Obituary: Mary Kay Letourneau

Infamous teacher and sex predator who later married the young boy she preyed upon and with whom she had two children,  Mary Kay Letourneau,  has reportedly died of cancer.  She was 58 and before she died, second husband and victim, Vili Fualaau, filed for a legal separation.  According to the article, he was with her when she died and had been taking care of her during her final illness.

Mary Kay with ex-husband Vili and their daughters

Letourneau had a host of mental issues, there is no question of it.  I remember the 20/20 interview she gave with Vili, and I felt terrible for him.  I wrote about it here, although the video has since disappeared, probably due to a copyright strike.

Letourneau died fairly suddenly in her home late Monday, her former attorney David Gehrke told CNN. Most of her family was with her, including Vili Fualaau, her former student and ex-husband who was giving her 24-hour care the last month of her life.

The two met when Letourneau was a 34-year-old teacher in Seattle. She was married with four children when she began an affair with Fualaau, her 13-year-old student in 1996.

It was clear from the interview he had been badly damaged from the situation. Little wonder he filed for a legal separation.

Letourneau was a daughter of one-time representative John Schmitz, who once ran for president on the American Independent Party ticket, and who himself went down in a sex scandal involving a woman who had been a student at the community college where he taught and had two children with her.  Unfortunately, the woman died, and, if I remember correctly, Schmitz didn't acknowledge them enough to have taken custody following their mother's death.  Schmitz has since died.

Schmitz was a radical right politician from Orange County, California,  a John Bircher.  He is mentioned in Claire Conner's excellent memoir, Wrapped in the Flag. 


New York Times:

Anne Bremner, a lawyer who has been friends with Ms. Letourneau for nearly 20 years, said Ms. Letourneau hoped in her death that people would be able to see her as someone who had served her time and gone on to raise two daughters with Mr. Fualaau and have a positive impact on the people around her.

“She was always a really good person,” Ms. Bremner said. “She was always a really good friend.”

Ms. Letourneau is survived by six children, four by a previous marriage.

Daily Mail:

Their illegal relationship was uncovered by Letourneau's husband at the time, Steve Letourneau, who found love letters exchanged between the pair and alerted school officials.

After Letourneau was arrested and charged with statutory rape, Steve filed for divorce. He received sole custody of their four children and moved the family to Alaska.

Letourneau was initially was sentenced to three months in jail as part of a plea agreement in 1997, in which she agreed to no longer have any contact with Fualaau. She was pregnant with her former student's child at the time of her conviction.

Letourneau was then paroled in 1998. However, shortly after her release from jail, she was found in a car having sex with Fualaau and was ordered to serve seven years in prison on second-degree child rape charges.

Letourneau reportedly died of colon cancer.  This is something I don't wish on anybody.  My brother Jim died of the disease back in 1989.  He was gone in less than four months after diagnosis.  He had never been sick a day in his life, and then all of a sudden he felt he had the flu he couldn't shake.  He went to the doctor, a man who had such a wonderful bedside manner he said my brother "wouldn't last six months."  His cancer had spread all over his body and nothing was removed.