Fire on Ice

by Oregonian Staff

  9

  The Conspiracy Unravels

  Shane Stant was a powerful enough man that he could do plenty of damage to a five-foot-four figure skater with his bare hands, but he had brought a weapon with him to Detroit. Called an Asp baton, it was a black wand that telescoped out with a whip-like motion of the hand. He had bought the lethal-looking weapon at a store called Spy Headquarters in Mesa, Arizona.

  Stant awoke at 7 a.m. on January 6. He dressed in a dark brown shirt, black jeans, brown hiking boots, a black leather jacket, and a black baseball cap. He tucked the Asp into his pants and pulled on a pair of black leather gloves. He carried a note that Eckardt had put together, reading, “All skating whores will die. No one can shut me off.” The note included the names of several elite skaters, including Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding. Stant planned to drop the note after he hit Kerrigan so that investigators would think the attack was the work of a deranged fan.

  Derrick Smith drove Stant to the Cobo Ice Arena, where they plotted their escape plan for the first time. They pried the license plates off a car in a downtown Detroit parking garage and placed them over the license plates of their rental car. At the arena, Stant pointed out the doors he would leave through after the attack was accomplished. Smith parked near the doors and the two went into the Cobo Ice Arena. Stant sat near the skaters’ entrance. Smith found a seat on the opposite side of the rink.

  The pair knew when Kerrigan was practicing because Jeff Gillooly had told them after getting the times from Harding, Gillooly would later recount. They had considered doing the job in Kerrigan’s hotel room—first attacking her and then leaving her tied up with duct tape—and Harding had gotten the room number from a clerk, Gillooly said. But it was too far from the hotel elevators to the exit doors. The practice rink would be safer.

  Stant planned to signal Smith when Kerrigan took to the ice so that Derrick would know to get the car and have it ready. The pair watched as one group of skaters, including Tonya, practiced. It wasn’t until late in the session when the announcer gave her name and she began practicing her program that Smith figured out which skater was Tonya. After a short break, the second group of skaters were ready to practice. Shortly before 2 p.m., the announcer began reading the names of the skaters. When Kerrigan’s name was announced, and Kerrigan stepped onto the ice, Stant stood up. It was the signal. Smith left the arena.

  The skaters practiced for about forty-five minutes. Kerrigan was one of the last to leave the ice. She stopped at the entry gate to put on plastic blade protectors. An ABC cameraman, filming the practice as part of the network’s coverage of the championships, followed her as she walked toward a blue curtain that led to the dressing areas. So did Stant. The cameraman set down his camera and Stant slipped behind him on the right. He walked past two men who were talking. Ahead, Kerrigan had stopped to talk to a reporter.

  Stant took the baton in his right hand and the note in his left and walked quickly up to Kerrigan. The skater instinctively took a step back as the stranger approached, but Stant swung the baton, striking her about an inch above her right knee. Kerrigan immediately fell to the ground, screaming. The blow was glancing, however, and Stant hit with only about half the force he could have used. He told Smith later that he knew he hadn’t hurt Kerrigan badly because he didn’t hear the popping noise of a bone breaking.

  Stant moved past the shrieking Kerrigan, dropping the note as he broke into a run toward the doors he had seen on his earlier survey of the hall. As he neared the doors, he saw that they were chained together. Panicked, Stant charged through the bottom of the door like a football tackle, popping the Plexiglas out of its frame and sending himself sprawling onto the sidewalk. From behind, he heard someone shout, “Somebody stop him.”

  Nearby, a large line of people waited for a bus. Stant scrambled off the pavement and began running, knocking down one man who tried to step in his way. As he ran, he threw the baton under a car, where its landing was muffled by five inches of freshly fallen snow.

  Smith and Stant had agreed that Smith would wait a few blocks away at a post office. Stant would run to the post office after the attack. But Smith parked the car only about one hundred fifty yards from the doors Stant had planned to escape through. When he saw someone being pushed, he assumed Stant had made it out. Stant ran down the sidewalk toward the post office—and away from Smith who had to drive after Stant.

  Stant looked back. No one had followed him.

