Sex. Murder. Mystery(139)

As Mary Letourneau's phone calls increased over the school year, the thought did cross Judy's mind that it was a little out of the ordinary. It didn't alarm her in any way; it just made an impression that the teacher had found something special in her daughter and both were benefiting from the mentoring.

“I knew she was a lot older, but she always struck me as the big sister Katie never had. I never felt the age thing was odd. I did wonder how a mother of four had so much time to spend on the phone with her students. Mary always struck me as young and fun-loving. It was great that she was young and loved the sixth-graders,” Judy said.

The lights in room 39 were almost always the last ones to dim at Shorewood Elementary. For a time, some wondered if Mary Letourneau was so disorganized that she couldn't get her work done in the manner of most other elementary school teachers. It was true that there was never enough planning and correcting time, but ten P.M.? Others who knew her better thought disorganization could be a factor, but also weighed the idea that Mary just didn't want to go home. Maybe she didn't have much reason to go? Her marriage was in deep trouble and she frequently hinted at that. At one point, three teachers cornered Mary Kay to tell her that she shouldn't be so vocal about her problems with Steve. They understood she wasn't happy and didn't want to go home, but why didn't she want to get home to her children? What was so terrible about home that kept her from her own babies?

She called on Katie Hogden a number of times to bail her out of her mental disarray.

“Katie, please! Let me go photocopy this… fax that. Please!”

Katie was happy to help. She'd sit at Mrs. Letourneau's desk for hours using the answer key and marking paper after paper while Mary ran off to take care of an errand.

“She always had a gazillion things to do,” Katie said later.

At the end of the day when darkness fell, Katie would help her teacher load up her bags with projects and papers that would never get finished. She'd carry them back and forth each day, unloading and reloading. Blanketing her desk in an avalanche of paperwork, she always said she was going get it done, that night. But there was always more to do. The distractions of daily life piled up and, in time, would bury her.

Danelle Johnson was a magna cum laude graduate of the school of hard knocks. She'd had it rougher than most, but pulled herself up from the abyss of living on welfare to cleaning toilets to a job with her own office at a community college. Her laugh was always ready, masking the realities of a life that sometimes seemed too hard, or just plain unfair. Her voice was deep, the result of cigarettes and the decibel level sometimes required of a mother of six. At forty-six, Danelle Johnson was doing the best that a single mother could. She had a good job, a nice house. Food stamps and welfare were a distant, but never fully forgotten, memory.

Her youngest were boy-girl twins, Drew and Molly, two sandy-haired kids with the push-me, pull-me relationship typical of brothers or sisters of similar age. They hated each other. They loved each other. They were close. They couldn't stand the sight of the other. They were Shorewood Elementary students from kindergarten to sixth grade. And they struggled every step of the way, forcing their mother to make herself known at the school office whenever the twins were having difficulty.

“I was famous at Shorewood,” Danelle said later. “All I had to do was call down there and say 'This is Danelle' and they knew exactly who I was and why I was calling.”

Danelle's job of nearly two decades had provided stability for her children, allowing them to start and finish in the same school—a not-so-common feat in a district that draws from the apartments and projects of the poor.

And even though Danelle and her own grown children formed an extended family, the focus on the school remained paramount. School, she hoped, would be their chance to do something better, as it had been for her when she hit rock bottom.

Their lives revolved around Shorewood.

“That's why what happened is so sad. Sad and disgusting,” Danelle would say later.

When sixth grade came in the 1995–96 school year, daughter Molly was enrolled in Mrs. Letourneau's class and her twin brother, Drew, was assigned to a teacher across the hall. Drew's best friend was Vili Fualaau. For a time, everything looked all right. Danelle Johnson hoped against hope that her children would get through sixth grade with enough knowledge to make the transition to junior high.

When Danelle showed up for her son's and daughter's parent-teacher conferences in November, she was looking forward to talking with Mrs. Letourneau. Molly thought so highly of her teacher, but her grades were still below average and Danelle considered school more than a popularity contest.