Please note that shortly after this issue was published, alot of the
links referred to mysteriously disappeared or changed. What a
coincidence... Or is it?
TTTTT H H EEEEE
T H H E
T HHHHH EEEEE
T H H E
T H H EEEEE
PPPP OOOO RRRR TTTTT L A N N DDDD I A N N TM
P P O O R R T L A A NN N D D I A A NN N
PPPP O O RRRR T L AAAAA N N N D D I AAAAA N N N
P O O R R T L A A N NN D D I A A N NN
P OOOO R R T LLLLL A A N N DDDD I A A N N
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The Portlandian, the Internet's premier source of Tonya News
July 30, 1999 Edition - SPECIAL TONYA WEB SITE EXPOSE
(C) 1999 Portland Ice Skating Society
http://www.oocities.org/Colosseum/Stadium/1190
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Tonight, "The Portlandian" presents the results of its biggest
investigation to date, one which has taken months of research by
our Special Duties Section, and which we hope will shed some
light on some goings on at Tonya's official web site that we
alluded to in an e-mail message to those on our mailing list a
few days ago.
ROY EDWARDS' DIRTY LITTLE SECRET
Recently people going to visit the former location of the
"official" Tonya web site would have been greeted by a strange
sight: instead of the usual beautiful pictures and messages of
support for our heroine, they have rather been visually assaulted
with various ugly pornography shots of Tonya and abusive,
insulting messages casting doubt on our integrity. This
apparently stems from a recent message that we posted to people
on our mailing list outlining some concerns about the way in
which the site has been run, and in particular, who was (and as
we will show, still is) running it.
To date, we have confined our concerns to those on the list and
have not posted them to Usenet as we wished to avoid an unseemly
fuss that might cause embarrassment to Tonya. It is only with
extreme reluctance that we even now seek to publicize the truth,
but we feel that given the postings on the tonyaharding.com web
site we have been left no alternative but to defend our
reputation in public. We view our role as being to promote and
defend Tonya's reputation, and anything that undermines our
credibility is a threat to our capacity to carry out that
mission. Our decision was further reinforced by recent postings
to various newsgroups from someone identifying themselves as
"glibguy@my-deja.com", which tried to imply that Tonya has been
abusing her students, something that we know to be untrue.
Accordingly, it is now time for the skating community to learn
the real story about the person behind the tonyaharding.com site.
It's a story that's so outrageous that it would be unbelievable
but for one thing - it involves Tonya.
For the past 17 months, the tonyaharding.com web site has been
under the control of one Roy Edwards - or so you're supposed to
believe. However intensive investigations by ourselves and the
webmaster of another Tonya site over the past few months have
discovered the remarkable truth - "Roy Edwards" does not exist!
The man who has been passing himself off to Tonya and her
advisors for the all that time as "Edwards" is in fact Jim Maxey,
the original founder of the site. We also believe that Maxey is
in fact also responsible for the "Glibguy" postings that have
appeared on Usenet in recent days and is currently continuing his
masquerade as "Brian Bayard", who claims he has been given the
site by "Edwards" but whom we can find no trace of. As we shall
show, Maxey has good reason to want his true identity to be kept
secret.
JIM MAXEY - NO BOY SCOUT
This is a photo of Jim Maxey, whom it might be recalled was the
founder of the tonyaharding.com web site back in early 1997:
http://boardwatch.internet.com/mag/95/jan/i28i1.jpg
It comes from the January 1995 issue of "Boardwatch" magazine, in
particular an article about what those who drive on the
"information superhighway" drive on the real highway (hey, I
guess somebody must have thought it sounded like a cool idea for
an article at the time). The full article can be found at:
http://boardwatch.internet.com/mag/95/jan/bwm28.html
for those who want to read it.
In the photo, Maxey is shown driving a Lexus LS 400. However,
given what we've learned about him over the past few months, we'd
venture to suggest that a more appropriate vehicle for him might
be a purple 1974 Cadillac Eldorado with imitation leopard-skin
seat covers. That's because Maxey happens to be a cyberpimp. In
his heyday he was one of the biggest on-line pornography
distributors in the United States.
Evidence for this can be found in the following article on
bulletin boards from an April 1993 issue of "The Economist"
magazine:
http://exai1.wu-wien.ac.at/~schoenf/infosys/articles/art23.html
Maxey originally got online in 1983 when he founded a bulletin
board by the name of "Event Horizons". Initially Maxey offered
astronomy photos, but later realized that the real money was to
be made by supplying stronger stuff in the form of hard core
porn. This strategy proved so successful that by the early 1990's
Event Horizons was one of the most profitable BBS services in the
US, with an annual turnover of over $3 million.
