If Loving You Is Wrong (45 page)

The officer ran the plates and drove past the car. Of course, it wasn't against the law to sit outside and talk in a car. Running plates was just something a cop does to pass the time. It was routine. As he passed the car Officer Harris could see that the driver wasn't alone; it appeared there was a passenger with her—though the passenger's seat had been fully reclined. It looked like a young man, a teenager, was with her.

On this night the routine of running the plates brought more than he bargained for. And for the woman inside the car it brought an end to her story.

The car was registered to Mary Katherine Letourneau, a registered sex offender
.

The Seattle police officer drove back and pointed his spotlight at the car. In an instant, Mary Kay Letourneau got out and walked toward the beam. In her haste, she left the driver's door open. She was alone, she answered, when the officer asked if she had someone with her. She had no identification; she gave her sister Terry's name when asked who she was. Vili Fualaau emerged from the car and also gave a phony name. Mary Kay said they'd only been in the car six minutes, though the condensation on the glass and on the hood of the car indicated much more time had passed.

“There was great hesitation in both parties in giving their names,” the officer later said.

Later, Mary Kay said she had gone to a movie by herself, went to Nordstrom, and when she returned, Vili was waiting for her. He had run away from home.

Vili laid out the story differently. He said that he had paged Mary Kay earlier in the evening and she had picked him up. They went to a movie, bought beer, and sat in the car for an hour and a half.

And though no one will ever know the truth, Mary Kay and Vili have told varying stories of what happened that night and the days before.

Just after three A.M. television reporter Karen O'Leary was awakened by a phone call from KIRO's overnight assignment editor.

“Karen,” he said, “you're not going to believe this, but Mary Letourneau's been caught with a sixteen-year-old!”

Karen sat up. “What?”

It must be some other boy. Not Vili, she thought. Vili was fourteen
.

The editor filled her in on the arrest and Karen was rocked by the news. She had thought that Mary Letourneau had been fixated on Vili and no other boy.

What? she thought
.

And as more information came to her that morning as she prepared for a trip out of town on another scandal story, Karen O'Leary was left feeling sad and duped.

“Everything that had come earlier had been a lie. All of the people that had said Mary Kay Letourneau should go to prison are right. I was wrong. She needed to be in prison. She made no effort to stay away from him. She didn't even wait a reasonable amount of time. She didn't wait a year, two years, five years... ”

Mary Kay has her own special memory of Karen O'Leary. According to Mary Kay, the TV reporter approached her at the Kent jail just after the lawsuit was filed. According to Mary Kay, the breathless reporter was indignant over the suit Bob Huff had filed.

“Maybe she wanted me to call off the dogs or something, I don't know her purpose in telling me that.”

But it was something else Karen said that really stuck in her memory:

“Mary, Vili says he's going to wait for you. Isn't that the saddest thing you've ever heard?”

What is the purpose in saying that? Mary Kay wondered. Out of all the things in the world, what would I want to hear more than that? Why would that be sad? It was Vili's choice and I couldn't have been happier
.

The rest of the morning, details were made available. It was the inventory of what was found in the car that provided clues to what might have been going on between the pair and made it clear that whatever Mary Kay and Vili had told police didn't quite mesh with the facts of the case. Under the carpet by the gas pedal, police found Mary Kay's passport. In a little lockbox given to her by pal Abby Campbell were sixty-three hundred-dollar bills. Investigators found books, toys, young men's underwear, shoes, and baby clothing. Receipts for more than $850 from Nordstrom. Two rolls of film and a disposable camera containing more film were sent to the lab for developing. A couple of beer bottles were found, one almost empty, one unopened. Two ticket stubs to
Wag the Dog
, the movie Mary Kay said she'd seen. A letter from Cascade Middle School suspending Vili from the school for smoking was found, too.

When the film was processed it showed pictures of Mary Kay Letourneau, Vili Fualaau, and their daughter, Audrey. Some of the images were taken indoors; others were out in public. Seattle's Pike Place Market was readily identifiable.

They also found a message pager issued just a few days before.

Chapter 68

MARY KAY LETOURNEAU broke hearts all over town the morning of her second arrest. Among those who shared the disappointment and the sorrow were the Fish twins.
How could this be? How could she let this happen?
They wondered if she was sick and unable to control herself.

“We thought she was somewhat erratic at times because we knew her personality, but we never put a label on it,” Angie said later.

For those closest to Mary Kay, the ones who knew her before she was notorious, it was an excruciating betrayal that spoke of both mental illness and selfishness. Neither of which were attributes those who knew Mary Kay wished ascribed to her.

As practical and logical as Kate Stewart could be, she had put her marriage at a bit of a risk by standing by Mary Kay and running a media command center out of her century-old Chicago two-story. She'd defended her college friend to her husband's family. She explained all that she could to those she allowed to know her connection with the teacher in love with a student. Kate even accepted that it had been love.

But talking to the audacious and unrepentant Mary Kay from prison after the second arrest brought her no real answers for the questions that ran through her mind daily.

How many crazy things can you do? You don't watch your back. You don't care what happens. You feel as if you are on top of the world. I can do anything! So here she is sitting out in front of her house having spent the entire day with him. Going to a movie, getting a six-pack at 7-Eleven. Saying 'Fuck you' to the court!

For Kate, the greatest bond that she and Mary Kay had when they went their separate ways after Arizona State was the fact that they were mothers.

