Sex. Murder. Mystery(198)
How do you say “fuck you” in Hollywood? “Trust me.”
—David Gehrke in a summer 1998 interview
I know how to bring out the best in people. To make them understand. I wish it was me out there fighting for me.
—Mary Kay Letourneau to a friend in 1999
Chapter 59
MARY KAY LETOURNEAU paced in her jail cell in Kent. She seemed a frail-looking woman, though of course she wasn't. Her lawyer, her friends, and even her jailers knew that she had a reserve of fortitude unmatched by many. No matter that she was in jail, confined, she still knew when things weren't done properly. She ranted in her young-sounding voice.
“I can't wear this,” she said. “The fabric is all wrong—it's itchy and I don't like the color.”
A guard used to the tirade looked on and rolled her eyes while Mary Kay shifted her tiny frame in the yardage of fabric that made up her county-issued garb. It didn't come in any other color but orange, for goodness' sake. The guard had heard the rants before. Everyone had. The Mary Kay the world would come to know was nothing like the inmate guards knew as she awaited sentencing in November of 1997.
“The real Mary Kay,” said one who saw her during that period, “isn't all that pretty. Funny thing, people like that are never told anything but words of comfort. She seems so weak, but inside she's anything but. Selfish and self-absorbed, that's what she is.”
Local Seattle boy Ted Bundy had had them. So had Los Angeleno Richard Ramirez, the so-called Night Stalker. Although Mary Kay Letourneau's crime was nothing compared to theirs, she did inspire a bizarre and devoted following. The groupies started coming to see her in the fall of 1997 and they didn't let up. Defense lawyer David Gehrke and others close to the Letourneau case had never seen anything quite like it. Whether it was her sun-streaked California good looks, her sweet demeanor, or if it had to do with the titillating nature of the crime, no one could say for sure. But the former schoolteacher, without a doubt, touched a strange chord among a cross-section of people. Men and women from across the country and indeed the world found something in Mary Kay. It was true that from the moment she was arrested in late February letters and phone calls from “weirdos” had bombarded her. But there were other callers, too. Mary Kay heard from people who on the surface seemed as normal as the neighbor next door. Scores of men and women who for some reason or another saw a place for themselves in her life. Some wanted to marry her. Some wanted to mother her. All wanted a connection to the woman they saw in the papers and on the television screen. One guy wanted to set up a defense fund; another announced a Web site, marykayletourneau.com, devoted to the woman behind bars for love. Some were convinced through some form of erotomania—the erotic obsession with a famous person—that Mary Kay was as desirous of them as they were of her.
Certainly Michelle Jarvis and Kate Stewart were not included in the collection of groupies, but they were unquestionably the most influential members of the “Mary Club,” as David Gehrke liked to call the widening circle of friends and hangers-on. Among the members of the group were Abby Campbell, a Mormon mother of five and wife of a South King County, Washington, lawyer; Max McNab, a writer who had written some unproduced screenplays and the back of a restaurant menu; Beth Adair, the Shorewood music teacher; and Tony Hollick, a fifty-five-year-old “retired physicist” from London.
Mary Kay, of course, didn't think of them as groupies, but as “true, true courageous people.” She later included Ron Fitten, the Seattle Times reporter, as one among her inner circle. Susan Gehrke also was a common fixture at the King County Regional Justice Center in Kent, but David Gehrke never considered his wife a groupie. She was only doing the right thing by befriending someone who needed it. Skeptical about Mary Kay at first, Susan became so devoted that months later she—like a dozen others—would contemplate writing a book about the extraordinary Mary Letourneau. She even signed an entertainment contract for her “story.”
But it was Abby Campbell who provided the most vehement support of Mary Kay Letourneau. And it was Abby Campbell whose idea of assistance seemed to be enabling Mary Kay Letourneau to do what she pleased. Some would say actions on behalf of the jailed teacher would have dire consequences.
“She was a housewife that was trapped with the boredom of raising kids and was taken with the interest and excitement of the story and the involvement. [She] has hated it, but in the long run has reveled in the excitement, the notoriety,” David Gehrke said later.
Mary Kay needed attention at the time. She was sitting in jail with nothing but her own thoughts to keep her company. When the men and women started coming, she agreed to see them. She was literally a captive audience. One man came nearly every day with a rose for the teacher—though jail rules prohibited him from giving it to her. Others phoned the jail just to see if she was all right. It irritated jailers because she wasn't supposed to be getting a fan club going, she was supposed to be paying for her crime.