I got a call from somebody over at my dad's office.
They said, "There's something going on up at Bradbury."
"But we don't know what it is."
And so I jumped in the car and started going up to Bradbury.
And, um, a cop stopped me.
They said, "Who are you? We're not letting anybody go through."
I said, "I'm Danny Thompson, Mickey Thompson's son."
And the cop, I just saw it in his eyes, you know, 'cause they knew.
And I went, "Ah, fuck."
You didn't believe it.
That was my dad. You couldn't kill him. He was untouchable.
Race car driver Mickey Thompson and his wife were murdered
in their driveway in a posh suburb of LA.
Mrs. Thompson and Mr. Thompson were shot several times in the upper torso.
The ambush murders of Thompson and his wife Trudy
in the driveway of the couple's Bradbury home...
Police are calling it one of the most mysterious celebrity murders.
It's an extent of evil that we hope we don't see.
Mickey Thompson was beloved by everyone. He had no enemies, save one.
The LA County Sheriff's Department
is the best of the best.
Some of the highest-profile cases are tried in Los Angeles.
You have to be dedicated 110%.
This is murder. There's no more serious crime.
It boils down to a passion and a sense of duty.
Justice comes from finding the truth.
One of the things about Los Angeles, it's huge.
And to get around, is there mass transit?
No! You have to drive.
People love cars in Los Angeles.
It's a huge area for car lovers to display their wares.
Back in the '80s in Los Angeles, street racing, it was its own culture,
from drag racing, to motocross, to off-road.
And being into cars back then,
I knew that Mickey Thompson was a legend.
Thompson was always known as an innovator,
a maverick car builder, and a driver that had to win.
The fastest man on wheels... Mickey Thompson.
See international speed kings in action. Mickey Thompson.
He has competed in every form of automobile racing.
I think, at one time, my dad had over 370 records.
But the one that put him on the map was
when he was the first American to go over 400 miles an hour.
His top speed, 406.6 miles an hour,
a record for the one-way run.
Mickey Thompson was not just a winner,
and not somebody who was just interested in cars.
He was a promoter.
He was the guy that basically invented indoor stadium racing.
We now put on what's called "short course racing."
We put it on in football fields, baseball fields,
inside domes, any place.
Thompson taking the win!
Mickey's son Danny has also decided
to dedicate his future to automobile racing.
I was racing full-time in my dad's series.
We'd fill these stadiums up. It was, I mean, incredible.
Thompson's own son took part,
and his wife Trudy was also involved in promoting the event.
I like to be close to him, and I like to do what he's doing,
and I like to go fast.
And I'm gonna be around for a long time driving race cars.
And I'm gonna win a lot more races.
I got a call early in the morning.
They said, "Know who Mickey Thompson is?" I said, "Yeah. Sure."
He says, "He and his wife, it appears, have been shot in front of their house,
and you're rolling to assist."
And we had the queen of our lab, Liz Devine.
She's brilliant, and everybody always wanted her on your crime scene.
I love going out. So I put on my jumpsuit and grabbed my kit and went out there.
At the time of this case, I was a senior criminalist
for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
We met and drove up to Bradbury Estates.
Bradbury Estates is an upscale housing area
that is... is a gated community.
My daughter Juliana,
she was taking horseback riding lessons in Bradbury Estates.
Every time I went there, I had to show ID,
I had to show permission from the stable owner just to get in.
And I couldn't fathom,
"How could somebody get in there to kill Mickey Thompson and his wife?"
Driving up, it was obvious that this was a huge case.
I've never seen so many cameras in one place in my life.
Obviously, it's a very nice house.
It's a very wide driveway.
Mickey's wife Trudy was laid out at the bottom of the sloping driveway.
And she had been shot,
and blood was running down into the gutter.
And Mickey Thompson is now laying up by the garage, which is on the top.
He has been shot in the body.
He had also been shot in the head.
They shot her in the head too.
We're going around and talking to people, and we talk to some of the witnesses.
Uh, we heard a series of shots.
All of a sudden, there was a period of about 10 or 15 seconds of silence.
Then I heard Mickey Thompson yelling, "Don't hurt my wife! Don't hurt my wife!"
