In February 2005, not just alarm bells but “air-raid sirens” went off in Dr. Thurman’s head, he told a jury in State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Tuesday, when he received an e-mail message from Mr. Jordan that declared: “Today the center of my forehead is ticking now and then. I feel in love with your daughter Uma.”

Ms. Thurman’s parents vividly conveyed that their family was no ordinary one. Dr. Thurman, who has the rugged good looks of a Western movie star, was once a Buddhist monk, and his wife, statuesque and graceful, was a Ford model in the early 1960s. Their testimony suggested that it was in part the allure of their distinctiveness that attracted the intellectual Mr. Jordan, 37, a graduate of the University of Chicago.