Sex. Murder. Mystery.

by Gregg Olsen

  “When she finally comes face-to-face with the fact that they aren't going to be together by his choice, what's going to happen with her?”

  Chapter 42

  OTHER INQUIRIES WITH lawyers had gone nowhere for both Mary Kay and Steve. After her arrest Mary Kay hired David Gehrke, and Steve hired a lawyer of his own, a young Tacoman named Greg Grahn. Steve met Grahn through a referral from his wife, Susan, also an Alaska Airlines employee. At the time, Steve was looking for advice, not necessarily a quick divorce. There were too many issues to be resolved. Mary Kay's criminal arrest, her pregnancy, and the foreclosure of the house in Normandy Park all loomed to cast a pall of uncertainty on people who needed resolution.

  More than anything in those early days of the criminal case, Steve Letourneau was embarrassed about the attention his wife and marriage were getting because of her involvement with her student. He met with Greg Grahn in March, shortly after the arrest of his wife.

  The thirty-two-year-old lawyer had practiced both civil and criminal law, and had even worked on a couple of child molestation cases. He saw Mary Kay as a pedophile. He wondered how Mary Kay could have hoodwinked Steve. But after conferring with his new client, it became clear that Steve hadn't been tricked by anyone. He simply didn't see the truth because it was so incomprehensible.

  “Initially, Steve looked at it as Mary Kay was just taking this pupil under her wing. He thought, 'Hey, it was inappropriate. Teachers shouldn't be having students at the home. That was kind of uncommon, a bit odd. He never really thought it was sexual.”

  Why would it ever be?

  Steve told Greg Grahn that he believed his wife was starving for attention and Vili was providing what she needed to feel good about herself.

  “He thought with Mary Kay maybe it was more of an ego-patting thing for her, that she was just intoxicated that somebody else was finding her to be such a wonderful person.”

  Steve said he had tried to be a better husband, a more supportive person. By then it didn't matter. Mary Kay was getting everything she needed from Vili.

  Those who knew Mary Kay Letourneau knew she loved the telephone more than face-to-face conversations. She thought nothing of calling to chat about one subject and ending up talking about a million others. During the time she was pregnant, Ellen Douglas was on her calling list. And throughout the conversations that the two shared, schoolteacher Ellen would take notes so that she could share what had been said with her husband, Daniel.

  One of the reasons she made notes was simply because Mary Kay seemed so out of it, was so far gone at times, that it was difficult to remember every tangent that she drifted to.

  Though facing treatment or prison and pregnant with a former sixth-grade student's baby, Mary Kay didn't seem to grasp that her world—her old world—had come to a complete halt.

  She talked about staying in the house after Steve was gone.

  “Well, we'll have to see what happens,” Ellen said.

  Mary, come on and wake up. You don't have the money. You're being foreclosed on.

  She talked about continuing her teaching career.

  “Uh-huh,” Ellen said.

  You're in denial. Life will not go on as it did. You won't have your children.

  Ellen just couldn't tell Mary Kay the silent responses that went through her mind. It would be cruel. It was unnecessary. It wouldn't have helped her fragile state one iota.

  “She was pregnant and life was tumbling on without her and things were happening and it was too late. No matter what I said to her it wouldn't have made a difference,” she said later.

  Whenever Ellen Douglas would hang up, by the look on her face and the duration of the call, Daniel Douglas knew his schoolteacher wife had been talking to their troubled neighbor. Ellen referred to her notes and shared what the two had discussed, but not all of it. Though she and Daniel were very close, some of it just seemed too personal to disclose. She shared nothing that was said with anyone at the school where she taught.

  Of everything they discussed, one issue seemed paramount to Mary Kay. She frequently referred to Steve's callous treatment of her.

  “She needed people to know that he wasn't a goody-goody,” Ellen said later.

  Chapter 43

  IF ANYONE OWNED the Mary Kay Letourneau story—outside of the principals involved, of course—it was television reporter Karen O'Leary. In many ways it was a good fit. Not only because Karen was an excellent reporter with a surprising reserve of sympathy for the teacher, but also because the two shared some common ground.

