by Gregg Olsen
Chapter 50
SHE DREADED THE day that she'd pick up the phone and it would be Steve Letourneau calling. Even though Secret Squirrel Linda Gardner had done what she felt was right, she knew that her actions led to the breakup of her husband's cousin's home, happy or not. Such as it was. Kyle Gardner had been in contact with Steve not long after the arrest and he had kept his wife up-to-date.
But it wasn't until April that the phone rang at ten P.M. and Steve's voice was on the line. Fear overwhelmed her and her heart sank. Before she could say anything—and she didn't know what it would be anyway—Steve took up the slack on his end of the line.
“Linda,” he said, “I just want to let you know that you got me out of this nightmare and I want to thank you for it.”
Linda didn't know what to say.
“Yeah. You want to talk to Kyle?” she asked, before setting down the receiver and looking for her husband.
Over the next few days the two would talk more. Linda listening at first, then offering advice. She thought it was ridiculous that Steve was still living there with his pregnant-by-a-sixth-grader wife. And why was he staying? The place was being foreclosed. It wasn't as though he was going to be living there after the law did whatever it was going to do with his wife.
She understood from talking with Steve and Kyle that things were getting violent in Normandy Park.
“You've got to get out of the house,” she said during one of their conversations that spring. “Come here and stay with us. If you don't you're going to get thrown in jail.”
Steve finally admitted that Secret Squirrel was right. It would be better than hanging around while Mary Kay had her baby.
And while her own mother-in-law would not forgive her, it seemed that once everything was out in the open among members of Steve Letourneau's family, Linda was not completely alone. Steve's mother and grandmother both made calls of support to thank her for taking care of the Mary Kay problem.
She knew Mary Kay and Steve hadn't kept the cleanest house. Linda Gardner recalled the time one of their children was missing at Carriage Row and it was discovered that the toddler had fallen asleep in a pile of debris on the sofa. Linda remembered tiptoeing through the clutter, but she didn't think that was as bad as what her husband Kyle described when he helped Steve Letourneau move from Normandy Park to their home in Bonney Lake just before Mary Kay had her baby. It wasn't just a case of packing boxes and moving them to storage. According to her husband, more than a half-dozen trips to the dump were necessary.
“They even threw away a couch,” Linda said later. “Steve had absolutely nothing when he left that house. It was all trash. Kyle couldn't believe how bad it was.”
And yet Steve and Mary Kay had always seemed so neat. Linda couldn't figure it out.
Something's not right. Not right with her. Not right with Steve. How can you be so filthy at home, but when you are around everybody you don't have a scrap of dirt on you… you're perfect?
She asked Steve about it not long after he moved in with the Gardners that spring.
“He told me that he would come home from work and he just gave up, because she would do nothing. She would not do any housework. They had a rat in the house. It was filthy. They lived in filth,” she said later.
Linda didn't want to rub salt into the wound so she kept her mouth shut, but still she wondered, “How was Mary Kay going to bring this baby home to that house? How could these kids live like that?”
When things became more relaxed and she felt she could pry a little, Linda asked her houseguest why he didn't just boot his wife out the door when he confirmed the involvement with the boy.
Steve said he just couldn't. Too many people were involved and he was afraid. He didn't know what to do, how to handle it. He knew she'd go to prison.
“She's the mother of my children,” he repeated.
That didn't wash with Linda.
“When she started having sex with someone the same age as her son, she gave up the right to be the mother of your children,” she retorted.
Later, when Linda would try to describe Steve's state of mind at the time, he was so wishy-washy, so noncommittal, that it was impossible.
“I think that he thought that possibly this would go away and they would be living their lives,” she said.
Over the course of the next few days and weeks, the story would unfold and Linda would become increasingly satisfied that she had done the right thing. Steve said Mary Kay had admonished their children to keep quiet about Vili's overnight visits.
“If you tell anybody, Mommy will go to prison”
He showed copies of the love letters he had found.
“So here we are. We had a dream—it was a once upon a time—fairy tale story about two people that were meant to become one—and did.”
In one missive, Mary Kay lamented how she couldn't show her love for Vili in public, couldn't call him, couldn't show off their devotion to each other…
“But each day something new happens to me and I always want to tell you… ”
Linda later described some of the letters as depicting Mary Kay and Vili as lovers from another plane, another dimension, and another time. God, they believed, had a plan for them and that plan included a baby. Linda thought the notes were “twisted” and “sick.”
“I also told them that this wasn't just sex and an accidental baby.”
Later, Linda fumed about the letters: “She knew that this baby would keep them together forever. They set out to make this love child. He was talking about how he loved her, how they were destined to be together and her letters were the same.”
Steve talked about phoning Mary and John Schmitz to tell them what was going on with their daughter long before she was arrested.
“They wanted to get Mary Kay out of Washington and moved to Washington, D.C., but she wouldn't do it,” Linda recalled Steve telling her. “Her mother wouldn't talk to her—totally wrote her off. The dad came out and brought her a car. Then he went back and the parents were not supportive of her at all.”
