With real-crime investigative TV shows finding a dedicated audience, this was kind of inevitable: There's a renewed interest in the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan scandal of 1994. Over the weekend, Reelz's Scandal Made Me Famous unearthed the evidence that may have been how police showed Harding's link to the brutal attack on Kerrigan, seven weeks before that year's Winter Olympics.
For anyone too young to remember, and who wasn't sucked into 2014's 30 for 30 documentary on the incident, here's a recap of one of the juiciest news obsessions of the '90s: A man attacked Kerrigan, America's Figure-Skating Sweetheart, outside a practice rink in Detroit, beating her in the knees with a police baton. She managed to recover in time to win silver in the Olympics. Suspicion immediately turned to her rival, Harding, a tough girl "from the other side of the tracks," as people loved to describe her. Eventually, investigators found that Harding's then-husband Jeff Gillooly and bodyguard Shawn Eckhardt hired a man named Shane Stant to do the deed.
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Harding claimed she had nothing to do with this crime. Documents released by the Multnomah District Attorney’s office for use on the Reelz show say otherwise, according to People. Among the evidence found linking Harding to her associates' plans is an envelope with notes (and an amusing doodle) in the skater's handwriting. She had written down the name and address of a rink where Kerrigan was practicing in Cape Cod, MA. That's reportedly where they initially planned to attack her before relocating to Detroit.
The image of that envelope kind of takes away from all those arguments that claimed Harding was blamed simply because of her working class background. She was convicted of hindering the investigation and was sentenced to three years probation, 500 hours of community service, and a $160,000 fine. U.S. Figure Skating banned her for life from competing and teaching, while cable channels embraced her as a favorite topic forever more.