Uma Thurman Testifies in Stalker Trial

[WSJ Law Blog]

The Law Blog has been waiting for the right moment to jump into the Uma Thurman stalker trial. With the “Pulp Fiction” star taking the stand today, now’s a good time.

For those of you who haven’t been reading Anemona Hartocollis’s coverage in the NYT, here’s what’s going on: Jack Jordan, a 37 year-old University of Chicago grad, is charged with stalking and aggravated harassment for his pursuit of the “Kill Bill” star. Jordan’s lawyer, George Vomvolakis, has said his client did nothing criminal and did not mean any harm or threat. “He’s a romantic,” Vomvolakis said yesterday, the second day of trial in New York State Supreme Court (NY’s trial court). “He loves her. He wanted her to marry him.”

Yesterday, the “Mad Dog and Glory” star’s parents took the stand. According to the Times, Birgitte Thurman, Uma’s mother, used “almost psychoanalytic terms” to describe how she handled a call that Jordan made to the family’s Woodstock, N.Y. home. “I wanted to know what was on his mind, so I asked him what this was all about,” she testified. “He told me in so many words that he believed that he and my daughter had a preordained life, as it were, that they were meant to be together. He knew this. She didn’t know it. If she saw him, she would know they were destined to be together and be very happy.”

Today, reports Hartocollis on the NYT’s City Room blog, the “Henry & June” star read to the jury a series of cards and e-mail messages Jordan sent to her during the 2005 filming of a movie, “My Super Ex-Girlfriend,” in New York City. Thurman said she opened a card from Jordan that had been delivered through her assistant:

• Little pieces of torn paper and a dollar bill fell out of the envelope, she said, as she pulled out a child’s confirmation card. On the front, was a dreamy pastel store-bought image of a small blonde girl, a spray of pink flowers and a dove.
  
  On the back was a crude pen and ink drawing of a male stick figure –­ apparently Mr. Jordan — walking off the edge of an Acme razor blade into an open grave, where a female stick figure apparently Ms. Thurman — had a thought-balloon over her head saying, “Tee-hee.”
  
  On the blank side of the card was a handwritten message in the shape of a spiral. Most of the words had been inked out, and Ms. Thurman read the still visible ones out loud in court in a soft, slow voice: “Chocolate, mouth, soft, kissing …,” she said, adding, “And then I saw this part: ‘My hand should be on your body.’”
  

She was terrified, she said. “It didn’t look right. It looked very disturbed. All these words crossed out and then you looked at the ones that were left.” Jordan’s lawyer reportedly said his client was diagnosed with schizophrenia and forcibly institutionalized after delivering the note.