Sex. Murder. Mystery. (83 page)

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 was 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.

“I don't think I've signed away my rights,” she told Kate, who passed along the information.

After that Chicago visit, things improved considerably. Mary called James Kent “fifteen or twenty” times.

Bob Graham and the Fixot project be damned
. It didn't seem to matter, not when the BBC had Mary Kay Letourneau calling the shots from prison herself—or so James Kent had believed. But just as others found out, with the Mary Kay Letourneau story, nothing lasts forever.

Bob Graham employed tabloid tactics to ensure that his story was protected. James Kent was appalled when he learned that the ghostwriter had told principals in the Letourneau story that
Inside Story
was tabloid trash akin to
Inside Edition
. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Inside Story
was a documentary series of which there was probably no American counterpart in terms of quality. It got back to him that Bob Graham had told sources that the BBC “did hatchet jobs” on people.

Another time, James Kent received a disturbing call from the author.

“I did receive a very threatening phone call from him, telling me that I had gone around telling interviewees that it was all right for them to talk to me, the BBC, because Laffont had no objections. I never told one interviewee that. He said if that continued, he'd sue me and the BBC.”

At the same time, Bob Graham made it clear that
he
—
not Mary
—was running the show.

Mary Letourneau kept James Kent and the BBC on a string for as long as she could. No one could confirm her motives, other than that she wanted to keep her options open; she wanted to control something in which she could not fully participate. But she pulled back, away from the one producer who seemed sympathetic and genuinely concerned about her.

“That was to me a broken promise,” he said.

Something else crossed James Kent's mind. He wondered if the love affair had run its course and that was the real reason for Mary Kay's silence, and indeed the silence of others close to the case. Maybe people were keeping mum because Vili Fualaau was no longer pining for his teacher, the mother of one baby, with another on the way.

If Vili Fualaau has already found someone else, it is a bit of a mockery, isn't it? It undermines Mary Kay's case that there was a deep and meaningful love relationship, James Kent thought.

The manner in which those closest to Mary Kay doled out their attentions made many feel they were doing reporters and producers a personal favor by even entertaining the possibility of an interview. The distrust and animosity from those who were speaking on Mary Kay's behalf was uncalled for and undoubtedly detrimental to her position.

“
You are so lucky! The BBC is so lucky! You are going to get the chance to speak to Mary Kay Letourneau.
”

“Mary Kay needs the media more than the media needs Mary Kay,” James Kent said later. “This is something her attorneys fail to recognize, apart from David. She's the one in jail. No one seems interested in getting her out.”

Chapter 79

A FUNNY THING had happened to Mary Kay Letourneau on the way to prison. She had become the center of a freak show,
Globe's
favorite cover girl, an editor's antidote for flagging sales, a producer's favorite incarcerated “Get.” Mary Kay Letourneau went from person to property.
Moneymaker
. All she had wanted to do was get her message out. Bipolar or not, she wanted the world to know that she loved a boy and he returned that love. No matter what people thought the story was, she said, it was about two families and it was about love. She was hopeful that the French book would change the way some viewed her.

Lawyers Bob Huff and David Gehrke had repeatedly insisted Paris-based Fixot was a publishing company without peer in the entire world and there'd be no selling Mary Kay's story short. Bob Graham, they also said, was the right writer for the job of taking her words and formatting them into a book. But when the ghostwriter left the women's prison after a pair of interviews in 1998, she had been left holding the bag.

“I remember when Bob Graham was leaving and I told him,” she told a friend later, “ 'we haven't touched on a big part of the story.' ” According to Mary Kay, he never returned.

Mary Kay recalled how her biographer said he didn't feel she “trusted” him enough. It was true that she did have an uncomfortable feeling about the writer, but the publisher chose him. She'd had no choice. There had been no interview to see if he was compatible or even if he was a writer worthy of her story from a literary point of view.

“I was reluctant,” she said. “I have to follow my heart on some things, and I have a good sense about people… and I didn't feel good about Bob Graham from the beginning.”

As the weeks passed, Mary Kay's pregnancy brought a fullness to the gaunt features seen when she was arrested in January. Mary Kay told friends she was grateful for the baby. The pregnancy was a diversion from her own troubles as she waited for the writer to return. She had ideas; things that she wanted to say.

