by Gregg Olsen
Finally one airline employee (“An angel, one of my angels,” Mary Kay said later) broke the rules and gave her the flight number. Steve Letourneau and the four children were listed on a flight arriving in SeaTac at 11:02 that morning. With a Nordstom bag in one hand and a sack of presents in another, Mary Kay frantically found her way to the gate. For a moment, after she had gone to the wrong gate, she thought she had missed them and started to cry.
“Jacqueline saw me… ” Mary Kay said later, tears coming to her eyes. “She put her arms up and called for her mommy. She melted into my arms. They all did. Steve looked at me and said, 'She knew you'd be here. She was calling your name before we got off the plane.' My eyes said, F. U., but I said, 'And what if I wasn't? What if I hadn't been here?' “
Those two hours at the airport would be the last time Mary Kay would see her children.
The next day, August 7, 1997, a haltingly repentant Mary Kay Letourneau joined the inmate population of the King County Jail. Among the prisoners there, she was by far the most educated, best mannered, and most beautiful. Just as she appeared to Karen O'Leary and other news reporters back in March when she first walked into a courtroom with her hair held up in a barrette and wearing a gray maternity dress, she didn't look like she was the type of person who belonged in jail. But there she was. David Gehrke had told the court earlier in the day that she was sorry.
“She's a very good person who did a horrible thing,” he said.
And there she would stay, pumping her breasts for milk for baby Audrey, awaiting sentencing that would drag on for months as doctors, lawyers, and people she didn't know argued over her fate: treatment as a deviant or more than seven years in prison as a criminal.
Chapter 57
AUGUST 21, 1997, was Vili Fualaau's coming-out party. Sort of. On that morning the boy and his mother, Soona, appeared on NBC's Today show and gave the world the first glimpse, albeit obscured, of the boy behind the woman. Karen O'Leary missed the segment that morning, but the KIRO-TV reporter caught excerpts of the interview on the NBC affiliate's noon news show. News director Bill Lord told Karen to get down to White Center to dig up an interview. The boy? His mother? Mary Kay? Gehrke?
“Anybody,” he said.
Karen O'Leary and cameraman Tom Matsuzawa made their way to south Seattle, but once there, Karen realized she had left the Samoan family's name and address back at the station. She went to see Nick Latham at the Highline School District.
“She showed up at Highline, with her cell phone, and told me, 'Bill Lord told me I've got to get an interview with Vili, help me find him,'” recalled the public relations officer. It made for an awkward moment and the beginning of a strain on their friendship. Nick couldn't tell Karen anything; the district and the Fualaaus had made it clear that legal action was a possibility if they disclosed information about Vili. Moreover, he wondered why she needed it from him anyway. All the information she wanted was on the charging papers filed by King County anyway. Name, address, probably phone number, too.
“I can't help you find him,” he said finally.
It was time for a Coke and plan B. Karen went to a nearby Burger King.
“Do you know that boy who was involved with Mary Letourneau?” she asked a group of teens hanging around the fast food restaurant.
The kids didn't flinch or hesitate.
“Oh, yeah, Vili… Buddha,” said one.
“I know his telephone number,” added another. “Here it is.”
It was that easy at Burger King and it probably would have been just as easy at Taco Time. The teens admitted that it was common knowledge that Vili was the mystery boy involved with Mary Kay Letourneau. Everyone, it seemed, knew.
Some secret, Karen thought. Kids aren't dumb. They are observant. Everyone knew this boy.
The house at White Center was modest and rundown. Karen O'Leary left the cameraman in the car and knocked on the door. Vili answered. He looked like a boy of thirteen, maybe fourteen. To the veteran reporter, Mary Kay Letourneau's boyfriend/victim did not look like a mature young man, as the lawyers had tried to portray him. He was small, gangly, and self-conscious like a kid. Karen introduced herself, though she needn't have. Vili immediately knew who she was and said so. She said she'd seen the Today show interview and the two talked about the story.
