Harding’s Fall Really Big Push?

And so this little crumb of a man, Jeff Gillooly, stands there in front of a judge, pleads guilty to doing his diabolical deeds and then has his hired mouthpiece tell us how the state of Oregon will at least get to keep the $100,000 fine should his client see any future money out of all this.

What Tonya Harding ought to be charged with is criminal taste in men.

Once, after she won a U.S. championship previous to her most recent one, Harding happened to mention her husband Gillooly by name. Somebody asked: “How do you spell that?”

“Spell what?” Harding asked.

“The last name.”

With a stare and a sneer, the skater replied: “H-A-R-D-I-N-G.”

The walls of the rink are closing in around tiny Tonya, who edges ever closer to having her name replaced by a number. Oregon authorities are sweeping out a small cell to accommodate her sniveling spouse and a larger cell to reserve for that wide-body bodyguard of hers. But it could be curtains for Harding soon, too. If she ever in her life has exercised expert spin control, now is the time.

Don’t believe him, she begged Tuesday. Gillooly’s plea-bargain throwing her to the wolves is simply part of “a continued practice of abusive conduct” toward her, Harding said through her attorney. Don’t believe this guy now after all he has done. Don’t believe this guy after all you already know about him.

He is the same man Harding once complained to the police who yanked her around by the hair and ripped it out by the roots and slammed her skull repeatedly onto the bathroom floor. He is the same man, she said, who slammed a car door on her fingers, who chased her in his truck (in violation of a restraining order), who stole her coat, who struggled with her one night until a shotgun went off in her hands and the cops had to come slap handcuffs on Harding and read her Miranda rights.

More than once, she went back to the guy. Why? Who knows why anybody goes back to anybody? Maybe because misery loves company, or maybe because Tonya Harding was every bit as miserable a person as Jeff Gillooly. In any case, she did reconcile with this man with the poisoned mind who, when asked in court whether he were guilty of plotting acts of violence against an innocent ice skater, swore before judge and world: “I am.”

So much for him. Sweep him away with a bailiff’s broom.

Have there been many moments more chilling than when Ronald H. Hoevet, attorney for the confessor, was asked whether or not Jeff Gillooly or Tonya Harding ever discussed killing Nancy Kerrigan? No, the man said, whereupon a follow-up question was asked--did anybody ever plan to kill Nancy Kerrigan?--and the lawyer’s reply was: “Jeff Gillooly and Tonya Harding did not discuss killing Nancy Kerrigan.” Leaving all to wonder who else might have.

To seven separate acts of impropriety or inhumanity, Gillooly acknowledged guilt. Hoevet ticked them off like a grocery list: 1. Intent to injure or assault; 2. Illegal recording of a conversation; 3. Conspiracy to commit first-degree battery; 4. The actual assault itself; 5. Intent to commit perjury; 6. A similar lie under oath; 7. Conduct resulting in the destruction of physical evidence.

Do you get the feeling that somewhere in New England, there is a young woman with a swollen knee who sits in a soft chair staring at a TV and repeatedly shaking her head in disbelief?

“Mr. Gillooly admits that each of these incidents occurred,” said Mr. Hoevet.

Well, have a nice day, Mr. Gillooly. Have a swell cell.

But before he goes, damned if Jeff Gillooly isn’t going to take someone with him. Someone being his wife, with whom he has conspired, he says. She was in on it, he says. She made phone calls. She dropped him off with the two grand to pay Shawn Eckardt, that tower of Jell-O bodyguard they hired. She became upset when the job wasn’t done as originally scheduled and demanded satisfaction or her money back. Tonya did this and Tonya did that, he says, and why shouldn’t we believe him, Jeff Gillooly being such an upstanding citizen and all?

“I can’t think any of you will go to bed tonight” still believing in the innocence of Tonya, said her husband’s lawyer.

How can the woman skate for America? She covered up knowledge of a crime.

Said Hoevet: “That fact alone ought to be ‘unsportsmanlike,’ don’t you think?”

Harding’s whole career is going down the drain, and Gillooly is the Drano. He is quickening the slide. Now that Harding’s out there trying to avoid taking the fall, well, the least Gillooly can do is stick out his foot and trip her. Haven’t we seen this story before? Wasn’t it with John Garfield and Lana Turner, or was it with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange? Something to do with a postman who came by more than once.

Harding’s going down. You can feel it now. Either she did this thing or she didn’t, but she is going down, one way or another. The Olympic people are going to pull her plug. This thing is spinning out of control. It is too wild, too crazy. Gillooly’s lawyer says her downfall is imminent. Some matron is changing the sheets and the pillowcases in another Lysol-smelly cell. It would be “unconscionable,” Gillooly’s lawyer said, to let Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan be on the same team.

Down she goes. Jeff would have “fallen on his sword” for her. That Jeff, what a guy. Shame, where is thy blush?

* GILLOOLY: Jeff Gillooly pleads guilty, implicates his ex-wife, Tonya Harding, in Nancy Kerrigan assault. A1