Eckardt walked away. Of course he knew the FBI wanted to talk to him, he said. And, yes, he stood by his comments.
When Gillooly and Harding arrived at home that night, there were messages from The Oregonian. Jeff called Haight, and she told him the paper planned to publish a story that the FBI was investigating Gillooly and others in the plot to hurt Kerrigan. Gillooly thought she meant the anonymous letter, but Haight told him the paper’s information came from a different source. Gillooly stayed calm and denied the accusations. As soon as Haight hung up, Gillooly dialed Eckardt’s number; Agnes Eckardt said her son couldn’t come to the phone; he was talking to two FBI agents.
Harding and Gillooly drove past the Eckardt house several times that night—not knowing they were watched by agents—as Eckardt talked, giving the agreed-upon cover story to the agents. Then one of the agents said they had talked to Saunders, the minister. Eckardt then agreed to tell the truth and the next day became the first of the conspirators to sign a confession.
Later that day, a nervous-sounding Eckardt told Gillooly he wanted to meet him at a local pancake house to talk. Gillooly told the FBI later that he expected that he was being set up, and he told the FBI later that he left his wallet and watch with Harding in the car because he thought he would be arrested. Eckardt wanted to talk money; Gillooly kept his mouth shut, convinced that Eckardt was secretly taping the conversation.
By the end of the day, Derrick Smith also had signed a letter of confession. The following day, both Eckardt and Smith were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit second-degree assault. On January 14, Stant turned himself in to the FBI office in Phoenix and also signed a confession.
Four days later, an arrest warrant was issued for Gillooly.
10
All Fall Down
After the attack on Nancy Kerrigan in Detroit, reporters were eager to get reactions from other athletes there, including Tonya Harding.
Diane Rawlinson, who was also staying in the Westin Hotel, told The Oregonian’s Julie Vader on the phone that she had heard about the attack from Michelle Kwan’s coach, Frank Carroll, when they were riding back on a bus from the practice rink. Rawlinson had told Harding about it. Tonya was really upset and frightened, Rawlinson said, and disappointed because “she really wants to skate against Nancy.” She went on to say that Harding had had a bad day at practice—a company from Los Angeles had sent the wrong cuts from Jurassic Park—the theme music for her long program. “She was not very happy,” Rawlinson said.
Tonya couldn’t talk, her coach said, because she was taking a nap. But she was supposed to be up by 7 p.m., so call back then.
At 7 p.m. there was no answer in Rawlinson’s room, so Vader called the skater directly. Harding answered the phone, sounding grumpy and annoyed. “You weren’t supposed to call me. I was sleeping,” Harding said.
Vader apologized and said that she had permission from Rawlinson to call. She said she just wanted to know Harding’s reaction to the day’s extraordinary events.
“I’m really shocked,” Harding said. “I don’t know what to say. It scares me because it could be anybody there—it could have been anyone and I’m lucky it’s not me.” She also said that she felt bad for Kerrigan because “we are friends” and then said, again, “It doesn’t make me feel very safe.”
Asked if she had spoken to Kerrigan since the attack, Harding said no, that she had been sleeping all afternoon.
But what would she say if she could talk to her?
“I’d tell her that I’m really sorry,” Harding said. “When it happened to me (the death threat in Clackamas Town Center), it was hard.”
In a press conference held the day before the attack, Harding had mentioned that she had hired bodyguards after the death threat in November. But she wouldn’t say whether she had a bodyguard with her in Detroit.
In her phone conversation with Vader, Harding said that it didn’t seem wise to her to announce whether or not she had protection in Detroit. “Maybe he could have attacked me,” she said of Kerrigan’s assailant.
The reporter told Harding that it looked as if Kerrigan would recover enough to skate in practice that evening. “I know,” Harding said, abruptly. “Ann Schatz just told me.”
Vader thanked Harding for her time and hung up, momentarily confused. Ann Schatz was a television reporter back in Portland. Why was Harding so grumpy about being awakened by Vader’s call if she’d already talked to a reporter on the phone?
