by Gregg Olsen
The father agreed that it would be all right for his boy to spend the night—as long as Danelle made sure he'd get to school the next day.
Years later, Danelle tried to put two and two together.
“Now that I think about it,” she said later, “I'll bet she had Vili out in the van also. She was trying to get rid of the boy so she could be alone with him.”
It was Mary Kay Letourneau's sweet and young-sounding voice on the line. It was mid-December 1996. It was a call out of the blue. Not for Christmas greetings or school fund-raising or anything that anyone might come up with to characterize a call just before the holidays.
“I'm concerned about Molly,” the teacher said.
Danelle Johnson repeated the statement as a question.
“Why are you concerned about Molly?”
“Molly comes down to the school all the time.”
“I know that. Her and Nicole, Vili, Drew—all those guys come down. What's the problem?”
“Well, Molly seems to think that I'm her best friend. That I'm the only friend she has… She tells me all kinds of things and stories about school and life up at the junior high and I don't think she should be hanging around here so much. I don't even know her!”
“She was in your class! And those guys have been helping you for three or four months. What do you mean you don't know her?”
Mary Letourneau sputtered to a finish.
“Well, I don't know her. We're not best friends. I'm kind of worried about her. She should have friends her own age.”
Danelle Johnson was furious. And she was hurt for her daughter, who had mixed up a relationship with an older woman. It was a friendship about which Molly spoke often. It was Ms. Letourneau this, Ms. Letourneau that. All day. Every day.
“All right,” she said softly. “I'll tell her to quit coming down there and bothering you or whatever she's doing to you. Seems to me like you've encouraged these kids to come around there and help you. I don't want to hurt her feelings.”
“I don't want to hurt her, either. I'm just worried about her. She shouldn't think she's my best friend.”
“She has a friend her own age,” Danelle said. “Her friend comes down there with her to help you. They think they're doing something great there.”
“I'm just real worried about her,” Mary repeated.
Danelle Johnson thanked the teacher for her concern and hung up. She was very troubled.
There's something wrong. Why would the kids think they should be going down there and helping her? And why would she call me to tell me she didn't even know Molly?
Later that day Danelle found a moment to talk to her daughter about the call.
“Ms. Letourneau doesn't want you to come around anymore,” she said.
The girl asked her mother for an explanation.
“She says you act like you're her best friend and she thinks you should have best friends your own age. She thinks you're getting way too involved. She asked you to stop—”
“Yeah, whatever, Mom.”
Danelle mulled it over that night and in the days and weeks after. She rationalized it. She worried about it. She figured the kids had become too rowdy and Mary Letourneau couldn't have them around as much. Maybe another teacher complained?
Teenyboppers aren't a lot of fun twenty-four hours a day. Maybe they got on her nerves.
Drew and Vili continued to go to Shorewood, while for the most part, Molly stayed away.
Not long after the phone call from the sixth-grade teacher, Danelle spoke to her new husband about it. It disturbed her that the kids were spending so much time with their former teacher.
“There's something weird going on,” she said. “Why is this woman hanging around with these kids from junior high school?”
Her husband didn't have an answer. No one did.
That Steve Letourneau had become violent and abusive toward Mary Kay to the point of hitting, kicking, and pushing her to the ground had been a shock to Michelle Jarvis. In all the years Michelle had known Mary Kay, she had never once heard of any abuse. Sure, Steve could be a jerk and punch some holes in the wall, but he didn't knock his wife around. But as Michelle learned, a few weeks after Steve found out that Mary Kay had become pregnant in the fall of 1996 things worsened in Normandy Park.
Mary Kay would reiterate some of the things that Steve had been saying and doing, and as the weeks went by, the information she shared with Michelle began to scare her. She not only worried for her friend, but she worried about the four Letourneau kids. In his embarrassment, hurt, rage, whatever, Steve never lost an opportunity to remind them what their mother had done.
“I know it for a fact, because I heard him when she was on the phone with me. She would write down all of the things he said to her. And he said things in front of the children. He would talk about where she had sexual relations with Vili. To little children!”
And always, Michelle Jarvis, more than anyone, would focus on the Letourneau children and how their parents had handled a terrible situation. It seemed that Mary Kay thought only of Vili and Steve was fixated on making Mary Kay pay for what she had done.
“The kids were an afterthought when she did what she did and they were an afterthought for him in that all he focused on was his own rage and his own need to get even or get back at her,” Michelle said later.
Michelle wrestled with the idea that maybe she could take in the children, and she discussed it with her husband. It was more thinking out loud than much else. How could it be otherwise? She had no claim to the kids. They were Mary Kay's and Steve's. She told Mary Kay that once the verbal and physical abuse started, she should take the children and leave. She should call the police and have Steve arrested. But Mary Kay kept insisting that Steve would come around and things would get better. They didn't. As the name-calling worsened, the children were left to absorb it all. Michelle worried that long-term damage had been done.
“The things Steve said about their mother… these kids are going to be in therapy forever. I doubt very much they are going to fully recover. They've been messed up for life. Damage control could have been had.”
