Thin Ice

by Frank Coffey

  The human trail was now nearly as long and plain as the paper and electronic trail, and it wasn’t even complete.

  Approximately one week before the attack on Kerrigan, Eckardt and another classmate, Sarah Bergman, got together for a cup of coffee at Shari’s Restaurant in Gresham. They had been friends since August, when they enrolled together in Crowe’s paralegal course. Eckardt had grown fond of Bergman. He phoned her virtually every day and often tried to impress her with his cloak-and-dagger stories. She liked him, found him amusing, but she also thought he was a bit odd.

  On this particular day, Eckardt was in top form. He talked about Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding and the figure skating championships. He talked about money and power. It was a rambling, unfocused story, and Bergman found herself tuning it out at times, but she understood the essence of it: Kerrigan was to be knocked out of the nationals. The reason, as she understood it, was to make Jeff Gillooly look like a hero in the eyes of his ex-wife. Bergman also came away with the feeling that Harding was aware of the plot, but she couldn’t be sure. Eckardt wasn’t clear.

  What was clear was the payoff figure: $55,000.

  “Shawn was one to tell stories,” Bergman told The Oregonian. “You didn’t know whether to believe him or not.”

  She didn’t. Not at first. It never occurred to Bergman to phone the police.

  On Saturday morning, five days before the attack on Kerrigan, Bergman stopped by Eckardt’s house to use his computer. The phone rang while she was there. Eckardt answered and began talking. Bergman could hear only his side of the conversation, but she picked up certain words and phrases: “Detroit,” “plane tickets.”

  Two days later she visited Eckardt again. This time he was upset. He was scared. He told her he was having trouble getting in touch with the two men from Arizona, the two men he’d paid $55,000 to assault Nancy Kerrigan. He accused the men of taking off with his money. He became enraged, at one point even punching a wall.

  Bergman found the episode at once amusing and disturbing. For one thing, she couldn’t imagine where Eckardt, who lived with his parents and drove a 1974 Mercury with missing hubcaps, would possibly get $55,000. She began to wonder if perhaps he was dealing drugs on the side. She remembered a previous visit with Eckardt, during which he had asked her if she knew anyone who might be interested in buying a pound of marijuana. To demonstrate his seriousness, he had pulled out a shoebox filled with what “looked like something he raked up from his lawn.”

  Another time he had asked Bergman if she knew anyone who wanted to buy a pound of crystal (methamphetamine). And more than once he’d displayed rolls of hundred dollar bills.

  But on the day they met at Shari’s Restaurant, Eckardt had told Bergman he had only $35 to his name. He was broke.

  None of it made sense.

  That was Shawn Eckardt, though. He was a riddle.

  Two days later, when Bergman next ran into Eckardt, he seemed relieved. He smiled and laughed and told her everything was fine. Then, on January 6, she turned on her television and saw Nancy Kerrigan lying on the floor, screaming … and she wondered. She talked to a few friends, who advised her to call the FBI. An agent wanted to meet her in a public place, however, and Bergman balked. By this time she was frightened.

  Another friend had told her he’d overheard Eckardt saying that he could have Bergman killed.

  What could she do?

  She could do exactly what Eugene Saunders did: talk to Gary Crowe, the man who taught her paralegal class at Pioneer Pacific College. He knew about such things. He could be trusted. Crowe met with Bergman shortly thereafter and immediately put her in touch with the proper authorities.

  Another break—the first break, actually—came on January 7, the day after the assault, when a woman who refused to identify herself called Detroit police chief Benny Napolean to say she had heard about a tape recording made some weeks earlier. On the tape, a group of men, including Jeff Gillooly and Shawn Eckardt, talked about hurting Nancy Kerrigan. The woman had initially dismissed the plot as a joke, but when she heard about the assault at Cobo Arena, she thought someone should know what she knew.

  Her story was added to the burgeoning pile of evidence in the attack on Nancy Kerrigan—and all of it was leaning toward Shawn Eric Eckardt.

