Word: eckardt
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...date is Dec. 28. Jeff Gillooly has just been dropped off by his ex-wife, Tonya Harding, at the home of Harding's bodyguard, Shawn Eckardt. Inside, Gillooly, Eckardt and two out-of-town thugs for hire discuss ways to keep Nancy Kerrigan from competing Jan. 7 and 8 in the U.S. figure-skating championships in Detroit. Methodically the four men run down their options: cut Kerrigan's Achilles tendon, break her leg or kneecap, kill her. According to Gillooly, he then calls Harding and asks her to pick him up. As Gillooly drives, he details a proposed...
Suspicions about Harding's role surround a failed plan that predated the Jan. 6 attack in Detroit. Three of the arrested men -- Eckardt; hit man Shane Stant, 22; and getaway driver Derrick Smith, 29 -- have told investigators that during the final days of 1993, they conspired with Gillooly to attack Kerrigan while she trained at the Tony Kent Arena on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. An 11-page affidavit, prepared by the Multnomah County sheriff's office in Oregon and made public last week, states that Eckardt initially claimed that Harding did not know about the plot. But under two days...
...after the publication of the Oregonian interview with Eckardt, Harding's patience cracked. Asked about the charges, she brushed past reporters, snapping, "I haven't spoke with anyone, O.K.?" When the questions continued, she shouted, "I'm not answering your questions, I said." A few hours later she smiled sweetly into the camera for ABC's Prime Time Live and said, "I believe God is watching over me. Maybe he believes it's time for something good to happen...
...Beyond Eckardt's ever changing accounts, the allegations that dog Harding emanate largely from rumor and anonymously sourced press reports. The only evidence in the affidavit that may begin to implicate Harding is a phone record of four calls placed between Dec. 28 and Jan. 3 from the cabin she shares with Gillooly to the Tony Kent Arena. The calls, however, could have been made by Gillooly -- or even by Eckardt himself...
...rest of the affidavit, which draws on the confessions signed by Eckardt, Stant and Smith, lays out a series of verbal and money transactions that implicate Gillooly but not Harding. All three co-conspirators say they met with Gillooly in Portland in late December; two of them say a price of $6,500 was set for Stant and Smith to injure Kerrigan. Eckardt and Smith concur that Smith was paid $2,000 on the spot, with bills supplied by Gillooly. Gillooly's bank records indicate that he made three withdrawals totaling $9,000 between Dec. 27 and Jan. 6. Western...