“Now that you've done national TV, we'd like to interview you for a local story.”
“Okay,” he said.
They talked a bit longer and Vili excused himself and went back inside. Karen could hear him converse with a couple of others. Later Vili would tell her that his sister, Leni, and his aunt were home.
“We said we'd disguise his face using pixalization. He knew what that was,” Karen said later. “We talked for five or ten minutes.”
Then Karen asked to use the restroom.
“I needed to use the restroom, is all,” she explained later. “It wasn't any kind of a ruse. I'm a television reporter. I didn't have a camera with me. What difference would it have made that I was inside? He was already talking to me.”
A few minutes later, he brought out baby Audrey to show to the reporter and the cameraman. The baby was very cute and they asked if they could take her picture.
Vili said yes at first, but later changed his mind.
“I don't think my mom would like that,” he said.
They took video of some of his artwork, the bassinet, and a car seat. When it came time for the interview, Vili considered the most appropriate venue. First the inside of the house was all right, then he thought the porch would be better. Finally, he said it would be best to tape it at nearby Hicks Lake Park.
Before they left, Vili washed off a stylized m with a heart that he had drawn on his hand like a mock tattoo. He was embarrassed and didn't want any kids to see it when he was on television. He was embarrassed, not because the m stood for Mary, which it did, but because he thought friends would tease him for writing it on himself.
Sitting at a picnic table not far from the tennis courts in the park, Vili Fualaau gave his second major interview. And though she'd hate to admit it later, it was the most important of Karen O'Leary's career. Not for what her subject said, but for how it would affect her life for nearly a year.
Vili talked about an uncle who had started getting involved with an older girl when he was twelve. The uncle married the girl—and they were still married. The story was interesting because it told Karen that Vili had been exposed to—and accepted—early sexual experiences within his family.
As they talked and the camera recorded the soft-spoken boy's words, Karen O'Leary observed something that surprised her. The rape victim still cared for the perpetrator. She wouldn't have thought that a boy would have such strong feelings for a woman over such a long period of time. He still cared for Mary Kay. He said that his brother had tried to fix him up with other girls, but he refused. He was waiting for Mary Kay Letourneau.
As they talked, he barely made eye contact with the reporter. He seemed shy and vulnerable. Nevertheless, he did drop a couple of bombshells. He said he and Mary Kay had planned the pregnancy and that they were still planning to be married. He wore a silver engagement ring, engraved on the inside. Mary Kay, he said, wore a similar ring.
The disclosures that afternoon were shocking because they revealed a relationship that was ongoing and a relationship that had been very deliberate. It was not about a teacher who had made a mistake. It was all planned and it wasn't over.
As the interview came to a close Vili said that he felt he was older than Mary Kay. His family, he said, considered him an “old soul.” He thought Mary Kay was childish or immature in some ways. He was more grown-up than she was.
On the way back to the station to rush the story for the 5 P.M. news, Karen O'Leary was thunderstruck by the boy, the victim, and his attitude about what had happened.
“He was a very romantic young person in the way that kids who read books about princesses and dragons… live this romantic fantasy life,” sh
e said later. The Vili Fualaau interview aired at 5, 6:30, and 11. Then, at least for Karen O'Leary, the trouble began. There was very little reaction. Only one phone call that Karen O'Leary heard about. But it was a doozy. It was from Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau's lawyer.
“The only call was from Bob Huff. It went to my boss. I'd heard that he'd called and insisted that we withdraw the story. And I knew we didn't do it. Just because somebody called up and was unhappy with a legitimate news story—that's gotten legitimately—were not going to not run it,” she said.
For Katie Hogden, the almost-eighth-grader with the weight of the world on her shoulders, the Karen O'Leary interview with Vili Fualaau solved a mystery that had hung in the back of her mind over the summer. She watched the KIRO report as Vili fiddled with the filigree-decorated silver ring that had been a gift from Mary. The inscriptions “I'll Be There” and “Oh Happy Day” triggered the memory of her teacher's request to relay three words to Vili.