And the next thing we heard is another series of shots and then silence.
Well, Dr. Johnson, he lived behind Mickey and Trudy,
and when he heard gunshots,
and he looked out,
he sees the bicycles going down Woodlyn Lane.
Dr. Johnson saw two young Black men on ten-speeds.
I mean, that was obviously a route of escape.
Dr. Johnson also said that Mickey Thompson, he had a routine down.
At six o'clock every morning, they would leave their house in Bradbury
and drive all the way to Anaheim Stadium, where their office was.
They used a van, and Trudy would generally drive.
She would back it out.
He would then lower the door, get in, and they would drive to work.
We know that there's two men on bicycles,
who we assume are the shooters,
but what was their purpose?
Now, it could be a robbery,
but when the detectives started checking the van that Trudy was driving,
it was full of jewelry, very expensive jewelry,
and Mickey, he had several thousand dollars in his wallet.
It wasn't taken, wasn't touched.
Obvious stuff is right on the seat, and they didn't grab it?
That makes no sense.
And then the neighbor heard
Mickey call out to Trudy,
and that they went after her first.
If this was a robbery, they never kill the woman first.
They always kill the man first.
He's a big guy.
Absolutely illogical.
Trudy was down on the ground.
There were fingernails broken off.
I mean, I just felt like she was driving.
They shot through the window at her.
I think she was running away and not fighting.
And, Mickey, you know, he was turned toward her.
And it just...
broke my heart.
It's the cruelest thing.
Everybody is telling us Mickey loved Trudy.
He was totally devoted to her,
and he was just madly in love with her.
My dad and Trudy, when they got married, it was a big deal.
She had a great personality, very jovial,
and they had a great relationship.
They were a really good team working together.
They were a good match
in the same way that a chord is a good chord.
They were very, very different,
but it worked in... in amazing ways.
My Aunt Trudy was an important part of my life.
Trudy had grace, kindness, and love.
She was the one who made people feel that they were appreciated.
The entire crime scene was outside,
but I was really trying to be observant and look at what is out of place.
We went into this office that was off the garage.
And out of the corner of my eye, I see somebody in there,
and I screamed.
Now, of course, the deputies come running in. Rey was there.
And it was a full-size mannequin of Mickey Thompson in his racing suit.
And, um, I was so embarrassed.
We were all laughing, but I...
You know, it was a light moment. Another... like, needed light moment.
You have to lighten the air or... I don't know.
You have to laugh so you don't cry. You just have to.
Then you go, "Okay, this is my job. I gotta get back out there."
I was really looking around,
really trying to evaluate what I could bring to the table.
I had photographs taken on the driveway of shoeprints in mud.
There was a stun gun on the ground by Mickey.
There were some cartridge casings.
Next to the garage door were these small, little orange trees.
And I looked, and I saw orange peels on the ground.
They were cut.
And it was fresh.
I mean, I remember just thinking, "They were sitting out there
and they're gonna have an orange while waiting to execute people."
It just made me know
that they knew exactly where to sit and wait.
You start piecing this all together.
They were lying in wait in front of the garage.
There was, yeah, the stun gun.
Now, was that used on Mickey? Was it used on her? We're not quite sure.
But it was there, obviously, to try and take control.
Ten-speed bicycles, guns...
Ah, killing in the sequence that would do the most harm and pain for Mickey.
We're talking a hit.
It is a hit.
Our primary suspects are two male Blacks.
They're described as 20 to 30 years of age.
There was a woman that was driving down the road near Bradbury Estates.
And as she's driving, suddenly from across that little driveway,
these two male Blacks on bicycles.
It seemed like they were out of control. They were going too fast.
But she got a look because she nearly hit them,
and as a good citizen, calls in.
Uh, she made a comment to the sheriff's department,
and the sheriff's department got her in contact with a forensic artist.
All the officers are aware, all the surrounding areas,
and we put up traffic stops at major intersections.
We're handing out these artist renderings of the suspects.
Homicide detectives in LA hope someone somewhere
will see this report on the murder of racing legend Mickey Thompson
and his wife Trudy,
and volunteer information about these two men.
The media coverage, it was...
