Last April, it was Uma.
Now, it’s Tyra.
Another springtime celebrity stalker trial is in bloom in Manhattan today, with Tyra Banks due to take the stand any time in the next few days to describe how she was freaked out by an overly ardent fan named Brady Green.
Tyra’s trial is happening almost a year to the day after the Manhattan trial of Uma Thurman’s stalker, a brainy mental patient who handed her disturbing, suicidal letters and repeatedly rang her Greenwich Village doorbell.
Two beautiful stars, two over-the-top fans, two tulip-time trials on identical misdemeanor stalking charges.
But while Uma’s stalker was easily convicted, prosecutors will have a tougher time with Tyra’s case.
Prosecutors must prove that there was no legitimate purpose to the defendant’s actions, and that he should have known those actions would scare his target.
Easy enough in the Uma case. Her stalker, the delusional Jack Jordan, had handed to Uma’s assistant a packet of scrawlings that included doodles of razor blades and a photo of a bride with her head ripped from the picture.
“My hands should be on your body at all times,” one postcard read. Uma told jurors she held and read Jordan’s letters and was scared witless.
Tyra’s case is different.
She never personally received any of her alleged stalker’s flowers, notes or calls, in which no threats or sexual overtures to the talk-show host were made.
He was neat, polite and compliant when he was arrested last year after allegedly returning to her West 26th Street studios despite being told, only once, to leave.
Prosecutors will counter that Green does have a violent streak. He once threatened an uncooperative “Tyra Banks Show” staffer over the phone: “I’m going to find you and slit your throat.”
Tyra was frightened to hear from her security staff that she had such a freaky fan, and frightened again to hear he was claiming to be her friend, they’ll argue.
But for prosecutors to win, criminal-court Judge James Burke, who is trying the case without a jury, will have to find that both elements of the stalking statute have been met.
In other words, he must find first that Green had no legitimate reason to visit her studios and want to see her — even though that kind of star worship is the very sort of behavior the fan-making industry behind any A-lister works to inspire.
Second, the judge must find that what Tyra heard about Green’s overtures was enough to truly scare her, despite being secondhand. And only Tyra herself can convince the judge of that, when she takes the stand on a yet-to-be-disclosed day.