Sex. Murder. Mystery.

by Gregg Olsen

  But it was the children who were precisely the reason Linda advised against the media blitz.

  “Your kids are seeing it,” she said.

  Even Kelly weighed in with a defense. They were, in fact, doing it for the children. There was no child support from their mother.

  “We're not getting any money from Mary Kay,” she told Linda.

  Steve's cousin's wife Linda was incredulous. “She's in prison,” she reminded them. “What does she get, ten dollars a month?”

  As time passed and Steve's face became a bit more familiar in magazines and on television, Linda calculated what kind of money the effort was bringing to the Alaska coffers. The figures she heard from Steve and other family members put it at $30,000 or more. But the money didn't seem to go far enough.

  “I know the money is gone,” she said later. “To pay bills, buy a computer. Go to Nordstrom to go shopping. Eddie Bauer.”

  She made another stab at getting Steve to see the light and confronted him.

  “Steve, you are a fool. Get off of the TV. What are you doing? People know you're getting paid. Don't talk to those trashy magazines. Don't talk to American Journal. You might as well talk to the Globe.”

  He didn't listen. Not when his wife was a superstar and he was known as the man who had been pushed out of his marital bed by a kid who didn't even shave yet.

  Chapter 76

  WHILE THE FALLEN schoolteacher recounted her love story to Bob Graham, the Irish ghostwriter assigned to help her write the French book, it seemed no one was counseling Mary Kay on what she should and shouldn't say to the man. He kept pushing her during their interviews to give up the most intimate details of her relationship with Vili Fualaau. Mary Kay was reluctant to do so. It wasn't the kind of book she wanted her name on. She wanted the focus to be on her love for Vili, not their sex life.

  “You're not trusting me enough,” she recalled the Fixot ghostwriter telling her.

  Mary Kay later said she felt awkward about it. She was sitting there in a visiting room with a guard right next to her listening to every intimate detail that the ghostwriter could pull from her.

  “Every time he asked a very personal question, she [the prison employee] would stare at me and listen,” Mary Kay told a friend later.

  Mary Kay had been promised she'd have a chance to edit the book before publication, so there was at least that safeguard. But it really wasn't enough protection for a client who, whenever she opened her mouth, dug herself in deeper and deeper.

  Lawyer Susan Howards had no say over the deal made between Bob Huff and the French publisher. The book deal, friends like Kate Stewart believed, was the pot of gold the lawyers had sought from the beginning. They believed the deal wasn't about getting Mary Kay out of prison or even presenting a more positive image to the world.

  “The only thing Bob Huff and David were concerned about was making a million-dollar book deal. The only concern they've had that they've said outwardly to me is the book deal,” Kate said later.

  Kate and others had been worried about the deal from the beginning. She didn't know if it was really in the best interest of her friend to do it. She knew it would make money. But would it really help Mary Kay's cause? It was about getting her freedom. Kate begged her friend to get another lawyer to look at the book contract.

  “I don't care if it's a fly-by-night attorney, have someone else look at it. You sit on it.”

  Mary Kay did not take her advice. She signed the agreement without a second opinion.

  “They pressured her,” Kate recalled.

  The money the Fualaaus received was problematic for Steve Letourneau's supporters. Though Steve cashed in also, some felt he didn't do so in a way that would make his children love their mother any less. Steve was careful about what he said. So careful, some assumed that he was some kind of a doofus who didn't have anything to say.

  Further, the four children in Alaska were not benefiting from any of the big money deals made by the Fualaaus. They were out in the cold, left with the tales of their mother having sex with Vili in “every room in the house” and on the swing in their yard in Normandy Park. Steve's lawyer, Greg Grahn, considered the whole moneymaking effort “unfortunate.” Not because Soona and Vili didn't have the right to do so, but because of what he worried would happen later.

  “I think them doing it is going to have repercussions on other innocent people, mainly the Letourneau children, later. It's not that I'm pissed off that they are doing it. I think it would be a lot more dignified if they wouldn't do it,” he said.