As sad as it was, they just shoved it down your throat every two seconds.
Police say he and his wife were shot several times...
The two men then fled on ten-speed bicycles.
The biggest question still unanswered is, "Why?"
It was on every station.
It was on all the major networks. Even the non-major networks were there.
The media was out of control.
It was very oppressive and very hard seeing it on the news...
uh, with the helicopters...
...showing pictures of where their bodies were.
And there was no personal space for grief.
Now, one of the things you've got to do is learn your victim.
When did they get into that position where they were gonna be victimized?
It's very important.
We were directed to go to a house not far from the crime scene
where the family had gathered.
Everybody was very, very hurt, very broken up.
And we were coming in to talk to 'em.
That's one of the worst parts about the job.
I think everybody was in a daze.
I mean, "Is this really happening?"
I tell you one thing, they killed the finest two people in the whole world.
Part of the gathering was the sister, who is Collene,
and she just loved Mickey and Trudy to death.
Danny, who was trying to fill in as much information as he could,
but he was... he was crushed.
He was hurting.
I told the investigators right at first, "This wasn't an easy residence to get in."
"You had to have a plan."
"And it had to be premeditated."
While we're interviewing everybody in the family, they had a feeling of,
"If it's done, Mike Goodwin was responsible."
Mickey Thompson and Mike Goodwin were in similar businesses.
Mickey Thompson would bring in Baja-style racing indoors.
Mike Goodwin was emulating that to a certain degree
on the motocross circuit.
The two of them decided a partnership would benefit them.
Mike Goodwin was incredibly bright, incredibly big personality,
incredibly charismatic, and he was used to winning.
He won at everything he did.
Mickey and Trudy had focused in on the car side of it,
and at the same time, Goodwin was beginning to promote
motorcycle racing under similar conditions.
Bringing the motorcycles in,
motorcycle events along with the car event together,
you know, made good sense.
Mickey Thompson had the name.
He was lending his name and reputation to the event to fill the stadium.
My dad secured the contracts at Anaheim Stadium
for both off-road and supercross.
It looked like Goodwin would've been a good partner.
But Goodwin, after a couple events there, ran the bills up, didn't pay 'em,
and burnt the relationships with the stadiums, you know,
by not paying and being Goodwin.
When we looked into Goodwin's background,
one of the things we found about him is,
any time he got a chance, he would screw you.
He was a crook.
For Mickey,
integrity and making sure that everyone was taken care of
was incredibly important.
There... There was a realization on Mickey's part.
"No, I'm not gonna lend my name to something like that."
So Mickey terminated the partnership,
and that was the beginning of a long legal battle.
All the court battles.
My dad kept winning, and the judgements were in his favor.
Goodwin started switching money around,
and, you know, claiming bankruptcy here,
switching it to this person, that person.
The last time that I saw Mickey and Trudy,
there was a phone call.
Mickey turned it over to speakerphone.
I... I recognized, uh, Goodwin's voice,
and what he was saying was,
"I'm going to make you pay."
"You'll never see the loss through its end."
Goodwin's tone was deadly serious.
One of the last conversations I had with my dad,
he warned me that Goodwin was out of control.
Well, obviously, we've now got to interview Mike Goodwin.
So we drive down to their law offices.
As we get in, Mike Goodwin was standing behind his attorney.
His attorney said, "We're not gonna allow him to talk to you."
And he stood there...
God, he went through this ritual of...
Hands up. [sarcastically] "Ooh!"
He kept pointing at his attorney. I thought, "Oh, God, I'm gonna throw up."
Goodwin had told his attorney
that he was at a gym at six o'clock that morning,
and he was talking to people.
A lot of people could verify he was there.
Mike Goodwin was on a treadmill in Orange County
at the time these two people were killed in the San Gabriel Valley.
So there was nothing connecting Mike Goodwin to that crime scene.
There is no direct evidence, there is no smoking gun,
because no one ever determined who were the shooters.
And then a short time later, Michael Goodwin and his wife,
they just disappear.
And when they contacted Michael Goodwin's attorney, they said,
"All that we know is they bought this boat,
and they left the country."
So he couldn't be questioned, he couldn't be investigated.
