by Gregg Olsen
Michelle could see the family was doing the best that they could, or at least they seemed to be trying. Audrey was getting a lot of attention, a lot of love. But what common ground did Mary Kay share with those people? None that Michelle could see.
“They weren't raised at the same social level as Mary Kay was. We're talking poor people. There is a huge difference. This is not against the family. It is just the facts.”
A shopping trip for Doc Martens at the mall became a kind of bonding experience for Kate and Vili. But he was still so young, so awkward, that Kate could never find the right moment to ask the question that lingered in the back of her mind.
Will you wait for Mary Kay?
Finally, she broached the subject to Soona.
“I want him to be happy,” Vili's mother said with great conviction. “I want whatever is right for my son. Just because he has two children with Mary does not obligate him to marry her.”
Kate understood. If it had been her son who had been caught up in the turmoil of such an affair, she'd have felt the same way. She might have hoped for a more positive response from Soona Fualaau, but Kate knew that only time would tell anyway. And there was a lot of time. Seven years, to be sure.
Vili's grandmother was less “let's wait and see.”
“Don't you look at another girl,” she said to Vili as Kate looked on. “You've got those babies… you marry that girl. You wait for her.”
Even before there was a second baby on the way, Mary Kay and her friends worried about whether she'd ever get Audrey back from Soona. It wasn't that she thought Soona was unfit, but simply that Mary Kay wanted to raise her own daughter herself. She had lost her first four to Steve and it would be a battle on the order of a world war to get them back. For a woman who often defined herself by the children she bore, Mary Kay was desperate to retain the bond that she had tried to forge between herself, her infant daughter, and Vili.
“Mary's parental rights are definitely at stake here,” said a close friend. “As more time goes by, the more attached Soona is to Audrey. And there ain't no parting of the ways with that woman and that child, I'll tell you now.”
When Soona referred to Audrey, it wasn't as her granddaughter, but her own infant.
“She says that's 'my baby.' My baby.”
But there was also another possible reason. By keeping Audrey, they kept the tabloid and book money, too.
“She's like the little Vanderbilt child in that family,” claimed the friend.
Chapter 74
THE DAY OF Audrey's baptism, April 26, four women made the drive from south Seattle to Tacoma and across the Narrows Bridge to the women's prison near Gig Harbor. They came with the hope they could see Mary Kay Letourneau. Abby Campbell drove, and Kate Stewart, Michelle Jarvis, and a TV tabloid reporter for American Journal accompanied her. The reporter was along “doing background,” but at least Michelle suspected that she was still after a Mary Kay interview and knew that hanging out with her three best friends couldn't hurt her chances. By then, the three women were old hands at the tabloid game. Abby and Kate had been interviewed, but they'd kept their names and faces out of the news. Only Michelle had gone on camera.
The women met with disappointment when, after filling out the requisite forms, they were denied the opportunity to see Mary Kay. The guards said Mary Kay was in the infirmary and could not have any visitors. One of the friends asked if they could have a tour of the prison, but that was also denied.
“For security reasons,” the guard said. “And no picture-taking on prison grounds, either.”
When they got outside, one of the women suggested taking a group picture in front of the prison flagpole.
“Let's just stand together and hold hands and send Mary Kay our energy and hope that she knows that we've been here.”
The television tabloid reporter took the photograph and the four started to walk over to their car when a voice called out.
“Hey! Hey!”
“Run!” Abby started to yell and the other three sprinted for the car. Michelle was unclear why they were running, but like a member of some kind of herd her feet started to move.
What's going on? she thought.
Just as Michelle jumped into the backseat, Abby Campbell pushed the gas pedal to the floor and threw the car into reverse. The dark blur of a uniformed officer moved in their direction and a little meter-maid-type cart was also revved up and headed their way.
“What do you think you are going to do?” Michelle asked the panicked driver. “Outrun them?”
“Pull over,” the voice said.
Abby looked blankly at a guard. “What did we do?” she asked.
“We specifically told you not to take pictures on the prison grounds.”
“But we were in the parking lot,” Abby said.
The guard pointed out that the entire property was considered a secure area and the instructions for no photography applied throughout—parking lot included.
“We won't take any more.”
Later the four laughed it off, but what they didn't know was that their parking lot escapade and Abby's getaway-car antics had cost them something very dear. A few weeks later each would get a letter from the prison superintendent, Alice Payne.
“When staff learned of your actions and attempted to make contact with you, you attempted to elude them unsuccessfully.”
The prison put Mary Kay's friends on notice: They were no longer eligible to visit any inmate at the women's prison. They were banned from prison grounds. For good.
“I was so crushed when I got that letter,” Michelle Jarvis said later. 'It was just another way they are trying to destroy Mary Kay by cutting off access from people who are closest to her. Their whole mission in life is to completely crush her. They hate her. They hate her. This was an easy way to put the screws to her again.”
Having lost faith in David Gehrke, Mary Kay's friends wanted very much to meet his partner, Robert Huff. But just as had been the experience of most of the media, the younger of the two attorneys was extremely elusive. Again, as always, no return calls.