In time, Linda would piece together what she thought was the real reason why Steve passively sat by as his wife got involved with a student. He was busy with his own affairs. He even fathered a child with one of his flings. And Linda in her best Secret Squirrel mind-set figured that Mary Kay hung that over his head and threatened him.
“If you tell, if you leave, I will let everybody know about all this stuff.”
And there was Kelly Whalen, too. Kelly, the flight attendant from Alaska Airlines, was the woman with whom Steve was planning his post-Mary Kay future. He talked about Kelly and how wonderful she was and how he couldn't have made it through the ordeal without her. He told Linda they had met on a trip to Puerto Vallarta. He didn't tell her what was going on with his wife, but he wanted out of his loveless marriage.
“I don't agree with him having an affair,” Linda said later. “If my husband ever had one, I'd pull a Lorena Bobbitt on him.”
A girlfriend of Mary Kay Letourneau's who went to the Shorewood open house in the fall of 1996 witnessed a slightly hostile exchange between a man—possibly another teacher—and Mary Kay. She told Linda about it later. According to the friend, she was in the classroom when the man walked up to Mary Kay and said, “You are getting way too close to Vili.”
Then he walked off.
* * *
Whenever they met at his Tacoma office or talked on the phone, divorce lawyer Greg Grahn always found Steve Letourneau to be true to form in one critical regard. Steve remained entrenched in his position that he wouldn't get caught up in the blame game that had been a part of the Mary Kay Letourneau saga from day one. Yes, he was pissed off at his wife for dumping him for a kid. Without a doubt, he was humiliated and bitter, but deep down there was some guilt. Pointing the finger at his dewy-eyed wife was not a good strategy. It only made Steve Letourneau look like a bully kicking her when she was down.
“He couldn't exempt himself from it one hundre
d percent, anyway,” Greg Grahn said later. “So rather than trying to figure out what percentage is his and what percentage is Mary Kay's, he doesn't want to blame Mary Kay in public.”
He had played a part in what happened, and despite what his critics would say, Steve Letourneau knew it.
“You know,” he admitted to his lawyer, “I could have done things that could have stopped this.”
But Steve wasn't paying attention or he was burying his head in the sand during the months his wife carried on with Vili Fualaau. Maybe he was too wrapped up in what he was doing with his girlfriend to step in and save his wife and family from the inevitable min? Hindsight was a killer, and Steve knew it. According to his lawyer, Steve had seen “hundreds of things” that indicated what had really been going on with Mary Kay and Vili.
“He just refused to believe it back then,” Greg Grahn said. “He feels bad about it. He blames himself a little bit for that.”
Chapter 51
FOR SUSAN MURPHY, the president of the Highline Education Association, the day Mary Letourneau moved out of her classroom brought a combination of sadness and disbelief. It was a Saturday, not long after Audrey's birth, that brought Mary, her newborn, and her friend Beth Adair, along with Susan and a school district security official, to Mary's old classroom at Shorewood Elementary.
As for Mary, she had come full circle, returned to the scene of what some considered a crime, the place where she said she fell in love with a boy. For the others there to oversee and help the stroller-toting former teacher, it was the end of what had been considered a promising career.
Mary had been instructed after her baby arrived that she would need to remove all of her belongings from her old classroom. Other than a few books, very little of her personal effects had been sent to her after she was arrested. Susan Murphy was on hand to represent Mary, who was still on the district payroll—though most doubted it would last much longer.
Susan had been told that Mary had “a couple of boxes” to pick up. Mary arrived with her baby in the Audi Fox that her father had brought to her before Audrey's birth.
It was apparent that her vehicle would not hold all she had left behind in room 39.
“It wasn't a couple of boxes,” Susan Murphy recalled later. “It was closets full of stuff. Tons of projects, props from plays. Several closets within the classroom were overflowing with belongings that the district did not wish to store any longer.” The HEA president figured if she were the teacher leaving that classroom, say to go to another school, she would have marched three fourths of what they were hauling out over to the jaws of an awaiting Dumpster. Mary wanted everything. Every scrap, every project.
It bewildered Susan and she had to bite her tongue to avoid what she wanted to say.
What are you thinking? Where are you going to put all this stuff?
Mary, upbeat and excited, wanted it all.
“She was kind of childlike,” Susan later said of Mary's behavior in the classroom. “I didn't get a sense that she understood the severity of the situation. She'd wander from one thing to the next, she was sort of disorganized, kind of wandering around in circles… ”
While the group sifted through Mary's belongings and pressed on with the business at hand, Susan came across a pink detention slip with the name Vili Fualaau. She put it in one of the boxes without saying a word. Susan also got a clue about how the children in the classroom were feeling toward Mary and her successor. Inside a drawer she found notes disparaging Mary's replacement: “So and So Sucks! I hate So and So!”
Mary went from one item to the next, exclaiming interest and recalling memories that came to mind as she boxed up student projects. She had a kind word for everyone and everything associated with the remnants of all that had once mattered.
When the mountain grew larger, Susan called her husband to bring his car to provide more packing room. Half a day had passed before it was time to caravan over to Normandy Park, unload, and put that sorry episode behind them.