  After getting rid of the stolen license plates at a gas station, Smith and Stant headed back to their motel room. Gillooly and Eckardt already had made arrangements to wire $1,300 to Detroit, and late that night Smith took a cab to a Western Union office to pick it up. When he returned to the motel, Smith bought some beer and reserved tickets on a flight to Phoenix the next day. The pair had their alibi, if they needed it. They would tell anyone who asked that they had been hired to watch Harding. Her husband suspected her of infidelity, they would say.

  —

  The telephone woke Gillooly at about noon Thursday in Portland. It was Harding, calling from Detroit, Gillooly later told the FBI.

  “It happened,” Harding said.

  “What happened?” a groggy Gillooly asked.

  “Nancy. They did it,” she replied.

  Gillooly was surprised. “You’re kidding.”

  Harding wasn’t kidding. “Did they get away?” Gillooly asked.

  Harding didn’t know.

  Tonya described the attack to Gillooly much as her coach, Diane Rawlinson, had told her. Rawlinson was still at the rink when the assault occurred and had talked to Frank Carroll, the coach of Michelle Kwan, who had been nearby. Some man had come out of nowhere and hit Nancy in the leg with a club, an upset Rawlinson told Harding.

  Gillooly then broke the news to Eckardt over the telephone; afterward he withdrew $3,000 from his bank account and drove over to his friend’s house. Gillooly was worried about how Smith and Stant would get out of Detroit. Eckardt said his mother, Agnes, had taken care of the flight arrangements. All they had to do was wire the men $1,300. Agnes Eckardt knew all the details of the plot, Gillooly later told the FBI.

  On their way to wire the money, Eckardt spun a wild tale of the attack for Gillooly. Smith and Shane had beat up a journalist at a bar the night before and stolen his credential, Eckardt said. They took care of a security guard by wrapping him in duct tape. When Nancy Kerrigan came through the door, Shane had burst from a crowd of about one hundred people and had hit her on the knee cap three times and on the side of her leg twice. When she fell to the ground, he had hit her in the head with what Eckardt called a Cobra baton. While he struck her, Shane had shouted, “I spent twenty-nine hours on a bus for you, bitch,” Eckardt claimed. And when he ran out on the sidewalk, Stant had had to beat up one guy. Meanwhile, Derrick was standing nearby. He drew his gun and pretended to be an off-duty policeman, shouting, “Stop! Police!” as he chased Shane.

  —

  On Saturday, January 8, Gillooly flew to Detroit on a Delta Air Lines jet; he took a stack of Eckardt’s business cards with him. He had promised Eckardt that he would pass them around; World Bodyguard Services Inc. was bound to get business.

  Gillooly got to watch Harding skate a beautiful long program, winning the national title and assuring herself the coveted position on the Olympic team. Gillooly was standing in a hallway with Harding after the victory when they were approached by Detective Dennis Richardson of the Detroit Police Department. Richardson was interested in talking to the couple when they had a few free moments Sunday.

  That night, Gillooly caught a glimpse of Kerrigan. Suddenly, he felt very small, he would say later.

  Gillooly met with Richardson at about 2:30 p.m. the next day. Richardson asked innocuous questions about figure skating, and the talk was interrupted several times because Richardson had to make telephone calls. Once, when Richardson returned from a call, he brought two men and introduced one as Dan Sobolewski of the Detroit office of the FBI. Th
e agent wondered if Harding had a bodyguard service. Gillooly gave him Eckardt’s name and information about World Bodyguard Services.

  Abruptly, one of the men asked Gillooly who “Derrick” was. “I just about shit my pants,” Gillooly said later. But he tried to hide his surprise. Gillooly told the men he didn’t know a Derrick. The interview wound down, and Gillooly signed a statement. One of the men said they wanted to speak to Harding on Monday. Before they left, Richardson smiled at Gillooly. You should be proud, he said. “Behind every great woman is a great man.”

  That night, Gillooly called Eckardt and warned him to talk to Smith to make sure nothing had gone wrong.

  Gillooly fell into a restless sleep. He later told the FBI he woke in the middle of the night and wakened Harding. If the FBI asks about Derrick, he told her, she should say, “You mean Derrick at the ice rink?” and he would say, “That’s where I heard that name before.” Gillooly had decided he would give up Shawn if it meant protecting himself and Harding. Before sleep returned, Gillooly later told the FBI, Harding said, “We’re never going to get out of here, are we?”