Maxey's success was not all plain sailing, however. In 1992,
Playboy sued him for copyright and trade mark infringement after
it was discovered he had been uploading some of their images onto
his service. Maxey's response to these allegations was one which
we have learned seems to be a standard tactic when confronted
with an unpleasant truth about himself: he made up a ridiculous
story that Playboy had sent round some 300-pound Shawn Eckardt
lookalike to beat up his secretary. Eventually he settled out of
court for $500,000. You can read the whole story at:
http://venus.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest/CUDS4/cud426.txt
In recent years Maxey has, like many others in his industry,
switched to using the Internet to distribute his pornographic
wares. In the following Usenet posting from 1995 he bemoans the
state of the BBS business and explains why he is switching to the
web:
http://x25.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=175102629&CONTEXT=
932981595.1009975355&hitnum=62
The most prominent web sites that he has had involvement with are
Throbnet (www.throbnet.com) and something with the not exactly
subtle name of "Adultporn.com". The exact nature of this
involvement, such as whether he has any financial interest them,
is not clear, but at the very least he seems to be heavily
involved in their technical operation. In fact, you can still
find a connection to these at Network Solutions, the domain name
registry, where he's listed as technical contact for Adultporn:
http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois/?STRING=
Maxey%2C+Jim&x=30&y=10
Adultporn (which is owned by Throbnet) also shares a Post Office
box, P.O. Box 468 in Lake Oswego, with another Maxey site,
www.yc64.com. This one is a site devoted to his old high school
and contains another photo of him taken in 1989 at
http://www.yc64.com/25years.htm. Since we posted our original
message, Maxey has made a rather lame attempt to hide this
picture from public view by removing the link to it from the home
page, but the page and photo are still there.
In addition to Throbnet and Adultporn, Maxey also runs Third
Millenium (www.3mi.com), a site which despite it's bland
appearance seems to be the outfit that is in charge of supplying
and digitizing the images that are used on his other sites. We
also believe he has some kind of connection to at least three
other porn sites, AllMPG.com, FreshVideo.com, and AboutNow.com.
The latter site even has some stills from the Tonya "Wedding
Night video" on it, at:
http://www.aboutnow.com/browse/images/celebrities/tonya_harding/
tonya_harding1.htm
Not satisfied with putting up real porno shots of Tonya, Maxey
has also been involved in distributing fake Tonya porn. We have
come across several fake composites featuring Tonya's head
superimposed on existing porn shots, many of which bear copyright
notices in the name of Event Horizons and the word "Maxipics"
(which our research has found is a trade mark associated with
Jim Maxey).
Those who doubt that the "glibguy" messages are originating from
Maxey can note that the IP address for the Glibguy messages -
206.139.24.6 - is almost identical to that for Throbnet -
206.139.24.10, despite Maxey's attempts to disguise his real
identity by using a throwaway Deja.com e-mail account. It is also
EXACTLY THE SAME as the one that was the source of a rude message
to David House purporting to be from a "Ted Renten" several weeks
ago, and the same as the one that I received e-mails from in
the name of "Roy Edwards".
http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois/?STRING=
throbnet.com
Furthermore, the th.com site is still listed as having the same
IP address as it has had for months, despite this supposed change
of ownership. It's the same address as Adultporn.com.
http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois/?STRING=
tonyaharding.com
http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois/?STRING=
adultporn.com&x=37&y=11
Coincidence? We don't think so. And a few days ago people close
to Tonya confirmed our suspicions when we e-mailed them copies of
the photos of Maxey we had found - photos of the man who had been
identifying himself to Tonya as "Roy Edwards" for the past year
and a half.
Maxey's response to all this has been to claim that our
allegations are all part of some giant conspiracy to get hold of
the domain name. Again, this is just another smokescreen. We have
never at any stage made any attempt to obtain the domain name,
either for free or for any kind of payment. This is not some case
of "sour grapes" or jealousy or such like. I should emphasize
that we had nothing against Maxey's Tonya site itself. When I
first became aware of Maxey's site in January 1997 I posted a
message of support to him encouraging him to further develop the
site (which at that time consisted of only one fabricated picture
of Tonya's head on Nicole Bobek's body). Maxey himself gratefully
acknowledged our support. And if you check back issues of
"The Portlandian" you will see we have promoted his site quite
heavily from day one.
