Before former Seattle-area teacher Mary Kay Letourneau died in 2020 of stage 4 cancer, she spent her last years trying to make up for numerous wrongs she believed she committed throughout her life. A friend has revealed to People that Letourneau shared she had written around 30 letters before she died.
The friend also stated that they aren't sure if Letourneau wrote a letter to Vili Fualaau or not.
The friend explained, "She had a lot of wrongs to right. She had a lot of things to say. She made a lot of mistakes in her 58 years — not just the big one everyone knows about — and she wanted everyone to know that she was sorry for the mistakes she made."
The friend also says that as far as she knows, Letourneau put a lot of work into making things OK with Fualaau: "I don't know if he received a note, but I do know that she made things right with him as best as she could. She loved him until the end."
The friend closed things out by noting that though Letourneau had a lot of joy in her life, she knew that her path there was a troubling one. "She knew, especially near the end, that the ends don't justify the means, and that even her wonderful daughters and long marriage didn't excuse how she got there," the friend said. "And she hoped that no one else would ever make the mistakes that she made."
Mary Kay Letourneau made headlines in the mid-1990s when it was revealed that she had pursued and sexually assaulted her 12-year-old student, Vili Fualaau. At the time, Letourneau was a married mom of four children. Letourneau went on to conceive two children with Fualaau before he was 15 years old, despite being in prison for second-degree rape of a child.
The pair got married after Letourneau was released from prison. They then had to focus on getting custody of their two daughters, as Fualaau's mother raised the children while Letourneau was behind bars. Letourneau also had to make amends with her four children from her first marriage, which she successfully did.
The two were married for 20 years before separating in 2017. At the time, a source close to the couple explained the difficulty they were experiencing while trying to extricate themselves from the marriage. "It’s really complicated," the source said. "There are financial considerations that have made this whole thing a challenge. They’re really trying to go about this as responsibly as possible."
When Letourneau died of cancer in 2020, both the Letourneau and the Fualaau families issued a joint statement. It read, "Mary fought tirelessly against this terrible disease. Mary, and all of us, found great strength in having our immediate and extended family members together to join her in this arduous struggle. We did our very best to care for Mary and one another as we kept her close and stayed close together."
