Sex. Murder. Mystery.

by Gregg Olsen

  “That isn't how it is done at Shorewood,” a teacher said later.

  In fact, another said, “There were parents who made sure their students did not end up in her class. They wanted more structure.”

  A few parents told a colleague of Mary Kay's that they noticed that sons, more so than daughters, “were not pleased with her as a teacher. The boys did not necessarily consider her their favorite teacher. But the ones who had girls had that little friendship connection…. ”

  Some parents said they never felt welcome in room 39, and again, more often than not, those who got a cold shoulder were the parents of boys. Those who had girls with whom Mary had some kind of friendship connection said they helped out because they felt “needed.”

  As time passed, some teachers speculated about their colleague and her alleged crime.

  Could she have abused any others?

  One Shorewood teacher couldn't rule it out, though she thought it was unlikely.

  Twelve-year-old Vili Fualaau was a popular kid in Mrs. Letourneau's sixth-grade class. Teacher and student shared their first kiss not long after this photo was taken in Shorewood's classroom 39. (Katie Hogden)

  Mary Kay Letourneau, pregnant with her student's baby and her world falling apart, was all smiles when she posed for this class picture in the fall of 1997. Her baggage handler husband Steve Letourneau had already discovered proof of the sexual relationship between his wife and her student. (Jose Avila)

  Mary Kay's was the only bedroom with an ocean view in the Schmitz home on exclusive Spyglass Hill in Corona del Mar, Calif. Family friends wondered what role the tragedy of little Philip, who drowned in the pool, might have played in Mary Kay's life. (Author)

  Like father, like daughter – John Schmitz and favorite daughter “Cake” shared many similarities. Both had two children by students. Both published memoirs. (Author)

  John Schmitz's ultra-conservative politics brought demonstrators to the Congressman's house. No one would dispute that Mary Kay was her father's staunchest defender. (Irv Rubin)

  Mary Schmitz, lawyer Gloria Allred and Hank Springer as they appeared on KNBC's “Free For All” public affairs television show in the late '70s and early '80s. (Pat DeAndrea)

  Not long after it was learned that he had fathered two children with Carla Stuckle, John Schmitz, disgraced and no longer a viable political candidate, lived in this trailer park in Tustin – a mile from his mistress's home. (Author)

  Steve and Mary Kay Letourneau and their children lived in this modest home in Normandy Park, Wash. Ultimately, marital infidelities on both sides and financial pressures would cause them to lose their dream house. (Author)

  Sixth-grader Katie Hogden considered her favorite teacher a friend and spent hours on the phone chatting with her. After Mary Kay's arrest for rape, the teacher asked the girl to relay an important message to Vili. She refused. (Judy Hogden)

  Some teachers at Shorewood Elementary School in Burien, Wash, were embittered by what they considered a lack of support from the district administration during the scandal. (Author)

  Defense lawyer David Gehrke represented Mary Kay through her second arrest. He infuriated Mary Kay's friends by calling them “groupies.” The friends, in turn, begged Mary Kay to dump the lawyer. (Noel A. Soriano)

  Nick Latham, Public Information Officer, Highline School District, was on the frontlines of the media storm. (Courtesy KIRO)

  KIRO-TV reporter Karen O'Leary was sued by Vili's family after she interviewed the teenager in a park near his home. The reporter considered the lawsuit an attempt to silence the media about the true relationship between the teacher and student. (Courtesy KIRO)

  Dr. Julia Moore diagnosed Mary Kay with bipolar or manic-depressive disorder. Dr. Moore's testimony at the sentencing hearing in November 1997 was critical to securing sex-offender treatment over prison time. (Donald Moore)

  The Mecca Cafe in Seattle got caught up in the media fever. (Jim Fielder)

  The story turned tabloid when lawyer Bob Huff brokered the Fualaaus' “exclusive” story to the Globe, “Inside Edition” and American Journal. Their French tellall, Un Seul Crime, L'Amour, netted them more than $200,000. (Author)

  Mary Kay Letourneau after her release from jail in January 1998. Though she looked it, the fallen teacher was not at her low point. Some encouraged her and enabled her to see the teenage father, and the results would be disastrous. (Seattle Police)

  Michelle Jarvis (here, with her husband Michael) flew to Seattle to bring Mary Kay home from the hospital after Audrey was born. Michelle worried about possible violence against her childhood friend by Steve Letourneau.

