Tarnished Victory

By Jill Smolowe

"I don't see anybody as my top competitors. I see myself as my top competitor. I'm the one I have to beat."

-- Tonya Harding, after winning the 1994 U.S. championship

No one really believes such a practiced sound bite, least of all the skaters themselves. But Tonya Harding is not -- nor has she ever been -- like most skaters. She is neither politic nor polished, sociable nor sophisticated. Instead, she is the bead of raw sweat in a field of dainty perspirers; the asthmatic who heaves uncontrollably while others pant prettily; the pool- playing, drag-racing, trash-talking bad girl of a sport that thrives on illusion and politesse. While rivals fairly float through their programs, she's the skater who best bullies gravity. She fights it off like a mugger, stroking the ice hard, pushing it away the same way she brushes off fans who pester her for autographs. So when Harding says her demons are all internal, she is neither psyching herself up nor talking herself down for TV. She is speaking the truth.

She wants gold at the Olympics and the rewards of fame. "To be perfectly honest," she said last week, "what I'm really thinking about is dollar signs." And so to the creed of the Games -- faster, higher, stronger -- she adds words she knows all too well. Harder. Longer. Badder. She has worked so hard, tried for so long, wanted so bad. But always the gossamer princesses seduced fortune and celebrity away, leaving her with only ire and ice. And one in particular kept crossing her path -- until they both reached Detroit two weeks ago.

The Jan. 6 attack on skater Nancy Kerrigan was shocking and chilling enough. But when the rumblings began that Harding or her entourage might somehow be involved, a grimly familiar tale of random violence turned into something far more gothic. Even people without the faintest interest in the crystalline world of figure skating could not help marveling at the spectacle. Did the scrappy girl from the trailer parks, who has climbed so high and suffered so much, possibly plot to destroy her rival? Or did her violently jealous husband assemble a gang of goons to act without her knowledge but on her behalf? If so, was the motive love or money? If not, why are others smearing his name with dirt? And if Tonya Harding turns out to be innocent, how searing must it be that more than a few people could imagine her guilt?

Certainly Harding was tarnished by the company she kept. One suspect after another was taken into custody, even as the reports circulated that Tonya herself and her husband Jeff Gillooly were under investigation. On Thursday police in Oregon arrested her hulking bodyguard, Shawn Eckardt, 26, who went to high school with Gillooly. Eckardt's lawyer, Mark McKnight, said his client had admitted to authorities that he had taken part in the plot, but was "not smart enough" to have designed or carried out the plan. The police also arrested Derrick Smith, 29, another bruiser, described by neighbors as having a taste for wearing camouflage and "playing army." Both Eckardt and Smith were charged with conspiracy to commit the assault on Kerrigan. Eckardt quickly made bail and was released.

On Friday Shane Stant, 22, surrendered to authorities in Phoenix, Arizona. Rumored to be the man who actually struck Kerrigan with a retractable black aluminum police baton, Stant checked into a suburban Detroit motel on Jan. 4 and left two days later. The Boston Globe reported that Stant told a source that "Harding was in on it way back." Indeed, she allegedly staged a death threat against herself in November as part of the plan.

Early in the week, when reporters asked Harding if she had been involved, she replied, "You guys know me better than that." After that she ducked out of sight, and was spotted only once late in the week arriving at her tiny cabin on a Christmas-tree farm in Beaver Creek, where she and Gillooly had been living since they were evicted from their apartment last fall for not paying the rent. For all the rumors, police disputed a Boston TV report that Harding's name was contained in a sealed warrant. But both were wanted for questioning, and they hired a pair of high-profile, out-of-town lawyers, both former U.S. Attorneys. After a meeting with the Portland district attorney Friday, no charges were brought against either Harding or Gillooly.

The conspiracy might never have come to light were it not for the wildly assorted cast of characters who teach and study at Pioneer Pacific College, a small vocational school outside Portland. It was here that the players converged: Eckardt, the bodyguard who allegedly helped hatch the plot; Eugene Saunders, the young born-again pastor to whom Eckardt confessed, with a frightening telltale tape; and Gary Crowe, the private detective who ultimately blew the lid off the story.

Crowe, an affable, tweed-clad private detective, taught a weekend course in legal procedure. Among his 20 students, Eckardt certainly stood out, by virtue not only of his 350-lb. frame but also of his blustery tales of having worked at various times for the FBI and the CIA. Eckardt, says Crowe, "lives in a world of shadows and trench coats." Also in the class was Saunders, 24, the pastor of a small evangelical congregation in suburban Gresham. Rotund and clean cut, with the zeal of a Boy Scout, Saunders signed up for the course because of his commitment to defending religious freedom.