  Karen O'Leary came from money. Her family lived in exclusive Pacific Palisades in Southern California. They owned a villa in Puerto Vallarta, an apartment in New York, a home in Lake Tahoe—Karen grew up blond and beautiful in the California sun. A tennis star as a teen and at Stanford University, she was fit and driven—the coed with the golden future in television news.

  So driven, friends thought, there seemed to be no time for the right man. But those friends were delighted when she married not long before the Letourneau case broke. But by the time the case was over, so was the marriage to a lawyer with political aspirations.

  For more than fifteen years at KIRO, Karen O'Leary was in the kind of job that ensured she'd never win a popularity contest covering the unseemly of Seattle. Karen reported on the Green River Killer investigation and the infamous South Hill Rapist from Spokane, Kevin Coe. She sat with Jim Lobsenz, a lawyer who would later represent Mary Kay Letourneau, and witnessed the execution of Lobsenz's client, a triple murderer, at the state prison in Walla Walla. And throughout all her stories, Karen O'Leary was always tough, dogged, and when necessary, pushy.

  “It's hard to like Karen sometimes,” a former coworker said. “She's a tough broad.”

  She didn't know it at the time, but more than ever, she'd need to be tough when it came to the Letourneau case. In time, Karen O'Leary would be fighting for her name, her career, and her dignity when the media circus came to town.

  On March 12, 1997, Karen stood with the other pack of reporters in a King County Superior Courtroom to get a look at the thirty-five-year-old teacher in the olive-green gingham dress when she entered not-guilty pleas to two counts of rape of a child. As a sex offender, a child molester, she could have no contact with the victim or his mother; nor could she be left alone with her own children. Since she was a candidate for treatment, there would be weeks of tests, counseling sessions, and legal wrangling to see if she could be placed in program under the guidelines of the Special Sex Offenders Sentencing Act, or SSOSA. Otherwise, Washington's determinate sentencing left no room for wiggling. She'd serve seven years in prison. Certainly the thumbnail premise of the schoolteacher's criminal case was remarkable, but not nearly so as how the perpetrator appeared that day in court. It could not be denied that Mary Kay Letourneau was not just any sex offender. Even the reporter who had seen it all was shocked.

  “This person was so pretty and sweet-looking and frail and pregnant,” Karen O'Leary said later.

  And it was the pregnancy that immediately raised an eyebrow.

  Could it be the kid's? Karen thought.

  Chapter 44

  MARY LETOURNEAU'S REQUEST made Katie Hogden feel uncomfortable. It also made the teenager feel more torn than ever. What was she to do? There was a time when she would have done anything for Mary or Vili or any of a number of people about whom she cared. She never felt used. She hung up the phone and sought out her mother.

  Judy Hogden could see the confusion in her daughter's eyes. She knew it had to be about Mary.

  “Mary wanted to know if I could pass a message between her and Vili.”

  Judy shook her head. She didn't think it was a good idea.

  Deep down, Katie felt the same, though she explained Mary's motives. She knew Vili was hurting and there was no direct way to contact him.

  But everyone was hurting.

  “She said it was a three-word phrase that would let Vili know that everything would be all right.
She said, no, I can't ask you to do that. But if you could tell him 'three words,' he'll know what it means.”

  “I'll have to talk to my mom about it,” Katie had said.

  Judy got on the phone later. She chose her words carefully, but she didn't allow Mary to cut into the conversation. Judy had some things to get off her chest.

  “Before I say anything else, I want you to know we'll always be here for you, we'll always be your friends. If you need anything, a place to stay, to get away from reporters, come here. We won't tell anybody you're here. I don't approve of what you did, but that doesn't change how we feel about you.”

  Mary Kay seemed to take it in and seemed to appreciate the support. She thanked Judy Hogden for the offer, but it wasn't likely she'd take her up on it. She was going to be fine right where she was—at home.

