Sex. Murder. Mystery.

by Gregg Olsen

  “This is the land that time forgot,” said Nick Latham, public relations flack for the district. “Progress jumped over the area and not much has changed.” When the former television reporter first came to work for the district one aspect fascinated him above many others: the people who lived in the area never left it. White Center, Burien, Roxbury—whatever the address, it was their town.

  “They are living within minutes of one of the most vital, exciting cities in the country, if not the world, and they may never, ever come here. It might as well be New York City. Nothing in Seattle interests them. They do not cross that First Avenue South Bridge.”

  In the center of the district is SeaTac International Airport, one of the nation's busiest, and the source of many jobs and, without a doubt, the starting point for nearly all who live in the area. But it is more than that. Ironically, the airport is the area's biggest impediment to communication and traffic. It is also noisy. And as the airport has grown, nearby property values have plummeted and people have departed for quieter environs to the north or east.

  For those coming and going, the airport is conveniently located between Seattle and Tacoma. For those who live close by—especially directly in its flight path—it is a disaster. Some schools have been so impacted by the noise that teachers have to stop lessons to wait for passing planes to go by. Families have turned up the volume on their televisions to ear-splitting decibels and learned to live with it.

  The Port of Seattle is public enemy number one in those neighborhoods, filled with people who are tired of the promises for noise abatement and the reminder that they “knew what they were getting into when they moved there.” The truth is, many didn't know. Airport traffic has grown steadily over the past quarter century and many of those complaining have been doing so for years.

  Nick Latham saw the impact the airport had on the people of the Highline School District. The Port of Seattle, he said, was to blame.

  “My allegiance has changed since I took the job down there. So much power. They [the politicians] don't care about the communities, and they don't care about our kids. Should they have to suffer?”

  If White Center and the surrounding areas seem a bit hopeless, despite a proliferation of the glitzy-cheap signs of fast food franchises, Burien has retained its small-town feel. It even has a feed store. Like most of suburbia, it isn't a pretty place, but it is home to thousands who sleep there at night and drive to jobs in Seattle or farther out. In her early years at the district, Mary Kay Letourneau did a reverse commute. In the fall of 1989, she came from outside the community to teach second grade in room 20 at Shorewood Elementary. She was admired and loved by nearly everyone in those early years. Her energy was unequaled; her ability to reach into a child's soul to pull out the dreams that she could foster was a gift. There wasn't a parent who didn't want their child in her class; there wasn't a little girl who didn't want to be just like the pretty teacher with the somewhat spiky, gelled hair. Hip hair.

  Patricia Watson was Mary Letourneau's principal for four of the teacher's first five years at Shorewood. She considered Mary Kay to be one of her top teachers, a nurturing presence in the classroom where some students needed that kind of caring in addition to their lessons. Mary was the type of teacher who looked for the best way to reach a student and she would make the effort to find the way.

  She was also an excellent mother. Patricia would never forget the day Mary Kay brought her son and daughter to the office to meet her. Mary Kay was so proud of them. And it showed. Steven and Mary Claire were groomed to perfection; shoes shined, hair combed and parted. Over the course of several years, the Letourneau children would frequently come to Shorewood to wait for their mother. Steve would drop them off to be with Mary Kay, and they ended up in the principal's office coloring pictures.

  “I still have some of the little treasures they made me,” Patricia said later.

  Chapter 20

  BY 1992, MARY Kay Letourneau had really wanted to sell the condo. She wanted to live in Normandy Park, one of the south-end-of-Seattle's more exclusive areas. She and the children had found the dream home when out on a drive before mass at St. Philamena, the Des Moines Catholic church the family attended and where the older two children attended school. It was on a quiet street that looped around to commanding views of Puget Sound, Vashon Island, and the Des Moines marina. The 1960s-era olive-green house didn't have a view of the sound, but it was on the edge of a lovely, wooded ravine. At the condo, Mary Kay organized their belongings into boxes, cleaned like a fiend, printed five hundred flyers, and served lasagna dinners to real estate agents. When the unit sold, she was elated. The family was moving up. But even so, Mary Kay emphasized to the Fish twins that although the new residence might have a better address than the condo in Kent, the house itself was nearly a fixer-upper. It also tested their budget, already strained beyond repair. Even with the proceeds from the sale of the condo, some of the down payment was coming from Steve's family, Mary Kay told the girls.

