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Murder In The Fast
Lane
A Woman Seeks Justice For The Murder Of Her
Brother And Sister-In-Law
(Page 1 of 6)April 28, 2007
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Mickey and Trudy Thompson (CBS)
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(CBS) Mickey Thompson's name became synonymous with
speed—from dragsters, to Indy, to off-road racing. Like
American legends Chuck Yeager, who broke the sound
barrier, and John Glenn, who orbited the earth, Thompson
would also go on to make history.
By the time he was 25, he was racing professionally.
He’d eventually go on to set 395 different speed
records.
After an early first marriage, he did make a key stop
along the way Mickey met and married Trudy Feller a
former secretary at Hot Rod Magazine. "Just special
people together. They had fun together," remembers
Mickey's younger sister Collene Campbell.
"He was the man. He was a dad, he was a great dad you
know? Coached baseball, coached football, still was out
racing—like I said he was, he was the man," remembers
Mickey's son, Danny Thompson.
But as correspondent Bill Lagattuta reports, Mickey was
still one step away from the history books. That would
all change on April 10, 1960, when Mickey climbed into a
car he had built from the ground up at the Bonneville
Salt Flats in the Utah desert.
Mickey put the pedal to the metal, and drove his car,
the "Challenger One," 406 miles per hour. It was an
amazing feat, topping a British racer, and setting a new
world record.
What he had done was go faster than any man had ever
gone before, without leaving the confines of the earth.
The headlines proclaimed him the speed king.
Twenty-eight years later, with his racing business still
going strong, Mickey would once again make front-page
news. Only this time there would be no joy: Mickey and
Trudy were gunned down in front of their home.
It was March 16, 1988. The light hadn’t come yet to
California’s San Gabriel Mountains, when Mickey and
Trudy set out for work, as they always did together at
6:00 a.m.
"And I got a phone call. From one of my dad’s employees
at the office and he said 'There’s something happened up
at the Bradbury house. And we don’t really know what it
is but something’s happened,'" Danny remembers.
Danny grabbed his car keys and made a phone call to his
aunt Collene.
"And I says, 'What is it Danny?' And he says, 'I don’t
know. I'm on my way up. I don’t know what happened they
just said there were gun shots up there,'" she recalls.
Neighbor Lance Johnson would recall being startled out
of bed. "And all of a sudden we were awakened by some
gunshots. About 15 seconds went by with silence and all
of a sudden I heard Mickey Thompson, who was our next
door neighbor, who lived right over here, and he was
screaming. Just screaming at the top of his lungs," he
recalls.
When Danny arrived, he saw the bodies of his father and
Trudy uncovered.
"I was in shock," he remembers.
Everyone in the racing community expressed their shock
and outrage, no one more than Michael Goodwin, Mickey
Thompson's business partner.
"It was just a tragedy and it was apparently an
assassination. Somebody shot them, so it wasn’t an
accidental death," Goodwin said.
Detective Mark Lillienfeld would spend much of his
career piecing together exactly what had happened. The
motive, says Lillienfeld, was murder and nothing else;
investigators had found about $500 on Mickey Thompson.
Police put out sketches of two African-American hooded
gunmen, which eyewitnesses had described. But the
shooters were long gone, escaping on bicycles.
Fourteen years later there were still no arrests. And
that's what’s most troubling to Thompson’s family and
friends. Because they say they knew from the moment they
heard about the murder who was behind it.
(CBS) Both Collene and Danny believe Michael
Goodwin was behind the killing; and Det.
Lillienfeld acknowledges Goodwin was the main
focus of suspicion.
There was a theory, but no indictment. Did
Goodwin get away with murder, free to live the
good life?
Police couldn’t prove it. But over the course of
the past 18 years, they wouldn’t be the only
ones investigating Michael Goodwin. Thompson's
sister Collene was determined he would be
brought to justice.
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Collene is all too familiar with murder close to home,
even before Mickey and Trudy were shot dead. Hard-boiled
detective Larry Flynn watched 20 years ago as Collene, a
housewife and mother, learned what it takes to solve a
murder.
This victim wasn’t famous. He was young and nobody much
knew him, but he was even closer to Collene than her
brother Mickey. The victim was Scott Campbell, one of
Collene's two children.
Scott was, according to his mother, a good kid who fell
into bad company. When Scott was 29, he disappeared
without a trace. That’s when his mother first met Det.
Flynn, who was with the L.A. County Sheriff's Office.
