Sex. Murder. Mystery(227)

Further, the four children in Alaska were not benefiting from any of the big money deals made by the Fualaaus. They were out in the cold, left with the tales of their mother having sex with Vili in “every room in the house” and on the swing in their yard in Normandy Park. Steve's lawyer, Greg Grahn, considered the whole moneymaking effort “unfortunate.” Not because Soona and Vili didn't have the right to do so, but because of what he worried would happen later.

“I think them doing it is going to have repercussions on other innocent people, mainly the Letourneau children, later. It's not that I'm pissed off that they are doing it. I think it would be a lot more dignified if they wouldn't do it,” he said.

Driving home from work, Steve's divorce lawyer would listen to talk radio as an endless stream of callers weighed in on the Letourneau story. A number of times, he reached for his phone and dialed all but one of the numbers. He wanted to defend his client to the ninety percent of the listeners who thought Steve was the problem, not his wife's obsession with the boy.

Mary Kay is not a victim, he thought. Steve is. The kids are. Vili is.

He never dialed the last digit. Better not to vent. There had been too much of that already.





Chapter 77

HER FRIENDS DIDN'T see it coming, and neither did Mary Kay Letourneau. But within a few months of her prison incarceration she crossed over from person to commodity. Ten books were purportedly in the works, including her own and the one announced by her legal team. Steve talked about a book. So did Tony Hollick. She was reminded that her voice was worth something, her image could mean money. And she listened and accepted the idea as though it would do her some good. But the fact was that none of the deals made in her name were moving her any closer to being released to be with the “young man” she loved or her older children, whom she'd seen only once in the past year. Whether she could fully comprehend it in her isolation—those who had the most contact with her were the ones making the deals in her name—will never be known. Because for all of the things Mary Letourneau was and would be, loyal was at the top of the list of her personal attributes.

A week after Vili Fualaau unmasked himself for money on the front page of the Globe, discussions heated up at a Chicago-based production company called Towers Productions. The company had been looking at the Letourneau story as a possible show for several weeks. Jeff Tarkington and other producers there had pitched the idea to the A&E cable channel's American Justice in the fall of 1997, but it was rejected. The Globe article six months later brought new life to their plans.

In mid-May, Jeff Tarkington started the research process that eventually included conversations with Mary Kay Letourneau and David Gehrke. Both lawyer and former client seemed excited about the project—especially the lawyer. He said he'd be available for interviews when the producer came to Seattle the next month. Mary indicated that she had used A&E's programs in her classroom and thought the vehicle would offer her a positive, fair representation. She had one caveat, however. Nothing she told Jeff could be used in the program. Everything was off the record.

“She was really interested in what we had to do and what we thought. I told her we were interested in what she had to say, too, but I told her I didn't know how we were going to work together if everything we talked about was off the record,” Jeff Tarkington said later.

Interviews lined up with David Gehrke and the Letourneaus' Normandy Park neighbor Tina Bernstein brought Jeff Tarkington to Seattle the second week in June 1998. When he arrived at the rental-car counter in the baggage-claim area at SeaTac Airport, he got the shock of his career after dialing David Gehrke's law office.

“I got a message through Dave's assistant that he was withdrawing his interview and he would not cooperate with us at any time. Thank you very much.”

That was it. Jeff Tarkington couldn't believe it. He wrote letters, faxed them from Chicago to David Gerhke's Seattle office. No reply. Phone messages went unreturned. Not a single word of explanation. What had happened? When he left Chicago everything was one big green light. When he landed in Seattle, zip.

“I had no idea where it came from or why,” he said later. “I still don't. I never talked to Dave Gehrke again. I can't even speculate on it. There was such an enthusiasm for what we were trying to do and for our program.”

And it suddenly got worse when next-door neighbor Tina Bernstein reneged on her interview. A trip to the old neighborhood to see if Tina could be persuaded was a bust.

“I won't talk to you,” she said, standing in her doorway. “I can't talk to you.”

The out-of-town producer explained how badly he needed her input. How she'd be the voice of concern for a neighbor and friend. Would she please reconsider?