  Driving home from work, Steve's divorce lawyer would listen to talk radio as an endless stream of callers weighed in on the Letourneau story. A number of times, he reached for his phone and dialed all but one of the numbers. He wanted to defend his client to the ninety percent of the listeners who thought Steve was the problem, not his wife's obsession with the boy.

  Mary Kay is not a victim, he thought. Steve is. The kids are. Vili is.

  He never dialed the last digit. Better not to vent. There had been too much of that already.

  Chapter 77

  HER FRIENDS DIDN'T see it coming, and neither did Mary Kay Letourneau. But within a few months of her prison incarceration she crossed over from person to commodity. Ten books were purportedly in the works, including her own and the one announced by her legal team. Steve talked about a book. So did Tony Hollick. She was reminded that her voice was worth something, her image could mean money. And she listened and accepted the idea as though it would do her some good. But the fact was that none of the deals made in her name were moving her any closer to being released to be with the “young man” she loved or her older children, whom she'd seen only once in the past year. Whether she could fully comprehend it in her isolation—those who had the most contact with her were the ones making the deals in her name—will never be known. Because for all of the things Mary Letourneau was and would be, loyal was at the top of the list of her personal attributes.

  A week after Vili Fualaau unmasked himself for money on the front page of the Globe, discussions heated up at a Chicago-based production company called Towers Productions. The company had been looking at the Letourneau story as a possible show for several weeks. Jeff Tarkington and other producers there had pitched the idea to the A&E cable channel's American Justice in the fall of 1997, but it was rejected. The Globe article six months later brought new life to their plans.

  In mid-May, Jeff Tarkington started the research process that eventually included conversations with Mary Kay Letourneau and David Gehrke. Both lawyer and former client seemed excited about the project—especially the lawyer. He said he'd be available for interviews when the producer came to Seattle the next month. Mary indicated that she had used A&E's programs in her classroom and thought the vehicle would offer her a positive, fair representation. She had one caveat, however. Nothing she told Jeff could be used in the program. Everything was off the record.

  “She was really interested in what we had to do and what we thought. I told her we were interested in what she had to say, too, but I told her I didn't know how we were going to work together if everything we talked about was off the record,” Jeff Tarkington said later.

  Interviews lined up with David Gehrke and the Letourneaus' Normandy Park neighbor Tina Bernstein brought Jeff Tarkington to Seattle the second week in June 1998. When he arrived at the rental-car counter in the baggage-claim area at SeaTac Airport, he got the shock of his career after dialing David Gehrke's law office.

  “I got a message through Dave's assistant that he was withdrawing his interview and he would not cooperate with us at any time. Thank you very much.”

  That was it. Jeff Tarkington couldn't believe it. He wrote letters, faxed them from Chicago to David Gerhke's Seattle office. No reply. Phone messages went unreturned. Not a single word of explanation. What had happened? When he left Chicago everything was one big green light. When he landed in Seattle, zip.

  “I had no idea where it
came from or why,” he said later. “I still don't. I never talked to Dave Gehrke again. I can't even speculate on it. There was such an enthusiasm for what we were trying to do and for our program.”

  And it suddenly got worse when next-door neighbor Tina Bernstein reneged on her interview. A trip to the old neighborhood to see if Tina could be persuaded was a bust.

  “I won't talk to you,” she said, standing in her doorway. “I can't talk to you.”

  The out-of-town producer explained how badly he needed her input. How she'd be the voice of concern for a neighbor and friend. Would she please reconsider?

  “Absolutely not.” Her firmness was undeniable. “Please get off my property.”

  Jeff Tarkington scrambled with the show, talking with Highline School District's Nick Latham and Susan Murphy, Dr. Julia Moore and several other psychiatrists. The show went on as scheduled, but the experience left a bitter taste.

  “I was struck by the many brick walls I continually ran into on trying to get answers. It seemed like there was a lock-tight grip on many of the people who were closest to this case.”