"I said, 'Come back in 24 hours,' and she said 'Oh no,
no, no. That’s not gonna work that way,'" he recalls.
"We locked horns the first time we ever met and I mean
you don’t want to lock horns with Collene because if you
do you are gonna lose."
With Collene on their backs, police learned Scott had
met two men, Larry Cowell and Donald Dimasio, and was to
fly in a private plane to Fargo, N.D.
Asked if this could have been drug related, Flynn says,
"Probable."
Scott never made it to Fargo—he never made it home
alive. Somewhere between Los Angeles and Catalina
Island, Scott met his death.
"Dimasio reached around and broke his neck. And
according to Kalb he put the plane in a right bank and
opened the door, and he went out," Det. Flynn explains.
Scott's body was never found.
How did police know this? Not through their own work,
but through Collene. Frustrated things were going slow,
she tracked down the man her son was to meet in Fargo.
"I picked up the phone and called him and said 'I know
you know what happened to my son. You were the last
phone call he made,'" Collene explains.
Collene convinced that man to come to California and
wear a wire. Conversations about Scott's killing were
then recorded on tape.
Having pretty much solved her son’s murder and having
sent his killers to prison, Collene decided she liked
getting things done and needed a platform. She began
working as an advocate for victims' rights.
"What is it that you know about the system most people
don’t?" Lagattuta asks.
Says Collene, "I know the system sucks."
And so when that call came about Mickey and Trudy,
Collene knew that she was beginning a hideous personal
journey once again. "I know what it feels like to have
people say this will bring you closure. There’s no
closure when somebody’s been murdered. It just goes on
and on and on," she says.
In order to change the system, she decided she had to be
a part of it. She became the first woman mayor in her
hometown of San Juan Capistrano.
And now Collene—that whirlwind of energy and sadness—is
aimed at solving her second set of murders and she's got
another detective who has become part of her life: Det.
Mark Lillienfeld.
"It’s a unique position being a murder cop. And you
kinda take on, I think, somewhat the life of the
victim," Lillienfeld says.
Lillienfeld has come to know everything about Mickey
Thompson—and about Collene. "She’s a grieving, pissed
off elderly woman that lost a brother and a sister in
law that she loved dearly," he says.
And as the years go by, for the detective and for
Mickey's sister, there are two constants: Collene's
unshakeable resolve; and secondly, Michael Goodwin,
another legend of the racetrack, and from day one, the
man Collene was convinced was behind the murders.
"This is a man who told a lot of people that he was
gonna kill my brother," Collene says.
(CBS) Like Mickey, Michael Goodwin's life is all about
living to the max, as a big-time rock 'n' roll concert
promoter, and as the inventor of the stadium-sized
motor-cycle road-show called "Supercross."
Back then, Goodwin had a beautiful wife named Diane and
all the perks money and fame could buy. "We traveled a
lot, diving, snow skiing. I had a fairy princess wife
and we just did wonderful things together," he tells
Lagattuta.
Bill Wilson, a retired cop-turned stadium manager,
remembers what made Mike Goodwin so special. "Michael
was highly competitive, an excitable individual. It was
an, 'I can do anything' kind of an attitude," he says.
He got things done, just like Mickey Thompson.
Mickey's son Danny remembers how in 1978 his father
transformed the car racing world, by bringing outdoor
auto racing indoors. "He said 'I want to bring 25
million pounds of dirt into your stadium. I want to run
these pickup trucks up through your bleachers and back
down. I want to jump them 70 feet back into the floor,'"
Danny recalls.
Even Det. Lillienfeld admits, when it came to thinking
big, Goodwin and Mickey had the same DNA. "In some ways
very similar personalities in that they were, I don’t
know if bull-headed is the right term, but very much
knew what they wanted," he says.
It was only a matter of time before Goodwin and Mickey
would go into business together and it was all about the
dirt: each man was paying a fortune hauling tons of dirt
in to the stadium for his own race. They decided to
split the cost by bringing in one load of dirt, racing
motor bikes one night and cars the next.
Asked what being in business with Mickey Thompson was
like, Goodwin says, "It was truly hell from the first
day."
And Mickey would have agreed, according to his sister
Collene. "Mickey called me on the phone and he said,
'Goodwin has stolen $50,000 from me.' And I said,
'What!' And he said, 'Collene, I think the guy’s a
crook.'"