At the Jan. 8 class, Saunders approached Crowe with a disturbing story, which Crowe recounted to TIME. The previous night, Saunders said, he had been invited to Eckardt's house and heard more than he wanted to hear. Eckardt talked about a recent meeting before which, he boasted, "I swept the room" for bugs, then planted a tape recorder. With that Eckardt proceeded to produce a cassette and play it for the unsuspecting minister. According to Crowe, Saunders heard three people debating a grisly plot; one was Eckardt, one an unidentified man from Arizona, and the third person Eckardt identified as "Tonya Harding's husband."

At one point, Saunders said, he heard this third man ask, "Why don't we just kill her?"

"We don't need to kill her," Eckardt allegedly responded. "Let's just hit her in the knee."

As they listened to the tape together, Eckardt started to come unglued. He told Saunders that "the guy in Arizona" was the hit man. He had not been paid the $100,000 he was promised, and might be coming to Portland. Eckardt's concern was so intense he started to give Saunders the tape for safekeeping -- "It was almost in my hand," said Saunders -- then decided against it.

Crowe says he would have dismissed the report had it come from a con man like Eckardt. But knowing Saunders to be devoutly honest, Crowe called his father Alan, who pressed him about the credibility of the tale. "I don't want to parade a ridiculous story about a national figure," Alan warned. They settled on a strategy. Alan Crowe phoned an investigative reporter with the Oregonian while Saunders and an attorney approached the Clackamas County D.A., who steered Saunders to the FBI. All of this left the FBI scrambling to follow up Saunders' leads even as the story was leaking to the press. No one has come up with the tape, though police last week did recover the assault weapon from a dumpster near the attack site.

Saunders was not the only source with information about a conspiracy. Rusty Rietz, 38, was a former aluminum worker who was also in Crowe's course, studying to become a paralegal. Rietz told TIME that he too visited Eckardt's house in early January, when he had to stop off to pick up a computer disk. The bodyguard, Rietz says, invited him inside to "talk confidentially."

"Would you kill somebody for $65,000?" Eckardt asked. When Rietz said no, Eckardt pressed.

"Would you break some legs for $65,000?" When Reitz again refused, Eckardt continued, "Well, I've got a job in Detroit."

"Oh, that's nice," Rietz joked, at which point Eckardt concluded, "Well then, I guess I'll have to send my team." Rietz assumed this was Eckardt doing his usual weird cloak-and-dagger routine. But only seven days later, Rietz said, he "put the pieces together."

On Saturday Sarah Bergman, 20, a friend and classmate of Eckardt's, told TIME another tale of Gillooly. A week before the tournament, she said, Eckardt told her that "Jeff wants me to do this for Tonya. Jeff wants me to set it up so that Tonya can win the Olympics. They're going to break ((Kerrigan's)) legs." The plans did not go at all smoothly. Eckardt, she says, had to deal with two sets of hit men. The first pair absconded with $55,000 without doing the deed. Eckardt, she said, "was really upset. He said, 'They took all my money! How am I going to pay for this?' "

Both Nancy Kerrigan, 24, and Tonya Harding, 23, are soap-opera fans, though only Harding's life resembles one. Kerrigan's sturdy family life and stable upbringing imbued her with a manner so authentic and unassuming that even last week's media barrage seemed not to faze her. Through her good years (a bronze medal in the '92 Games) and bad (a dismal fifth-place finish at the '93 World Championships), Kerrigan has drawn on the unconditional love of two parents, two devoted older brothers and an extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins, who turn out at competitions to cheer her on. Blessed with long, slender limbs and a natural elegance, she also reaps the rewards of a photogenic beauty that last year won her standing as one of PEOPLE magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World."

Still, according to her coach Evy Scotvold, the nurturing and support Kerrigan receives has bred some immaturity and insecurity. "She's a very dependent person," he says. It was not until 1992 that Kerrigan moved out of her parents' wood-frame home in blue-collar Stoneham, Massachusetts. But last week, when Kerrigan wasn't doing her daily round of physical therapy and hydrotherapy sessions, she was home with her parents in Stoneham, with all the world camped outside. Asked at a snowy press conference what would make a happy ending to her story, Kerrigan made no mention of medals or movie deals. "The most important thing is to be happy and healthy," she said.