The next time Harding talked to reporters was after the ladies’ short program on Friday night, January 7. Harding had skated wonderfully, to the theme music from Much Ado About Nothing. As is customary, the top finishers were brought into the press conference area, with their coaches.
Not surprisingly, all the reporters wanted to talk about was the Kerrigan assault. The size of the press contingent had swelled with crews from network television and syndicated tabloid shows. Frank Carroll, Kwan’s coach, started to tell an interesting story about a man he had seen acting suspiciously at rinkside just before the clubbing—a man whom he described as “sweaty” and, he recalled, who had asked who Nancy Kerrigan was. Carroll said he was annoyed to have someone so close to the skaters who obviously didn’t know the sport (later it was determined that the man was simply a reporter).
U.S. Figure Skating Association officials were bothered by the questions and announced that this press conference would be only about skating. As a result, Harding was not asked any direct questions about the attack.
The next day, Harding practiced her long program in Joe Louis Arena. She finished off by landing two very impressive triple axel jumps, and the sparse crowd applauded and whooped in appreciation. Harding obviously was in top form, confident and fit. As Diane Rawlinson made her way from rinkside she noticed Julie Vader sitting in the front row. They smiled and said hello.
“Sorry Tonya was so rude to you,” Rawlinson said.
“I’m used to it,” Vader replied.
“I’m not,” Rawlinson said through a thin smile.
—
The questions would become harder and harder for Harding when she returned to Portland on January 10. And she would become less and less accessible. She had held a press conference after her triumphant arrival at Portland Airport, but when reporters asked her about the Kerrigan attack, she became visibly annoyed and curt. Why, her attitude seemed to be, were people so intent on spoiling her good time?
The next day, although nothing had yet been published, the walls began to close in on Tonya Harding, Jeff Gillooly, and the others involved.
Television station KOIN had received a copy of a letter from an anonymous woman, who called herself Jane. The letter said that Harding, Gillooly, Eckardt, and others had planned the attack. Reporter Ann Schatz called Harding and asked for an interview about the letter and the growing rumors about the Kerrigan attack. At the skater’s request, Schatz faxed the letter to Harding’s home.
Harding, Gillooly, and Eckardt read the letter, and then they all went to Eckardt’s house. That afternoon, Tuesday, January 11, Oregonian photographer Brent Wojahn snapped a picture of the couple leaving the house—a picture that would appear in the morning paper, in the next issue of People magazine, and would be broadcast on television. In one hand Tonya Harding holds a cigarette, in the other a pack of Marlboros.
That evening Harding was interviewed for TV cameras about the “Jane” letter.
“I can’t believe it,” Harding said. “I mean, why does someone want to discredit me? I mean, I just don’t understand.” She called the letter “totally ludicrous” and said, “I just wish people would see that, you know, I’m out there trying just as much as everybody else is, and it’s just really sad. It’s sad that there’s that kind of people out there.”
And she once again expressed her fierce determination. “No one controls my life but me,” Harding said. “I mean, if God already wrote it out for me as how it’s going to be, but if there’s something in there that I d
on’t like, I’m going to change it.”
—
After the interview, which was broadcast on the eleven o’clock news, Harding said that she and her husband had stopped at Gillooly’s mother’s house and then went home. They did not go anywhere else—except out at about three o’clock in the morning to get a copy of The Oregonian from someone’s driveway. Meanwhile, other stations were broadcasting what was in the early editions of The Oregonian.
Harding recounted all this to the FBI in a ten and one-half hour interview in Portland a week later. At least she said that in the first version—the version before the FBI agents told her that lying to a federal agent was a crime and that they knew she was lying.
In her next version of the story to the FBI, Harding admitted that she and Jeff had spent a lot of time driving around that night, trying to call the hit men with Eckardt, trying to get things straightened out. She had not told them this information, she said, because she was afraid of her husband.
That night, when the group, according to their statements to the FBI, were all busy trying to keep the dam from breaking over their heads, Gillooly did take the time to return calls left by reporters for The Oregonian.