Shirley Brown, Mickey's personal assistant and
bookkeeper, says she soon began to get complaints from
the company's outside contractors. "And that was the
first indicator Goodwin was running off with Mickey's
money," she says.
Goodwin denies stealing any of the partnership’s money.
Always willing to defend himself to 48 Hours, Goodwin
insists the problem was that Mickey just wouldn’t live
up to the deal.
"Although Mickey had signed an agreement to turn all the
decisions over to me, because we did recognize we
couldn’t have two bosses, that was not the case; he
wanted to continue to run the show," Goodwin says.
Mickey went to court claiming Goodwin had stolen
hundreds of thousands of dollars straight out of their
business; he won a $514,000 judgment, but Goodwin says
he did not pay up. In fact, Det. Lillienfeld says
Goodwin never paid a dime.
Instead, Goodwin declared bankruptcy, and appealed the
ruling. It would drag on through the legal system for
two years before Goodwin’s appeal was shot down.
Mickey's family and friends say that's when Goodwin got
ugly. "Mickey called me on the phone and he says 'Sis,
I'm really concerned.' I says 'What is the matter,
Mick?' He says 'I'm afraid Goodwin is going to hurt my
baby,' meaning Trudy. He says, 'Sis, I am telling you
this guy is capable of it, and I feel it in my bones,'"
Collene remembers.
"It would be phone calls and Mickey would say, 'Goddamn,
Goodwin is at it again,' and the death threats were 'Get
off my back,'" Shirley Brown recalls.
Death threats, one after the next. That's what those
close to Mickey Thompson remember.
"I said, 'How are things going, Mike?' He said,
'Thompson is killing me, taking everything I got.' He
says, 'I am going to take him out,'" Bill Wilson says.
But Goodwin denied that claim. "I did not tell Bill
Wilson or anyone else I was going to take out Mickey
Thompson and I didn’t," he told 48 Hours in 2002.
But when 48 Hours saw him a few years later, his story
seemed to change. "I am sure that dozens of guys, or
hundreds of them in the racing world, including myself
at one time or another is gonna say, 'I'm gonna take
that guy down or out..,' now in motor cross racing that
means you’re gonna knock the guy down or push him off
the track," Goodwin said.
"And so I said 'C’mon Mike, nobody wins that way.' I
said, 'He’s dead and you’re in prison.' And he said,
'No, they won’t catch me. I'm too smart for that,'"
Wilson recalls.
But soon after that conversation with Wilson, Mickey and
Trudy were shot dead in their driveway.
And Det. Lillienfeld says he believes Goodwin is behind
the killings, and that he was responsible for hiring
those hit men.
"Michael Goodwin is a four letter word. He’s evil. He’s
evil all the way through," Collene tells 48 Hours.
(CBS) For Michael Goodwin, it seems as if there has been
nothing but suspicions and allegations since the day he
met Mickey Thompson. But so far there has been no proof.
So Goodwin carries on, living life in the murky limbo
that comes with being tagged a murderer but not being
arrested.
Under suspicion but never charged, Goodwin says he has
been a convenient target, and it has ruined his life. "I
cannot imagine a more quantum change from what our life
was back then to what it’s been now. I’ve lost my wife
over this. I’ve become a pariah in many circles," he
says.
But the police won’t stop chasing Goodwin. He claims
when it comes to the murders of Mickey and Trudy
Thompson, he is victim number three. "If they want ya’,
they’ll get ya’. I mean I truly do believe that they’ll
sometime come and grab me on fabricated evidence,"
Goodwin says.
His life as a jetsetter is over and his savings are all
but gone. Goodwin now lives in a trailer with his aging
father. And he blames the politically connected Collene
Campbell for all his troubles. "She doesn’t really want
the real killers of Mickey Thompson. She wants Michael
Goodwin," he claims.
But Collene says she doesn't care about Goodwin at all.
"I only care about the person who murdered my brother
and if that happens to be Mike Goodwin, then I'd like to
have him behind bars," she says.
It's August 2001, and Michael Goodwin’s fears—and
Collene's wishes—may be coming true. Two new witnesses
claim to have important information.
Goodwin was arrested by police, to stand in a line-up.
Det. Lillienfeld brought in the witnesses. He says they
did come forward at the time of the murders, but only
now has their information come into clear focus for the
cops. "And what they saw was two men sitting in a car in
front of their home and they were just watching the
roadway using a pair of binoculars," he says.
Lillienfeld believes that it was "some type of a dress
rehearsal." But there’s just one problem with the
detectives theory: the car was at the bottom of the hill
and the Thompson home is at the top.
