A Matter Of Hearts

(3 of 7)
Some friends call him Buddha, and Soona has often called Vili "an old soul trapped in a young body." He has always seemed mature. In sixth grade, a couple of years ago, while classmates were writing poems that described themselves as lovers of "girls, baseball, ice cream...and MTV," Vili wrote that he was a "Lover of giving, faith, trust... Who likes to wear masks over his soul." He was just 12.

That is the Vili that Mary fell in love with. She had met him years before, in her second-grade class, and quickly noticed his talents. He had noticed her too, and he flirted with her throughout sixth grade. Kids get crushes on teachers all the time--and, of course, most are rebuffed--but Letourneau had entered a fragile period. In October 1995, her father, retired G.O.P. Congressman John Schmitz, had disclosed his terminal cancer. As Mary later told a psychiatrist, she felt he had died already. "She felt she died too," says Dr. Julie Tybor Moore. Her father has always been a rock, even during his own public whipping. In 1982, an extramarital affair was revealed when his mistress (a former college student of his) brought one of their two children to a hospital after the child was injured in an accident. The hospital requested the father's name, and Schmitz--a church-and-family conservative--then watched his political career wilt.

Family was always important to Mary; now hers seemed to be disintegrating. She had been a superteacher, hauling her own kids to her classroom after dinner so she could chat and play as she finished special projects. But after learning about her father's illness, she withdrew, declining to take on a student teacher and saying no to some Girl Scout duties.

Meanwhile, she and Steve were growing distant. They had always been a bit oddly paired: she the literary romantic, he the frat boy at Arizona State, where they met in the early '80s. She got pregnant not long after meeting him, and she married like the good Catholic she has always tried to be. But by the early '90s, it was clear to friends that even their four children weren't going to hold Steve and Mary Letourneau together. Expenses outpaced salaries--Steve loads cargo for Alaska Airlines--and creditors were phoning. They filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy in May 1994.

An inner circle of Mary's friends, a troika who have requested anonymity even as they talk among themselves of a "campaign" to burnish Mary's public image, insist that Steve was having affairs and abusing Mary, mostly verbally but with an occasional shove. (Steve Letourneau and his lawyer turned down several interview requests.) It got to the point that they were barely civil. Therapist Moore says Mary remembered that when she told Steve about her father's cancer, he growled, "What do you want me to do?"