Thin Ice

by Frank Coffey

  Because of her personality. Once again, it seemed that Tonya Harding was proving to be her own worst enemy.

  Finally, the USFSA, after consulting with officials at the rink, agreed to give Harding a bye into the nationals. If the alleged death threat was indeed designed to spare Harding an unwanted performance, it had worked perfectly. The Northwest Pacific Championships went on without her.

  Although it seems ludicrous that anyone would stage her own death threat simply to avoid the minor indignity of skating in a qualifier, it came as no great shock to those scheduled to compete against Harding.

  “None of this surprised us,” one skater told The Oregonian. “We were all wondering how she was going to get out of the competition. She thought it was below her to do it. She was not in competitive shape. A convenient thing happened. The thing is, she would have beat all of us.”

  Seven

  The pictures lie. The image is false.

  You’ve seen them, the medal winners posing together for the camera, arms draped around each other, each thrilled by the other’s success. One big happy family.

  You’ve seen them standing together, awaiting the judges’ scores. They are in first and second place, and when the numbers come up, one will be champion, one will be runner-up. One will be an Olympic gold medalist, the other will be … quickly forgotten. Then it happens. The audience roars. The women turn to each other, embrace, smiling all the time, smiling so hard their makeup looks as though it might crack.

  They must be polite.

  They must be supportive.

  They must hide their true feelings, because they are figure skaters and the world is watching and millions of dollars are on the line and they are expected to uphold the integrity of their sport, even if that integrity is an illusion.

  Mostly, the image of camaraderie is a charade. A gimmick. Figure skating could hardly be more different from traditional team sports where group interdependence is crucial to victory. Figure skaters do not have especially warm feeling for one another. In truth, they barely know each other. They train hundreds, maybe thousands of miles apart. They see each other only a few times a year, at select competitions, and even then they have very little to say to each other, because they are, if not enemies, at least opponents, striving for the same sparkling, elusive prize.

  They have sacrificed childhood and adolescence and even part of adulthood in pursuit of gold. They have chosen to exist in a strange world where success is dependent not only on grace and speed and athleticism and artistry, but on choosing just the right costume and hairstyle. A world like few others in sports, because in sports victory is supposed to be an objective thing: the team with the most points wins; the runner with the fastest time wins.

  Skating operates differently. In skating the standards are completely subjective. It is as much theater as sport.

  If you’re a skater you accept the arbitrary nature of the game because you understand that it is precisely that air of drama that makes skating the glamour sport of the winter Olympics. Figure skaters are actresses, and the best actresses are paid handsomely.

  How do you measure the value of a gold medal? What is it worth? Hundreds of thousands of dollars?

  A million dollars?

  Ten million?

  Think about it. Sponsorship deals. Endorsements. Lucrative private contracts with ice shows and professional competitions.

  Would you risk everything to get a piece of that? Would you hurt someone to get a piece of that? Would you close your eyes if someone close to you was willing to hurt someone to help you get a piece of that? Of course, it would have to be the perfect act of sabotage. You’d have to get away with it cleanly, because even being suspected of such a repugnant act would probably leave you branded as a leper by the advertising world.

  But what if you could get away with it?

  What if no one found out?

  What if …?

  Between 1991 and 1994, Tonya Harding reportedly earned more than $200,000 from her figure skating. Minneapolis promoter Tom Collins told the Portland Oregonian he paid Harding $150,000 for appearances at his ice skating shows. Harding also received money through private donations, including $20,000 from New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, a big booster of the Olympic movement; $12,500 from the U.S. Olympic Committee; and $10,000 from the Tonya Harding Fan Club.

  But figure skating is a costly endeavor, and the bills added up in the Harding household. Divorce records indicate that Harding and Gillooly fought bitterly last year over $9,000 sitting in a trust fund with the USFSA. In January, 1993, Credit Control Corporation sued Harding for an unpaid phone bill of $544.80.