Every homicide investigator in the history of mankind
has one or two cases
that they can't pull the trigger on that last bit of evidence.
There is those cases that you think,
"My God, that one bothers me."
Mickey didn't deserve this. Trudy didn't deserve this.
And you have this punk Mike Goodwin fleeing.
Yeah, I mean, I think it really hurt those detectives.
They all were really upset that they just couldn't break it.
Everybody wanted that to be solved.
They don't always get solved.
The Cold Case Unit of the LA County Sheriff's Department
at that time was composed of
about six older, mature, close-to-retirement detectives.
A great detective, a guy named John Yarbrough,
he basically said, "Hey, I've got this really big unsolved cold case,
the Mickey Thompson, Trudy Thompson murders."
"And I'd like you to learn about the nuances of this case
because there's a lot to it, and I'm old. I'm gonna retire soon."
"You're young. It'll be easy for you. It won't be hardly anything at all, kid."
He ultimately retired around 1994,
and myself and my new partner
then kind of assumed control of the case from that point on.
I'd never heard of Mickey Thompson in my life
until I got introduced to the case.
It's a high-profile case,
and I'm really at the beginning of my murder career.
I've only been a murder cop two years.
I went to Rey for advice. I respected him greatly.
He gave me great advice.
"Only one way to eat an elephant."
"One bite at a time."
Mark Lillienfeld. I was always impressed by him.
If I am murdered, I want him investigating my murder.
He has the skills, tenacity, intelligence, humor,
and, uh, he was not impressed or pushed around by hierarchy.
It's good sometimes to question authority.
You gotta think globally, be open to other ideas,
but to not dismiss out of hand certain other theories that may come up.
Was somebody mad at somebody else for another reason other than
this business dispute between Michael Goodwin and Mickey Thompson?
You've gotta be open to that.
So one of the first things we did was I met Collene Campbell,
Mickey Thompson's kid sister.
Collene Campbell is a force of nature.
She's an amazing woman.
Anybody that's had somebody murdered, I think, understands.
There is so much anger inside of you, and you don't get past it,
and you relive it every night in your nightmares.
The first time I met Collene was at her home.
I hit it off with her. I liked her right away.
We kind of had a connection.
And of course, after four minutes of being in the home,
I had to use the restroom.
As I'm walking down the hallway,
I see a photograph of a young man on the wall,
and it was Scott, her son.
In 1982, Collene suffered, you know...
The most horrific tragedy any parent could suffer is the loss of a child.
Scott had been hanging around with the wrong people.
He was killed, and his body was tossed out of a plane.
She basically investigated it herself.
She brought everything, all the information together.
She worked those innards to make 'em outards.
And she was very instrumental in pushing for, uh, prosecution.
I mean, she was relentless, never giving up,
and she was all the time on it,
and on it in ways that you would never even imagine.
Larry Cowell was ultimately convicted for the murder of Collene's son,
and Collene, she described repeatedly,
"You need to at least look at this and eliminate Larry Cowell."
Because it turns out during the trial of Larry Cowell and his crime partner
for the murder of Scott Campbell,
Mickey Thompson actually testified.
Larry Cowell was, uh, deeply enmeshed in the narcotics world
'cause he was a dope dealer,
but also, he was a big auto racing guy.
And Mickey testified as an expert witness
regarding these car parts found in Larry Cowell's shop.
The trial ended eight or ten months prior to the deaths of Mickey and Trudy.
It's kind of unusual that murder should hit a family like that.
So we looked for a connection.
We reviewed all the Scott Campbell murder reports.
We spoke to the original detective.
You know, we took it seriously.
There was not a shred of evidence to indicate any relationship
between the murders of Mickey and Trudy Thompson
and the murder of Mickey's nephew Scott Campbell,
other than the fact that they devastated a very nice, big, warm, loving family.
My partner and I wound up going back, really, to square one.
We'd come up with theories, ideas.
All those things have been eliminated. The one thing that hasn't been eliminated
is the fact that somebody was paid to do this murder,
and they were paid by Michael Frank Goodwin.
Once Mickey Thompson was murdered,
once Trudy Thompson was murdered,
if Mike Goodwin had nothing to do with it,
you'd expect him to live his life very normally,
going about his business,
not changing anything of any note.
