If Loving You Is Wrong (54 page)

“I didn't know you could wear jewelry here,” I said.

“Only a wedding band,” she answered. Her smile was coy.

“Then you are married to Vili?” I asked.

“Yes, and it is blessed,” she said.

I asked for details, but she didn't feel like giving any. I didn't want to bring up the fact that she was already married to Steve and marrying Vili was another crime. She told me they had exchanged vows of eternal love on Mercer Island, an affluent suburb just east of Seattle—a world from White Center.

She told me she could make it in prison another year, but she was fearful that she could not really survive her full sentence. “I'm willing to do a fair amount of time,” she said, “but I don't think I really can make it here much longer than a year more.”

She wanted to be out so she could be with Vili. The teenager, the father of her youngest children, was not an enigma to Mary, but a masterful warrior who had captured her heart. He was younger than she by more than twenty years, but in some ways, he was her superior.

“It blows my mind,” she said of the boy's character. “He's truly amazing. He dominated me in the most masculine way that any man, any leader could do. I trusted him and believed in him and in our future.”

Interestingly, while she talked about Vili at length, she barely mentioned her four oldest children, except to blame Steve for keeping them from her as they battled over custody issues in their divorce.

Mary had given up everything—her family, her freedom, and her profession for the love of a thirteen-year-old. He was an artistic genius, the old soul. He was the leader; she followed him. He was the master. He was the adoring object of her affections. That's how she saw it. The roles they embodied, she said, were from another era. He dominated her.

“I am
with
Vili. If you are truly in love, the roles are natural.”

She never felt that way with Steve because he was not, she said, her equal.

Like a teenager who refuses to do the dishes, Mary had been unyielding in her defiance and did nothing to bend to the rules of prison life. Inmates who had befriended her watched her dig herself in deeper. She didn't seem to realize going with the flow gets you out sooner. Pissing off the guards only leads to trouble; trouble leads to a loss of good time. She learned how to do a few things—“to bend, twist, and turn to do my little dance”—when guards demanded a strip search.

She also learned how to blow smoke rings and sometimes, like a lovesick teenager, would blow them into the sky with a wish they'd waft over the razor wire and find their way to White Center and Vili. Vili, she thought, was standing by her. He was Zeus. He was the man of her dreams, a godlike boy-man whose love would hold them together no matter the bars between them. Or so she repeatedly said to inmates, guards, and visitors.

She was younger than her years in nearly every way. She was charming, wide-eyed, and prone to a quick laugh. It struck me that she seemed so happy. No matter that she was in prison and away from the love of her life and her children and she would never teach school again. At times she spoke in the exaggerated manner of a schoolteacher reciting a story, in which she was the main character. Of course, others had told me that she acted “young.” Some were convinced that she was so good at teaching grade school because she identified with her students. Others had been harsh in their assessments. They saw her as a case of arrested development—stuck as an adolescent. I know Mary (no one but those who knew her in childhood or through media exposure calls her Mary
Kay
) would argue that nothing could be more beautiful than seeing the world through the eyes of a child. What is wrong with the giddy enthusiasm of youth?

I left the prison that night with more questions than answers. Oddly, the questions had little to do with Mary. Instead, I wondered about those who knew her in the years and months before she became involved with her student. If her manner had not changed dramatically from those days to what I saw in prison, why hadn't anyone helped her? I recalled one of the psychiatrists saying that she had liked Mary a great deal, but was exasperated by her actions and words. She wanted to reach out and “shake some sense” into her. I understood that completely.

Why hadn't Steve Letourneau, who knew her better than anyone, stepped in to help his wife before her meltdown led to disaster?

Didn't friends, co-workers, her principal, see what I saw in that prison visiting room?

And what of all this media coverage? Why had so many people felt the need to get on television to exploit her? Steve Letourneau turned up on a television tabloid show telling the world how he was getting along and how he hoped for a divorce from his infamous wife sooner, rather than later. His flight attendant girlfriend Kelly Whalen was pregnant with his child. The idea that Steve felt compelled to be heard bothered Mary Kay, and she told me so. It was
her
story, not his, that was of worldwide interest. His hawking of family photos and comments about her love for Vili was detrimental to the healing Steven, Mary Claire, Nicholas, and Jacqueline so desperately needed.

“What benefit can there be for the children in his selling the story, the lies? For the sole purpose of making money?” she asked.

When the subject of old friends came up, Mary Kay tried to dismiss those outside of her tight circle as people who didn't really know her. Michelle Jarvis went from close friend to outsider when the Californian cried her eyes out on TV's
Leeza
when the show featured the contents of the French book. Michelle thought Mary Kay was sick, and said so.

For her part, Michelle told friends that she still loved Mary Kay and hoped that one day she'd be able to rise above the travesty that she'd made of her life by getting treatment.

“Not a day passes that I don't think of her and pray for her... I don't want her rationalizations ringing in my ears, my heart wanting to believe them while my brain tells me precisely what they really are,” she said.

Of course close friends and the Letourneau children have been devastated by what happened in the wake of what happened between Mary Kay and Vili. There were enough tears to fill Puget Sound. Students, teachers, neighbors, friends—all had been left heartbroken. In time, most know, the impact will fade and soften for some.

But for some the legacy of the story will endure. Danelle Johnson's daughter became pregnant at fourteen.

“She wasn't the only girl in Mrs. Letourneau's class that had ended up like that. When [my daughter] told me she was pregnant—by a man older than eighteen, though I'm not sure how much older—she said her pregnancy was just like Mrs. Letourneau's with Vili. It was
love
. The age difference. The whole Romeo and Juliet thing. Some lesson she learned in that sixth-grade class.”

