How Did Mary Kay Letourneau Get Caught?
Todd Haynes’s upcoming romantic drama May/December, which premiered to positive reviews at the Cannes Film Festival back in May, is already drawing Oscar buzz, particularly for its lead actresses Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman. Moore plays Gracie, a woman who must confront the origin story of her relationship with her much younger husband, Joe (played by Riverdale’s Charles Melton) when an actress (Portman) begins researching their past. Although it depicts fictional characters, the film is loosely inspired by the real story of Mary Kay Letourneau, an American teacher who engaged in a sexual relationship with a student in her class, and ultimately pleaded guilty on two felony counts of second-degree rape of a child. But that’s just the beginning of Letourneau’s story.
Related: 5 Things You Didn't Know About Julianne Moore
Who is Mary Kay Letourneau?
Born in 1962, Mary Kay Letourneau (nee Schmitz) grew up in California and began working as a teacher in the Seattle area in 1989. At the time, she was married to Steven Letourneau, a man she’d met at college in Arizona, and was well liked at Shorewood Elementary School where she worked as a second grade teacher. In the fall of 1991, she began mentoring one of her students, Vili Fualaau, teaching him the piano and encouraging him to pursue art. Fualaau’s home life was somewhat chaotic; his father was in and out of prison throughout his childhood and he felt detached from his family, which may have led him to seek connection elsewhere.
"There was a respect, an insight, a spirit, an understanding between us that grew over time," Letourneau told The Seattle Times. "There was a bonding that was pretty instantaneous.” That platonic bond developed into a sexual relationship, which began in the summer of 1996.
What was the age difference between Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili?
There was a 22 year age difference between the two. When their sexual relationship began, Letourneau was 34, and Fualaau was 12. He told the police that they had sex for the first time in June of 1996, shortly before his 13th birthday. The encounter took place at Letourneau's house, while her husband was out and her four children were asleep in another room.
How did Mary Kay Letourneau get caught?
On June 18, 1996, less than a month after their relationship began, police found Letourneau and Fualaau in a parked car inside a marina parking lot. Both gave false names when they were asked for identification, and Fualaau told them that he was 18, not 12. The officer was suspicious, and Letourneau and Fualaau were taken in for questioning, but ultimately released after denying that any physical contact had taken place.
It wasn’t until eight months later, in February of 1997, that the truth finally came out. Letourneau's husband Steve discovered a stash of love letters that she had written to Fualaau, and confided in a relative, who subsequently reported it to the school and to Child Protective Services. Letourneau was arrested shortly after, on March 4, 1997, on charges of second-degree child rape. At this point, she was seven months pregnant with Fualaau’s child, and was allowed to remain free on bail as she awaited the birth. She gave birth in May of 1997, to a baby girl named Audrey.
Related: The 43 Best True Crime Shows
How much time did Mary Kay Letourneau spend in jail?
IMAGO / ZUMA Wire
On Aug. 7, 1997, Letourneau pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree rape of a minor. Despite this plea, she insisted that her relationship with Fualaau was consensual and “romantic,” not predatory, and pleaded for leniency. Fualaau's mother, Soona, also testified on her behalf. “I feel Mary has been punished enough for her mistake," she said, adding that sending Letourneau to jail would inflict unnecessary pain on her young daughter and on Fualaau, who would “carry this guilt with him as long as she is in jail."
Letourneau was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison, but all but six months of her sentence was suspended. There were various conditions attached to this arrangement: Letourneau had to attend a treatment program for sex offenders, take medication for her bipolar disorder and have no further contact with Fualaau. After serving just six months behind bars, she was released in January of 1998. Within a month, she had violated two of these three conditions—she stopped taking her medication, and that February she reunited with Fualaau.
In light of this parole violation, a judge revoked the original suspension of Letourneau’s sentence, and sent her back to prison to serve the remainder of her time. She gave birth to a second daughter with Fualaau in 1998, while she was behind bars.
How old was Mary Kay Letourneau when she married Vili?
