Mary Kay Letourneau ‘made peace’ with Vili Fualaau, 1st husband Steve and kids before dying from cancer: Source
A former high school teacher who had hit national headlines over her sexual relationship with her 12-year-old student and died last week opened up about her past crimes before she passed away, it has been revealed.
MEA WorldWide (MEAWW) previously reported that Mary Kay Letourneau, 58, lost her life to stage 4 cancer, with her controversial past once again coming to the fore in the wake of her death.
Letourneau had been a married mother-of-four and a well-respected sixth-grade teacher at the Shorewood Elementary School in the Seattle suburb of Burien when she met 12-year-old schoolboy Vili Fualaau.
While their relationship started as platonic, it turned sexual in March 1997 and she was arrested after her then-husband, Steve Letourneau, contacted the authorities. But over the next few years, she repeatedly shirked court orders to keep away from Fualaau and twice became pregnant with his children before he was 15.
Letourneau had previously struck a defiant tone when questioned about her relationship. Following her release from prison after a seven-year sentence in 2005, she persuaded a court to reverse a no-contact order and tied the knot with Fualauu but is said to have relented on her death bed and acknowledged the harm she had done.
"When it was clear that she wasn't going to make it, she made her peace with everyone in her life," a source close to the former school teacher told People. "She died having made peace with Vili, Steve [Letourneau, her first husband], and all six of her kids. Everyone said everything that needed to be said."
Letourneau had detailed her taboo relationship with Fualauu and how it all began during a '20/20' special 'American Scandal'. "The incident was a late night that it didn't stop with a kiss. And I thought that it would and it didn't," she revealed. "I loved him very much, and I kind of thought, 'Why can't it ever just be a kiss?'"
She had remained relatively under the radar after marriage but did break her silence about their relationship during an interview with an A&E special, 'Autobiography', where she insisted she saw nothing wrong in what she had done and questioned the media's obsession with them.
"It's shock value," she had said. "That's what it was all about. Shock. I call it media carnage. Roadkill. Blood. Everybody wants to hear the story. Whether it's because they want to analyze it or criticize it. It's been 20 years but it's still there."
"The age difference, all of that stuff wasn't going through my mind," she continued. "A lot of things that should have gone through my mind at the time weren't going through my mind."
A source close to the couple similarly defended them to People. "They know what everyone thinks about their relationship. And they don't care," they said. "They really never have. The wrong stuff that happened was so long ago. They are two grown adults who are living their lives now."
Letourneau and Fualauu finalized a legal separation in August 2019, with the latter reportedly changing his mind about their relationship. "He [Fualauu] sees things clearly now, and realizes that this wasn't a healthy relationship from the start," a source claimed.
With her death, some wounds appear to have healed. In a joint statement, the Fualaaus and the Letourneaus said they are "deeply saddened" by her loss.