  When Harding and Gillooly applied for a Visa card at the Safeway Northwest Central Credit Union in November, 1991, Gillooly reported his monthly income from the Oregon Liquor Commission as $1,803.76. Harding, a “self-employed figure skater,” listed her gross income as $1,800 a month. Two years later, in November of 1993, the credit union sued the couple in Multnomah County District Court to collect an unpaid Visa bill of $1,984. Also last year, Harding was evicted from her apartment after accumulating $1,095 in back rent.

  Money was a problem for Tonya Harding. There is no doubt about that. Small wonder she said the wrong thing—again—when she returned triumphantly from the nationals in January, 1994. She was asked about being a champion, and about the Olympics, and even about Nancy Kerrigan.

  Harding’s response:

  “What I’m really thinking about are dollar signs.”

  So … what if you could get away with it? What if you thought you could get away with it? Even for just a little while? What would you do? Would you be tempted to do something crazy? Something foolish?

  A few years back Robert Goldman, a former athlete and a scientist specializing in sports medicine, asked a peculiar question of 198 world-class athletes:

  “Would you take a pill, guaranteed to help you achieve an Olympic gold medal, even if you also knew that it would kill you in five years?”

  More than half of the athletes said they would.

  Eight

  By late January, 1994, the question of what Tonya Harding knew about the assault on Nancy Kerrigan, and when she knew it, remained unanswered. Authorities had, however, largely pieced together the puzzle. They had charted the actions of the four men arrested, uncovered a pathetically obvious paper and electronic trail, received confessions from Eckardt, Stant and Smith, and reportedly were prepared to bring charges against Harding.

  The biggest flaw in their case was Eckardt himself. It was he who gave investigators the biggest share of the information needed to break the case. It was he who began pointing a finger at Gillooly and, later, at Harding. Much of what Eckardt told officials was corroborated after intense investigation of the facts. Nevertheless, Eckardt’s credibility remained a central issue.

  Described by virtually all who knew him as “a blowhard,” Eckardt was a big man with big dreams—fantasies, really. He was a computer hacker who, at twenty-six, still lived with his parents and yet fancied himself a player in the daring fields of espionage and counter-terrorism. He threw out phrases like, “asset-protection strategies,” made arcane references to attitudes toward penology in the 12th and 14th century, and described himself as “engaged worldwide in executive protection.”

  His résumé included such outrageous lies as “successfully tracked and targeted terrorist cells throughout the Middle East, Central America and Europe; coordinated and conducted successful hostage retrieval operations.” According to the dates on the résumé, coupled with Eckardt’s birth certificate, he would have accomplished these feats of derring-do when he was between 16 and 20 years of age.

  Even when arrested for soliciting the services of a prostitute, Eckardt remained the fabulist, telling the police he was working undercover on a computer burglary case. (The 1987 case ended with Eckardt pleading guilty and paying a $125 fine.)

  He was a high school and community college dropout who liked to pretend that
he could arrange protection or mayhem; that he could move illegal goods, including drugs, if necessary. He was fascinated by guns and survivalism and wealth, and yet he ran his small business, World Bodyguard Services, Inc., out of his parents’ house.

  He was also a boyhood chum of Jeff Gillooly.

  “We’re very much aware of the fact that his credibility is at issue,” Eckardt’s attorney, W. Mark McKnight, told the Portland Oregonian in late January, while awaiting word on whether a grand jury would indict his client, or any of the others. “Corroborating facts are going to be necessary or he’ll be torn apart.”

  Multnomah County District Attorney Michael D. Schrunk acknowledged Eckardt’s gift for spinning yarns, but he also said, “Everything Eckardt has told us so far has checked out.”

  So they knew what happened. Or they thought they knew what happened. At the very least, they had a story, a sick, twisted story involving a band of hopelessly amateur thugs—the Gang That Couldn’t Kneecap—trying to pull off a caper that had virtually no chance of success.