  Twins Amber and Angie Fish babysat Mary Kay's new baby, Audrey, until Mary Kay was sent to jail in August 1997. The twins worried about their friend's mental stability. (Breea Bridges)

  No longer a teacher but an inmate at the Washington Corrections Center for Women near Gig Harbor, Mary Kay Letourneau spends her days writing and answering fan mail. Since her incarceration, she has not seen the two babies she had with the Samoan teenager Vili or the four she had with Steve Letourneau. (Jim Fielder)

  After her second arrest, an avalanche of media interest enveloped Mary Kay. The former teacher made the cover of People; articles in Time, Paris Match, Mirabella, Spin and George were among the many that appeared in the spring of 1998. (Author)

  “I had a parent tell me that her older son felt uncomfortable in class,” she said a couple of years later. “But I still think if Vili hadn't been in her room she wouldn't have picked anybody else.”

  Who was this woman they all thought they knew? It was a question that for the longest time went unspoken within the walls of Shorewood Elementary's staff room. For a while the charges and whether they could be true was all they thought about, all they talked about. One teacher later described herself as feeling like a snowman in one of those little plastic domes trying her best to be still and numb. But now and then someone would give her plastic dome a shake and particles would fall once more.

  Who was Mary Kay Letourneau? Even the way the media called her Mary Kay was unsettling to many who knew her at Shorewood. It almost made her seem unreal, like some character they didn't know. Mary Kay? She always went by Mary at school. The only one they knew who called her Mary Kay was her husband, Steve, and that was to differentiate her from Mary Claire, their daughter.

  But who was she really?

  The answers prompted only more confusion and even some dissension. It seemed that no one could really agree on her true character; everyone believed Mary Letourneau was a different woman for different people.

  One saw her as a master manipulator who got whatever she wanted. Arriving late, skipping meetings, doing whatever she pleased.

  Another saw her as a charismatic, if unhappy, woman who wanted nothing more than to be a good teacher. Devoting hours and hours for the good of her students.

  She was competitive, a teacher thought. She wanted to be seen as the best, the most popular teacher in the school.

  “I see Mary as a cheerleader who wanted to be very popular and wanted everybody to like her,” said one.

  Still another saw her as a rule-breaker, a person for whom the guidelines of the school had no meaning.

  “You can't chew gum in the classroom, but Mary let her kids do it. We might not all agree with the same rules… but we try to uphold them.”

  A teacher who was relatively new to Shorewood thought that Mary appeared to act like a junior high school student. In fact, the teacher said, she even looked the part

  “Shorts, skirts, big baggy sweatshirts. She looked very cute. She looked to me like a teenager,” she said later.

  Mary would discuss nothing but her pregnancies, and child-rearing concerns, with another teacher sharing a similar personal load.

  Another was given insight into her marital problems.

  In time, even one of her most devoted friends on the staff would begin to wonder if all had been duped by the pretty blond woman in ro
om 39. Had they ever really known her at all?

  “A sex offender's forte is deception and knowing one's audience and you play to them what you want them to see. And if you have to play different parts for different people you can do that. And they lay a blanket on whatever's behind; whatever they don't want you to see,” the teacher said later.

  John Schmitz arrived in Seattle less than a week after his daughter called him from Beth Adair's after the arrest. He brought her a car, an Audi Fox, and the promise that he'd stand by her. Mary Kay and Steve showed him the “peaceful coexistence” contract that had been drafted by the Jesuit priest that she and Steve had consulted when they first discovered she was pregnant by Vili.