  “It's going to be tight for a while,” she said cheerfully. “And it will be a long time before we can fix it up, but it's going to happen.”

  As she spoke of the move she was upbeat, animated, and very excited. So much so, that Amber and Angie didn't want to reveal their own sadness. The Letourneaus were their dream family. Little Nicky was “their” baby. Steven. Mary Claire. All of them had meant so much.

  The Letourneaus promised the twins they could continue baby-sitting. Steve said he'd take care of driving them back and forth from Kent to Normandy Park. It made the girls feel as though it wasn't over between them, really. Mary Kay continued to do her part in keeping the relationship alive. She phoned Amber and Angie more often than either phoned her. Sometimes she called when she needed a sitter. Other times she dialed their number when she only wanted to chat.

  Despite the warnings that the place needed a handyman's touch, the house surprised Angie and Amber.

  “I thought it was going to be a lot nicer,” Amber later said.

  Angie, as usual, was more direct.

  “It wasn't even built right. The front door was on the wrong side of the house.”

  If the house in Normandy Park was meant to bring happiness to the Letourneau family, Amber and Angie Fish wondered if it had been a flop. Even as teenagers, the girls could see that both Mary Kay and Steve were more harried and pressed for time than ever.

  “Steve didn't seem happy,” Amber said later. “In the condo he did seem happier. In the house he was more cold, withdrawn.”

  Mary Kay was working longer hours then, too. And though the sisters kept up with her on the phone, they didn't see her much. The days of hanging out were over and Amber and Angie missed them terribly. Whenever Mary Kay called out of desperation for a sitter, Amber or Angie—or both—would come right over. They spent the night a few times at the Letourneaus' new place, but by the following year, those kinds of visits had dropped off. Even so, they kept in touch by taking the kids out for ice cream or McDonald's every four months or so.

  The little enclave of forty-some homes that made up the Letourneaus' Normandy Park neighborhood was a surprisingly tight group, even in the days of whirlwind careers and ever-evaporating time. What brought much of the cohesiveness was the network of children, and the connection they gave to the adults who raised them. Ellen and Daniel Douglas had two children, Scott and Jennifer, the same ages as Mary and Steve Letourneau's two oldest. So it was inevitable that the Douglas family would get to know the Letourneaus, though they lived at opposite ends of the neighborhood.

  That Mary Kay and both Daniel and Ellen Douglas were teachers was merely a bonus. The children were always the primary connection. And while the kids shared many similarities, there was one difference. The Letourneaus were enrolled in Catholic school at St. Philomena and the Douglas kids went to public school in the Highline District where all three teachers taught.

  “I'm not sure why they did it. Maybe they wanted the stricter values of the church
? Ironic, isn't it?” Ellen asked later.

  The Douglas home was on a stunning piece of view property once owned by Ellen's grandmother. At one time Ellen's older brother and his childhood buddy, lawyer David Gehrke, rented the little house. Years later, when the grandmother died, the property was divided and the north half sold to the Gehrkes for a much-dreamed-about home that he would build one day—“when the money comes in.”

  In time the four children were inseparable. There were lessons together, bicycle rides, trips to the grungy shores of Puget Sound, and for Scott, Little League baseball with Steve Letourneau as coach.

  “A really young, active family,” is how Ellen described the Letourneau brood years later. “Very involved with the kids, busy with the church. They were always busy, always hectic, and always late—for school, meetings, parties, picnics, and life. Life was busy. They were overbooked, maybe not too organized.”