  “And as far as Katie getting involved,” Judy said, tackling the most difficult part of the call, the reason for her conversation with Mary. “I think you are in some really big trouble and I don't think it's best to involve Katie, even passing along a three-word phrase.”

  Mary agreed and apologized for even asking.

  “I'm in such a panic for him to know that everything is going to be okay,” she said. “There are three words that if he heard he'd know that everything's going to be okay.”

  Judy felt sorry for Mary, but Katie would not be her little dove sending messages from her to Vili.

  “I can't allow it,” she said.

  Katie phoned Vili after her mother got off the phone. She didn't know what the three words were but if she did she would have told him. Why hadn't she asked?

  “Is she okay?” Vili asked.

  “Yeah,” she answered.

  “Is she crying?”

  “Yeah, she is.”

  “Did you calm her down? Did you tell her everything was going to be okay?”

  Alone in her upstairs room, thinking it over for the gazillionth time, Katie Hogden held on to one great hope that Mary Letourneau was in love with the right guy.

  “He was just as concerned for her as she was for him,” she said later.

  She wondered what the three words were. Was it so basic as “I love you”? Or was it more creative? Deeper? More personal? She also wondered why she hadn't asked what the words were. Just in case.

  When Mary knew that she was not going to be with Vili for a long time because the courts had restricted their contact and some jail time was all but a certainty, she timidly asked Katie Hogden the same question she had posed to so many others. It was a question that none of her friends liked to answer.

  “Do you think Vili will wait for me?”

  This was difficult. Katie knew that Vili loved Mary at some level, but if it was a lasting love she couldn't be certain. Wise as she was, Katie was only thirteen years old.

  She tried to be kind, to keep Mary's sagging spirits lifted. But she wasn't a liar.

  “He may not be there when you get back,” she said. “But he'll remember and he'll probably want to come back.”

  Mary understood.

  “I'm sure you'll always be friends,” Katie said.

  It broke their hearts to see the Letourneau family crash and burn. The four kids were about to be scattered to the winds and the parents were living in the same house, but not speaking to each other. Steve slept in the bedroom and Mary Kay stayed camped out on the hide-a-bed. Amber and Angie Fish saw it as the end of the perfect family. They never, ever could have imagined that anything could break up Mary Kay and Steve.

  They could never have conceived of Mary Kay falling in love with a student, either.

  Almost as much as they wanted to support Mary Kay, they wanted to let Steve know how they felt about him. How worried they were and how much they loved him, too. But he would never look into their eyes.

  Only one time did he even make a halfhearted attempt to speak to them.

  “He was very short, abrupt,” Amber recalled later. “I kept trying to make eye contact with Steve. I just wanted to talk to him. I never got the chance… ”

  Steve didn't appear to want anyone's help.

  When people called, he hung up. When a neighbor knocked on the door to let Steve know that he was supported by lots of people, he barely listened.

  “Yeah, thanks,” he said before shutting the door.

  The twins talked about Steve's behavior with their mother.

  “Steve's hardly around,” Angie said, “and he's got a baby coming.”

  “He's not around because it's not his baby,” their mother said.

  The girls thought their mother was way off base.

  “There's no way,” Amber said. “Of course it is.”

  Joy Fish didn't think so.

  “It probably isn't,” she said.

  It was too much. The fact that the teacher had been having a sexual relationship with a student was bad enough. Shorewood parent Danelle Johnson thought it couldn't get any worse, but of course it did. Danelle had a better pipeline for information than the Fish girls or their mother. She learned from her children that Mary Letourneau was carrying Vili's baby.

  “The kids thought it was just another awesome sign that it was a meant-to-be romance. I thought it was godawful,” she said later.

  Parents, for the most part, didn't see it the same way. In fact, few thought the pregnancy was positive proof about anything, other than it proved the woman hadn't been teaching birth control. Some fathers joked about wishing they could have had a tutor like Mary Kay Letourneau.