The baptism was an opportunity to see him and both Michelle Jarvis and Kate Stewart knew it. When they finally reached him, he promised he'd either get back to them or meet them after the baptism. Though they talked that one time—mostly about money matters—he never did show for a meeting.
“He told Kate that he thought money could go to Mary Kay's defense fund as long as it didn't come from us,” Michelle recalled. “If it came from Vili's family then it would be okay. But we're guessing he's telling Vifi's family that they can't give any money to the defense fund because it might be a problem. I'm guessing he's playing two ends against the middle. He's controlling the money totally.”
And as the bank account from the Letourneau story grew fatter and fatter, the friends wondered where the money was going and when it would help Mary Kay get out of prison.
That first Globe article made Mary Kay's real friends wince. They knew instantly it would make their positions as defenders of a great cause even tougher than ever. Michelle and Kate saw it for the first time when they were up in Seattle for the baptism. Such good timing. An American Journal reporter told the women that she thought, as Vili's agent, Bob Huff had been paid for the photographs and interviews with Vili and Soona.
Certainly the money concerned Michelle. It wasn't that someone shouldn't be paid, it was where the money was going that distressed her. As far as she knew the defense fund had not received a penny from the selling of Mary Kay.
The article's description of the to-the-moon sex, anytime and everywhere, disturbed her greatly and gave her doubt about what had really happened between Vili and Mary Kay.
“Kate and I thought at one point the affair she had with Vili was nothing more than sexual obsession. Maybe that's all it was. Really. [She said it was] this incredibly spiritual, passionate thing, when it was nothing more than this heightened sexual state that she goes into.”
Shorewood teachers and students got a quick lesson in the reality of the supermarket tabloids around that time. A pair of Shorewood teachers was shopping at an area Wal-Mart when one told the other she needed to get a Globe. The teacher cluelessly searched the shelf while the other grabbed the tabloid and put it in her basket.
“And I'm looking for a model of the Earth,” she said.
It was a mistake she'd never make again. Nearly from the beginning, Globe was not a planet, but a source of Mary Kay Letourneau news.
One student looked at the spiffed-up pictures of Vili Fualaau staged for his daughter's baptism.
The girl shook her head and pointed at the demure photographs.
“This is not him. He dresses gangster style in the large shirt and baggy pants. They made him look all so neat.”
Puhleez, the mother of the Shorewood student thought.
As the world beat a path to Soona's front door to learn more about her son who had been raped by his teacher, the other Fualaau children were shoved aside, leaving the attention focused on the youngest. The star of the story. He was not courted for his artistic talents, but for the fact that he had been sexually involved with a teacher.
It could not have been a proud moment for any mother.
Kate was certain David Gehrke was either directly or through Susan Gehrke's mysterious entertainment contract—television, film, literary?—reaping some kind of windfall from his representation of his now-famous client. The “haven't made a penny” proclamation didn't wash with her. Kate was adamant that whatever deals Bob Huff was engineering with the tabloid media and book publishers, David Gehrke was getting a piece of the pie, too.
“Huff was the front man on the media deals. David was in the shadows, but he was a part of everything. He doesn't want anyone to know,” she insisted later. “How many attorneys do you know who profit from this kind of stuff? Not many.”
David Gehrke shrugged off Kate's charges. He admitted his wife's story of being Mary Kay's friend could lead to big payday—if the TV movie was produced—but it was Susan's deal, not his. Besides, he said, “Mary wanted Susan to be a paid consultant on the project because she trusts her to do it right.”
Instead of getting rich, David told Kate and others that when it came to his legal fees he gave Mary Kay a deal.
“I gave her my neighbor's-charged-with-rape-friend-in-need-easy-plea-discount,” he explained later. “I've joked to colleagues how little I got paid for all the work I did. I basically got a few trips out of it, and that's about it.”
In April 1998, a no-nonsense lawyer from Boston named Susan Howards joined Camp Mary Kay as the appellate attorney. She'd made much of her career and reputation by winning appeals for women who had been abused by boyfriends and husbands. Though she didn't publicly make a statement about Mary Kay's appellate efforts, it was considered a good bet that the alleged abuse by Steve Letourneau was going to factor into the case, too. It was the appearance by Michelle Jarvis on the Sally Jessy Raphael show in New York that led to the new lawyer.
“It was the one good thing that has come out of doing any media,” Michelle said later.
David Gehrke and Bob Huff were out and the women and men devoted to Mary Kay Letourneau could not have been happier. But the break wasn't as clean and complete as some would have liked. Bob Huff was still involved with the media deals. Somehow they'd retained that responsibility. And though he had no connection to Mary Kay other than as the broker for her story, Bob Huff sometimes called Kate after weeks of being out of reach and would say he was tired of being kept out of the loop.
“Like it's our fault,” an exasperated Kate Stewart told a friend. “Like it was Susan's fault. Like it's someone's fault.”
Kate couldn't figure out what Bob Huff was doing half the time, he was so elusive. He seldom got back to anyone.
“I don't know what kind of law he practices,” she said. “I don't even know if he has any other clients.”
“She's washed her hands of David,” Kate said.
Cutting all ties to Bob Huff proved more difficult.