  Richardson and Sobolewski came to the couple’s hotel room the next day. Richardson asked Harding several questions about figure skating but didn’t mention the name “Derrick.” Harding signed a statement saying she had no knowledge of the attack on Kerrigan. The two investigators gave Harding and Gillooly rides to the airport and said goodbye.

  —

  Jim Long had almost forgotten about the telephone message from someone named Crowe. Long, an investigative reporter for The Oregonian, had spent a wonderful, relaxing weekend in Seattle with his wife, Ruby. The two were first-time grandparents and had driven up to visit their new granddaughter for the first time. Long liked to just sit with the tiny Sorayah in his arms. On Saturday evening, holding the sleeping baby, he flipped on the television and happened to catch the final of the women’s figure skating championships.

  Long knew Harding was from Portland and rooted for her.

  “I didn’t know anything at all about ice skating, but I knew to cross my fingers when she headed into a difficult jump,” Long recalled. “When she landed it, I gave a little cheer—not loud enough to wake the baby. The thing that stuck in my mind was the way Tonya broke her stage-grin at the end of her last big jump and broke into a triumphant smile, knowing she probably had the medal. I was really glad for her.”

  When Long returned home Sunday, he had a message from the office to call a man named Crowe. Long tried the number, but no one answered, and the reporter wrote it off as one of the many off-beat calls he receives. Long was immersed in other work Monday morning when he remembered the message. He had to call Ruby at home for the number.

  This time when Long tried the number, Gary Crowe answered.

  Crowe, a longtime Portland private investigator with Billy Ray Cyrus looks and a media-savvy personality, had worked with Long almost twelve years earlier on a software copyright-infringement case. Now, Crowe wanted to give Long first crack at another story.

  Crowe taught part-time at Pioneer Pacific College, a small trade school south of Portland. Crowe had been approached by another teacher, a young minister named Eugene Saunders. Saunders was upset and needed to talk.

  A student at the school, Shawn Eckardt, had told Saunders about a plot to knock Kerrigan out of the championships. Eckardt played an audio tape—too garbled and poorly recorded to really understand, Saunders said—and identified Gillooly as one of the plotters. The other was a hired hit man from Phoenix.

  As Saunders related Eckardt’s description of the tape, the conspirators had debated what to do to Kerrigan. The plot was carried out as planned, Eckardt told Saunders. Now Eckardt was afraid that the hit men would come after him for more money, Crowe told Long.

  Long asked an editor for a few minutes to check out the story. It would go faster, he said, if he could borrow Dave Hogan, who covered the courts for the newspaper. The two were good friends who often played basketball together on Sunday morning pick-up games–the six-foot-three Long at power forward, the five-foot-eleven Hogan a lightening quick guard. Besides, the two already were working together investigating the loss of $20,000 from an evidence locker at the Portland FBI office. They could quickly check out Crowe’s story, then get back to their real work.

  Long, Hogan, and Abby Haight, a sportswriter who had covered the recent championships and the assault, gathered in a small meeting room, where Long told Crowe’s story. Long and Hogan half-expected Haight to laugh off the tale as too preposterous. She didn’t.

  “I could see that happening,” she said.

  Long and Hogan began the basic research into Eckardt and Gillooly. By early afternoon, they had a driver’s license, an address, and a telephone number for Eckardt. They wanted to talk to Eckardt but didn’t want to scare him off. The reporters decided Haight should call Eckardt to interview him about bodyguard services and, somehow, see if he would reveal anything about the plot. If Eckardt was really that frightened, maybe he’d tell all.

  Eckardt didn’t sound frightened when he returned Haight’s call. He was eager to talk about his work, and they agreed to meet an hour later at a bar in southeast Portland.

  The bar, attached to a “family” restaurant near a shopping mall, was almost empty when Haight walked in at 3 p.m. Eckardt, dressed in a dark suit, sat in the back facing the bar’s entrance, a cola and a pack of cigarettes on the table in front of him. His choice of tables was planned, he told Haight at the start of their conversation. He saw everyone who came into the bar, and his car—a beat-up 1976 Mercury four-door—waited just outside a nearby emergency door.

