Kerrigan killer talks about scandal thirty years ago: ‘I would have to cut her Achilles tendon’

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It is one of the biggest scandals in sports history: on January 6, 1994, an assassin wounded American figure skater Nancy Kerrigan (then 24) in the leg. Explosive: The mastermind behind the attack was the husband of Kerrigan’s compatriot and competitor Tonya Harding (then 23).

Thirty years after the scandal, hitman Shane Stant speaks about the background to his crime. “Then I was on my own from the age of fifteen. “My father was a drug addict, alcoholic and dealer,” Stant told “Bild am Sonntag”. “When I attacked Kerrigan, I was involved in all kinds of criminal activity.”

The stories from that time sound as if they come from another time: the internet was hardly widespread, Stant only knew his victim from a photo. He only had a vague idea about the motive: Kerrigan, the favorite of fans and media at the time, would be so badly injured that the focus at the upcoming Olympic Games in Lillehammer (No) would be entirely on Harding. .

The attack happened during training in the run-up to the American championships. Stant smuggles a stick into the Detroit ice rink. “I knew exactly what I wanted to do, which leg I wanted to hit. I’m right-handed, she stood with her back to me. That gave me the perfect angle to hit her in the right leg.”

The killer’s fallacy

Stant strikes once. Harding goes down screaming. He flees through the catacombs of the stadium, jumps through a closed plexiglass door into the open air, where his uncle is waiting with the getaway car. Stant gets $6,800. If successful there should have been more. But not everything goes according to plan.

“The clients suggested I cut Kerrigan’s Achilles tendon. “But I didn’t think that was necessary,” says Stant. An assumption that turns out to be a misconception: Kerrigan recovers surprisingly quickly from her injuries. In the center of the entire sports world, she won Olympic silver six weeks after the attack in Lillehammer. Harding, who only admitted her complicity years later, came eighth. “Beauty crushes the beast,” reads a Norwegian newspaper headline.

Even before the Olympics, the noose around Stant was tightening: Because Shawn Eckardt, one of the two masterminds along with Harding’s husband Jeff Gillooly, publicly bragged about his knowledge of the crime, investigators quickly got on the right track. Just a week after the attack, Eckardt and Gillooly were arrested. Stant turned himself in to the FBI and was sentenced to 15 months in prison, followed by 36 months of probation.

Stant has now found his way back to life. He manages apartments in California and works as a life coach. “There I help people who have experienced similar things as me and come from similar difficult circumstances.” He never apologized to his victim Nancy Kerrigan: “I wouldn’t feel comfortable forcing myself into her life.” (cmu)

Source : Blick