Sex. Murder. Mystery. (79 page)

No one came forward right away. But in time, word sifted throughout the community that the Samoan boy was from White Center and was the son of a single mother. Though KIRO-TV's interview in the park had showed his hands and ring, his face had been obscured. No one knew exactly which Samoan kid had the fling—or was raped—by his pretty, blond teacher.

Not long after Lima's outreach, a local social worker came to inquire about the resources available in the Samoan community.

“[Social Services] had a meeting finding out about how the Samoan community was looking toward this particular situation, case. Nobody knew then who these people were,” Lima Skillion recalled.

She advocated a slow approach, no “jumping into conclusions.”

“They were discussing taking the child—the boy's baby—from these people. What would Samoan people do with this baby?”

She understood through overtures made to the social service agents that the Samoan senior center offered to help take care of the baby. But they really didn't know what could be done. No one knew who the boy was. Or, if they did, they weren't talking.

It was a nudge from a staff member in the parking lot of the White Center Albertson's grocery store that finally clued in Seattle Samoan Center Executive Director Lima Skillion.

“That's the boy's aunt,” the staff member said.

Lima Skillion couldn't believe her eyes and ears. She didn't need to ask
which boy
. She knew her companion meant the boy who had become the talk of the Samoan community—the boy who was involved with his teacher. She also knew his family. The father of the clan had been a minister. She knew what kind of people they were. From what she had seen over the years, Lima Skillion could not have imagined that that particular family could be involved in such a scandal.

“That mother was always with this family, putting her family together. Telling her children that this is not right and this is right and blah, blah, blah. And how they turn out… we've done our part. You can only do so much. I know he was from a very disciplinary family.”

It couldn't be a boy from that family. “No,” she said that early evening in the parking lot. “That's not right.”

Her staff member nodded. “Yeah. Yeah,” she said.

Lima Skillion put her shopping aside and walked over to Soona Fualaau's sister's car and stood by the driver's window, while the occupant rolled it down.

“Is this true?” she asked.

“About?” the woman asked.

“Is the boy in the news your nephew?”

The woman was surprised and not all that happy about the intrusion, the question. But she admitted that it was Vili, her nephew. It bothered her that it was known among the people of the community.

The aunt was in shock, Lima said later.

“She had just found out that the citizens and people had discussed the case. They were more private people. There was too many people into their business.”

Lima offered to help in any way that she and the center could. She passed a business card through the open window.

The aunt was much happier. Maybe relieved. She left with words that the Samoan leader would never forget. It was a rebuttal to some things said by others in the Samoan community.

“Lima,” the aunt said, “we didn't teach our boy to go do what he did.”

Not long after running into Vili's aunt in the grocery's parking lot, Lima made the same offer of help to the pastor of the Fualaaus' church. She didn't discuss the case, she just told the minister that she understood what tremendous pain the family was going through and that she and all of her resources were there for them. Soona's mother called later to thank Lima for her concern and for the offer of help. Yes, she said, they had a lawyer.

Some thought the whole affair reeked of the exploitation of a young boy, but Lima Skillion viewed it differently. Though Mary should have known better, she was in love. So was the boy.

“I looked at their feelings,” Lima said later. “They got strong for one another. You know those emotional feelings—right or wrong. You've got to fight with your inner person there, where she acted it out. I know that the feeling was mutual for both of them. I believe it was a love deeper than we can really look at it. It meant a lot to her, this whole thing here with this boy.”

She felt sadness for Mary Letourneau and how things would turn out for her. The boy's family was strong, she thought, and they'd make the best for him. But Mary, Mary was a tragic figure.

“She truly loved him for her to risk a whole lot of her heart, her life. She lost a lot more than he did. It is a sad price to pay if there was true love.”