The kids were oddly casual about the subject matter and it bothered Danelle Johnson when they told her that Mary Letourneau had been beaten by her husband, Steve—at least that's what she told Drew and Vili during one of the late-night bulletin board sessions at Shorewood Elementary.
The kids related how Mary had told them Steve had hit her and was “mean to her and all of that.”
Danelle wondered about it later.
Why in the hell would a grown woman be telling this twelve-year old-kid about her family life? About her husband beating her and things like that? Where would that come from? And, she wondered, where would it lead?
Chapter 30
ONE AFTERNOON A Shorewood teacher looked out of her window and saw Vili Fualaau driving Mary Letourneau's van in the courtyard. It was worth a double take. It was so outrageous and potentially disastrous. The van moved slowly toward the window and the teacher worried that the boy was going to drive it right though the glass. He wasn't even a teenager as far as she knew. He was a child. Just as she bolted from the window to avoid a disaster, Mary came running out of the annex to save the day.
The teacher was relieved. Why had Mary given a kid her keys? Why hadn't she supervised him, though it “was possible Vili had taken the keys without permission?
The teacher couldn't help but notice the expression on the boy's face.
“You could see this big smile on his face. 'I'm this evil little person doing something… ' ”
Later when she thought about it, the teacher dismissed it as just “weird interaction” stuff between Mary and Vili. It was not anything unusual for Mary Letourneau.
“Mary was always weird. She did strange stuff.”
Years later a teacher who worked for many years at Shorewood shook her head at the memory of an encounter she had with a student in the hallway near the school library. A girl
came up to her and asked her if she knew where Mary was. The teacher thought the girl was looking for a student.
“Mary who?” she asked.
“Well, you know, Mary.”
“No, I'm afraid I don't. Whose class is she in?”
The girl got snotty. “Mary Letourneau” she said.
The teacher was miffed by the attitude and reminded the student that at Shorewood teachers were addressed by their last name.
“If you are looking for Mrs. Letourneau, I'm sorry,” she said, “but I haven't seen her.”
“Whatever!” the girl said before stomping off in a huff.
The teacher held that little scene in her mind as a perfect example of the boundaries that Mary seemed to ignore.
“She allowed the kids to call her by her first name. She gave them her phone number, address, call anytime,” she said later.
When she told another Shorewood teacher about it, she too thought it was inappropriate—and dangerous. Fostering that kind of closeness wasn't right in a professional setting. It could only invite trouble.
“I don't give out my name and address unless it is an absolute emergency. Parents can send a note to school, leave me a message at the office.” the other teacher said.
For some the noise coming from room 39 was more than they could take. It seemed that no matter what time of day, Mary Letourneau's classes seemed to buzz with a boisterous energy that sometimes seemed to border on pandemonium. Friends seemed to understand that was just the way Mary did things, but newer teachers—teachers who didn't have an emotional investment in a relationship with the woman—found they could tolerate it less.
“Mary had a comfort level that was probably different than some people, but when Mary wanted to have their attention, she had their attention,” said a veteran teacher and friend. “So if she allowed kids to behave in a way that was comfortable for her, but uncomfortable for other people, that was her style of teaching. But she also had very good control when she needed it or wanted it.”
One newer teacher who occupied the classroom next to Mary Kay's bit her tongue until she could no longer take the invasion of noise coming through the walls.
“Sometimes I couldn't hear myself think,” she said later.
After much exasperation and soul-searching, the woman finally went over to tell Mary that the noise level was disturbing her students. She had tried to choose words that would not offend, because she didn't want to cause problems or make Mary feel bad. Nevertheless, Mary was offended.
“The next day she made sure to come over and tell me that we were being too noisy,” the teacher remembered.
Chapter 31
NO ONE COULD figure out her waning sense of style. Mary Kay Letourneau always prided herself on her appearance. Always had. Her hair and makeup had been a priority since those agonizing hours Michelle Jarvis had had to endure in Mary Kay's bedroom back in Corona del Mar. But as the school year went on, people noticed that the woman who shopped at Nordstrom with a maxed-out credit card wasn't dressing that way anymore. Instead of a classic pleated wool skirt and blouse, Mary wore tennis shoes and layers of T-shirts—sometimes as many as three or four at once. She also wore tights and sometimes two skirts—at the same time. Parents noticed, too.
“She never wore anything that fit her,” a mother recalled. “Yet she was so beautiful. It was strange.”
When the kids asked about her layering, Mary shyly explained that her choice in attire was the result of a comment.
“One of my friends said I was bony,” she said.
She wore the layers to cover up what most considered was a beautiful figure, yet somehow Mary had got it in her head that she was grotesquely thin—a nineties Twiggy. No one thought she had an eating disorder. In fact, most marveled at her ability to eat whatever she wanted without gaining an ounce. Even so, it was apparent to many that Mary Letourneau was obsessed about her weight, or lack of it. But there were other options. A number of students at Shorewood favored baggy clothes, the rapper or gangster style. Some wondered if Mary Letourneau was making a fashion statement when she wore clothes that hung on her like a sheet on a drying line. But something else was going on, too. One time she came to class without her usual layers. Instead, Mary wore a woman's long-sleeved cotton T-shirt and a wool skirt. Without mentioning names, she later told a friend what happened: “Somebody was obviously scanning me, giving me the eye, looking at me at places where I wouldn't want anyone to look. He said, 'Hey, now we can see it all.' I went out to my car and put on another shirt. It upset me. I think when I talked to him later I even used the word 'harass' when I said I felt uncomfortable with what he was saying and where he was looking.”