  Based on court records, statements, interviews, affidavits and reports from newspapers and magazines around the country (Eckardt granted extensive interviews to the Portland Oregonian and ABC’s Prime Time Live), the story unfolded as follows:

  On or around December 16, 1993 (Eckardt said he wasn’t sure of the precise date), Jeff Gillooly visited Eckardt at his parents’ house. They had known each other for years, and Eckardt had periodically provided “security” services for Gillooly, though those services usually amounted to no more than a few words of advice, and he was never paid by Gillooly. Sometimes, Gillooly would take Eck-ardt out to dinner to show his appreciation, but it never went beyond that.

  This time it did.

  Gillooly began talking about his ex-wife and Nancy Kerrigan, and about how much easier it would be for Tonya if Kerrigan were somehow unable to skate in the nationals. He asked Eckardt if, as a supposed expert in such matters, he might know anyone willing and able to hurt Kerrigan. Eckardt did not even know who Kerrigan was at the time, but Gillooly explained and Eckardt, impressed that Gillooly trusted him with this sort of request, said, Yeah, he could probably find someone.

  According to Eckardt, Gillooly tried to lure him into the scheme with promises of fame and power and riches. The theory was that if someone attacked Kerrigan at the Olympic Trials, the entire sporting world—still scared out of its mind after the 1993 stabbing of Monica Seles—would respond with blind panic. Everyone would insist upon hiring a bodyguard … maybe 10 bodyguards. Eckardt, of course, would benefit the most. He would specialize in protecting skaters, and Harding would be his first client. (In truth, he had never before served as her bodyguard. The first time he would appear with Harding in public was upon her arrival in Portland after the nationals. Then, she said, she had hired a bodyguard out of fear for her safety in light of the attack on Kerrigan.)

  It was a crazy plan, but it made sense to Eckardt. He, too, saw dollar signs. He would get rich. He would be famous, just as he’d always dreamed. He and Gillooly agreed to set the plot in motion. Eckardt said he would make a few phone calls, see what he could find out. And then he just sort of forgot about the whole thing.

  One day, though, on approximately the 20th of December, Eckardt received a call from Derrick Smith, a one-time resident of Corbett, Oregon, who had recently moved to Phoenix. Like Gillooly, Smith, 29, had been a friend of Eckardt’s for several years. The two shared an interest in paramilitary activities, and had even discussed the possibility of one day launching an “anti-terrorist” training academy. His home in Corbett, according to neighbors, was an exercise in paramilitary madness, with barbed-wire and bent-tree boobytraps surrounding the property.

  Smith and Eckardt had gotten to know each other when they were both taking classes at Mount Hood Community College in Gresham, Oregon. Neither graduated, and while Eckardt set up his own shop, Smith went to work for Developmental Systems, Inc., of Milwaukie, Oregon, a company that employed and trained mentally retarded adults. By most accounts, Smith was good at the work. He was quiet and patient, although some observers felt his behavior bordered on the anti-social.

  “He did some wonderful things while he was here,” Tom Cherry, the company’s manager, said of Smith in an interview with the Portland Oregonian. “I’ve seen him do some wonderful things with people who would be most people’s ‘throwaway people.’ I’m fond of him. I mean, there’s a piece of him, if not all of him, that’s a real good human being.”

  Smith and his wife, Suzanne, had often said they disliked the weather in Oregon, and most people who knew them assumed that was why they moved to Phoenix. But Smith had also talked about doing work for some people who planned to start a paramilitary camp in Arizona, and that was his actual reason for relocating. He had, on several occasions, told acquaintances that he would be doing work for a Swiss company, known as Blackstone, which supposedly specialized in counterterrorism.

  Eckardt, a notorious talker, had also mentioned Blackstone to friends. In fact, he listed the company as a former employer on his résumé.

  When Smith called that day he had no notion of the conversation between Gillooly and Eckardt; rather, he had a scheme of his own. He wanted to know whether Eckardt was interested in coming to Phoenix to help set up an anti-terrorist training camp. They chatted about that possibility for a while, and eventually the subject turned to other business. Did Eckardt have any irons in the fire? Smith wanted to know. Eckardt thought for a moment before revealing his chat with Gillooly.

