for nearly two years, from early 2005 to the time of his arrest last October.
Thurman told the court she was “freaked out” when she received a sinister drawing from the defendant, showing an open grave, a headstone and a man walking on the edge of a razor blade. “I was completely freaked out,” she said, as quoted by the Associated Press. “It was almost like a nightmare; it was scary.”
Thurman repeatedly experienced the goose bumps of her manmade nightmare when Jordan called and emailed her parents and brother. She testified that she had skimmed some of the emails only to find, to her horror, that they mentioned her former husband, actor Ethan Hawke, and their two children, aged 6 and 9.
One e-mail said, “You have no children,” and called them an “illusion.”
“I don't think any mother or parent would want a stranger to fixate on their children, and fixate on them not existing,” Thurman said. “That was terrifying to me.”
Jack Jordan, 37, who denies stalking and aggravated harassment, told Thurman’s parents that he would kill himself unless he could see her. He attempted to enter her trailer on the set of “My Super Ex-Girlfriend” and even loitered at the New York home she shares with her two young children between early 2005 and shortly before his arrest last year.
Thurman further testified that Jordan had turned up at her Greenwich Village home last August, while she was vacationing in the Bahamas, and that her personal assistant called her to say the man would not leave. He only left when she threatened to call the police.
“I felt afraid. I felt afraid now for my life,” she told the jury. “I realized this was a very dangerous situation. I was frightened for the lives of my children and myself. It was clear we were in serious danger and we needed professional help.”
Jordan faces up to a year in jail if convicted. His lawyer, George Vomvolakis, told the jury earlier this week that he is a troubled man who “does not think the way you and I think.” Vomvolakis argued that his client needs psychiatric treatment, not jail.
“He loved her and possibly still does. He never wanted to annoy her, threaten her or alarm her. Creepy? Yes. Obsessed? Yes. Criminal? No,” Vomvolakis said at the start of the trial. “He doesn't know the boundaries you and I know.”