Students tried to encourage her whenever possible. One time when bolstered by her sixth-graders, Mary wore a green dress that was stylish and the Round Table kids told her how terrific she looked. Mary accepted the compliment and wore the dress several more times. She never looked better that entire year.
Though none of them knew it then, the next time they would see that green dress was when their teacher appeared on TV. On her way to court.
Though Mary Letourneau had never seemed particularly happy in her marriage with Steve, things worsened during 1994–1996 at Shorewood Elementary. She told a teacher friend that she had married Steve Letourneau only because she became pregnant. Her Catholic-to-the-hilt mother had put her foot down. “There was no way she was not going to marry Steve.”
Mary told the other teacher that she had loved another man and had been engaged to be married, but she had been jilted. Steve Letourneau had been a rebound relationship.
It surprised the Shorewood colleague when she learned that Mary was pregnant with her fifth baby. She knew from previous conversations that Mary hadn't slept with her husband for months. And, equally puzzling, Mary hadn't been the one to tell her that she was pregnant. She learned it from someone else.
“Whose baby is it?” the teacher asked, knowing immediately that her question was odd, but it just came out. She had assumed that Steve was not the father. She didn't know who, though.
Mary thought about it for a second and answered.
“Actually, it's my baby,” she said. She went on to say that she knew her body and could gauge her ovulation with complete precision.
It didn't answer the question, but it did confuse the friend. Was she saying that she was pregnant by Steve, after all? Or had she found someone else and decided to have a baby?
Later when Mary showed her the silvery films of an ultrasound examination, the friend asked if Steve had been accompanying her to the obstetrician's office.
“No,” she said firmly. “This is my baby.”
Money was always a big worry for Mary Letourneau and most at Shorewood knew it. Of course, with teacher salaries being what they were, a husband who threw baggage for a living, and four kids with another on the way, money would be an issue for just about anyone. Mary never had any money of her own and it bothered her. Her paycheck was used to pay the mortgage on the Normandy Park house. Steve had insisted.
“Steve had control of the money,” said a teacher who knew Mary well. “Her check went to the house payment because 'that was the house she wanted.' ”
Though she said she never wanted the van in the first place, Mary was glad for it because it afforded her an opportunity to do some secret stockpiling. During the 1996–97 school year, the pregnant sixth-grade teacher told a colleague that she had begun to squirrel away extra cash.
“She had secret places in the van to hide it,” the teacher said later. “She wanted to have some money herself.”
The disclosure wasn't that peculiar; the teacher knew that Mary and Steve were having serious marital troubles. Mary freely talked about those problems. But when a teacher tried to talk to Mary about her own finances or any other subject from her life, she doubted Mary was paying much attention.
“It never seemed she was much interested in what I had to say back. I could be telling her something, but
I knew her mind was going somewhere else.”
Chapter 32
MARY KAY LETOURNEAU was elated by the pregnancy; she reveled in it. She told her sixth-grade class that she was going to have her fifth baby—before she told any of her colleagues at Shorewood. She told them she was due in May, just before the end of the school year. The baby was so wanted and the teacher beamed whenever she brought up the subject. One afternoon seventh-graders Vili Fualaau and Katie Hogden met with their former sixth-grade teacher in the classroom when she brought out the sonogram images from among her drifting sheaves of papers and school brick-a-brac.
Mary traced the lines of the image, pointing out the baby's head and arms.
Katie had never seen her teacher so joyous. “She was glowing with happiness,” she said later.
But so was Vili Fualaau.
“Vili was just so happy too that she was going to have a baby that it was kind of awkward,” Katie recalled some time later when many of her memories had been tarnished by the story that had taken over the lives of her two friends.
“I knew them so well,” she said, “but I didn't pay attention to the most obvious thing. I missed the big thing. It didn't occur to me then that Vili had anything to do with it.”
Judy Hogden had a different reaction when she first heard about the impending birth. She thought it was peculiar that Mary had turned up pregnant in the first place. She knew from comments Katie had made that Mary and Steve Letourneau were struggling through a rough patch in their marriage.
“I guess it worked this time,” she said when she talked to her daughter about Mary's pregnancy. “Stranger things had happened.”
Later, when it was hinted that Mary's husband was not her baby's father, Judy couldn't make sense of the man sticking around in the same house in Normandy Park.
“If he knows that's not his child, then why would he stay with her?” she asked.
Nobody in the neighborhood knew what it was, but it was clear that something was going on with the Letourneaus. Some saw changes in the children, particularly Steven and Mary Claire. Steven Letourneau ditched GI Joe action figures for an attitude and the grungy, baggy look of a gang-banger. The change seemed sudden to Ellen Douglas. Steven even adopted the shuffle-walk and the dull, apathetic gaze of a kid who didn't care or who thought the world owed him something.
