The TV movie announced by USA Network also occupied Mary Kay's time and though she didn't have a direct financial interest in it, she was ever hopeful that money would be funneled to her children. Casting was a source of amusement. Tatum O'Neal, Darryl Hannah, Gail O'Grady, even Calista Flockart were mentioned as possible Mary Kays. They were too old, not pretty enough, or too unknown to play the role, but Mary Kay acted as though she didn't care one way or another. It was New York producer Sonny Grosso's and loyal friend Susan Gehrke's project and whatever it was, would be out of her control anyway.
“I very much trust Sonny Grosso. He's like a favorite uncle,” she said. “He would make sure it was true, whatever the movie is… it will be true.”
Mary Kay spent five hours a day in the clinic expressing milk for her baby and storing it in a freezer that the prison bought for her use. “I know other nursing mothers could use it, too. But I feel like it's mine, my own little freezer.” Susan Gehrke made several trips a week to pick up frozen breast milk for baby Georgia. Baby Alexis. Whatever name she was called.
According to what Mary Kay told a friend, after the first of the year, the Fualaaus had found a video of her teaching class and wanted to sell it to Inside Edition. They needed the money. For a family who had once lived on next to nothing, who had been on welfare and made do, they needed the cash that Mary Kay's name could bring. Mary was upset about the suggestion of airing the video and said it could not be used. There were students of hers in the video and it was out of the question to get them involved in something like that.
The turning point, if there could be one for Mary Kay, came during the February 1999 television broadcast “sweeps” when Vili Fualaau went before the cameras on Inside Edition with a fistful of letters written to him by the mother of his two children. It was an appearance for money.
It was also evident that the rift between Mary Kay and Soona had widened. In one of the five letters, Mary Kay accused Audrey and Georgia's grandmother of “stealing our babies and not caring enough” about Vili.
She also sounded like a girl obsessed with her boyfriend.
“The only kids you're having are mine… I'll give you 18 if that's what you want, but your babies are mine… ” she wrote.
Eighteen was the number of children that Vili's imprisoned father had sired—the man Vili had once told sixth-grade classmate Katie Hogden he had never wanted to emulate.
But it was the letter with the heading “Test Time” that brought the most attention. She wrote how she threatened “automatic castration” if he even looked at another girl. He thought she sounded a little “crazy,” but he liked the fact that she wanted him to be true to her. After the Inside Edition show aired, Mary Kay told friends she was shocked and appalled about the betrayal.
“I told them no and I guess they had to find something else to sell. It is okay for Vili to sell me out,” she said shortly after the program aired. Her voice caught in her throat a bit, indicating that maybe it wasn't so okay after all. “I guess they needed the income,” she said.
Steve Letourneau also found dollars as reason to weigh in and slam his wife once more during the sweeps-rating period. He appeared on the low-rated Extra telling the world that Mary Kay had to take responsibility for what she did before he could forgive her. During the tumultuous last two years of Steve and Mary Kay Letourneau's marriage, a total of four children were born of their extramarital relationships.
But what of Mary Kay's children, her six “angels”? The four in Alaska were off-limits because baggage handler Steve Letourneau had decided that was best. But what of the youngest? Even during her long summer of waiting for the sentencing, Mary Kay had been allowed to have baby Audrey. She had also seen Audrey in the King County Regional Justice Center. But not at the prison. Mary Kay told friends that the paperwork for which Soona was responsible was the big hold-up in arranging visits with Audrey and Georgia. When the weeks melted into months, through a “third party” Mary Kay confronted the “Samoan Queen.”
“Why is it taking you [Soona] nearly three months for to comply?” Mary Kay had asked.
The purported response from the forty-year-old grandmother was chilling: “Have you finished the English manuscript?”
“Those were her exact words. I almost didn't believe it,” Mary Kay later said. “But others have said the same thing.”
Tensions between Mary, her lawyers, and the Fualaaus escalated in the months since Georgia's birth. Mary told friends that she certainly understood where Vili's mother stood when it came to caring for the two babies. Soona Fualaau deserved respect for taking the children in and, more importantly, for standing up and saying that Mary Kay Letourneau wasn't an evil predator, but a part of their family. But why wasn't she getting the babies down to the prison?