AP Photo/ Louis LanzanoUma Thurman's overzealous (to say the least) fan isn't a stalker—he's an opportunist. At least, to hear him tell it.
Jackson William Leslie Jordan, the man accused of stalking and aggravated harassment of the actress, took the stand in a Manhattan courtroom this morning, insisting that, despite garnering the exact opposite response, his romantic (or, as Thurman describes it, "creepy") overtures to the Kill Bill star were not meant "to scare her in any way."
"In a misguided way I was trying to give her an opportunity to meet me and give myself an opportunity to meet her," testified the former mental patient, who made repeat and unwanted visits to her home and movie sets and sent unsolicited emails and letters to Thurman and her family.
Jordan attempted to clarify one such expression of his love this morning: a card he personally delivered to Thurman's movie trailer that featured a drawing of an open grave, a headstone and a man standing on a razor blade, and the statement, "My hands should be on your body at all times."
Cupid's arrow was slightly off target, though. Thurman testified Thursday that the card was "like a nightmare" and left her "completely freaked out."
"This cartoon was meant to amuse her, to endear me to her," Jordan, 37, testified. "I felt like I was walking the razor's edge. I felt like it reflected this relationship that I unfortunately imagined we had.
"It's an ironic, kind of twisted sense of humor."
As was, he confessed, his threat to Thurman's family that he would kill himself if he didn't manage to meet the actress.
"It was a clumsy and poor way of expressing my emotions for her."
No kidding.
"I wasn't feeling suicidal, but I was expressing a depth of feeling that was very disturbing," he said.
Again, no kidding.
If convicted of the charges, Jordan, who, his attorney acknowledged, suffered from schizophrenia and is bipolar, faces up to a year behind bars.