Words that will let him know that everything would be all right.
It was the ill-fated lover's song “I'll Be There.” Those were the words that Mary had believed would comfort Vili.
“I knew that was what she had wanted to say. I finally figured it out,” she said later. “It was like a puzzle.”
Friday morning, August 22, 1997, started out promisingly enough for the reporter who had interviewed Vili Fualaau as they sat at a picnic table at a White Center park. She had brought to light new information and it was the talk of Seattle and beyond. A talk radio show praised Karen O'Leary for revealing the other side of the story; that the boy wasn't a victim, but was a thoughtful and caring boy. A boy who loved Mary Kay. Still. And she still loved him. They had planned their baby and plotted a future together.
If the good feeling of a good story can be savored only until the next telecast, it was over even faster for the KIRO reporter.
The bubble burst when Bob Huff showed up in front of KIRO's offices in downtown Seattle with lawsuit papers in hand. He had called other media for a surprise press conference to announce that the rape victim and his mother were suing KIRO, owner Cox Broadcasting, and Karen O'Leary for a dirty-laundry list of infractions including unlawful imprisonment, invasion of privacy, trespass, negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent hiring and supervision, and fraud.
Outrage and indignation bolstered each word. Karen stayed out of it; in fact, the station sent only a cameraman down to film what was being said. There would be no confrontation in front of the competition.
Bob Huff stuck his claim to the boy's story that morning and drew the line in the sand with a backhoe. He made sure that the message was loud and clear: Keep away from the kid.
“It rings almost hauntingly of what they are accusing Mary Kay Letourneau of doing—coming in, gaining confidence, and abusing trust to gain something from the boy,” the lawyer told a reporter after the announcement.
Karen O'Leary certainly had plenty to consider, but one thing troubled her more and more, something that hadn't been apparent until Bob Huff showed up waving papers in front of KIRO. She knew Bob Huff as Mary Kay Letourneau's attorney along with David Gehrke. Every time she had seen David Gehrke in court, Bob Huff had been there, too. But she was unaware he had anything to do with Vili Fualaau.
So strange.
“It seems like an amazing conflict of interest that you would represent both the rapist and the rape victim,” she told a friend. “But Bob Huff's doing that. It seems shocking to me.”
Bob Huff didn't completely disagree. He thought the situation was curious, too. The lines were blurred in the Letourneau Triangle. The rapist's chief supporter appeared to be the victim's mother. In addition, he later suggested that the prosecutor's office just wanted the whole thing to go away, and by doing battle over Mary Kay and Vili's shared representation, it would only focus more attention on their story—fallout that would only serve the strange alliance's goal—more ballyhoo.
“I was keenly aware that you can't be a representative of people with a conflict of interest,” Bob Huff said later. “But that unusual thing here is that even though they were rapist and victim, they had the same commercial interests. Vili wanted to make money and Mary wanted to get her story out.”
As she faced the first lawsuit in her career, Karen O'Leary found herself in an odd position. She was a reporter covering a case in which an offshoot of it was a lawsuit against her. Over the next few months, she would see what it felt like to be called a liar, manipulator, and a fraud. A dentist from Mukilteo, Washington, sent a note: “Did you get a thrill questioning this young man about his sexual adventure?”
The TV reporter would also see how a boy and his story was twisted and turned for what his lawyers appeared to want more than they wanted justice.
Karen O'Leary deduced two reasons for the lawsuit. One had to do with the upcoming sentencing hearing, the other had to do with money. With sentencing coming up, David Gehrke and Bob Huff were promoting the position that Mary Kay Letourneau was a victim of her own mental imbalance. She was an upstanding teacher who made a terrible mistake. She needed mercy, not condemnation. Treatment, not prison.
