We thought the whole stalking saga of Law & Order: Criminal Intent star Kathryn Erbe was an open and shut creepy-dude-on-the-internet-is-obsessed-with-mid-level-TV-actress case. But the testimony yesterday by superfan Charles Nagel has opened our eyes. See, Nagel was "Internet friends" with Erbe via MySpace, and the two had been trading friendly messages. So you can understand how upset he was when he found out that the account was being run by a teenage imposter!
It was paramount that Nagel visit the set of CI to inform her of the subterfuge. They had to figure out this mess together. And that's why he was so upset when he visited the L&O:CI set in 2008 with his two daughters, Batgirl and Harley Quinn, and he was not treated with the respect a friend of Kathryn Erbe's deserved. “Your bodyguard came over to us, pushed me against a car,” and “treated me and my family like dirt. [My] two daughters [began] to cry,” he told jurors of the experience. And that's why he was upset with her! It was all a crazy misunderstanding.
And that whole thing about doctoring a Facebook photo of Erbe's daughter with that of a cockroach and the words, "I'm ugly"? Oh, that wasn't him—it was his 12-year-old daughter and her friend, he testified. What a silly misunderstanding, Nagel would never mock his good friend's family. His daughter would, but he wouldn't. For the jury, hearing Nagel's testimony must have been like watching the Zapruder film for the first time.
As a cherry on top: the prosecution spent their portion of Nagel's five hours on the witness stand questioning him about his erotic Internet chat room conversations with another woman not involved in the case, "including one particular fantasy involving a McDonalds’ burger."