  Many played the gender-reversal “what if” game. Danelle had a unique take on that kind of supposition. As mother of boy/girl twins it was easy for her to flip the roles.

  “Molly tells me she's in love with a thirty-five-year-old man and they got pregnant to prove their love, and I'm gonna kill the motherfucker. End of story. Same with my son. I'm gonna kill her. Mary can be as sick as she wants to be, as demented as she wants, and I would,” she said later.

  With her honeydew-round belly, Mary Kay Letourneau thumbed her nose at the court order prohibiting unsupervised contact with her children, and the five of them boarded an Alaska Airlines flight to Southern California. They stayed with Michelle and Michael Jarvis and their three children in their home in Costa Mesa. Mary Kay knew her time with her children would be limited for a while and she wanted to spend every minute with Steven, Mary Claire, Nicky, and Jackie. Disneyland was their prime destination, and was wonderful as always. Mary Kay reminded her brood that their grandfather had once worked at the theme park as a Cobblestone Cop. Later, they played in the surf at Newport Beach. Mary Kay even took her kids up to Spyglass Hill to drive by the old house and to remember what once had been and imagine the future.

  “I felt like it was us again and that everything was going to be all right,” she said later.

  Michelle was heartsick during the visit, but she didn't show it. Mary Kay was so upbeat and energetic that it didn't mesh with the reality of her situation in Seattle. She was in the trouble of her life. Moreover, she wasn't telling Michelle every detail, either. There was one detail in particular that she hadn't shared with her best friend. It was the identity of the baby's father.

  “I knew she was pregnant by someone other than Steve when she got pregnant, but I didn't know who. She didn't tell me. I knew who Vili was, she talked about him, but I didn't know he was the father. But going from here to there was like crossing two galaxies to me. Taking it from this kid, to being a father, was a leap that I couldn't even fathom.”

  Chapter 45

  THE SPRING OF 1997 had not been easy on Soona Fualaau. Her beloved father, just fifty-nine, died, leaving her with a broken heart and a grieving mother. Her hands were also full—overflowing, really—with her youngest son's imminent fatherhood and the criminal case facing the mother of his baby. And if she ever doubted things could get worse, they did. The last thing the soon-to-be grandmother needed was any more trouble with the police. But that is exactly what she got that spring, when Vili and
his brother shook down a kid for his Fila jacket and a basketball jersey at Cascade Middle School. According to a police report filed after the second-degree robbery incident, one victim was clobbered with a broom handle, the jersey and jacket “ripped from them.” The other was left with the threat that if he called the police “he would be killed.” The boy wanted his jacket returned badly enough to risk it. The police were called, and the Fualaau boys were identified by pictures in the school yearbook.

  Later that same day Vili and his brother were read their rights, booked, and fingerprinted at a local police precinct.

  One of Vili's lawyers later dismissed the seriousness of the charges and considered it nothing more than “stupid kid stuff.”

  * * *

  The stress and violence also intensified inside the Letourneau home. Each day closer to Mary Kay's baby's delivery date turned the flame up another notch. By May it was a blowtorch. Normandy Park police officers responded to a 911 call from Mary Kay on May 9. They found the pregnant woman with a red mark two inches wide and four inches long across her stretched stomach. She said her husband had hit her.

  “We want to see the law bury you and it can't happen too soon,” Steve had said, according to Mary.

  They had argued over the spiral notebook she kept of his threatening remarks and he grabbed at her and struck her.

  “The battle has begun,” he said before leaving.

  Mary Kay refused to press charges and the officers departed.

  But later that day Steve returned. Mary Kay later said she met him outside in the driveway. While Steve stayed in the driver's seat, Mary Kay told him that the police had been to the house earlier and had taken a statement. She didn't think it was a good idea for him to be there. He could be arrested.

  A police report chronicled what happened next:

  “… Steve suddenly pulled away and she felt the vehicle bump her and knock her down… She said she struggled to crawl toward the house and at some point [a neighbor] came and took her to the hospital.”