  For the next two hours Eckardt rambled on about threat assessments, risk evaluations, and observational psychology. As evening neared, a handful of bar patrons ordered drinks, watched a talk show or played video lottery games. Eckardt said he had been recruited by a security company out of college—where he claimed he had studied engineering—and now was the vice president of his own company, World Bodyguard Services. Eckardt talked about his jobs guarding celebrities in Europe, about how he helped Mideast governments battle terrorists and how he was shot at during the strike at the New York Daily News.

  What did he think of the Kerrigan attack, Haight asked.

  “I think it was some nut,” Eckardt said. “All I know is there’s a lot of weird people out there, and they do a lot of weird things.”

  He blasted the security at Detroit’s Cobo Ice Arena and nearby Joe Louis Arena, where the competition took place. “Where was somebody?” he asked. “In my opinion, security was lacking because it shouldn’t have occurred.” Midway through the interview, Haight asked Eckardt if he knew the FBI was looking into a plot in Portland to injure Kerrigan so Harding could win the skating championship and get on the U.S. Olympic team. Eckardt brushed past the question.

  But as Eckardt’s marathon talk wound down, Haight asked him to comment on rumors that he was involved in the plot. “That is absurd,” Eckardt said with a surprising lack of anger. “I would never get involved in anything like that. That would jeopardize my future, my career. I mean, that’s not something I could do or allow.”

  —

  Eckardt and Gillooly had driven through Portland to Gillooly’s mother’s house after Jeff and Tonya’s return from Detroit on Monday, January 10. In the car, Gillooly had relayed the gist of his interviews with Detroit authorities. “They asked me who Derrick was, and I just told them I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gillooly said.

  The two cooked up a new coverup, because they knew the questions weren’t going away. Eckardt agreed to tell the FBI that he had sent Derrick to Detroit to drum up business for World Bodyguard Services, Inc.; that he hadn’t told Jeff about it because he didn’t want Jeff to be upset; that it was only after the Kerrigan attack that Gillooly had contacted him to provide security for Harding when she returned from Detroit. Tell the FBI I paid you $3,500 on January 6 for bodyguard services, Gillooly told his friend. />
  When they arrived at Gillooly’s mother’s house, Harding was watching a video of herself skating at the championships. Gillooly went over the alibi with Harding, he later told the FBI. They could explain Harding’s calls to the Tony Kent Arena with the same story about getting Kerrigan’s autograph on a picture. Gillooly wanted to call Smith and make sure their stories were straight, so the three drove to a nearby gas station to buy a twenty-dollar “talk-and-toss” card. Eckardt slipped into a hotel to make the call, but Gillooly told him to find a less public telephone. They drove to a large department store, where Eckardt called Smith again and went over the story with the Phoenix man. Eckardt told Gillooly he would call Smith on Tuesday and go over the story again.

  —

  On Tuesday morning, Harding and Gillooly woke to the jangle of the telephone. Ann Schatz, a reporter for KOIN-TV in Portland, had received an anonymous letter implicating Jeff and Tonya in the assault. Schatz agreed to fax the letter to them; she wanted their comment. The letter arrived about the same time that Eckardt showed up. Gillooly was relieved when he saw the letter because it appeared so “stupid.” But the letter had mentioned Derrick’s name, and its author had sent a copy to Detroit police.

  That afternoon, Gillooly called Sobolewski in Detroit to tell him about the anonymous letter, which he faxed to the agent, along with the letter he had sent to the USFSA complaining about the treatment of Harding’s death threat in the fall and the resumes of people providing security for Harding.

  Gillooly and Harding then stopped by KOIN-TV for an interview with Schatz. Harding denied any involvement in the assault and said the letter-writer was trying to discredit her. That night, Eckardt went to classes at Pioneer Pacific College. While he stood outside having a cigarette, Oregonian reporters Abby Haight and Julie Vader approached him. Did he know the FBI wanted to talk to him, Haight asked. Did he stand by his denial earlier in the day that he wasn’t involved?