  Eleven

  “I don’t know where they got the name,” Eckardt told Gillooly. “I didn’t tell anybody.”

  They were still in the car. Gillooly was trying to figure out what had gone wrong; Eckardt was trying to stay calm.

  They arrived at Al Harding’s house. Tonya said goodbye to her father and drove off in the truck with Gillooly. Eckardt followed with their luggage. At his house in Beavercreek, Oregon, Gillooly still seemed distracted. He talked about the assault, and about the FBI. He was scared and angry.

  “Jeff kept saying how we were all going to go to jail,” Eckardt told The Oregonian. “And, you know, I’m just sitting there listening, and Tonya was getting upset. And then she started coming up with these excuses for the acts that she had done.

  “She had made several phone calls back to (the arena in) Boston to try to find out how to get ahold of Kerrigan. And she said she was going to use the excuse that she had this poster with herself, Kristi Yamaguchi and Nancy Kerrigan on it. She had signed the poster, and Yamaguchi had signed the poster, but she needed Kerrigan’s signature on it because she was going to send it to a fan.”

  Gillooly, too, was trying to think of excuses for his actions. But what? What could he say? The FBI knew about Smith. They knew a man named Derrick was in Detroit and that he was somehow linked to Harding and Gillooly and the attack on Kerrigan. Of course, Gillooly had no idea then that Eckardt had essentially already rolled over.

  He struck upon a possible alibi.

  “He wanted me to tell the FBI that I had surreptitiously sent Smith back on a sort of marketing expedition,” Eckardt told The Oregonian. “To market to Claire Ferguson (of the USFSA) and some of the other figure skaters. And he told me to make sure I told the FBI that I did not tell Jeff because I didn’t want to (anger him). ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s get ahold of Smith and get our stories straight.’ ”

  There was just one problem. Actually, there were a lot of problems, but the first was covering their tracks. They couldn’t call Smith from Gillooly’s house—they had to find a pay phone. And they had to get a disposable credit card, which, at one-thirty in the morning, would be difficult. After driving around for a while, they found a pay phone at the Jubitz Truck Stop on Marine Drive. They called Smith and discussed the alibi.

  The following day, FBI agents asked Eugene Saunders to arrange a meeting with Eckardt. They asked him to wear a wire, which he did. Eckardt suspected something, though, and did not implicate himself. Gillooly, meanwhile, told an FBI agent in Detroit that Derrick Smith was working with Eckardt to set up a security service for ice skaters. He also publicly acknowledged that he was under investigation by authorities, but vehemently denied any involvement.

  On the morning of January 12 Eckardt’s mother woke him. Tonya Harding had called and asked him to get out to her house as quickly as possible; it was an emergency. When Eckardt arrived, Harding and Gillooly confronted him with a front-page story in The Oregonian detailing the first dirty news of the scandal: the possibility that Harding’s entourage was involved in the attack.

  “Jeff said, ‘We’ve got to get some damage control. I’m great at damage control,’ ” Eckardt would later tell The Oregonian. Eckardt also said that Harding seemed relatively calm.

  “She told me that she had completely convinced herself that she had done nothing wrong.”

  Eckardt wasn’t nearly so confident. He was scared. He understood the situation completely. The police knew much more than Gillooly and Harding realized, and it was only a matter of time before they’d all be in jail. The game was up. Gillooly and Harding were hanging by their fingertips over an ever-widening chasm.

  That night two FBI agents visited Eckardt a
t his house. They asked him a few gentle questions and he stuck to his story.

  There was a pause in the conversation.

  One of the agents asked Eckardt if he understood that it was a violation of the law to lie to a federal agent. Eckardt said that he did.

  There was another pause.

  “Then why don’t you tell us what really happened?”

  And that was it. Shawn Eric Eckardt bared his soul. He told them the whole sordid story. It was a real whopper, too, better than any he had shared with his friends over the years. This time, though, when he was through, no one laughed. No one rolled their eyes. This time they asked him to sign a statement, slapped a pair of handcuffs on him, and took him downtown.