Nor is this because we were ignorant of Maxey's background. In
fact, as soon as we became aware of Maxey's site we ran checks to
discover his background and easily found references in
respectable magazines such as "The Economist" to his pornography
involvement. We did not say anything at the time, however, simply
because we did not believe it was our business to do so. We here
at The Portlandian support free speech and believe that
consenting adults should have the right to view explicit material
if they wish. The Portland Ice Skating Society exists to promote
Tonya Harding, not to police people's private sexual morality. We
continued to remain silent even after we discovered fake
pornographic images of Tonya on another site connected to Maxey
as they were presented in the context of a joke, (albeit a
rather tasteless one), and because we did not want to risk
controversy that could embarrass Tonya and potentially derail an
excellent Tonya site.
In addition, we had received e-mail from "Roy Edwards" indicating
that he was now in charge and that Maxey was now no longer
involved in running the site, so the question seemed to be moot.
"Edwards" even claimed that this was a "different" Jim Maxey, one
who was "involved with the Boy Scouts" and that he understood
that the "other" Event Horizons Jim Maxey was "dead", an
explanation we found unconvincing, but which again appeared
irrelevent in view of the site's "new" management. However, new
information reaching us in the past few weeks, the source of
which we cannot divulge, confirmed our growing suspicions that
despite these assurances the site was still being run from the
same servers as Throbnet and Adultporn, and indeed other porn
sites that we were initially unaware of. In the wake of the
recent breakup between "Edwards" and Tonya, and the subsequent
erroneous anti-Tonya propaganda being put out under the Glibguy
alias, we decided the time was right to take further action.
We at the Portland Ice Skating Society stand firmly behind our
claims that the Jim Maxey who ran (and indeed still runs, despite
his attempts to make you believe otherwise) www.tonyaharding.com
is involved in the pornography business, and indeed has even been
responsible for spreading faked pornographic images of Tonya
herself. We do not make a practice of making baseless, scurrilous
allegations against people we barely know, especially someone who
claims to be a Tonyaphile. We check our sources. We gather our
facts. And we have strong evidence to back up our claims,
evidence that has recently been forwarded to Tonya's advisors for
their consideration. Neither are we in the habit of backing down
in the face of threats and bullying. In our almost 3 years of
operation we have fought against the bigotry and hypocrisy that
surrounds Tonya, drawing attention to corruption and the double
standards that permeate the highest levels of the Olympic
movement and figure skating in particular. We believe that
Tonyaphiles can only have credibility if we speak the truth. We
are not going to be intimidated by some pathetic self-important
Larry Flynt wannabe who thinks that just because he's got piles
of money he can push people around.
Exactly what Maxey's game is I do not know. Perhaps he is a
pervert who wants to give Tonya a good whacking with his own 6
inch telescopic police baton, if you get my drift. In view of the
type of material he's involved in distributing that's not too
unbelievable. Maybe he wants to extort money from her somehow. Or
possibly he's some kind of raving psychopath. Given his mutiple
personalities and the deranged ranting that has appeared on his
site in recent days I think that that must be considered as a
distinct possibility. Whatever the truth is, to my mind his
devious, unprofessional conduct in recent months, plus his shady
background, indicate someone whose motives are not in Tonya's
best interest and I think she is wise to be rid of him - he seems
to me to be just Jeff Gillooly in a better suit. Someone who
exploits Tonya for profit in this manner is not a true
Tonyaphile. It was obvious to us that his April Fool's Day "joke"
about closing the site was some kind of power game and this is
more of the same. Tonya has had enough of these sort of
manipulative people in her life in the past and doesn't need
another. Accordingly I have removed any link to his site,
especially as it now no longer seems to point to anything Tonya
related.
In an article on his site, "Bayard" says "those who seem the most
credible, have a gift of gab, string you along, are usually the
ones who steal you blind for some sort of glory, credit, or
personal gain". We couldn't agree more. He also invites readers
to "think for yourself". Again, we agree. We have presented you
with facts, evidence, URL's and reasoned argument. Jim Maxey, on
the other hand has presented you with lies, phony aliases,
abusive language and pornography. You can verify everything we've
said with a few mouse clicks. We'll leave it up to you to work
out who is telling the truth.
We would particularly like to thank David House for his valuable
assistance in our investigation.
Terry Hall
Head of Special Duties Section
Portland Ice Skating Society
- New Zealand's Tonya Harding fan club
http://www.oocities.org/Colosseum/Stadium/1190
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VISIT THESE GREAT TONYA WEB SITES:
PortIce - http://www.oocities.org/Colosseum/Stadium/1190
Dave House - http://www.davidhouse.com/tonya/index.html
Charlie Main - http://www.charliesweb.com/tonya/tonya.html
Puppetboy - http://www.puppetland.com/mirrortony2.html
Valerie Smith - http://www.olywa.net/radu/valerie/LilHam.html
Swan Lake - http://members.tripod.com/~TonyaHarding/index.html
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