Harding, by contrast, would make an unlikely role model -- though her grit and spirit have served her well in surviving a turbulent childhood and triumphing in a grueling sport. Tough, self-sufficient and bruised well beyond her years, Harding has never known stability either on the rink or at home. She moved between eight different houses in six communities in her first 18 years, during which her father Al, who has variously driven a truck, managed apartments and worked at a bait-and-tackle store, was her best friend. He gave her her first gun, a .22, when she was five, taught her to hunt and fish and fix a transmission. Her parents' marriage fell apart in 1985, and two years later her mother married James Golden, her sixth husband (who told TIME last week that yet another divorce is in the works). Soon afterward, Harding moved in with Gillooly, whom she had been dating for three years.

In March 1990, when Tonya was 19, they were married; 15 months later she filed for divorce. At the same time, Harding sought a restraining order to keep Gillooly away. "He wrenched my arm and wrist, and he pulled my hair and shoved me," she wrote in her petition for the order. "I recently found out he bought a shotgun, and I am scared for my safety." A police report filed the next month quotes Harding as saying that Gillooly had cornered her in a boatyard and threatened, "I think we should break your legs and end your career."

The following March they got back together -- but by last July Harding was seeking a divorce and a restraining order. This time the petition read, "It has been an abusive relationship for the past two years, and he has assaulted me physically with his open hand and fist." The couple again reconciled, but not before their divorce was final. At a competition last October, Harding explained, "We're trying to get the divorce annulled." She then stated, "I'm definitely married." Since moving to Beaver Creek two months ago, the couple has maintained such a low profile that others living on their road didn't know of their famous neighbors until last week.

The picture of Gillooly remains fuzzy; he seems to project virtually no identity beyond that of being Harding's on-again-off-again spouse. The youngest of six children, Gillooly is a high school graduate who has been a lifelong resident of the Portland area. Fellow workers at his last job, on a conveyor line at the Oregon Liquor Control Commission warehouse in Portland, say Gillooly was an average guy and an average worker. His supervisor, Ron Marcoe, says Gillooly quit. "He started out good, but it deteriorated," says Marcoe. "It happens. It's boring work."

As the scenario of a baton-for-hire attack on Kerrigan unfolded, it was easy to speculate on the motives behind the assault. Worse crimes have been committed in the name of money and celebrity. But even the more creative commentators had trouble imagining what line of reasoning could have convinced the conspirators that the macabre assault would enhance Harding's Olympic edge and marketability. If the crime was solely the work of a zealous entourage that aimed to cash in on her post-Olympic fame, even the most narrow-minded conspirator must have feared that the attack might backfire, sabotaging Harding's concentration on the ice and further tainting her gutsy image.

If Harding herself was involved, surely it must have occurred to her that she risked sitting out the Olympics in a jail cell. Indeed, last week Claire Ferguson, president of the U.S. Figure Skating Association, said that the case "may be a rolling stone that rolls right over her." While Ferguson said that evidence of Harding's involvement had not emerged, she said her chances of being at the Games were "looking pretty grim." Simply having had a suspect in her employ may mean Harding's ouster.

The very blow that was apparently designed to shatter Kerrigan's hopes and improve Harding's prospects promises to have the opposite effect both on the ice and off. If Harding skates in Lillehammer, she will face a chilly reception from a panel of judges reluctant to bestow gold on a skater who has cast so dark a shadow over the sport. "Subconsciously they're probably going to mark her down," says Seppo Iso-Ahola, a University of Maryland sports psychologist.

Moreover, Harding can kiss the "dollar signs" goodbye. The combination of her manner and the scandal is sufficient to drive most potential sponsors away. Kerrigan, meanwhile, already enjoys lucrative endorsement contracts with six companies, including Reebok and Campbell's soup. The events of the past week have made Kerrigan even more valuable. "People are calling from all over the country with offers for television and book deals," says Jerry Solomon, her agent. If Kerrigan can find the resources to overcome her legendary skittishness to do well at the Olympics, she might earn more than $10 million in contracts. She doesn't even have to win gold.

At the time of the attack, Kerrigan tearfully asked, "Why me?" Last week Harding may very well have been asking herself the same question.

With reporting by Jordan Bonfante, Patrick E. Cole and James Willwerth/Portland, William McWhirter/Detroit and Janice C. Simpson/Stoneham