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Accused NY stalker says he didn't mean to scare Uma Thurman
2008-05-02
A fan accused of creepy behavior that "completely freaked out" Uma Thurman insisted Friday that he never meant to frighten her. "In a misguided way I was trying to give her an opportunity to meet me and give myself an opportunity to meet her," said the defendant, who identified himself on the witness stand as Jackson William Leslie Jordan. "I was feeling distressed," said Jordan, 37. "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." Jordan said he now understands how Thurman could be frightened by his attempts to see her, and by the e-mails and letters in which he professed his love and called her two children "an illusion." On Thursday, Thurman testified about a bizarre card Jordan delivered to her trailer in Manhattan's SoHo section, 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." "I felt I was walking on the razor's edge," Jordan explained Friday. "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." "Do you see how it could have scared her?" asked his lawyer, George Vomvolakis. "I see it now," Jordan said. 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 is on trial in Manhattan's state Supreme Court. Accused of following and trying to contact the actress sporadically for more than two years, he faces up to a year in jail if convicted of stalking and aggravated harassment. The defendant said he was "humiliated" by the trial and the fact that his private affections for the actress had become so public. Jordan said he first developed a crush on the "Pulp Fiction" star in high school after seeing her in the movie, "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen." His feelings for her intensified, he said, after he saw her in "Kill Bill" in 2003. He sent her a letter saying: "I was overcome by a tenderness and affection for you that I've never felt in my life. I feel that we are destined to meet." Jordan, who lives with his parents in Gaithersburg, Md., said he was involuntarily committed to a mental facility in late 2005 after a detective told his parents he had sent Thurman a package of razor blades -- possibly an erroneous reference to the drawing. Jordan said he was diagnosed as schizophrenic and, while hospitalized, sent Thurman 20 letters. "Each letter opened with a statement saying that I was trying to explore these feelings I had," he said. "I had feelings of love, affection and admiration for her." He said the letters were not answered or returned.
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