But what did Mike Goodwin actually do after Mickey was killed?
Michael Goodwin and his wife decided to sell their house,
and they take all the assets that they have,
and they funnel 'em into a Caribbean bank.
Eighty-eight days after the murder, he fled the country on a boat
that he obtained through fraud.
In 1993, Mike Goodwin was charged with fraud
after he came back to the United States.
He was found guilty and went to federal prison.
And he would receive a sentence of two and a half years.
Mike Goodwin wasn't gonna talk.
He'd never talk to the cops, but we had his phone calls monitored.
At the same time,
every person that was ever interviewed by the original detectives,
my partner and I went back and re-interviewed those people.
In speaking with Dr. Lance Johnson,
who was kind of an earwitness to the assault,
he said, "My daughter, her best friend, Allison Triarsi,
lived across the street from Mickey Thompson."
"She saw the whole thing."
And he wasn't sure if law enforcement had ever contacted Allison Triarsi.
It turned out, in reviewing the records, law enforcement never had.
They didn't overlook her.
At the time of the murders, Allison Triarsi, a 15-year-old girl,
she was actually hidden by her parents
because of the psychological trauma that she had.
And I get it. If I had children...
If it was my dog that was an eyewitness, I would have hidden my dog.
I wouldn't let my dog talk to the cops either.
Allison Triarsi, she's a grown woman now,
so we were able to locate her.
Allison told my partner and I
that she was getting ready to go to school,
and she heard this really high-pitched screaming
as she ran to these living room windows that looked down on the Thompson estate.
So Allison actually saw
Trudy Thompson crawling on her hands and knees down the driveway.
Mickey Thompson was kneeling with his hands raised,
begging, "Please don't kill my wife. Please don't kill my wife."
Not begging for his life, begging for her life.
When Trudy got to the end,
the suspect pulled the trigger and fired into Trudy's head.
Allison watches that same suspect walk up the hill, shoot, and kill Mickey.
Allison was able to describe right away
that it was two African-American males that fled on ten-speed bicycles.
They wanted Mickey to watch her suffer,
allowing him to understand
that the last thing he's ever gonna see on this earth
was the love of his life being executed.
He so treasured her.
He was that kind of person.
The fact that he'd try and put himself in harm's way to protect her,
it was no surprise at all.
It was planned to torture my dad.
Cut and dry.
And it did.
Hearing Allison's version of what occurred
really kind of drove the nail into the coffin a little bit more
in corroborating what we already believed.
She is the only living eyewitness
that was able to describe the actual shooting of both victims.
So she was pretty critical.
It's one thing to hear about it. It's another thing to actually see it.
There was only one reason to kill these two people in this manner,
and that was pure, unadulterated revenge.
But more evidence was needed
to literally tether Mike Goodwin to the actual murders.
Mike Goodwin paroled from federal prison.
He flew out to Orange County, Santa Ana airport.
So I wound up having his luggage somewhat lost, um, when the plane landed.
So I pretended, you know, that I was a passenger on the plane too,
and we're both pissed off, waiting for our luggage.
He was clueless.
I had a tape recorder going 'cause I wanted to record his voice,
'cause I knew at some point in time
I was gonna attempt to wiretap his telephones,
so I wanted to know what he sounded like.
So that was really my primary goal,
and secondarily, it was simply just to meet the guy.
Much like knowing about your murder victims,
the more you know about your suspect,
the more you can find their weak spots and exploit that to your advantage.
During that 40-minute airport meeting,
it was all Mike Goodwin, all the time,
and it was all bullshit.
Mike Goodwin claims to be the youngest Eagle Scout in history. Bullshit.
Mike Goodwin claims to have bedded every Playboy Bunny. Bullshit.
Mike Goodwin claims he's the Golden Gloves Champion of Pensacola, Florida. Bullshit.
Really bullshit, inconsequential lies
that don't amount to a hill of beans, but show a pattern of conduct.
The guy can't tell the truth.
His whole life was a lie.
At first, it was quiet. Nothing was really happening.
As much as I like Lillienfeld, he didn't tell me anything.