  The carrots had been dangled and yanked away. With none of the principals available—Kate wouldn't go on camera, Michelle never returned phone calls, Steve wanted to put the television stuff behind him—Jeff Tarkington was left without any insiders. Except one—would-be writer Maxwell McNab. Maxwell, whose own ambitions for a book deal or a screenplay had stalled inexplicably, promised that he could deliver all kinds of materials relating to the case. Plus, he told the cable guy, if he played his cards right, Maxwell could deliver an interview with head groupie Abby Campbell. He knew all the principals—he'd visited with Mary Kay in jail and had her blessing as one of the “chosen writers” to tell her story.

  Jeff Tarkington was interested at first. Very interested. But his enthusiasm waned as Maxwell became more aggressive about remuneration.

  “He made it abundantly clear he wanted to be paid,” Jeff Tarkington remembered.

  At one point, the producer, a little desperate for sources, trial-ballooned an offer to have Maxwell serve as a consultant. He jerked the offer before Maxwell signed on.

  “I thought better of it almost immediately, and thought, no. So the offer was never really truly made to [Maxwell]. But he really decided that that was the bandwagon that he should sort of hop on.”

  They didn't speak again.

  “I never returned any of his messages after I returned from Seattle. It didn't seem right to me. We don't pay for interviews and we never have.”

  When Boston attorney Susan Howards first came into the picture in late spring, early summer of 1998, members of the media rejoiced. Many hoped the see-sawing of interviews granted and taken away would end. But there wasn't any improvement. In fact, for the BBC producer, it appeared to go from bad to worse when he learned it was David Gehrke—the affable and media-loving lawyer—not Bob Huff who had been replaced.

  James Kent was bewildered and phoned Susan Howards to sort out the mess. According to the BBC producer, the Boston lawyer was in the dark, too.

  “What wasn't made clear to Susan Howards was that Robert Huff would retain under his contract all media liaison between subjects and the media. All contractual deals, any money all went through Robert Huff. Susan Howards wasn't aware of that until it became clear that he did have those rights and again the BBC had a little problem,” James Kent said later.

  It was the modern version of an age-old tabloid story. Lawyers and members of the media tripped over each other in pursuit of who would talk and who would broadcast or write about what was said. In this case, James Kent felt great sympathy for the subject of his film. She said she wanted to do the BBC film, but her hands were tied, though to what degree she was uncertain.

  It was frustrating and a complete waste of time for many of those who had come to Seattle to tell the story and head back home. Home to New York, Santa Monica, or London. If someone had only made the terms clear, some like the BBC producer Kent would have backed off. But no one could. And sadly for the BBC—and ultimately Mary Kay Letourneau—James Kent was under the pressure of a deadline. With money already spent and no conclusive hope that Mary would face his camera, he had to move on and look for another way to tell the story.

  “But of course within the contract there were also things, I assume, that were not to be made public, and even when she asked for the contract at least to be given to her new lawyer Susan Howards, this seemed to be so long in coming that we had to proceed on the basis in the end that we wouldn't get her.”

  James Kent was very disappointed. He had come to Seattle with the promise and understanding that an interview with Mary would be forthcoming. He had wanted to be fair to the woman embroiled in the story her handlers were making more unseemly every day. He had wanted to look into her eyes and make an assessment based upon the hours he had spent on the case and the years he had spent interviewing people. He wanted to provide his audience with the complete, true picture of the American teacher who said she fell in love with her student.

  The way he viewed it, Mary Letourneau had a media battle to win and he was just the producer to lead the charge. But as the days and weeks passed none of what he could do for her mattered. And in the end, he just couldn't fathom the way it had turned out and the role of those around her. He was the uninvited guest at everyone's dinner table.

  “I couldn't believe the BBC having been treated like this. Having the doors been opened, invite us in, take our coat, sit us down at the table and say, 'You aren't expecting any food, are you?' “

  At one point, James Kent recalled Susan Howards telling him in a phone conversation that he had “progressed this film prematurely—before having all the consents.”