Goodwin attorney Elena Saris is quick to point out that
slight problem with Lillienfeld’s theory: “There’s no
proof it was Michael Goodwin.” “The car was facing the
wrong way.” “This evidence is laughable to me.”
Twelve hours after his arrest, and back at the county
jail, Michael Goodwin is walking out a free man once
again.
The two witnesses did identify him in the lineup, but
unbelievably, authorities decided not to hold him.
Goodwin says that's because there’s no case against him.
Asked if it was him in the car with the binoculars,
Goodwin says, "Absolutely not."
About the witnesses, Goodwin says, "They are lying.
They’re not wrong. They’re lying. It’s been set up that
way. This is all part of Collene Campbell and Detective
Lillienfeld’s script to convict me for the crime because
they can’t find the real killer."
But Lillienfeld says he doesn't have a "personal agenda
or grudge" against Mike Goodwin. "I mean he’s the man
all the evidence led me to. So the logical conclusion at
the end of the trail is Mike Goodwin," the detective
says.
"Here’s one of the reasons some people say you look
guilty. You owed Mickey Thompson money, he’s murdered
and you leave the country," Lagattuta remarks.
"Yes, but they may not be asking for the real facts,"
Goodwin replies.
"Did you leave the country?" Lagattuta asks.
"Yes, but not for five months and for the two and a half
to three years that we were out of the country, they
never called and asked for me to return. Because there
is no evidence to connect me," Goodwin says.
(CBS) After the murders, Goodwin headed to the Caribbean
on his yacht, but when he returned to the U.S., he found
himself in a sea of trouble. But it wasn’t about the
murders; Goodwin was charged with filing false loan
statements. He was convicted and sent to prison for 30
months.
Not surprisingly, Goodwin says. He claims Collene wanted
to put him there and that the charges were "all
fabricated."
Asked if he thinks he will be indicted, Goodwin says,
"Yes."
Goodwin’s convinced his time is up—so convinced, he has
set up one of 48 Hours' video cameras in his living
room. On Dec. 17th the tape was rolling when the bang on
the door finally came and he was arrested.
The next morning, Goodwin is arraigned for the murders
of Mickey and Trudy Thompson.
Goodwin would plead not guilty and say he was eager to
go to trial, but justice would move slowly, and
strangely. After two and a half years, the case against
Goodwin was dismissed by Orange County.
He was just about to walk out the door a free man, when
he was re-arrested by authorities from Los Angeles
County; they would hold him another two and a half
years.
Finally after five years locked up without bail, Goodwin
would go to trial in Pasadena, Calif., his future in the
hands of a young prosecutor, who wasn’t even in college
yet when Mickey and Trudy Thompson were murdered.
Prosecutor Alan Jackson would make the case that the
very nature of this murder was a give-away, the road map
that inevitably led to Michael Goodwin. "This was an
incredibly well-orchestrated, well conducted , execution
style murder," Jackson tells Lagattuta. "This was about
pride, this was about ego. This was about winning and
losing. Mike Goodwin saw paying a nickel to Mickey
Thompson as a loss and he’d be seen as a loser the rest
of his life."
"What they have is that Michael could have had a motive
because he was a business partner, and the business had
gone sour. That’s all they have," says public defender
Elena Saris, for whom this murder has now gotten
personal.
"The scariest case that you can try is with a client
that you believe to be innocent. There’s just nothing
that’s more fearful," she explains.
Saris says she does believe her client is innocent.
And so it would all finally begin, 18 years after that
bloody morning: the murder trial of Michael Goodwin.
The prosecution's case is built on the memories of
witnesses, like former cop Bill Wilson, who says Goodwin
said, "I'm gonna take him out."
And the death threats he recalls hearing so many years
ago.
"What the evidence will show is that the killers of
Mickey and Trudy Thompson have never been identified,
never been named, never been caught, never been
arrested. The police have no murder weapon, no forensic
evidence, nothing tying any individual to this
crime—much less tying Michael Goodwin to these unknown
assassins," Saris argues in court.
"Regardless of whether you like this man, regardless of
whether they told you for the last seven weeks what a
jerk he is, the law protects the unpopular, the law
protects people when the district attorney does not
present enough evidence to convince you beyond a
reasonable doubt," she tells jurors.
Goodwin is the only one in the Pasadena courthouse who
knows for sure if his were the hands behind the Thompson
murders.