  On Thursday, January 13, Shawn Eckardt and Derrick Smith were formally arrested in Portland and charged with conspiracy to commit second-degree assault, an offense punishable by a maximum sentence of ten years in prison and a $10,000 fine, though a term of one to three years seemed more likely.

  On January 14, Shane Stant surrendered to FBI agents in Phoenix. Like Smith and Eckardt, he signed a confession.

  On January 16, Nancy Kerrigan returned to the ice for the first time, saying that her knee was stiff, but overall she felt good and fully expected to compete in the Olympics.

  That same day, the U.S. Olympic Committee, under pressure to make a decision on whether to remove Tonya Harding from the figure skating team, issued a statement. It did not specifically mention Harding, but did say the committee was determined to select a team that was “made up of America’s finest young men and women who cherish the Olympic dream and who earn the right to represent the United States in a fashion highlighted by good sportsmanship, fair play, strong skills and a dedication to the rules of the game.”

  On January 17, Tonya Harding resumed training during a midnight session in Portland.

  On January 18, an arrest warrant was issued for Jeff Gillooly. The same day, FBI agents questioned Harding for more than ten hours. During a break in questioning, Dennis Rawlinson, the husband of Diane Rawlinson and also one of Harding’s attorneys, issued a statement in which Harding announced, once again, that she was separating from Gillooly, although she still believed he was innocent.

  On January 19, Jeff Gillooly was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit second-degree assault.

  On January 21, Tonya Harding skated in front of a crowd of more than 400 people—many wearing pink “We Believe in Tonya” buttons—at the Clackamas Town Center rink. There were placards that read: “Tonya Harding Is Back! Deal With It, America!” Her every move was met with applause. She continued to deny any knowledge of the attack on Nancy Kerrigan.

  Over the course of the next week, news broke slowly. Gillooly spent nearly two full days meeting with investigators. Reports surfaced that he was considering cutting a deal in exchange for testimony against his ex-wife. Authorities also reportedly were close to issuing an arrest warrant for Tonya Harding.

  Meanwhile, the United States Figure Skating Association and the U.S. Olympic Committee held numerous closed-door meetings in an attempt to devise a strategy for handling the delicate case. Harding had qualified for the team; she had earned the right to go to Lillehammer. If they now tried to deny her that right, when she had not even been charged with a crime, let alone convicted, she would almost certainly take them to court. An ugly public battle would then become even uglier—and no one wanted that.

  As the month of January drew to a close, the deadline for a Multnomah County grand jury report was twice pushed back, first to February 3, and then to February 18—six days after the start of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway.

  And three days before it would be too late to replace Tonya Harding on the United States Olympic Team.

  Twelve

  Tonya Harding skated for only 20 minutes on the morning of Thursday, January 27. She left the ice abruptly, seemingly shaken. Less than an hour later, accompanied by attorney Robert Weaver, she appeared at a hastily arranged news conference at a Portland athletic club.

  Wearing blue-and-white sweats from the 1991 World Championships, and with her hair pulled back in a loose, girlish ponytail that made her appear much younger and more vulnerable than her 23 years, Harding stepped up to a microphone. At the time, no one knew why she had suddenly agreed to speak with reporters. It was known, however, that on the other side of town, Jeff Gillooly was undergoing his second consecutive day of intensive interrogation. Whether the two events were connected was anyone’s guess.

  There would be only a statement, Weaver had said. Tonya would not, could not, answer any questions. Please understand.

  Harding stood at the podium, her face almost blocked by the cluster of microphones in front of her. In her trembling hands she held a prepared statement. As she started to speak, her eyes welled with tears and her lips quivered. In the background, lights flashed, cameras clicked and whirred, capturing the drama—capturing, perhaps, the denouement of a story so strange it seemed torn from a supermarket tabloid.