  There were times when Mary Kay would drop off her children at neighborhood birthday parties, leave and go to the store to pick up a gift, wrap it in the car, and return to the party. Even though the invitation had been posted on the refrigerator for weeks.

  When Ellen Douglas figured out the frazzled ways of the Letourneau household she made sure she was designated car-pool mom for Steven and Scott's Cub Scout meetings. That way they would not be stuck waiting for Mary Kay and Ellen would be able to get the two boys to where they needed to be on time.

  Several years later, Ellen dismissed the lateness as inconsequential.

  “Nobody was ever hurt by it,” she said.

  When the quicksand of a scandal enveloped the blond-headed family with the four beautiful children, Ellen Douglas wanted the world to know one thing: At one time the home had appeared happy and Steve and Mary Kay Letourneau were devoted to their children. At least, she thought so.

  As much as Steve and Mary Kay sought a brand-name, status-soaked lifestyle, it was no secret among friends in the neighborhood that they had money troubles. One time Ellen Douglas watched the Letourneau children when their parents went downtown to meet with the Internal Revenue Service over some back taxes that they owed in order to get approval on some refinancing.

  Another time a neighbor listened as Mary Kay complained that St. Philomena wanted to send the kids packing for public school because she hadn't kept current on their tuition. It had reached the crisis point, and a letter had been sent home and overlooked.

  “It was about three inches down in the pile on the kitchen counter,” the friend said with a sigh.

  Ellen Douglas even hated to bring it up later, but she couldn't understand Steve and Mary Kay's choices. Both made okay money. Both worked steadily. Yet, they were struggling beyond belief. But they had the best clothes. Steven had the coolest new bike. They even had a landscape service.

  “They had no money, but they paid for lawn care. But if you're broke, you mow it and just let it go brown and you don't care,” Ellen said later. “We knew all along they weren't good at handling whatever money they did make.”

  To a few, it still seemed that Mary Kay and Steve Letourneau were a team. The focus appeared to be on their family. Steve worked nights so that he could be home when Mary Kay was teaching at school. When she returned to work after her babies were born, she'd pump her breast milk in the classroom and Steve would make milk runs throughout the day.

  “Steve was her best friend,” Principal Patricia Watson said later.

  At times, the principal worried about Mary Letourneau, the person. Mary the teacher always gave one hundred percent and more—but that was a problem.

  “Even before I left Shorewood,” Patricia Watson said years later, “I had some concerns about her stability.”

  She talked with Mary about focusing her priorities. She was staying up too late, and running herself ragged. The principal worried that the teacher's own children were not getting enough of their mother's time.

  “Mary,” Patricia said more than once, “you need to get some things in control. You got to set your priorities because you can't do it all.”

  Mary would promise to give it consideration, come up with a plan, a compromise that allowed her to be the best teacher and the best mother she could be. She'd come back to Patricia and they'd talk some more. She was sincere in her understanding that something wasn't working.

  “She was just really a perfectionist,” Patricia recalled. “When you are a perfectionist you see every place that is not working for you. She could look at her children and figure out what wasn't right and beat herself up about it.”

  In the fall of 1993, Mary Kay Letourneau moved into the annex, a cluster of Shorewood classrooms joined to the main part of the school by a narrow covered walkway, to teach sixth grade—at her request. She was pregnant with her fourth child, and after Christmas she delivered another beautiful daughter, Jacqueline. Mary Kay Letourneau was doing what she was born to do, being a mother and a teacher.

  In time, toddler Jackie would join her mother and big sister as they sang the songs from the Bette Midler movie Beaches, and danced around the house. Like her father, Mary Kay would twist the lyrics and make them her own. She sang “Happy Sunshine” instead of “You Are My Sunshine.” Her children loved it.

  Chapter 21

  IN SAD REALITY, the Steve and Mary Kay Letourneau marriage was a gorgeous package with nothing inside. They seemed to want the world to see them for what they had a right to be—pretty, handsome, and with money to spare. Flight benefits from Steve's job at Alaska Airlines allowed for a big part of the charade by giving them next-to-nothing airfare to anywhere they desired. Nordstrom credit cards and creative bookkeeping did the rest. Steve would later say he didn't want to know that he was in so deep and that his wife was a spendthrift extraordinare. He didn't want anyone to know how bad it was.