"They have absolutely no idea who killed these people.
And they’re looking for someone to blame, because it’s
been unsolved for 18 years," Saris says.
"I worry everyday a jury is out. There’s no way not to
worry. I mean I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little
bit on pins and needles. But I’m real superstitious,"
prosecutor Jackson says.
Even he knows why his case is a tough one to sell.
"There is no single smoking gun in this case," Jackson
acknowledges.
And he admits there is no physical evidence at the crime
scene linking Goodwin to the murders.
Asked if he will be acquitted, Goodwin tells Lagattuta,
"I do believe I will. I can’t be 100 percent sure. But I
do believe I will."
And Collene can’t be sure either, fearful that the case
might falter on something like a hung jury. "No matter
what happens, no matter what the jury comes back with,
it doesn’t bring Mickey and Trudy back," she says.
(CBS) For five days the jury deliberates. Finally, there
is a verdict: guilty of first degree murder.
"I touched Elena on the arm and I told her I’m sorry
cause she worked so hard on this," Goodwin says,
recalling the moment he heard the verdict. "And I said I
didn’t do it. And I didn’t. I mean I'm looking at 30
years in a cage. I’m sorry."
While defense attorney Elena Saris was "deeply shocked
and saddened" by the verdict, Mickey's son Danny told
reporters, "It’s a great feeling. This doesn’t bring my
dad back, but there’s some justice here."
It’s was a tough case all around. For prosecutors and
police, not a single piece of physical evidence to tie
Michael Goodwin to the Thompson murders. Their case and
their hopes were that Goodwin would be done in by his
own big mouth, his ego, his anger, his threatening
words—words at least one witness will never forget.
"It was just the totality of all the evidence is what
did it," says Bill Wilson, who thinks jurors rendered
the right verdict.
The jury heard a parade of witnesses like Wilson, the
ex-cop for whom that one phrase echoed like a shot.
"And as a former cop, how did you interpret those words
'I'm gonna take him out?'" Lagattuta asks.
"Well, I'm going to kill him, there’s no question,"
Wilson says.
There was no DNA, no phone calls, and no hard evidence.
Still, for the juror's 48 Hours spoke with there was
also no question.
"Well obviously we believe he meant the threats," one
juror told Lagattuta.
Asked what kinds of witnesses helped them make their
decision, a juror said,
"We counted, I believe 15, people that testified about
either hearing a threat, or being the target of a
threat."
"Twelve people sat in judgment. And twelve people voted
guilty," Lagattuta remarks to Goodwin.
"Without half the evidence that they should have seen,
Bill," Goodwin replies.
Asked if he thinks he got a fair trial, Goodwin says,
"Absolutely not."
Goodwin and his defense team insist the jury never got
to hear their claim that Mickey had other enemies. "We
were not able to present the other suspects to the jury,
we were not able to present the other theories of the
crime, any other person that may have had a vendetta
against Mickey Thompson," Saris explains.
"Find one other case in this country one other case.
Where there’s been a conviction where they didn’t
identify the killers. Apprehend the killers. Or tie a
meeting or a payment or something linking the person
that got convicted. In this case me. To the people that
got killed. Didn’t happen. And the judge instructed them
they could do that," Goodwin says.
The trial may be over, but the investigation into the
murders isn’t done yet, and that means his sister won’t
be resting anytime soon. "We still want these people,
they are killers," she told reporters.
And Det. Lillienfeld says he won't be resting either.
"This case is not over me, it’s still an active open
investigation and I hope someday that the information
comes forward where we’ll be able to identify and
prosecute the actual gunmen," he says.
As Mickey Thompson was ripped from his racing throne,
now Goodwin’s fall is also complete. All that’s left is
talk—something everyone agrees—Mike Goodwin was always a
champion at.
"As we sit here, in this jail, after your conviction,
you’re still telling me you’re completely, 100 percent
innocent of these murders?" Lagattuta asks.
"Well, I’m either 100 percent or zero. It’s no where in
between. I’m a 100 percent not guilty of these murders.
No connection to them," he says.
"He will die saying 'I'm an innocent man.' And, you
know, he’s as evil as they get," Collene says.
For a racing family, winning is everything and while
speed was Mickey's claim to fame, it was his sister’s
endurance that won the day.
"Checkered flag is the symbol of winning the race and
we've been in a long endurance race and we finally
crossed the finish line and the winner gets the
checkered flag and Mickey knows that," Collene says.
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