  He explained the rationale, how by disabling Kerrigan the path to Olympic gold would be much smoother for Tonya Harding. Gillooly thought that would improve his standing in his ex-wife’s eyes, inasmuch as it would surely make her a millionaire. It also would allow Eckardt—and anyone who helped him—to become bodyguards to the stars. Moreover, Eckardt said, Gillooly had mentioned that the payoff would be substantial in other ways. For example, while he and Gillooly had settled on a figure of $6,500 to carry out the hit (an absurdly low figure for such dirty work), the assailants stood to gain considerably more by receiving up to ten percent of Harding’s future endorsements.

  It all sounded pretty good to Smith. He told Eckardt he could handle the job. He would enlist the services of his nephew, Shane Stant.

  Stant, like Eckardt and Smith, was a survivalist and weapons enthusiast. He was also a rugged, sometimes hostile young man who carried 225 pounds on his six-foot frame and had scars on his face and head from beatings he had endured as a boy. He looked like a body-builder, which was precisely what he was.

  “He bulked up during high school,” Greg Schoenberg, youth pastor at Corbett Christian Church, told The Oregonian. “He seemed to me like a kid who just loved violence. He was always looking for a fight.”

  Sometimes he found one; sometimes he just found trouble. In 1991, for example, Stant and two friends were arrested for allegedly taking four cars from the parking lot of an auto dealership and going for a joyride. He spent 15 days in jail.

  Stant was born in Corbett, spent several years as a child in California with his father, and then returned to Oregon when he was in sixth grade. He began lifting weights when he was a junior in high school and as his physique grew, so did his confidence.

  “There were a lot of rumors about steroids. You just don’t get that big that fast by lifting weights alone,” Tony Lucky, a former classmate, told Knight-Ridder. “He was always talking about becoming a professional weightlifter and then becoming a bodyguard for wealthy people.”

  “He was the quintessential bully,” observed another classmate. “He wasn’t very nice. He had a hard time adapting to what other people wanted, what other people expected of him.”

  What Smith and Eckardt expected—what they wanted—was plain enough: They wanted Shane Stant to track Nancy Kerrigan down and hurt her. Just how badly she was to be hurt had not yet been determined.

  A few days after Christmas, 1993, Derrick Smith and Shane Stant (w
ho had lived with Derrick and Suzanne Smith in Corbett, and had moved with them to Phoenix to help Smith gain a foothold in the paramilitary business) arrived at the home of Shawn Eckardt’s parents in a black Porsche 944. They wanted to set up a meeting with Gillooly. Eckardt made a call and they agreed to get together the next day. The meeting would be held at World Bodyguard Services, Inc., which might have been a problem, except that Eckardt’s parents were not expected to be home.

  They would have privacy.

  They could arrange the maiming of a figure skater without anyone knowing about it.

  Nine

  It was Derrick Smith’s idea to tape the meeting. He convinced Eckardt that Gillooly couldn’t be completely trusted, and that the only way to ensure his loyalty was to record the entire plot. If there was evidence, they’d all have to keep silent. If one talked, they’d all be caught. This was insurance. That’s what Smith said. What he was really thinking, Eckardt would later discover, was that this would also be a way to blackmail Gillooly; a way to guarantee that the bodyguard business would get off the ground, and the ten percent from Tonya’s endorsements would arrive on time each month. Smith was no fool. He knew what he was doing.

  Or so it seemed.

  Gillooly was blind to the ways of the underworld, too. He walked into the meeting an hour late and immediately started talking openly about what he wanted done. Not specifically, but openly. He never noticed Eckardt’s tape recorder on a desk, thinly disguised by a sheet of paper towel.

  “We made the introductions and I sat down and Derrick told Jeff that he had come up from Phoenix to talk to him about his problem, and how he was the kind of guy who takes care of people’s problems,” Eckardt told The Oregonian, in an interview that closely matched his affidavit. “And then Jeff told them what he wanted done. He said he was looking for someone to make sure that Nancy Kerrigan didn’t skate in the nationals.”