  He found the statement outrageous.

  “Hold on,” he said he told the Boston attorney, “I have a go-ahead from her lawyer. I have a go-ahead from the subject of the film. I've spoken to the subject of the film repeatedly who told me an interview would happen, but to just be patient. I've got access to her good friends. At what point does one embark on a film?”

  James Kent had a thought that he knew was as true as anything he learned about the Letourneau case: She was let down by those around her.

  * * *

  Within the group of “friends” who became enmeshed with Mary Kay Letourneau, cause célèbre, there was one whom the others would consider a traitor—Maxwell McNab. As Kate saw the situation, Max was a “starving writer” who ingratiated himself, won the confidence of Mary Kay and her supporters, and burned them with a tell-all article in Mirabella. Mary Kay felt that she and her friends had been used and betrayed. Max had said he was writing a screenplay.

  “He got close to her and sold his soul for seven grand to Mirabella and wrote an article that he never acknowledged he would write,” Kate said later, still bitter.

  But Maxwell went further, an irritation that outraged her friends and harmed the convicted teacher's “fund-raising” efforts. Kate heard from other media sources how Maxwell had continued to peddle his so-called inside information to other shows. A&E producer Jeff Tarkington called Kate in Chicago about McNab and his offer of material for money.

  “Do I need him?” he asked.

  “No,” Kate said firmly. “He's an outsider and he's trying to get back inside. He was on the inside and he twisted the knife. I'll give you all the information you need.”

  Articles about Mary Kay Letourneau were translated into German, French, Spanish, and Dutch. Outside of America it was seen as a love story, pure and simple. The idea that Americans passed judgment on it had more to do with a gut reaction springing from antiquated, deep-in-the-culture, puritanical roots than whether it was really wrong.

  It seemed to Mary Kay that the lack of understanding surrounding her story was driven by the media. Whenever information about her love for Vili came out, it brought knowing snickers.

  She and Vili had a secret code, a way to say “I love you” without others knowing. It w
as through a look or things they did—anything at all—with their left hands.

  “I know some think that sounds juvenile, but I don't care. It is quite pathetic that people take everything, dissect it, and pronounce its worth by calling it juvenile. It was a way for us to say we loved each other, and we'll use the same ways when I'm a hundred years old,” Mary Kay said later.

  Chapter 78

  THE SEATTLE FREELANCER for Spin magazine, Matthew Stadler, had been a friendly contact for many of the journalists stopping off in Seattle to court Mary Letourneau, and more critically it seemed, her lawyers. Among those he met with was James Kent, whom he found very straightforward and ethical, nearly an island in the sea of garbage that had accumulated around the story since it went worldwide with the second arrest and the disclosure of her second pregnancy.

  James Kent later refused to say much about his Seattle meeting with book ghostwriter Bob Graham, other than to say the tabloid reporter was “very dismissive of the BBC and said, 'Go home, boy.' “

  Matthew Stadler called it a setup arranged by Bob Huff. “It was dinner at the 'OK Corral.' He literally told James to get out of town, this was his. It was humiliating and horrible and he hated not only Graham, but Huff for setting the whole thing up.”

  Bob Huff later admitted that it was important to send a message that the Letourneau story was not for the taking.

  “I remember Bob Graham and I getting pissed off at the other guys. We wanted to protect our interests. There were all these people buzzing around our pile a crap and we wanted them out of here.”

  After the kiss-off from Bob Graham, ostensibly the author of the French book about Mary Kay Letourneau, James Kent's resolve became even stronger. He'd press on with the story. He flew to Chicago to see Kate, the college friend, whose frequent collect calls from Mary had been one of the chief means of information concerning Mary's support of various projects that involved her.

  According to James Kent, through Kate Stewart, Mary had indicated that she still supported the BBC film and wanted to remain involved.