Teacher jailed, married former 6th-grade student
SEATTLE — Mary Kay Letourneau, a teacher who married her former sixth-grade student after she was convicted of raping him in a case that drew international headlines, has died. She was 58.
Her lawyer David Gehrke told The Associated Press that Letourneau died Monday, not Tuesday as previously reported. Letourneau had been living in the Seattle suburb of Des Moines and died of advanced colon cancer, Gehrke said.
Letourneau was a married mother of four in 1996 when she taught 12-year-old Vili Fualaau in her class at Shorewood Elementary in Burien, a south Seattle suburb.
Police discovered them about 1:20 a.m. on June 19, 1996, parked in a minivan at the Des Moines Marina.
Letourneau, then 34, initially told officers the boy was 18, raising suspicions that something sexual was going on. At the police station, Fualaau and Letourneau denied there had been any “touching.” They claimed Letourneau had been babysitting the boy and took him from her home after she and her husband had a fight.
About two months later, the evidence was undeniable: Letourneau was pregnant. They had a daughter — and then, later, another one, conceived in 1998, after Letourneau had pleaded guilty to child rape but before she began serving a 7½-year prison term.
Letourneau and Fualaau married on May 20, 2005, after her release.
Fualaau and Letourneau characterized their relationship as one of love at that point, even writing a book together — “Un Seul Crime, L’Amour,” or “Only One Crime, Love.”
But it didn’t last a lifetime: King County court records show Fualaau asked for a legal separation from Letourneau on May 9, 2017.
Seattle attorney Anne Bremner befriended Letourneau, visiting her in prison and meeting her for lunch after her release.
“She accepted that it was a crime and that she had to serve her time, but when she got out she didn’t dwell,” Bremner said. “She moved forward in a very positive way and raised those girls.”
As for Letourneau and Fualauu’s relationship: “Everyone said it wouldn’t last, but it did, at least for 20 years.”