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Uma Thurman's parents testify at stalking trial
2008-04-29
The former mental patient accused of stalking Uma Thurman appeared at her front door repeatedly at odd hours, and he left her a frightening letter, according to testimony Tuesday by two of the actress' employees. Thurman's housekeeper Dorota Janas testified on the second day of Jack Jordan's trial that he rang the bell at the actress' Greenwich Village town house at least twice a day for at least 10 days last summer. Jordan, 37, is on trial in Manhattan's state Supreme Court charged with stalking and aggravated harassment. He was arrested in October 2007 after following and trying to contact Thurman from early 2005 until about a month before his arrest. He faces up to a year in jail if convicted. His lawyer, George Vomvolakis, says Jordan is a former mental patient who has been diagnosed as schizophrenic and bipolar and should be in psychiatric treatment, not in jail. Janas, testifying through a Polish interpreter, said she saw Jordan sitting on the front stoop a few days before another employee called police. Some time later, she retrieved a letter Jordan had left for Thurman on the stoop. Samara Koffler, a film producer who was Thurman's former personal assistant, testified that she returned from the Bahamas in August 2007 and saw the letter Janas had found. She read part of it in court. "Dear Uma," Koffler read, "I love you completely. Unless rousted, I'll spend the night in front of (Thurman's address)." At another point, she read: "Ask your assistant to let me wait inside until you return. I feel afraid that if I see you with another man I'll kill myself." Koffler said she told Thurman about the letter and called 911 and told police "an unstable man" was hanging around the house. The 38-year-old Thurman -- who has starred in "Pulp Fiction," "Kill Bill," "The Producers," and "My Super Ex-Girlfriend," among other films -- hired a private detective and allowed installation of surveillance cameras around the house, where she lives with her two children. Earlier in the day, Thurman's parents testified. Her father, Robert Thurman, said his reaction after reading e-mails from Jordan was to try to remember the FBI's telephone number. He said in court Tuesday he was seeing Jordan for the first time. Her mother, Birgitte "Nena" Thurman, testified that she believed Jordan "was someone who would benefit from medical attention." She said the first time she spoke to the defendant was in 2005 when he called her home in Woodstock, N.Y., and told her that he "and my daughter had a predestination to be together." She said he asked her to relay that message. "I tried to assure him in no uncertain terms that this was just a fantasy and he was projecting," Thurman said, and that her daughter had no interest in him.
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