The best true crime books are built on a solid foundation of original research. I always measure the quality of a book in this genre by the information that the author has unearthed. Who wants a rehash of what is already in the public domain? I want to know more. Accomplishing that is not always easy. In fact in these days of tabloid and checkbook journalism, it has become increasingly difficult. Money is now in the mix. Just as a reporter will not pay for information (paying could induce sources into creating false information or even exaggerating legitimate information in order to make the buyer feel as though he is getting his money's worth), I do not offer money for interviews. In this case, more than any I have tackled, the request for cash for information was played out with numbing regularity. Directly or indirectly it was suggested to me that cash would lead to interviews. Those with hands held outward included everyone from a police officer to friends and associates of Mary Letourneau. One individual asked for $70,000. At no time during my phone conversations and visits did Mary Letourneau request remuneration.

Given such a climate, it must be stated here that I could not have overcome all of the obstacles and all of the closed doors without the talents of crime writer and researcher Gary Boynton. Not only did Gary hang in there with the dogged determination of a private eye, he did so with a polite and professional attitude about which several sources—friendly
and
hostile—remarked. Thanks, Gary.

As always, I appreciated the support of my literary agent, Susan Raihofer of Black, Inc., New York; editor Charles Spicer and his assistant Dorsey Mills of St. Martin's Press, New York; and my faithful advance readers, June Wolfe and Tina Marie Schwichtenberg. Special appreciation goes to Kathrine Beck, who encouraged me when it looked as if the story would be impossible to crack.

Finally, I was not able to secure interviews with Steve Letourneau, Patricia Maley, Vili Fualaau, Soona Fualaau, Sharon Hume, or the Letourneau children for this book, though I made efforts to do so. I spoke to Robert Huff just as this book was being prepared for printing.

—Gregg Olsen
Spring 1999
e-mail: [email protected]

UPDATE: 2004

MARY KAY LETOURNEAU, now 42, will be released from prison this summer. She'll leave the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Purdy, Wash., as the most famous—and reviled—inmate in the institution's history. Never have the likes of a media star roamed the halls as has inmate No. 769014. There have been other “teacher rapists,” but none have achieved Letourneau's notoriety. None have been the subject of countless TV shows, a USA Network movie, books (mine and the French book—which never saw an English incarnation), magazine covers and a million hours of water-cooler chatter.

Among the Letourneau news were stories about the former teacher's disregard of prison rules; a couple of stretches in solitary; rumors of a lesbian lover (which Letourneau denies), the betrayal by a former cellmate who was going to write her own book about Letourneau's life behind bars. And late last year, the local newspaper carried a picture of Letourneau and her daughter on the front page—a prison-sponsored back-to-school event for moms and their kids.

What Letourneau faces with her freedom is both certain and unsure. There is no doubt that her infamy will continue.
Globe
magazine published an article in January 2004 indicating that she intends to pose nude for
Playboy
. The story is old (and probably ridiculous), but shows the interest in Letourneau remains strong. The flames are being fanned: that much you can count on.

Letourneau's future with Vili Fualaau and her children is less clear. Soona and Vili filed a $20 million suit against the Highline School District and the Des Moines Police Department for failing to stop the relationship from taking its shocking and sad turn. The jury didn't agree with the plaintiffs, who left a King County Courtroom in May, 2002 without a penny. The jury saw the plaintiffs as money-hungry and already overcompensated for their roles in the drama through the tabloids. The fact that Soona and Vili saw little of the money from the movie, the French book, the other collateral materials of the story had little bearing. It was as if the jury thought the Fualaaus had their chance and they, well, blew it. There was no appeal.

I met Soona at the trial. Perhaps with the exception of all of the children, I feel sorriest for her. She was roughed up on the stand and made out to be the worst mother on the planet, a low-rent Joan Crawford. Just walk in her shoes. I think she did the best she could and she did so with dignity and even a little grace. What probably would have been best would have been for the family to resolve the situation without police. The question that remains is, what was in the best interest of the children (Audrey, almost 7, and Alexis—the family's preferred name for Georgia—now 4)?

There is another story, another tragedy that's a part of the saga of Mary and Steve Letourneau. Last year all attempts at reconciliation between Steve and his second wife, Kelly, failed. Broken-hearted and bankrupt by the divorce, Kelly moved with their tow-headed four-year-old daughter, Gabrielle, to the Seattle area, while Steve stayed in Alaska with the four older children—and his new love, another woman.

Those closest to Kelly Whalen-Letourneau told the flight attendant that the failure of the marriage was inevitable, and she'd be better off without Steve and all the drama that had enveloped his life. Right now she can't see that, but in time, she just might. What reportedly hurts her most is the fact that she's been cut off from seeing Steven, now 19, Mary Claire, 16, Jackie, 12 and Nick, 10. For the tumultuous seven years that their mother had been ripped from their lives, Kelly tried to play that difficult, and frequently thankless, role of stepmother. But hers was a more complicated situation than most. By far. She was married to a man who chose to put tabloid money ahead of privacy. She was in the unenviable position of helping to raise children whose mother was on the front page of the
Globe
and on TV at seemingly every turn.

In the end, when the kids had nothing to say to their mother, it was Kelly who'd sit down every other week and send Mary an update note on each of her four children. It was Kelly who filled the “Mary Box” (Letourneau's old homework box from Shorewood) with schoolwork from the kids. She addressed the envelopes, mailed the packages, made sure the kids were there to take the calls.

It was Kelly who asked local grocers to pull tabloids from view. Kelly was the one who called the school and read them the riot act when a teacher played the
All American Girl
TV movie for the class as a current-event lesson.