(2 of 2)
While all this might cause Harding further discomfort, a strict cost-benefit % analysis of the deal suggests that the national champ is no chump. True, the Kerrigan attack -- which the four admitted co-conspirators priced at $6,500 -- will cost Harding $160,000. But unlike the men who pulled off the criminal prank, among them ex-husband Jeff Gillooly, Harding faces no prospect of prison time. The travel restrictions still give her access to California, where a production company has promised her an undisclosed sum for the rights to her story. And none of this appears to affect a $300,000 deal she reportedly signed with Inside Edition.
Even so, prosecutor Norman Frink insists that justice was well served. The plea bargain, he notes, will save Multnomah County the cost of a lengthy trial. Perhaps not incidentally, it will also spare Frink the task of mounting a counterattack to Harding's expected battered-wife argument -- a line of defense that finds increasing sympathy among juries.
In the end, the biggest losers may be the millions of Harding fans and detractors who have stayed breathlessly tuned to As Tonya Turns. Now they can only speculate. If the prosecution had proceeded, Frink says, Harding would have been hit with charges of racketeering and conspiracy to commit second- degree assault. As part of the plea agreement, Harding admitted to being actively involved in a cover-up. That was a step beyond her Jan. 18 confession to the FBI, when she maintained that she was guilty of nothing more than failing to notify authorities after learning of the plot. But the pre-attack phone calls from her home to Kerrigan's training rink remain unexplained, as do the notes, recovered from a bag of Harding's trash, that listed Kerrigan's rink and training times.
Sins of omission -- or commission? We may never know.