  “I would like to begin by saying how sorry I am about what happened to Nancy Kerrigan. I am embarrassed and ashamed to think that anyone close to me could be involved. I am disappointed not to have the opportunity to compete against Nancy at the nationals. I have a great deal of respect for Nancy. My victory at the nationals was unfulfilling without the challenge of skating against Nancy.

  “I had no prior knowledge of the planned assault on Nancy Kerrigan. I am responsible, however, for failing to report things I learned about the assault when I returned home from the nationals. Many of you will be unable to forgive me for that. It will be difficult to forgive myself.

  “When I returned home Monday, January 10th, 1994, I was exhausted but still focused on the national championships. Within the next few days I learned that some persons that were close to me may have been involved in the assault. My first reaction was one of disbelief, and the disbelief was followed by shock and fear. I have since reported this information to the authorities. Although my lawyers tell me that my failure to immediately report this information is not a crime, I know I have let you down, but I have also let myself down.

  “But I still want to represent my country in Lillehammer, Norway, next month. Despite my mistakes and my rough edges, I have done nothing to violate the standards of excellence and sportsmanship that are expected in an Olympic athlete.

  “Nancy Kerrigan and I can show the world two different types of figure skating. I look forward to being on the team with her. I have devoted my entire life to one objective: winning an Olympic gold medal for my country. This is my last chance. I ask only for your understanding and the opportunity to represent my country with the best figure skating performance of my life.

  “Thank you.”

  When it was over there was only one question, from the one reporter who ignored Weaver’s demand that there could be no questions. His voice came from the back of the room, loudly, clearly.

  “WHAT ABOUT JEFF?”

  There was no answer. Harding was already on her way out of the room.

  After that it was a matter of deciphering the statement. Was it a plea of innocence or guilt? Or both? Clearly, she had asked for forgiveness. She had fairly begged for her spot on the U.S. Olympic team. She had said she wanted to win a gold medal for her country, but more than a few observers would suggest that she was digging for another sort of gold, and her country had nothing to do with it.

  It was her lot in life now to endure the jokes and the criticism and the back-stabbing. If some people felt she was a victim, others felt she was a criminal. Worse, even. She was Amy Fisher on ice. And now she had to deal with it.

  Shortly after the press conference in Portland, word came down that the United States Figure Skating Association had formed a five-person panel to examine the Harding case. The panel was scheduled to meet twice the following week before presenting its recommendation.

  On Thursday afternoon, the U.S. Olympic Committee also expressed an o
pinion, and it did not seem to demonstrate much sympathy for Tonya Harding. A statement released by USOC executive director Harvey Schiller was carefully worded.

  And it was cold.

  “The United States Olympic Committee is deeply concerned with statements made today by Tonya Harding relative to her stated knowledge of the attack on Nancy Kerrigan at the national championships.

  “We have been advised by the USFSA that it has appointed a hearing panel to investigate this and all other issues related to the attack on Nancy Kerrigan. In addition, the USFSA has indicated it will forward the names of 22 skating athletes to us on Sunday (January 30) for the purpose of submission of the official entries for the Olympic Winter Games competition, and the list will include Tonya Harding’s name.

  “As a matter of procedure we will submit those names to the Lillehammer Olympic organizing committee on Monday (January 31) under competition rules; however, the United States Olympic Committee is prepared under constitutional procedures to initiate any action deemed appropriate relative to any athlete entered in the Games. Changes in the skating rosters are permitted in each discipline well after the Monday entry date, and in the case of the ladies’ competition, until February 21.”

  Three thousand miles away, outside Boston, Nancy Kerrigan skated. Painlessly, confidently.

  On the subject of Tonya Harding, she had no comment.

  Epilogue

  As this book goes to press, Tonya Harding has still not been charged with any crime; however, developments in the investigation have prompted a flood of reports indicating that her arrest may be imminent.

  They include:

  • On Friday, January 28, a Detroit television station reported that it had obtained phone records showing that ten phone calls to Shawn Eckardt’s home were charged to Harding’s personal telephone credit card on January 4 and again on January 6, the day Kerrigan was assaulted.