But he couldn't. That's not... He...
His job is not to blab around everything. His job is to investigate, figure it out.
After so many years on this Mickey Thompson, Trudy Thompson killing,
you needed to approach in a different way.
The Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau were not media-driven,
but I had used the TV show America's Most Wanted previously
on another unrelated murder case,
and it generated some really good clues.
I was trying to identify the shooters. They were still interested.
We got a couple hundred phone calls,
and some of them were the crazy phone calls,
the alien phone calls, or John Wayne did it, or whatever,
but a number were of value.
What makes Mark so great is
he's gonna find these little things
and figure out a way to get information.
In this case, found a girl that got done wrong by him.
We received a call on a tip line.
This woman, she'd had a brief romantic relationship with Goodwin.
She told us on the phone that Mike Goodwin and her
were watching a crime show on the Mickey Thompson murders,
and that Mike had confessed to her
his responsibility for having arranged those murders.
And he was bragging about how he'd never be caught
'cause he was too smart.
So she became a good witness,
but it was one part of the bigger puzzle
that the women in Mike Goodwin's life had obtained admissions from him,
and God knows how many other women are out there that hold that secret.
I was asked by Mark,
"Hey, I'd like you to head this up."
"I want you to go to Virginia to monitor the activity of Goodwin's ex-wife."
Mike Goodwin was married
at the time of the murders of Mickey and Trudy Thompson,
but, eventually, he and his wife of that time divorced.
Mike Goodwin paroled from federal prison
pretty close to the same time his ex-wife Diana Goodwin
went to live with her parents in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
We applied for and received permission to do a wire intercept
in the state of Virginia on Diane Goodwin's home phone
and her business telephone.
During undercover operations,
we sometimes want to stimulate people to talk about crime.
One of the ways, and it's very common, is quite frankly by calling the person.
"I'm Detective Mark Lillienfeld from Los Angeles County Sheriff's Homicide."
"I would love to talk to you about your ex-husband."
I don't really care if she talks to me or tells me to go fuck myself,
which is basically what she did.
All I care about is I got her brain going.
When she started getting phone calls from Mark Lillienfeld,
we were there to monitor her in an assortment of surveillance tactics,
and see what she did,
because it's gonna lead to more evidence.
One phone call in particular we listened to,
she basically makes an admission that Mike had admitted to her
that he was responsible for the Thompson murders.
We've got two different people
in two different states at two different times
making the same statement,
that Michael Goodwin admitted being responsible for the murders
of Mickey and Trudy Thompson.
That's good shit, a legal term in my world.
Everything about this case was circumstantial,
in terms of connecting Mike Goodwin to the actual murders.
That changed with the revelation of new eyewitnesses.
The America's Most Wanted show generated a call from a gentleman
who was an accountant, and they said,
"I've got a client, and he saw some suspicious activity
a couple days before the murder."
"He's tried calling the cops, but they always brush him off."
This gentleman's name is Ron Stevens.
Basically, he said, "I didn't know Mickey Thompson,
I never met him,
but I lived about three blocks away from where he was killed."
Ron goes on to tell me, "I come home early,
and my wife steps outside the house to greet me in the driveway."
"She said, 'Hey, I'm glad you're home.'"
"'There's a suspicious car parked on the street.'"
"'It's got two men in it, and they got binoculars,
and I think something is up.'"
"'There's a grade school down the street. Maybe they're pedophiles, kidnappers.'"
And Ron Stevens actually walks towards where this car's parked,
and he can see the side of the driver.
Driver was white. Passenger was Black.
When Ron Stevens gets closer to the driver, he gets out of there.
He, like, peels rubber leaving the scene.
And Ron thinks, "God, that's odd."
He called the LA County Sheriff's Department.
Sadly, we never sent a radio car out there.
So it... it's on us. It's our bad.
This is about four days before the Mickey and Trudy Thompson murders.
And when he describes the driver,
he describes Michael Goodwin almost to a tee.
Could this have been Goodwin?
Could he have been there actually surveilling the area
in order to set the plans in motion to have them murdered?
So now what had to be done was there had to be a lineup
to see if this witness really could identify Goodwin.
That was the problem. How are you gonna do that?