“The thing I find so difficult and so ironic is that she's a mom who is dedicated to her kids. I don't question the dedication. It is definitely there. What I don't understand is how, how can you make the decision to repeat this business when the most important thing in your whole life is your children. Who you live and die for, dressed, bathed, fed, educated, developed. Called the shots. Ran the house.
Everything
. Made sure they had the perfect birthday party. Had the right stuff. Not for other people, to impress them. But for
her
. That was her fulfillment.”

But Mary Kay squandered it all for the night in her car with a teenage boy she had been forbidden to see. Kate would try, but she could never fully accept Mary Kay taking that kind of dangerous, irrevocable risk. Not when she knew that Mary Kay really did love her children. She just
had
to.

Abby Campbell phoned Michelle Jarvis with the terrible news. If Abby had done so with the thought that Michelle would commiserate with her over the injustice of it all, she was disappointed.

“She damn well deserves everything she's getting now,” Michelle said. “Because she's pissed it all away.”

Her remarks caught the mother of five off guard. “I can't believe you're saying that,” she said.

Michelle sighed. “That's how I feel.”

And she hung up. Michelle had been through good times and bad times, ups and downs, with Mary Kay. Bad times that got her an inch from
big trouble
, but nothing like this. What else could she say?
Her children were without a mother now
. And unless there was some kind of a miracle, Michelle knew Mary Kay was going to prison. There was no arguing it or wiggling her way out of it with tearful brown eyes. She'd broken parole. There was no second chance. Cake had used that one up already.

Michelle bitterly gave Tony Hollick the heave-ho that same day. It was high time, she thought.

“I hold you personally responsible for her being back in jail,” she said. “It's your fault. If you had not stirred up all of this crap about how this medication was going to hurt her centers of spirituality, love, blah blah, and all these other side effects, then she would have been on her medication and she probably would have been able to control herself and not be back with Vili again.”

Devastated by the news of the arrest, Tony held back. He didn't debate and he didn't charm. He hurt too much. The woman he loved was in serious trouble and Michelle Jarvis and her ranting couldn't change that at all.

It was a given. Indeed there was the look of shock and anger when eyes met throughout the Highline School District the morning Mary Kay Letourneau was arrested. But there was also the look of bitterness. The wound was gaping and bleeding. The jokes would come once more. But even worse, it was Election Day for a school funding levy and voters were coming into the schools with one thing on their minds—the pretty teacher in the steamed-up car with her former student. They weren't thinking about education and how much it should cost and which programs were worthwhile. No, they were thinking Mary Kay.

The levy lost.

“Bad feelings were dredged up again and this did not help. There are many of us who believe that Mary Letourneau cost us the election,” said one administrator.

They were all there. The media vultures had descended on Seattle and the King County Courthouse as they always do when they can mix sex, a crime, and a pretty woman into their newspapers and television shows. Producers and cameramen from
48 Hours, The Oprah Winfrey Show,
CNN, and the usual local suspects strung cable like Chinese noodles through courthouse hallways to Linda Lau's courtroom.

For a woman who had jailhouse tantrums over her hair and attire, the Mary Letourneau who showed up at her resentencing on February 6, 1998, had let herself go. Her hair was no longer the sun-streaked coif of a woman out of touch with her crime and the public's perception of it. Instead, she was a mess. She could have achieved the same look by using a garden rake and a can of hairspray. But she hadn't, of course. Her red King County issues were long and limp on her skeletal frame, her face ashen and devoid of blush and lipstick. She weighed barely more than a hundred pounds.

“Mary Kay could have used some Mary Kay [cosmetics], if you asked me,” said one observer.

Testimony from the police, supposition from the prosecutor about what was happening [“she was going to flee”], and an emotional plea for mercy from David Gehrke because his client was out of touch with reality and functioned like an adolescent had little impact on what Judge Lau could do. Mary Kay's tears would have no bearing on the outcome, either. Nothing anyone could do would stop the judge from sending her to prison.

“This is not about flaws in the system,” said Judge Lau. “It is about an opportunity you foolishly squandered.”

Mary Kay Letourneau was led away to face seven and a half years in prison—her original sentence before it was deferred in favor of treatment. But there would be no treatment, now. She had abdicated that in favor of a prison cell. Her home would be the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Gig Harbor, just west of Tacoma. The first thing she did was head for the phone to call her children in Alaska.
Screw the rules of the deviancy program
. She was in prison, but she was free.

Inmate no. 769014 was instantly the superstar of the Washington prison system, if not the most celebrated or notorious female face behind bars in the entire country. Upward of thirty letters flooded her cell each day and filled the mailboxes of the lawyers and friends in support of her case. Some contained money for the defense fund. One man from Ohio sent $200.

“She is innocent because she didn't force the then thirteen-year-old to have a sexual relationship... He initiated the sexual part of it,”
wrote one supporter.

At his home in Des Moines many months after the revocation hearing, David Gehrke blamed the groupies for Mary Kay's downfall.

“I found out that people were covering for her,” he said.

And look at what the “help” got her. He blamed Abby Campbell—“this groupie who was trying to help her, encourage her, and cover for her.” It was Abby who had provided the pager that ended up with Vili. Her actions, David believed, were paramount in setting the events in motion that led to the parole revocation.

“I don't know what [Abby] wanted but if someone had told me about all this it would have been real obvious to me that it wasn't the right thing to do if you were enabling them [Mary Kay and Vili Fualaau] to be together.”