Letourneau and Fualaau remained committed to each other during her time in prison, and began making plans for their future. "I would imagine [they] will get married as soon as she gets out of prison," a friend told People at the time. "The two of them want to be together. They're drawn together like magnets."
Sure enough, when Letourneau was released in August of 2004, she and Fualaau married within a year, after successfully petitioning to have the court’s no-contact order lifted. They wed in May of 2005 at a winery near Seattle, in front of 200 guests. At that time, Letourneau was 43, and Fualaau was 21.
Did Steve Letourneau ever remarry?
Steve filed for divorce in 1999, while Letourneau was in prison, and got custody of the couple’s four children. He subsequently remarried, had more children with his new wife and now lives a quiet life in Alaska. Approached for a comment by People in 2017, he said: “I’ve moved on, and I have nothing to say.”
How many children did Mary Kay Letourneau have with Vili?
Letourneau and Fualaau had two daughters together: Audrey, who was born in May of 1997 and Georgia, who was born in October of 1998.
Why did Vili and Mary divorce?
For many years after their wedding, Letourneau and Fualaau lived a low-key suburban life near Seattle, raising their two daughters. Letourneau worked as a paralegal, while Fualaau had a job at a home improvement store. But after 12 years, Fualaau filed for separation from Letourneau in May of 2017. The reasons behind the split remain somewhat unclear. Friends who spoke to People at the time suggested that the couple had fought over money, their careers and division of household chores. “She always wanted him to man up and take responsibility,” one source explained. “She was making the money, and he was trying to get his career as a DJ to take off, so he would spend a lot of time working on that… He said that she would be pissed off that he wasn’t doing as much around the house as she was.”
Letourneau's attorney, David Gehrke, is one of the only people who has discussed the couple’s relationship publicly. "I'm convinced they were totally in love," Gehrke told People. "But sometimes, people who are totally in love have trouble staying in love."
What did Mary Kay Letourneau die from?
In July of 2020, Letourneau died of stage 4 colon cancer at the age of 58, having been diagnosed four-to-six months earlier. In her final days, once she realized that she didn’t have long to live, Letourneau reportedly made efforts to make amends to various people in her life. “The bottom line is that she understood on a very deep level that she had really made a mess of her life and the lives of many other people back in 1996,” an unnamed friend told People, per the Toronto Sun. “She realized even though things turned out relatively good that she was responsible for a wide swath of destruction by her actions. She apologized to a lot of people for a lot of things.”
Was Vili Fualaau with Mary Kay Letourneau when she died?
Although the couple had been separated for three years, Fualaau was with her when she died. In fact, according to Gehrke, Fualaau spent the final two months of Letourneau’s life by her side, taking care of her as her condition worsened. “They were together since the mid-90s, when he first met her, and they’ve been in love since the late-90s,” he told The Seattle Times. “That’s 20 years of love—and they never fell out of love. They had their differences like couples do, but they deeply loved each other through the end.”
In an appearance on The Dr. Oz Show, he recalled his final moments with her. “I didn't see her chest moving, and I thought it, maybe, it was like one of those pauses she has and then she'll come back. She'll take a deep breath, and she's gonna come back…I would count in between those pauses, and it was just the longest count that I had." He added that he felt like he’d “lost a piece of himself” after she died.
Did Mary Kay Letourneau reconcile with her older children?
For many years after her arrest and subsequent divorce from Steve, Letourneau had limited contact with her four children from that first marriage. It’s not clear how much of a relationship she had with those children in recent years, but prior to her death in 2020, Letourneau did reportedly reconcile with everybody in her life, including all of her family members.
"When it was clear that she wasn't going to make it, she made her peace with everyone in her life," a source close to the family told People. "She died having made peace with Vili, Steve [Letourneau, her first husband], and all six of her kids. Everyone said everything that needed to be said."
After her death, the Letourneau and Fualaau families released a joint statement. "Mary, and all of us, found great strength in having our immediate and extended family members together to join her in this arduous struggle,” the statement read. “We did our very best to care for Mary and one another as we kept her close and stayed close together.”