  It was true. One of Steve's relatives recalled a cousin's wedding and how Steve and Mary arrived late, though not as late as usual. They looked beautiful. Better than the bride and groom. Their children were equally well decked out.

  “The kids were all dressed like Little Lord Fauntleroy, you know, knickers. They dressed like they thought they were the Kennedys or something,” the relative said later.

  Steve and Mary were the gorgeous golden couple. She was the California girl with the stylish hair and the figure of a model. He was the square-jawed Dudley Do-Right; all blond and broad shouldered. Mary Kay even called him Dudley Do-Right and teasingly gave him a bathtub toy depicting the cartoon Canadian Mountie. Their children were perfect, too. A balanced grouping for the family Christmas card.

  But as Steve and other family members learned, it was not so lovely after all. The Letourneaus' money problems escalated after they moved to Normandy Park. Even with family help, things were speeding from bad to worse. They were behind in their payments for the van given to them by Steve's father in Alaska. Even the money given by a wealthy aunt and uncle for part of the down payment on the house in Normandy Park had not been enough to provide a cushion in their overwhelmed checking account. The mortgage payments had been too high and the house was headed for foreclosure. The month before Steve and Mary Kay celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary, they filed Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Student loans of more than $27,000, medical bills, and assorted credit cards had overwhelmed them. They still owed the IRS more than $10,000. The total unsecured debt was almost $50,000. For assets, they listed a 1985 VW Jetta and a 1969 Buick. Steve had $25 cash on hand.

  The couple's difficulty with money brought the inevitable problems among the family lenders.

  “Sharon and Mary Kay didn't get along at all,” said a relative. “They were always calling Sharon for money to pay the power bill, money for food.”

  But they kept up the lovely front. Mary Kay flew off to California to visit Michelle or just to get her hair done. When they lived in Alaska when they first got married, Steve would come down to Seattle for his hair appointments. From the outside, it looked like they were glamorous and rich.

  “They w
ere trying to be somebody they weren't,” the relative said later. “They didn't care. They knew that someone would bail them out. They knew Steve's mom would give them money. She's not going to let her grand-kids go hungry.”

  Steve knew it was true and it made him feel terrible.

  “It was all a big façade. It always was,” he admitted years later to a family member.

  In August of 1995, Stacey Letourneau was getting married in Alaska, and despite the fact that Mary Kay didn't care much for her sister-in-law, she was named matron of honor. She also insisted on helping with wedding decorations. She even spent a week working on a collage for Stacey—“something that she would keep for the rest of her life, it was that beautiful.” The bride's colors were a blue tone and an apricotlike color that was hard to describe. Nadine and her older daughter, Sandra, went shopping for balloons for the reception decorations but when they returned, Mary Kay said they had made a terrible mistake.

  “Those are not the colors! Those are orange! Take them back. They won't work. They'll never work,” she said.

  Bullied into it, the women, led by Grandma Nadine, returned to the balloon store, only to learn they had the closest thing to apricot that could be found in all of Alaska. Nadine thought the whole fuss was ridiculous.

  “Who in God's name is going to match those balloons with the bows and ribbons, anyway? Who cares?” she asked.

  They all knew: Mary Kay.

  That evening Mary Kay took the kids in the motor home Dick Letourneau had rented for extra sleeping quarters and drove twenty miles out to Eagle River to the reception hall. She worked all night making sure everything was just so. It was after three A.M. the next day when she returned.

  Her way or no way. That was understood by everyone who knew Mary Kay, but most saw it as a sign of perfectionism. Mary Kay had experience with the finer things—and those pep-rally-colored balloons were not going to work. But there was nothing she could do about it. No balloons of the right color could be had in all of Alaska.