On July 6, 2020, 58-year-old Mary Kay Letourneau died of colon cancer — with her former student and husband Vili Fualaau by her side.
A&EMary Kay Letourneau died at age 58 after a months-long battle with cancer.
When Mary Kay Letourneau died in 2020, most headlines eulogized her in the same way: as a teacher who raped and later married her former student. Indeed, Letourneau is best known for her relationship with Vili Fualaau, which started in 1996 when she was 34 and he was 12.
Though the two divorced in 2019, Fualaau flew to be with Letourneau when he learned that she had been diagnosed with colon cancer. He spent her final months by her side, watching as Letourneau grew weaker and weaker.
Letourneau purportedly hoped that a “miracle” would happen, but she just kept getting sicker. When she broke her arm after an accidental fall, a CT scan revealed that her cancer had spread to her brain and spine.
Mary Kay Letourneau ultimately died in Washington on July 6, 2020, with Vili Fualaau at her side. She was 58 years old. Fualaau had just turned 37.
The Illegal Teacher-Student Relationship That Shocked America
RedditVili Fualaau and Mary Kay Letourneau in an undated photograph.
Born on January 30, 1962, Mary Kay Letourneau led an unremarkable life until her 30s. She got married, had four children, and became a popular teacher at Shorewood Elementary School in Burien, a town just outside Seattle.
Then, in 1996, Letourneau began to develop a close relationship with her sixth-grade student, 12-year-old Vili Fualaau. Though things started innocently enough — Vili had made a playful bet with his cousin that he could “get” his teacher — their relationship eventually turned sexual.
Soon afterward, Letourneau became pregnant.
Police PhotoMary Kay Letourneau was arrested for statutory rape on March 4, 1997. She spent over seven years in prison.
This set off a chain of dramatic events, closely watched by shocked Americans across the country. Letourneau gave birth to their first daughter, was sent to prison, released on parole, then sent back to prison for seeing Vili. By then, she was pregnant again with their second daughter.
Letourneau ultimately spent more than seven years behind bars as Vili Fualaau’s family raised the two girls. But when Letourneau was released, she and Fualaau reunited. They got married in 2005, when Fualaau was 21, and stayed together for over a decade before separating in 2017 and divorcing in 2019 (their friends say that their love had simply faded over time).
But then, Mary Kay Letourneau got sick.
How Mary Kay Letourneau Died At The Age Of 58
ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock PhotoMary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau before their divorce in 2019.
Though they had divorced, Mary Kay Letourneau reached out to Vili Fualaau after she became sick, about six months before her death in July 2020. The two started texting, and then Letourneau told Fualaau that she’d been diagnosed with cancer following a colonoscopy.
“I was in disbelief,” Fualaau told Dr. Oz in September 2020, a couple of months after Mary Kay Letourneau’s death. “I didn’t want to believe it.”
He flew back to Washington State from California to spend time with his ex-wife. According to Fualaau, Letourneau still looked “pretty normal” and “pretty healthy” at first. But then, her condition quickly deteriorated.
“Her health declined rapidly in such a short period of time,” Fualaau told Dr. Oz. “It was really just unreal to see her that way.”
But Mary Kay Letourneau believed a “miracle” would make the cancer go away. Fualaau acknowledged that this could make her a difficult patient because she didn’t want to talk about what would happen after her death.
The reality of how serious the cancer was reared its head when Letourneau accidentally fell one day and broke her arm. At the hospital, a CT scan revealed that her cancer had spread to her brain and her spine.
YouTubeVili Fualaau spoke about Mary Kay Letourneau’s death on Dr. Oz’s show just a couple of months after she died.
“They told us that there wasn’t much that they could do at this point,” Fualaau recalled. “And so, the very last weeks of her life, she started to realize that she was going to go — and it was a difficult thing for all of us.”
Mary Kay Letourneau died on July 6, 2020. Fualaau was at her side when she perished. One of the former couple’s daughters was also there, along with one of Letourneau’s daughters from her first marriage. Fualaau recounted Letourneau’s final words to him: “The last thing she told me is that I am the most important person to her and that everything is going to be okay.”
Soon afterward, Fualaau realized that Letourneau’s chest had stopped moving. Fualaau later remembered, “I thought it, maybe, it was like one of those pauses she has and then she’ll come back. She’ll take a deep breath, and she’s gonna come back. I would count in between those pauses, and it was just the longest count that I had.”
Letourneau was gone.
“At that moment, I had to tell the kids that they needed to call the rest of the siblings to come and say their goodbyes, that this is it,” Fualaau said.
Mary Kay Letourneau had died at age 58. Fualaau was 37, making him just a few years older than Letourneau had been when their relationship began.
Vili Fualaau And Mary Kay Letourneau’s Ever-Controversial Relationship
To the world, Letourneau will always be a teacher who raped her 12-year-old student. But to Vili Fualaau, she was many different things.
AETVMary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau married in 2005 and stayed together until 2019. After Mary Kay Letourneau’s death in 2020, Fualaau still referred to her as his “wife” and his “best friend.”
After Mary Kay Letourneau’s death, he described her as his “wife,” his “best friend,” and the “only person that actually cared.” But Fualaau has also acknowledged that he recognizes the darker side of their relationship.
In 2018, he admitted that he would tell his younger self, “Don’t do it!” before saying, “I can’t regret my two daughters and the entire life that I’ve already lived.” To Dr. Oz, Fualaau stated that if he was ever attracted to a preteen, as Letourneau had been, “I’d probably go and seek some help.”
“I couldn’t look at a 13-year-old and be attracted to that because it’s not in my brain,” he said. “I mean, we all have our preferences.”
Still, he insisted that there was no “perversion” in Letourneau’s history and that she hadn’t had similar relationships with other young boys.
“That is my wife and she is my best friend,” he told Dr. Oz. “And we had our kids together, and we did get married. And we had a whole life together.”
Still, Mary Kay Letourneau’s death will do little to silence the critics of her life choices. At age 34, she pursued a romantic and sexual relationship with a young boy. And nothing — not even the threat of prison — would stop her.
“Am I sorry he’s the father of my children, and that we’re married and this is the man of my life?” she asked in a 2018 interview. “No, I’m not.”
After reading about Mary Kay Letourneau’s death at the age of 58, learn about the tragic death of Dustin Diamond, the “Saved by the Bell” actor who died of lung cancer at the age of just 44. Or see how Bob Marley died after delaying cancer treatment that could have prolonged his life.