“I think Bob's her link to Vili and she's afraid to hurt that,” Kate said.
In prison, isolated from her children, virtually ignored by her siblings, Mary Kay Letourneau saw the lawyers as her family.
“You know how you have members of your family and you might not agree with everything they've done or said, but you still accept them because they are family.”
When she heard a particular photo had appeared in a magazine that she hadn't authorized, she suspected it had been taken from her storage locker. She was both disappointed and exasperated. But she knew who was responsible.
“I kept asking them [the lawyers] for a copy of the article,” she told a friend later, “but they never sent it to me.”
They were family and she could almost forgive them.
Bob Huff maintained there had never been any theft from Mary Kay's storage locker or anywhere else. He recalled how in the summer of 1998 he and ghostwriter Bob Graham accompanied Vili to retrieve some of Mary Kay's belongings from a mini-storage unit.
“She would say Vili should make decisions, then he would go and do stuff and she'd get mad. You couldn't win with her,” he said.
According to the lawyer, Mary Kay was upset because a cheerleading photograph showing her spread-eagled in midair turned up in the media.
“She was mad because she said it was the wrong shot. It showed her in some kind of flawed position,” he said. “She told me, 'Anyone who knows anything about cheer-leading can see it… it is so obvious!' “
Chapter 75
REPORTERS LIVE AND die by the tips that come their way. On the morning of a legal conference with lawyers to discuss their next move in the lawsuit, the television reporter at the center of the legal storm got a tip that Vili Fualaau and Mary Kay Letourneau were on the front cover of the Globe. A few calls later, the grainy image from a fax machine spit out the pages from the May 5, 1998, issue.
JAILED TEACHER'S 6TH GRADE LOVER TELLS ALL!
The four-page “special report” detailed how Vili and his teacher had had sex in every room of the Letourneau home, on the deck, even on a yard swing. The boy who Bob Huff had said wanted nothing but to be left alone was blabbing about the most intimate details of his life. And his mother, who had wrung her hands with worry over the impact of the KIRO interview, was spilling her guts, too. As if she hadn't even paid attention to the sexual escapades described by her son, Soona told the world how Vili's “romance with his teacher was based on true love, not lust.”
Karen O'Leary waved the fax in front of the lawyers. She knew the law. Her estranged husband was a lawyer. So were her father and her brother. Everyone in the room was aware that the article had been of the type where money had changed hands. But just how much? They knew Soona had been paid a few thousand for the American Journal interview, but this was a bigger deal. Twenty-five thousand dollars? Fifty thousand? Maybe more?
One thing was certain. Bob Huff's lawsuit was toast.
“It was a bombshell that totally undermined their case about violating this boy's privacy, with the boy plastered all over this tabloid about losing his virginity,” Karen said later. “This was manna from heaven. It just showed the lies that was their case.”
Michelle Jarvis couldn't bear the sight of Steve Letourneau on television. She refused to watch Oprah Winfrey's talk show earlier in the year because she knew that Steve was appearing on the program. She saw him as a man whose primary purpose was to destroy his wife, to make her pay. She remembered what Mary Kay had told her he said when their battle turned ugly: “I will win.”
“He hasn't finished with her yet,” Michelle told a friend. “Every minute that he torments her he's happy. That's his motivation to go on living. She says that he's a good father. I don't know that he cares about those kids. I don't know that she does.”
If Michelle couldn't face watching Steve Letourneau on television, Kate Stewart stayed up late one night to catch
Steve and his girlfriend Kelly Whalen on one of the tabloid shows that had claimed them as their “exclusive” prize.
The whole idea of Kelly appearing on TV sent Kate reeling.
“Why would she ever put her face out here? Standing by her man, like Hillary. He's going through a divorce and has a live-in lover!”
As time passed and the media frenzy continued, Steve's comments in the newspapers and appearances on television not only irritated Kate, but she felt they gave the world a true and unflattering glimpse at the man behind the woman and the boy.
“Look what he's done to his family,” she told a friend, her voice rising to stress the importance of what she had to say. “Why did he have to try his wife in the press at his children's expense? Let's have the world look at that one. That's the one thing from a religious standpoint that he's going to come down and die on that one. He could have handled it in private. They were going to. His ego couldn't take it.”
Steve Letourneau's media appearances were as dangerous as a baby crawling on broken glass. By putting himself out there in front of America—and the world—he was risking having his own behavior made public. It wouldn't be hard for the disclosure of his affairs, and the fact that he had fathered another woman's baby, to give the sympathetic and the fence-sitters a reason to believe in Mary Kay.
Steve, with his deer-in-the-headlights gaze, was a tragic figure and most could rally around him, but the more he said, the more he tried to compete with his wife's relentless media assault, the greater the chance that a reporter would ask: What were you doing when your wife was sleeping with a sixth-grader?
Secret Squirrel Linda Gardner confronted Steve after another of the endless waves of media interest.
“Steve, you might think it is kind of neat having these people wanting to interview you. Someone is going to dig out all of it. And you are going to be made out to look like the bad guy.”
Steve pooh-poohed her worries.
“We need the money,” he said. “We're broke. I've got four kids to raise.”