Chapter 71

IT WAS ALWAYS the same song and dance and Mary Kay Letourneau's lawyers learned the steps and the lyrics quickly. The Hollywood crowd still seeking the rights to Mary Kay's story wanted to secure it by putting a small amount of money down with the promise that when they placed it “with a major production company and major network,” they'd all get a giant payday. But David Gehrke didn't want promises of more later. He wanted it now. So did Bob Huff. They wanted an offer of cash up front.

“We like your connections,” David said more than once. “Your proposal sounds great. Put the figure down on paper and we'll consider it.”

But the producers never did.

“One guy said he had a cashier's check for two hundred thousand and we told him we'd meet him at the airport. Be sure to bring the check. Call us when you're there.”

That hot-to-trot producer never showed up at SeaTac.

As David Gehrke and Bob Huff entertained offers from mainstream American television and film companies, a unique opportunity presented itself when James Kent, a producer from the British Broadcasting Corporation, contacted the lawyers in the early spring of 1998. A veteran of more than two decades of producing documentaries, James Kent had seen a story about Mary Letourneau in November 1997 and was intrigued. When the teacher was arrested for the second time, his interest grew. The Brit booked a flight from London to Seattle. He didn't know it at the time, but things were about to become increasingly difficult for the legitimate press, and the BBC could certainly be considered one of the premier media outlets in the world.

James Kent did not see her during that visit, but Mary Kay told him over the phone that she and her lawyers were very interested in participating in a film produced by the BBC. With that understanding, James Kent returned to London and arranged for financing.

When he returned to Seattle a short time later things had changed dramatically. By that time, messages weren't being returned by either David Gehrke or Robert Huff. Mary Kay, however, still seemed supportive of the BBC production, to the extent that she made repeated calls to the producer providing background and details that would constitute the basis for the on-camera interview that they agreed to record at the prison later in the summer.

By that time, several media deals were hammered out. Sonny Grosso, a New York producer, negotiated the rights for a television movie that eventually found a home at cable's USA Network. A book was also in the works. The publishing company was French—Fixot, headquartered in Paris. The publisher was Robert Laffont.

The rumored deal for the French book alone was a quarter of a million dollars.

“It was much more than that,” David Gehrke said later of the deal that gave Bob Huff a fifteen to twenty percent agent's fee and united both convicted rapist and victim in a mutual business deal. How much Mary Kay was getting from both deals was unclear. She told friends that a trust fund with proceeds from the book was being set up for “all of my children.” She had no profit participation with the movie.

“They [Bob Huff and David Gehrke] didn't want my name on anything,” she said later. “My involvement in any deal could be used against me by the prosecution.”

There was no contract for the TV movie and no direct promise of money, though at one time a lump sum was discussed in lieu of a percentage of the gross.

“I'm not getting anything, but I hope that there is some gift for my children. I haven't asked Susan [Gehrke] about it, but I'm hoping.”

James Kent rented a house and planned to stay for six weeks—four weeks researching and two filming.

“I was caught up in a kind of media legal tangle that I had never experienced before. It clearly was a story that involved legal participants and those in the media circle around the story in a way they themselves got entangled in it. I think there was money to be made from this story and I think that did complicate clear lines of command. Mary couldn't, ideally, represent herself. She was caught between her legal team and the media.”

The British producer knew a book deal was in the offing, but he didn't know exactly how wrapped up into the whole affair Mary Letourneau and her two Seattle lawyers were. The publishing company had big plans for the story, including a documentary and possibly even a theatrical release. What no one knew for the first few weeks of the spring of 1998 was what that all meant to members of the media seeking access to Mary Kay.

“I think they [the lawyers] themselves, to be fair, didn't realize that the publishers of the book, who had their own intended documentary planned, would have reacted so negatively to a BBC film being made.”

James Kent would become less charitable in his assessment of the Letourneau legal team. In the beginning he found sympathy for their position. He sensed David Gehrke and Bob Huff were in over their heads, unused to a story of the magnitude of the Letourneau case.

“They found themselves, let me put it this way, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea—the media, the book publishers in France, and the BBC in London,” he said later.