  “It was a contract based on respect for each other and the understanding that what must be done is done in the best interests of the children. There would be no reconciliation and the priest said he wouldn't even pray for a miracle to have us reconcile. We would transition the children to their new life, divorce, and they'd remain with me. I was their mother, their primary parent. After my father left, Steve ripped up the contract. He accused the priest of being in conspiracy with my family.”

  “You won't get your way this time,” he said.

  Chapter 41

  HAD THERE REALLY ever been a graceful way out of the mess that Mary Kay and Steve Letourneau had made of their lives? It was a question that, once Mary Kay was arrested, Kate Stewart could never really answer with certainty. For a time—through Christmas, New Year's, Mary Kay's birthday, even the Valentine's Day a couple of weeks before the arrest—it seemed that there was, in fact, a little room for the concept that things could be worked out quietly and discreetly. But Kate felt that in the long run, it didn't seem possible that “Plan A” (as her former roommate described it) would ever really work: Steve and Mary Kay would divorce, she would quit her job, and Vili would move in with her and the kids. And they'd be one big happy family.

  Plan B hadn't been any better. It was even more preposterous. Steve and Mary Kay would move away to raise Vili's baby in a new town, far from the prying eyes of those who knew them. It wasn't that Steve didn't love Mary Kay enough to do that; Kate and others knew that he worshiped her. But it wasn't up to him alone. His family would never stand for it and his ego wouldn't allow for accepting his wife's student's baby as his own. Once that little black-haired baby was born, it would be all over at the Letourneaus'.

  Sometimes, Kate understood, people just can't look the other way. Even if it is in the best interest of everyone involved.

  Kate could only hope that the divorce between Mary Kay and Steve would be swift and involve as little finger-pointing as possible. Finger-pointing would lead to defensiveness; defensiveness would lead to nothing but trouble. In reality, this was a divorce for which there was plenty of blame to go around.

  But if Steve Letourneau was in turmoil, much of it his own doing. And certainly, there had to be a measure of guilt thrown into the mix. Steve hadn't been exactly faithful. If he was smart, he'd be the last one to throw any stones.

  “The marriage had broken down to the point where she didn't even know where he was,” Kate said later. “They could probably have swapped sex stories if they had to or were in the mood to at home. It was out in the open between them. At one point he was going to be gone and told her that he was going to see a girlfriend.”

  “Now that's all right? You're okay with this?” Steve asked.

  “Fine,” she answered.

  But it wasn't fine. Mary Kay had reached out to a sixth-grader. Yes, Kate knew, over the years there had been transgressions on both sides. There had always been the understanding, however, that when the night was done, both Steve and Mary Kay would return home. If Steve hadn't strayed, maybe Mary Kay wouldn't have been so inclined to do the same.

  During the weeks and months before she and Vili crossed the line to the point of no return, Mary Kay Letourneau was falling apart and her husband was seemingly oblivious.

  When Kate and Mary Kay started talking after the two-year hiatus of their friendship, the subject of sex with Steve came up. Mary Kay said that it had never been that great with her husband. The revelation surprised Kate. She had always assumed that sex was the glue that bonded their marriage. But it was more than just mundane sex that troubled her. Steve wasn't the man of Mary Kay's dreams. He had no conviction. No passion.

  Steve Letourneau, as his wife presented it to Kate, went whichever way the wind blew. When he was with Mary Kay, “they'd be sleeping in the same bed crying together” and trying to find a way to save their marriage. When he talked with his family he whined about the nightmare his wife had caused.

  “He has no backbone,” Kate said. “He is not strong. That's the whole reason she could never love him. He doesn't know his own mind.”

  Steve Letourneau loved Mary Kay—which was the strangest part of the whole tragedy surrounding their broken marriage. Though he strayed, though he pushed her around when she was pregnant, it had more to do with his badly bruised ego than hatred for Mary Kay. Mary Kay told her friend that her father had put it in very simple terms.