If the person was in custody, you could do it.
So the idea was,
"Well, let's arrest him on a Ramey warrant."
Ramey is a term we use in California for a probable cause arrest warrant,
where we take the actual warrant to a judge.
He signs it. The prosecutor is not involved.
So I write an arrest warrant for Mike Goodwin.
Fuck Mike Goodwin.
Mr. Goodwin, you are here
because you refused to volunteer for the lineup.
Would it have been easier, in hindsight,
to simply volunteer rather than go through this?
No, I think we have to challenge government misconduct whenever we can.
But let me ask you this, if I committed otherwise a perfect crime,
would I have been so stupid to go to the scene of the crime?
I mean, this is beyond belief.
I coordinate a live lineup in Men's Central Jail with Ron Stevens,
with him and his wife.
We have them both view the lineup.
They both identified Michael Frank Goodwin
as the guy sitting in the car with an African-American
three blocks from Mickey Thompson's house four days before the murder.
Being able to place him at or close to the crime scene
was a revelation, was a huge deal.
We got him now, and we charged him with murder.
This whole thing is a farce and a setup,
and my treatment in jail was exemplary of that.
That's it. - It's a Bible.
Thank you.
I looked up in the sky, and talked to Mickey about...
I said, "You think you've gone through some endurance races in your life."
"Let me tell you."
"We've just gone through a 13-year-nine-months endurance race."
"And this is a tough one, but I did what you taught me to do."
"Never, never give up."
I remember when he was arrested.
It was hopeful.
But it wasn't done.
Goodwin called the case against him "character assassination."
Knowing what a slimy bastard Goodwin was...
Is he gonna wiggle his way out of this one?
Mike Goodwin had a hot red, burning hate for me after I'd arrested him.
The threats and everything started around that time.
He had people working for him,
and it was a continual, you know, never-ending thing.
Mark Lillienfeld was starting to get some pretty significant threats.
Um, threats on his life, death threats,
but Mark was of the opinion,
"I've got a job to do. I'm not gonna be deterred."
Mark is one of those guys that learned to let blows glance off them,
and I was that dumb Irish boxer
that stood there taking... absorbing every frickin' blow
to show everyone how tough you are.
To do it as long as Mark did it, you have to be like Mark,
where you really can let things glance off of you.
After seeing what these people will do, I am concerned about anything.
They will make up evidence.
The DA's office didn't want to get involved in this if it was a loser.
If you don't have all your ducks in order, you don't want to take a chance,
especially on a publicity case like this.
I met Ron Bowers. He was a deputy district attorney.
He had retired at the time,
and he'd been hired back in their Trial Support Division.
So, the two prosecutors, Alan Jackson and Pat Dixon,
had elicited Ron's help
in preparing all of the court exhibits and helping get the case organized.
It was a massive case.
And I said, "Well, I'm more than happy to look at it,
uh, but I'm gonna have to have the case files."
And Mark said, "Okay, we'll take care of it."
Next day, I come to work, and I barely can get into my office.
It is filled with boxes and boxes.
And scribbled on my yellow tab,
Mark had written,
"Ron, these are the boxes that you requested."
"Now put the case together, and do it quickly."
Ron Bowers was integral
to putting together a blueprint presentation
to get the case to trial.
Ron was a master at that.
I put together a presentation, showed it to the district attorney,
and the district attorney said, "Okay, we're gonna file it."
So that was the beginning of the preparation
for the trial of Michael Goodwin.
From day one,
literally day one,
Michael Goodwin had bad intentions.
I'm unaware of any other case in the history of California
where the actual shooters were never even identified.
There's just no other conclusion that's reasonable
but that Mike Goodwin hired these people.
We just kept coming back to the idea
that I don't have to prove that Mike Goodwin did it
as much as I can prove
that seven billion other people on the planet didn't do it.
Nobody else wanted Mickey Thompson dead.
So in this case, motive became very, very important.
Mike Goodwin was homicidal, angry, claiming to everybody that would listen,
"I'll see Mickey Thompson dead before I give him a nickel of my money."
The killers of Mickey and Trudy Thompson
have never been identified.
Never been named, never been caught, never been arrested.