The KIRO interview showed a side of the defendant that didn't mesh with that strategy. Vili said the pregnancy had been planned. Mary Kay Letourneau was going to marry him. It was a deliberate and calculated relationship. The lawsuit was a muzzle on the media.
“They didn't want that out,” Karen said later. “They didn't want anyone else to get to Vili. They knew Vili would talk.”
At least to Karen, the second effect of the lawsuit proved to be the most enduring. Bob Huff and David Gehrke were sitting on a story that could mean money. Movies, books, television interviews. Bob Huff, who had that curious role as an associate of David's in the beginning of the case, now had a real job.
“He wanted to make sure no other reporter tried to approach Vili. He threatened everybody else. Nobody else better go to that boy! Nobody else should interview him!” Karen told a friend of Bob Huff's purported tactics.
Karen saw the Today appearance as a promotional effort for the marketing of the “forbidden love” story and her “free” interview in the park had thrown a wrench into the plan.
“They allowed just a little bit of Vili's story out there as a teaser, letting publications like the Globe, Inside Edition, people who pay, know, 'Hey, he'll talk.' Then the negotiations were supposed to start,” Karen said later.
The KIRO interview undermined everything. Vili Fualaau was giving the information away for nothing. That wouldn't do. Not for him. For Audrey. Or for the lawyers. Most importantly, some observers felt, for the lawyers.
Bob Huff flatly denied that the family wanted to sell out. He made the point perfectly clear during an interview with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “This is their lives, and they're not going to cheapen it.”
The KIRO lawsuit wasn't the only pending legal matter. No one knew it at the time, but Bob Huff had contacted the Highline School District the week before Vili went on TV. A notice of claim alleging the district had been negligent in the hiring, supervision, and retention of Mary Kay Letourneau had been sent to district offices in Burien. The notice of claim merely rings a warning bell. The statute of limitations for any negligence runs for three years after the minor's eighteenth birthday. The district responded a day after they received Bob Huff's letter. Their investigation showed that the district did not have any knowledge of Mary Letourneau's improper relationship with her student, and therefore had not failed to act in the best interests of the boy.
Mary Kay was livid when she learned of Bob Huff's letter.
“He did it on his own,” she told a friend. “He just did it to see if they could scare them into doing something, paying something.”
Feeling sorry for Mary Kay Letourneau was best left to those who saw her as a Joan of Arc for a forbidden love. She had recklessly and spectacularly ruined her life. But it was something she had done to herself. A
lthough TV reporter Karen O'Leary had compassion for the teacher, it paled next to the sorrow she felt for the four Letourneau children. She could not fully imagine the devastation it had brought to their lives now, and ever after.
“[Imagine the pain of being] rejected by their mother because she's choosing a twelve-year-old over their father, but also over them ultimately,” she said later.
Lawsuit or not, she felt it added up to a mental illness. It had to be. Karen was convinced that Mary Letourneau was in fantasy land and needed treatment, not prison. The Letourneau children deserved a mother who was made well, not jailed. She believed it so much that in the middle of a San Francisco vacation the Monday after the lawsuit was filed, she agreed to appear on CNN's Burden of Proof to argue her position. It turned ugly and Karen learned firsthand how rotten the other side of the camera can be.
“They were just vultures,” the Seattle reporter recalled of the hosts and other panelists who wanted Mary Kay locked up forever. “They were terrible and I was defending Mary. They chewed me up. They all sided against me.”
Whenever some teacher-turned-rapist tidbit hit the papers or television or even the White Center grapevine, it ignited dissent and discussion. The Mattson house with its big-screen TV was always a center of such activity. Rumors began to circulate that Vili would not be waiting for his teacher-girlfriend and he was already playing the field. To be fair, most considered the boy somewhat shy, artistic, a tranquil presence in a sea of middle-school turmoil. At least that's what he could have been if the relationship with his teacher had remained private. But it didn't. And those who knew him knew that the girls were after what Mrs. Letourneau had.