Sex. Murder. Mystery(126)
Chapter 15
NATALIE BATES WAS one of those who came to celebrate Mary Letourneau's graduation from Seattle University. Mary told her neighbor that it was an “informal” get-together. The word “informal” was important to Natalie, who considered herself “a jeans and sweats” kind of person. To Natalie's surprise, the spring 1989 gathering included Mary Kay's mother and father, just in from Washington, D.C. Natalie wasn't the type to party with strangers, but she was so fond of and so proud of the young woman's accomplishment that she decided to pop over for cake and coffee. It was the only time she'd known Mary Kay's parents to make the trek from back East for a visit. Years later, Natalie couldn't deny that she was a little bit curious about John and Mary Schmitz. Mary had told Natalie that she was not close to her mother.
“It was really strange. I couldn't believe the mother. She was a nice-looking lady with sort of reddish-brown hair, slender and well dressed. But I didn't see anything in the way of love over there. It just didn't seem like a family affair. It was like somebody came to tea… and then she was gone,” she said later.
A lack of interaction between John and Mary Schmitz also struck Natalie Bates as odd. It almost seemed like they weren't connected to each other, bonded like a longtime married couple.
“No closeness,” Natalie recalled.
It was years later that Natalie Bates began to wonder what, if anything, could have caused the tragic turn of events that would ruin lives, make people rich, and send a woman to prison. She remembered the graduation party and the cold vibes she picked up from the parents.
Then one day the answer came to her. It was so obvious, she thought. It must be a lack of love. Mary didn't get any love. Not from her parents. Not from her husband.
“If she had had some love from somebody else, maybe Steve… this would never have happened,” Natalie said many years later.
The relationship with Mary Kay and her parents was complicated, and after a time Steve's maternal grandmother, Nadine, didn't even try to figure it out. Mary Kay acted like she couldn't stand her mother and that her mother didn't care about her. Her father was wonderful and could do no wrong. Such descriptions were at odds with what Steve's grandmother heard from Steve or saw for herself.
Steve had told his grandmother that his in-laws didn't have the best marriage; in fact, John Schmitz had fathered two illegitimate children with a campaign worker.
“This was her Prince Charming father?” Nadine wondered.
Whenever Mary Kay had a baby, Nadine and her daughters would show up with a gift. One time when they were over there, Mary Kay made mention of a present her mother had sent for the new baby.
“I got a box from my mom today,” she said, looking disgusted. “I wish she'd mind her own business. It was something I wouldn't put on my child.”
As far as Nadine could see, it was an absolutely beautiful outfit.
“How's your dad?” Nadine asked one time.
“I don't know,” she said. “I talked to my mom, but I didn't ask her.”
Years later Nadine would wonder how much Mary Kay's parents knew about her daughter's life in Kent. Mary Kay put on such a pretty face about everything. But it wasn't pretty from where Nadine sat.
“It was a big front. It was too nicey-nice. You've got kids running wild, and you'd say, 'Honey, will you take care of the children? Honey, would you see what they are doing now?' “
Their financial situation was perpetually in dire straits, too.
“They were always sending home for money. Sharon said it was constant. Two hundred dollars. Three hundred dollars. Telephone service would be cut off. Didn't have food on the table. Where was the money going? They were making over sixty thousand dollars a year. Where was it going? They had nothing to show for it.”
Steve and Mary Kay's chronic lateness was no joke to Steve Letourneau's grandmother. She was the opposite. When she was required to be at work at five-thirty, she'd show up at the drug and variety store at five just to be safe. But that was her and she did her best not to fault people for running a little late. But not two or three hours, as had been the case with Steve and Mary Kay. And not at Christmas.
She blamed Mary Kay for the tardiness.
“That was her. Control. That was her way of controlling. That's like a kid pooping his pants when he's five. Because he's got the control. That's the way Mary was,” she said later.
But being late for a Christmas celebration and gift exchange, however, would not be tolerated by Steve's grandmother.
“They knew what time we started. I got the table all set. The little kids are running around wanting to open presents. How do you explain to a three-year-old that we can't start yet [because] Mary Kay's not here?” Nadine said later.