The summer ran into the fall, and an upbeat Mary Kay told other prisoners that she would be getting out just after the baby came. She'd be given a pardon or a trial.
Something would free her
. She saw that something as the French memoir.

As the due date of her second baby with Vili grew closer, Mary Kay began to worry and maybe even
accept
that freedom wouldn't come as quickly as hoped. She was suspicious that her stubble-bearded lawyer Bob Huff was not forthcoming about the French book and its publication schedule. When the lawyer visited her a day or two before leaving Seattle for Paris in the fall of 1998, Mary Kay would later say he was evasive. He told her he was
thinking
about going to France to determine what was going on with the book. His remarks were so casual, so off-handed. What he didn't tell her was that the book was already finished, and he had a copy.

“I had no idea he was going the next day! He made it sound vague, like he was only considering going to clear up some business matters with Fixot. He didn't say he was going on a book tour with his teenage daughter, David Gehrke, and Vili. I didn't know the book was even printed. As far as I was concerned we hadn't even finished it yet.”

But it was.
Un Seul Crime, L'Amour (Only One Crime, Love)
was a hastily assembled volume of interviews of Vili, Soona and Mary Kay. Mary Kay told friends that chunks of text were simply not true. Disclosures of sex in cars and around every corner of the block were not the words of a soulful and loving young man like Vili. Having sex
two or three hundred times was not the message that she had wanted out!
Blanks were filled in in the rush to get the book out while the story was still hot.

“I know what happened,” she said, bitterness creeping into her normally sweet voice. “Bob Huff got impatient and instead of waiting for the writer he drove Vili around Seattle talking into a tape recorder. They filled in the blanks with David and Bob. You can hear David's voice in the book, too.”

She didn't blame Vili for what he had put into print. She saw Vili as a bit of a chameleon when it came to interacting with others.

“Put him in a car with a lawyer like Robert Huff and how do you think he's going to respond? He's going to act just like Bob because he wants to be liked, to fit in. Bob's like a surrogate father to him.”

Bob Huff later refuted Mary Kay's allegations. He had been working around the clock with the book and didn't know that he was headed to Paris until a few days before he left. There wasn't time to reach Mary Kay. He admitted that he helped to “adapt” the English manuscript to French. He was fluent in French and the publishing crunch was on to get it out while the interest in the story was still high. He did not fabricate any of the content.

“I couldn't make any of this up,” he explained. “It's too wild.”

But Vili Fualaau's lawyer suggested that perhaps, the teacher's young lover did have a tendency to stretch the truth. Bob recalled one time when he “and the boys”—writer Bob Graham and Vili—were hanging out at Bob Graham's rented place in the Belltown section of Seattle discussing the book's content. Vili's details of conquests with his teacher grew more and more outrageous.

“You know how it goes,” Bob Huff said later of the locker room banter. “But I did learn later that Vili did make up some stories. But we didn't need any bullshit. There was enough of a good story there.”

Even if inaccurate, the book made headlines, as did nearly everything associated with the former teacher. But if she had hoped the book would help her—there was a postcard in the back pre-addressed to Washington State Governor Gary Locke, with a plea for clemency—it only made matters worse. While she wrote of her undying and spiritual love for Vili, the teen wrote of waiting to have sex with her and betting a friend $20 bucks that he could nail his teacher, and living in her car while she was released from the King County jail. Mary Kay and Vili also wrote how they had disregarded the law and continued to see each other after her arrest at Shorewood Elementary. When she went into labor, it was Vili who drove her to the hospital—though, at 13, he didn't have a license and couldn't manage a stick shift. Mary took over and drove the rest of the way.

Other details were revealed, from the ridiculous (Mary Kay wore Mickey Mouse underwear at her sentencing) to the shocking (the sex). Vili wrote of a life in a violent home in the “hood,” of sex with other girls, of influencing pre-teen Steven Letourneau to abandon his “preppy” ways for a gangster style—while he was sleeping with the boy's mother. He had no respect for Steve Letourneau, as a man or a husband.

Before they consummated their relationship, Mary Kay had even told Vili that when two-year-old Jacqueline was of age, Vili should marry the girl. Mary Claire, she said, was too much like her father to be worthy of Vili's love. And while Vili struck a tough kid pose, Mary Kay's chapters, for the most part, were sweeter than a Hallmark card.