He told Abby Haight that the whole story of his connection to the plot was absurd. “I have more faith in my wife,” he said, “than to bump off her competition.”
—
After the story broke in The Oregonian, it seemed as if every reporter in the world wanted to talk to Tonya Harding. Camera crews took up permanent residence in front of every home she might conceivably stay in. There was a blizzard of rumors about where Harding was, where she would be, where she would go. There were rumors that she was going to Virginia for a scheduled appearance in an ice show. Then that she had canceled. Then that she was going. Reporters rushed to the airport in Chicago in the hope that she might be changing flights there. There were rumors that she would talk to “60 Minutes.” Or to Diane Sawyer. Or to Barbara Walters. But Harding remained as remote as Garbo.
On Thursday, January 13, Dennis Rawlinson, Harding’s lawyer (and husband of Tonya’s coach), said that she would have plenty to say. The next day, a statement was issued: “Tonya Harding and Jeff Gillooly are meeting today with their lawyers, Bob Weaver, Dennis Rawlinson, Chris Koback, and Ron Hoevet. Tonya and Jeff have cooperated with law enforcement officials and are in daily contact through their lawyers with the District Attorney’s office.
“No arrest warrants have been issued for either of them. In a few days, Tonya and Jeff will have a more detailed statement to present.”
It was the beginning of a pattern—brief statements issued through lawyers—vague in both tone and content. And tantalizing off-the-record hints about complete statements to come. Which never did come.
On Sunday afternoon, coach Diane Rawlinson and her husband, Dennis, announced that they would speak to the press in front of their home in the West Hills of Portland. More than one hundred reporters, with five satellite trucks and a dozen television cameras crowded around the house in the quiet neighborhood. Dennis Rawlinson, who had acted as Harding and Gillooly’s attorney, came out of the house and distributed a statement. It read: “Tonya Harding categorically denies all accusations and media speculation that she was involved in any way with the Kerrigan assault.
“Tonya is shocked and angry that anyone close to her might be involved. She is pleased to see that Nancy is recovering quickly. She wants the U.S. team to be as strong as possible.
“Tonya is beginning the most important month of the most important year of her life. She wants to represent her country in the Olympics and needs her fans’ support and prayers.”
—
After the release was read aloud for the cameras and microphones, Diane Rawlinson declared that Tonya was innocent and that Tonya believed Jeff to be innocent. As for Diane, she was going to stick by her athlete, she believed in her, and together they were going to go to the Olympics.
There are two victims here, Diane declared, Nancy and Tonya. She added that Harding had written a personal letter to Kerrigan, but she did not know its exact contents.
“All I want,” Rawlinson told The Oregonian, “is for Tonya to be cleared.”
That night, in the late hours, reporters gathered at the Clackamas Town Center. Harding was to skate at midnight, her first practice since the nationals. She and her husband had been filmed several times during the past week, always in cars or on the run. She would say she was fine or that she was tired and that she couldn’t talk about the Kerrigan case. Now, in front of a group of specially invited television crews, she walked into her home ice rink, her husband by her side, and performed for the cameras. The idea, clearly, was to get pictures of her skating on television, not just video of her fleeing from a mob of reporters.
The next night she practiced again, but this time Gillooly was absent and Harding looked upset. Again, she wasn’t saying anything—she wanted her skating to do the talking.
On Tuesday, January 18, Harding put on a dress and heels and went with her lawyers to talk to the FBI. The interview would last more than ten hours, while television crews and reporters clogged the lobby.
Five times the news pack would catch scent of its quarry. Five times it bunched forward at the appointed hour, quarreled over camera lines and plotted tactics to capture a piece of Harding. Five times it relaxed as the FBI announced the interview was being extended. Reporters munched on takeout Chinese food, traded theories and waited. At 9 p.m., Harding finally released a statement to the local media:
“After a lot of agonizing thought and evaluation, I have decided that it would be best for Jeff and me to separate. I am innocent and I continue to believe that Jeff is innocent of any wrongdoing.”