Sometimes Kate Stewart would wonder how it got so strange. There she was, darkness all around, with time to think about nothing but Mary Kay Letourneau. Kate was up at two A.M. waiting for a messenger to come from
People
magazine to take photos from Chicago to New York. She had spent half the night carefully identifying the images of Mary Kay and Steve, mostly from her 1988 wedding.

“They were a happy little family,” she said later while reviewing the images remaining in her album. Empty pages provided silent testimony to the demand for pictures from her wedding.

Mary Kay had loathed the jailhouse photos, the mug shots that had been plastered in the media. She wanted something decent out and Kate agreed not only because she was her friend, but also because she had a treasure trove of Mary Kay photos.

That early morning as she waited, firemen were flushing the hydrants and a spray of water hit the edge of the Stewarts' charming front porch. She kept an eye on the family dog to make sure no one woke up. But mostly she worried about the water ruining the photos in an envelope on the porch and the bizarre turn of events of the past months.

How did I get involved with this crazy story? she asked herself
.

Chapter 72

MARY KAY LETOURNEAU was pregnant. It was the topper of all toppers and when it was discovered in mid-March it pushed Mary Kay Letourneau back on the front pages of newspapers and into world headlines—though there had barely been a lull since her arrest in February. Newsgroups chattered about her on the Internet. Talk shows geared up.
American Journal
came calling again. After she arrived in prison, a sonogram was performed and it detected the heartbeat of a six-week-old fetus. The fact that she was pregnant again moved her story into the category of the unbelievable, but true. For Mary Kay, it gave her something on which to focus while she appealed her case and sought a new lawyer. She was overjoyed at the life growing within her.

It was further proof of her love for Vili Fualaau.

When the second-pregnancy story made the news, it was attributed to Kate Stewart, “a good friend from the Midwest.”

But she had never confirmed anything.

“That was a reporter's trick,” she said later. “They were only saying that because they got inside information from the prison and they needed a second confirmation. They just used me. They couldn't say they got it from the prison… that was illegal. They tried to get me to confirm it but they couldn't.”

Abby Campbell called Michelle Jarvis to recount Vili's words when the teenager found out he was going to be a father again.

“Oh, fuck!” he had said.

'What do you think of his reaction?” Abby asked.

What could Michelle say? She figured it could be one of two things. Vili might have been horrified that he was going to be a father again, or it might have dawned on him instantly that her pregnancy could provide proof that they had sex again.

For Bob Huff and David Gehrke, the pregnancy meant Mary Kay had made her story worth all that much more money. And some believed that was all that mattered. As spring marched forward, Michelle Jarvis began to feel that no one really cared about Mary Kay. All they cared about was making money off her.

“She's nothing but a commodity… her story is something that is fodder for the media. They own it and it's just money making,” she said later.

Bob Huff, for one, would have no part of Michelle's allegations. He had been given a job to do—to sell her story, but he insisted that didn't mean he didn't care about her. He said when visiting her in prison, at times, he was depressed for her.

“Whatever she is… in love with Vili or some sick monster… whatever anyone thinks, prison is not the place for Mary Kay. She's quick-witted. She's charming. She's funny. And I was more concerned about what was happening to her than she was. She'd try to cheer
me
up.”

One of the most tragic aspects of her friend's life, Michelle believed, was that Mary Kay was so wrapped up in herself and her love story that she couldn't see what was happening.

“She's so narcissistic that she thinks that she is so important to all those other people, she doesn't see herself for what she is—just a way for them to make money, that's all. I don't think that anybody really gives a damn about her. Does Vili?”

Chapter 73

IN THE LAST week in April 1998, Michelle Jarvis boarded a flight to Seattle to honor the request of her best friend. Mary Kay had asked Michelle to be Audrey's godmother. She didn't want to go and considered trying to get out of it. She had been worn down by the pressure and the hopelessness of everything that swirled around her childhood friend. Mary Kay had been mad at her for some of the things she had said on the
Sally Jessy Raphael
show.