The defense's case could be most easily summed up as
Mike Goodwin was at a gym at the time these two people were killed.
He had nothing to do with it. There are too many unanswered questions.
There were many witnesses we called
to testify regarding the threats,
regarding the pre-offense conduct that occurred between Mickey and Goodwin.
I testified about hearing the threats made
and recognizing Goodwin's voice.
He looked smug, like he was sure that he wasn't going to be convicted.
Yet, at the same time, he never met my eyes.
It was a big acknowledgement to me that he knew the pain he had caused.
Our closing arguments,
one of the things that I thought was incredibly... poignant,
sad, but still important,
was the way Mickey drew his last few breaths.
Mickey Thompson's last vision on this planet
was that of his wife being executed.
Why is that so important?
Because there's no other person on the face of the earth
who wanted Mickey Thompson to suffer like that.
There's only one guy.
And that was Mike Goodwin.
When Alan Jackson came on and did closing arguments, I was dazzled.
I was going, "Yeah! Yeah!"
Now, he convinced me.
Did he convince those other 12 people over there?
The jury deliberated about six days,
and that wait was brutal.
So you're left in this limbo
of not knowing what those jurors are gonna think of your presentation.
When the jury buzzed to say they have a verdict,
it was a very, very jarring moment,
thinking, "Okay, here we go."
We the jury in the above entitled action
find the defendant Michael Goodwin guilty.
When they came back with that, Collene's squeezing my hand.
It was just like...
There is justice. You know, there is justice.
Mike Goodwin was convicted of all charges,
two counts of murder, and special circumstances,
and he was sentenced to two consecutive life terms without parole.
I stood up, turned around, and...
Collene was just sobbing
with joy and... and relief.
This is for Mickey. This is for Mickey.
He won this race.
It's a great feeling.
This doesn't bring my dad back, but there's some justice here.
When I heard the verdict,
I remember saying out loud, "Finally."
I gave a piece of myself to the case.
There's an enormous amount of personal satisfaction
knowing that the family of Mickey Thompson and Trudy Thompson,
what they had fought for, dedicated their lives to...
For every fiber of myself that I gave to the case,
I got so much more back from them.
My promise to Collene and Gary Campbell,
and the Thompson family, really,
was simply that I would work it as hard as anybody and do my best.
I intentionally don't use...
I think it's a horrible word and a horrible term,
and that would be the C-word, meaning closure.
When you lose two loved ones through a horrible act of violence,
you're not getting any closure.
I remember when the verdict came in, there was finality to that,
both for me and for the family,
but there was a nagging little thing in the back of my brain.
"But it's unresolved. The two killers are still out there."
We've got one out of three, but we still want these people.
During the entire investigation, we never developed a solid lead
on who the actual shooters were.
That's still an active, ongoing case.
It's wonderful to know that a conviction was gotten.
But their murder...
is part of my life.
My Aunt Trudy,
she's there in the back of my mind.
Mickey decided it was time to fulfill his lifelong dream
and to set the world land speed record.
The one thing that my dad never accomplished
was the world land speed record.
He did it one way, but he didn't have the official record.
So when he called me in 1987, and he said, "I want you to drive it,"
that meant more to me probably than maybe anything else.
And then we started talking about it, how to do it and everything,
and then my dad got murdered.
Then I let it go, and I let it sit for 22 more years.
And then I thought, "You know what?"
"I don't want to be sitting on the couch when I'm 80
wondering if that car would have gone 450 miles an hour."
We gave up everything to do that.
We gave up every single thing we had in life to do that.
And it happened.
Way to go!
Car went 459 miles an hour.
I take my helmet off.
I'm still standing in the car, and I'm looking up.
I finished his mission...
and completed mine.
Probably one of the most meaningful moments...
ever.
If there's one enemy of a homicide detective, it's time.
Time is your enemy.
Teresa Broudreaux was found naked and dead on the beach.
It's been 33 years of no answers.
What was your wife's name?
Terri. T-E-R-R-I.
And you guys were legally married?
Right? Okay.
Everybody thought I did it.
That I got away with it.
A murder case is never closed until someone's held accountable for it.
Somebody out there knows something.