Local TV crews went live with the news even as prosecutors put the finishing touches on an arrest warrant that would be served on Gillooly the next day. The slender, unassuming man who had once threatened to break his wife’s legs stood accused as the mastermind of the plot to break Kerrigan’s.
Finally, at 11:26 p.m., word came that Harding was coming down. More than seventy journalists pressed forward, thrusting cameras and sound mikes that looked like dust mops toward the yellow stripe of tape on the brown tile floor.
The elevator bell chimed. A clump of nervy TV photographers backed out of the jammed elevator cars to a chorus of jeers.
“Down in front, camera down!” shouted photographers whose view of the diminutive athlete was blocked. Harding looked surprisingly fresh, poised—and young. She looked very young.
Harding’s clear blue eyes widened as she glanced at what lay in wait. She looked scared, caught in the headlights of a story careening out of control. The kid who dreamed of Olympic gold and the money that comes with it was left with this: Instead of an adoring public, she faced an ugly pack.
Her lawyer, Robert Weaver, told the press that Tonya was exhausted; she would answer questions at the appropriate time. Now was not that time, he said. Weaver grabbed her arm, and Harding tucked her head as the pair wriggled through the crowd.
“Tonya, how are you feeling?” a reporter asked.
“Tired,” she said as she ducked by.
The pack became a mob as Weaver and Harding spun through the glass doors and made for the sky bridge and the parking garage. Harding was swallowed by a swarm of cameras and reporters shouting questions. Reporters and photographers, tripping on television cables, sprinted ahead of the beleaguered pair. Shouts erupted when several photographers, backpedaling in front of Harding, fell in a pile at the first set of stairs. The swarm paused as they scrambled to their feet; the glare of strobes and floodlights painted the night air white.
In the parking garage at last, Weaver barked at the press to stand clear of his car. Someone asked Harding if she had any words for her fans.
“Please believe in me,” she said.
The pack swarmed back over the sky bridge like a school of fish to question the authorities. “Was Tonya a suspect?” Meanwhile, Hardin
g, whose latest split with her ex-husband was two hours old, went to her father’s apartment in Portland. Early the next morning, reporters watched as Gillooly came out of the apartment and drove away.
—
The separation from Gillooly did not stop the story. It didn’t even slow it down. Tonya was by now a staple of comedy monologues and David Letterman’s Top Ten list. She was linked in the opening sketch on “Saturday Night Live” to the maimed John Wayne Bobbitt and the parent-killing rich boys, Lyle and Erik Menendez. She was on the cover of Time, Newsweek, and People and the front page of virtually every newspaper in the country.
Still she wasn’t talking to reporters. On Monday, January 24, however, she and her lawyers both issued statements.
“I deny all allegations that I was involved in any way in the Nancy Kerrigan assault.
“As you know, I made myself available to the District Attorney for ten and one-half hours on Tuesday, January 18, 1994. My attorneys continue to work with the District Attorney’s office in an effort to resolve this matter as soon as possible.
“As much as I would like to talk to you, I have been directed by my attorneys to remain silent until this matter has been resolved with the District Attorney.
“I have turned my attention to my figure skating and am training regularly in preparation for the Olympics.
“Thank you for your patience and understanding. Your continued support and prayers are appreciated.”
For their part, Harding’s attorneys said:
“We are pleased that many representatives of the United States Olympic Committee and the United States Figure Skating Association continue to view the allegations against Tonya with an open mind. We are confident that the USOC and the USFSA will continue to abide by their constitution, bylaws, regulations and rules and will deal with this situation in good faith with Tonya’s rights and interests in mind.
“By virtue of her first-place finish at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships and pursuant to the bylaws and rules of the USFSA and the USOC, Tonya has earned a place on the U.S. Olympic team. Tonya has done nothing that would warrant her removal from the team. It would be manifestly unjust and contrary to well-established legal principles to remove Tonya from the team on the basis of unproven charges.
Fire on Ice Page 10