The Saga of Letourneau and Family

Your article on ex-John Bircher John Schmitz and current cradle-robber Mary Kay Letourneau was an eye-opener (“The Fall From Spyglass Hill,” April 30).

With a mistress and illegitimate children, Schmitz should win an award as perhaps the most hypocritical politician ever. His daughter Letourneau has raped a sixth-grader repeatedly and is bearing the boy’s offspring in prison.

Schmitz and his dysfunctional brood show the all-too-common results of the Right’s “family values.”

ROBERT SCHMIDT

Culver City

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I commend Pamela Warrick’s “The Fall From Spyglass Hill.” While not justifying Mary Kay Letourneau’s behavior, Warrick gives us a responsible look into the possible triggers for Letourneau’s bipolar disorder, an illness that causes its victims to recklessly take their families, friends and communities on a devastating roller coaster ride that makes no sense to the rational world.

Until now, talk shows and many seemingly responsible press outlets have chosen to judge Letourneau for her behavior without giving insight into the disease.

If those members of the media would spend less time focusing on the titillating details of a woman gone astray and more time helping us to understand the nature of this mental illness and its outcomes when left untreated, more people might realize the truth behind Julia Moore’s statement that, in this case, “morality is going to begin with a pill.”

MAURA J. CALLAHAN

Sierra Madre