Sex. Murder. Mystery(204)
She was charming and controlling “in a nice way,” Dr. Moore recalled later, but she was clearly out of touch. She told the psychiatrist that her children wanted the relationship between their mother and Vili Fualaau. She had deluded herself into thinking that Steven, Mary Claire, Nicky, and Jackie supported her love for Vili.
“Her bipolar condition was so severe that Mary could only focus on the hypersexual object—the boy—and her involvement in him,” Dr. Moore said later. “She loves her children, but she cannot see the effect on them of the divorce, their separation from her, their mixed feelings about a boy they knew betraying them, Mom betraying them. She does not understand what her children feel.”
Throughout the jail interview, Mary Kay had to use several pieces of paper to keep her thoughts in order and her mind raced from one subject to the next. But it was her emotions that were most revealing. Her laughter would turn to tears, Dr. Moore said later, “with the flip of a switch.” The mood swings were not a result of the subject of their conversation. They were driven, the doctor felt, by a mood disorder. Mary Kay said she slept between two and four hours a night. It shocked her how others had given up on Mary Letourneau and supported a course of treatment in a sexual deviancy behavior modification program. The woman in the red jumpsuit didn't need that. She needed medication to stabilize her moods.
Dr. Moore could see clearly that in March when Mary Kay had been diagnosed as bipolar, no one had noted the rapid nature of her thoughts and the scant amount of sleep she needed to function. Mary Kay's bipolar disorder was marked by hypomania followed by mania. It was a pattern that led to the disruption of her social functioning skills. She had been able to hold it together well enough prior to the relationship with the boy. She had had a family life and a successful career and she snapped.
Dr. Moore believed she could help. She considered the troubled woman a basically good person who needed treatment to “get back to who she is.” One key was to determine if any of Mary Kay's neurobiological symptoms were present in any other members of the Schmitz family. Though she barely scratched the surface of the family dynamics, and suspected there was much more to learn, she wondered most about John Schmitz.
Steve Letourneau was of no help. He referred Julia Moore's calls to his lawyer. Steve had completely bailed out on Mary Kay, despite the fact that she was the mother of his four children—and always would be. Mary Kay's network of friends seemed to include people who had known her for only a brief time and could offer no verifiable history. The only family member Dr. Moore could reach was Jerry Schmitz, the brother in Tempe, Arizona. Jerry wasn't of much help, either. He was matter-of-fact about what was happening with his sister. He didn't believe she suffered from any mental disorder. His dismissal of any concerns was strange to the psychiatrist.
“This is her choice,” Jerry said reiterating Mary Kay's position. “She's just like everybody else. It has nothing to do with any disorder.”
Dr. Moore didn't know what to make of the brother's reaction. His sister was facing prison and he didn't seem all that engaged. The call lasted only twenty minutes.
Julia Moore also turned her attention to pinpointing the catalyst for the events that led to the relationship with the boy. Why had Mary Kay, who had been functioning at a reasonable level for years, suddenly gone over the edge? The trauma of her childhood could have had an impact, but Dr. Moore discounted Philip's drowning, and the Carla Stuckle affair, as significant. She was instead concerned with more recent events, more recent bouts of depression. She made a list of key events. Mary Kay's father's cancer, her disintegrating marriage, her miscarriage—all within a year leading to the affair with Vili—had sent her into the depression that was followed by the mania.
Dr. Moore could see that the Letourneau marriage was a disaster. Mary Kay and Steve were not a good match in nearly every regard.
“She was more cultural, more into talking, into needing new cultural and social stimulation, had plans for her life, envisioned the future. She saw him as not really interested in having a life that much outside of work. Not interested in work being meaningful. But she was willing to tolerate all that for the sake of the kids, until her father got this prostate cancer and she was devastated and she was very depressed and could barely function, turned to her husband for help, only to hear 'What do you want me to do about it?' “
From what the psychiatrist learned during her consultations with Mary Kay, Steve's lack of understanding about her father's cancer was the crushing blow.
“She took it as utter rejection. He [Steve] was never really the man of her life, her father was. With her father dying, who would be the man of her life? She couldn't depend on him. She had to move on.”