A love like no other

Josh Mankiewicz Correspondent • Profile

SEATTLE, WASH. - Who could have imagined that a story that started where a love story shouldn’t and survived where a love story can’t, would wind up here, where a love story belongs—in a waterfront suburban home?

There, a family of four shares smiles. The two growing girls and their loving parents seem downright... ordinary.

The former teacher known around the world as Mary Kay Letourneau now goes by the name Mary Fualaau. She’s been married for a year now to her former sixth grade student—the same young man she was once convicted of raping.

Josh Mankiewicz, Dateline correspondent: If 10 years ago somebody had told you that the two of you would be together now, married and celebrating your first anniversary, what would you have said?

Mary Fualaau: I would’ve just said “wow.” I mean, like, “How’s that gonna happen?”

Last week, I sat down with Mr. and Mrs. Fualaau, now ages 22 and 44, in a hotel near their home. Together, they told their story of how this unusual— if not outrageous— relationship started.

Josh Mankiewicz: How does a 34-year-old woman fall for a 13-year-old boy?

Mary Fualaau: Well he’s quite the man, and was back then actually.

Vili Fualaau: I wanted her. So I wasn’t gonna stop. 

Mary claims at the time it didn’t cross her mind that her new love was illegal.

Mankiewicz: What were you worried about?

Mary Fualaau: His mother getting angry.

Mankiewicz: You weren’t thinking to yourself, “I could be fired. I could go to jail.”

Mary Fualaau: Oh, no.

The couple told me about their life now, their struggle to get full custody of their two daughters, and their surprising relationship with Mary’s four children from her first marriage.

Mankiewicz: Your oldest is how old?

Mary Fualaau: 21.

Mankiewicz to Vili Fualaau: 21.  Almost your age.

Mary Fualaau: Couple years, yeah.

And now, is Mary pregnant with the couple’s next child?

Mary Fualaau: Don’t look too close. I have a feeling the camera’s zooming in on me.

In our long conversation, this couple born in infamy did not hold back.

But at its heart, is this a true love story, or a true crime story? Can a couple the law regarded for years as criminal and victim now be accepted as loving husband and wife? Maybe the only way to decide is to listen to what Mary and Vili have to say now, and to judge for yourself.

But first you need to remember the whole story— and what a story it is.

In 1996, Mary Kay Letourneau, Mary to her friends, was a popular 34-year-old teacher at Shorewood Elementary in a Seattle suburb. She was married with four kids, ages two through 11. Vili Fualaau was a student in her sixth grade class. As some of Mary’s colleagues would later testify in a civil trial, Mary and Vili seemed a little too close.

Lawyer (in court): You saw Vili and Miss Letourneau slow dancing?

Colleague: correct.

That summer, between Vili’s sixth and seventh grade years, when Vili turned 13, the relationship blossomed from an unlikely friendship to an unfathomable romance.

It was months before they were found out. Mary’s husband suspected something illicit, and one of his relatives tipped off authorities.

By the time Mary was arrested in 1997, she was already pregnant with Vili’s child. Mary only got to spend a few short months with her baby girl Audrey. In the summer of 1997, she pleaded guilty to a felony for her sexual relationship with her baby’s father.

Mary went to jail. Her husband filed for divorce and moved to Alaska, taking the couple’s four children with him.

Steve, ex-husband (1997 interview): She was a wife, loving wife, good person.  But does a good mom do what she did?  Does a good teacher do what she did?  Does a good wife do what she did?  No.

After 5 months behind bars, Mary was released on probation—contingent on her attending counseling and staying away from Vili. At the time, it sounded like that’s what she intended to do.

Mary Kay Letourneau (in court): It was wrong and I am sorry. I give you my word, it won’t happen again.

But it did happen again. Less than a month after Mary left jail, police caught Mary and now 14-year-old Vili together in a car at 3 a.m… along with baby clothes, $6,200 in cash and Mary’s passport.

Judge (1998 ruling): These violations are extraordinarily egregious and profoundly disturbing.

Mary Kay Letourneau, by now an international media sensation, was sent to a medium security prison to serve out the full seven year sentence that had originally been suspended. But in the few short weeks she’d been out on probation, Mary had become pregnant again with Vili's second child.

With Mary in a prison cell, and Vili only 15, both their babies were placed in the temporary custody of Vili’s mother.

Mary’s feelings for Vili over the years seemed to remain remarkably consistent—just as she’d predicted they would in a 1997 Dateline interview the night before she first went to jail.

Letourneau (1997 interview): I don’t believe that true love—ends because time has passed.

Five years later, when she was in prison and I interviewed her by telephone, she was a bit more circumspect—but she never disavowed her feelings for her former student.

Letourneau (2002 interview): There’s no time that could pass that could change what we were…

Mankiewicz: It sounds to me like you still are in love.

Letourneau: I didn’t say that. I just know that I very much value what we were and I do know that he does also.

But in truth, Vili’s feelings over their seven years apart seemed to be all over the map. In an interview when Mary first went to jail—when he still wanted his identity hidden—he told Dateline he was in love with Mary.

Vili Fualaau (2002 interview): I would describe her as my soul mate.

But a few years into Mary’s incarceration, Vili seemed to have a change of heart. He and his mother sued the school district and the local police for failing to stop the relationship. On the witness stand, Vili claimed his affair with his teacher had left him an emotional wreck, and swore he was no longer in love with her.

Vili Fualaau (in court): Personally, I just lost feelings for her.

The jury didn’t buy it.

Mankiewicz (2002): Do you believe Vili Fualaau when he says that he doesn’t love Mary Kay LeTourneau anymore?

Jury member 1: No.

Jury member 2: No.

Jury member 3: No.

Jury member 4: No way.

Vili and his mom didn’t get a cent. Had he faked indifference towards his erstwhile lover in hopes of a big cash payoff? Just when it looked like the public would never know for sure, along came the biggest development in this case in seven years.

In 2004, Mary Kay Letourneau was released from jail.

She left the lockup in the dead of night, using a decoy car to fool the TV cameras. The next day she followed court orders and signed up with the sheriff’s office as a registered sex offender. But her supposed victim, the same one who had claimed severe emotional damage in court, wasn’t sounding like a victim at all.

In a Today Show interview just after Mary’s release, Vili, by now 21, told Matt Lauer he had big plans for a future with her.

Vili Fualaau: I want to go on a boat cruise. I want to go to the Bahamas or something, or Miami. I don’t know. Somewhere tropical, really hot. Or maybe somewhere really cold.

But those postcard fantasies would have to wait. As a condition of her probation, Mary was not allowed to leave the state of Washington. And there was a bigger problem: that court order prohibiting Mary from having any contact with Vili was still in effect.

So on August 6, 2004, just two days after Mary’s release, 21-year-old Vili petitioned the court to lift that order. And with the stroke of a judge’s pen, Vili Fualaau was transformed from jail bait, to potential mate. By Valentine’s day, they were engaged.

They wanted a joyous, romantic ceremony, just like every couple— but not every couple has their nuptials broadcast nationwide on “Entertainment Tonight” and “The Insider.”

Mary and Vili’s story has been debated, dissected and judged, but they say once you’ve heard it from their point of view, you’ll see things very differently.

Mary Fualaau: There’s layers and layers of things that just plain weren’t the truth. And so I feel like people deserve the truth. And then from the truth they can have an opinion. 

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