Late spring in the Puget Sound region brings a burst of growth and incessant rain, and in a week's time lawns can be overgrown—with no dry days in sight to mow. But that was not the case at 21824 Fourth Place S. The Letourneau home stood out from the others in the tidy neighborhood. Its lawn was overgrown and dandelions were rampant. Susan Murphy felt another pang of sorrow for Mary and her family. Though she could never dismiss the professional breach of trust and responsibility that Mary had blatantly and seemingly cavalierly forsaken, somehow Susan held some hope that Mary and Vili's story was truly one of a deep and undying love. Even though it was as wrong as could be—and there was no way to make it right in her mind—she allowed herself to hold out some hope for a somewhat happy ending. Susan didn't really buy into it, but even so she hoped for it anyway. Otherwise, she knew, all of this was for nothing.
Mary skittered about the half-empty house and announced that she'd spend some of her free time going through each and every item. She thanked everyone for their concern and help.
Susan Murphy will never forget the sadness she felt for Mary Kay Letourneau, her new baby, her husband, her children, and, because she had devoted her life to it, too, the teaching career that she had squandered.
Years later, that Saturday at Shorewood still brought a sigh from Susan Murphy.
“She was never going to teach again. Her certificate had been revoked. Unless she went somewhere where they didn't care about having one. Or for some strange reason they had never heard of her… that would be pretty incredible. Antarctica, maybe?”
When teachers at the school heard Mary's things were finally gone, they were both relieved and a little angry. They saw her tardiness in retrieving her things as more than just putting something off because it was painful. It was about power.
“She didn't come back until after the baby was born, which personally I felt was a little game with her that the kids would know her stuff was still there and she was in charge,” said one Shorewood teacher.
Mary Kay wouldn't have given a single thought to the Shorewood teachers after she left the school with her belongings. She had a bigger problem. She told friends that she thought that King County Police Detective Maley had it in for her. It was personal, Mary told a friend later.
“They were all saying that it was some kind of a Hitlerian mentality going on. That I had sought out a genius in order to give me a better baby than Steve could. Pat Maley was behind that. What was with her? I couldn't figure it out for the longest time until David [Gehrke] told me to consider that something was going on between us, woman to woman.
“I've encountered this before in my life, I won't say 'jealousy', but something like that. Resentment. Here I was with the love of my life, and I'm living on the water in Normandy Park, and she's this pockmarked detective living in SeaTac somewhere by the airport. And she will never, ever get to Normandy Park and I have. Never.”
And for that, no matter what her motives, Pat Maley would probably be eternally grateful.
Chapter 52
A TURNING POINT for Amber and Angie Fish came a few weeks after Audrey was born. From that rainy night in late February when they first tried to comfort Mary Kay to their baby-sitting excursions to Normandy Park after Audrey was brought home from the hospital, Mary Kay didn't let on about her true feelings for her former student.
But then she started to refer to Vili Fualaau more frequently. She started to tell the girls that she was in love with him and he was in love with her. They had wanted to make a family. And, against all odds, she was going to do everything in her power to prove it to those against the idea.
“I remember her talking about it,” Amber said later. “ 'Yeah, it's like Romeo and Juliet' and I asked her what she meant and she said, 'You know we're forbidden to be together, and I hope it doesn't end up like that.' ”
Amber knew how Romeo and Juliet ended. Was Mary Kay suggesting a suicide pact?
When Mary Kay started speaking of the relationship with her student as a
love story, it was such a departure from what the twins understood that they found it hard to process. They had seen the media accounts on television and read some of the legal papers scattered around the house. They knew there was a difference between a love affair and a crime. They also didn't believe Mary Kay was the criminal type. All of it was confusing.
“We really didn't know what to think,” Angie said later.
Although the girls thought of Mary Kay more as a peer than an adult figure, they didn't try to dissuade her from her impossible plans. There was no point in going against her.
“I never thought it would come to the point where she'd go to jail. We just kind of blew it off. We never agreed with her, but the way she was saying, 'I'm never going to jail.' The way she talked about everything, rolling her eyes about everything. It made it seem that it was not that big a deal. It was coming from her… so we didn't think it was a big deal,” Amber said later.
Amber Fish had a good memory and when she learned that Mary Kay had been involved with a boy that she had taught in second and sixth grades, she flashed on an incident that took place four or five years earlier at Carriage Row.
“I can remember one day standing in her kitchen and she was telling us—she came home really late and I don't know if she was with him—but she was telling us the story about this little kid, an incredible artist. He was amazing, smart.”
Amber wondered if this was the same child. Mary Kay had been so animated, so excited that night. Though it was true that Mary Kay was the type of woman who frequently showed enthusiasm for the world around her, this was different. The second-grade boy she was talking about had touched her deeply.
Though Mary Kay thought the world of this child, she never spoke of him again.
Later, when she thought about it, Amber Fish would bet money that boy she had talked about years before was the same one she had been accused of raping.
Amber and Angie knew that Mary Kay was not supposed to have any contact with Vili, but they were certain she broke that rule—though she never came out and confided that she had. There were occasions when she would whisper into the phone.