  “How do you expect him to handle it? He's been upstaged by a thirteen-year-old!”

  Kate understood where Steve was coming from. “He never wanted a divorce. He loved her. If she called up and said, 'Oh, my God, I made such a horrible mess. I need you so much. We just have to get the kids and move to Canada,' he'd be right there.”

  Kate Stewart was another who just couldn't accept Steve and Mary Kay living together once things went from civil to ugly. She was worried for Mary Kay when the violence started to escalate between the two. Mary Kay was pregnant, in a state of confusion, and her husband was hurt, bitter, and humiliated. Not a good combination for resolution or even a truce. Mary Kay told Kate that alcohol had been thrown in the mix and she was even more worried. Steve made frequent trips down the hill to the shopping center for big cans of Foster's. When their car was out of commission, he'd walk the long walk down the hill to the shopping center.

  One time Kate overheard a shouting match between father and son when she was on the phone talking to Mary Kay.

  “Get out of there! Leave her alone, you big drunk!” Steven's eleven-year-old voice called out in the background.

  Some nights Mary Kay couldn't take the yelling and the shoving. She grabbed a blanket and a pillow went to sleep in the van.

  Kate could only wonder if the nightmare Mary Kay was living through would really be worth it. Somehow, as incomprehensible as it seemed, Kate understood that her former college roommate loved teenagers. She also recognized that Mary Kay's feelings for the boy were stronger than they had ever been for Steve Letourneau. Yet Kate couldn't help but play the devil's advocate during their phone conversations from Seattle to Chicago. She pressed the notion that although Mary Kay and Vili were “in love,” they were from two very different worlds.

  “If you are at a black-tie cocktail party and Vili's next to you and there's a lot of politicians and all these people in the room—people in high-powered places. You're in an arena that you are very comfortable in, how will you feel?” Kate asked.

  There was no hesitation from Mary Kay. She said she'd be fine.

  Her friend pushed harder. “You won't worry about Vili?”

  “I've spent my whole life worrying about what my husband was going to say when he opened his mouth; I can't tell you how comfortable I'd be with Vili. He can hold a candle to anyone in the room. I would never worry about what comes out his mouth,” she said.

  Several weeks had transformed the tail end of another gray Western Washington winter into a wonderful, wet, and warm springtime. Gregory Heights teacher Mary Newby found herself at an executive board meeting at the Highline Education Association offices near the airport. An HEA director told her that Mary Letourneau was there taking care of her pension and other matters related to her employment as a teacher for the district.

  “If you want to talk to her, this might be a good opportunity,” t
he director said.

  The veteran teacher was torn. She wanted to see her former student teacher, but felt she'd get teary-eyed and start to cry. No matter what had been said about Mary Kay Letourneau, it could never shake the sympathy that so many shared. How could it? Mary Newby was like so many others; what she had seen firsthand was a gifted teacher and devoted mother, a far cry from a predatory monster.

  Finally, Mary Newby gathered her strength and went out to the parking lot and marched right over to the younger woman. She put her arms around her. It was a moment Mary Newby will never forget.

  “I asked her how she was doing, at that point I felt she was on very, very thin ice, emotionally.”

  Mary Letourneau, still pregnant, didn't seem upset.

  “I'm fine,” she said. “Everything's going to be okay.”

  It was almost as if she had found it within herself to comfort the comforter.

  “You wrote to me, didn't you?” Mary Letourneau asked.

  “Yes.”

  Mary Kay smiled. “I thought that you did. I received several hundred notes and just couldn't answer all of them.”

  Years later, Mary Newby struggled to get a fix on the attitude of the pregnant teacher in the parking lot that evening. The word that came was “bravado.”

  “There was almost a sense of bravado, that everything would work out.”

  Mary Newby continued to worry about her former student teacher and the impact of her relationship with the artistic Samoan boy.