Killers for Hire (10 page)

Rick instantly thought of the conversation he had with Goodwin regarding the two former employees who ended up dead.

“I put these stories together and believe those two guys were dead before they ever went over that cliff,” Rick would later tell Lillienfeld.

During this trip, Goodwin borrowed Rick’s underwater camera. Rick didn’t take any other diving trips and didn’t bother to retrieve it for three years. One day he showed up at Goodwin’s Orange County home, asking for the camera because of an upcoming trip. Goodwin refused to turn it over, claiming it was his. The pair argued and Goodwin said: “How would you like to find your ass in a pair of cement overshoes?”

At that point, Rick gave up. “If I beat the shit out of him, I’d have to look over my shoulder the rest of my life. He’d kill me,” he said.

Rick initially left a phone message for Detective Griggs to report what he had experienced but didn’t get a return the call. Then, as Lillienfeld prepared for the trial, he decided to call one more time.

“There’s no doubt in my mind he was telling the truth, this is entirely consistent with Goodwin’s personality,” Lillienfeld said.

And to bolster the story of the two unidentified murdered men, bounty hunter McGhee knew the same details even though he didn’t even know Rick.

“Goodwin would brag about how two men tried to fuck him out of money and he killed them in the desert by having them go over a cliff,” McGhee said, adding that he heard the information firsthand from some people in a bar in Belize.

Lillienfeld and Jackson began looking for a missing person’s case that involved two men who disappeared over a cliff. The problem was, they didn’t know where this happened. The pair contacted authorities from California to Washington State without any success. No open cases like that existed, or at least none they could find.

“It was frustrating because I know it’s out there somewhere,” Lillienfeld said.

“If I could prove that he committed more murders, I’d charge him with those,” Jackson lamented.

The case crawled toward trial, and Goodwin once again came in contact with a jail snitch who had an interesting tale to tell Lillienfeld. Like Steve in the Orange County Jail, this inmate perked up when he heard Goodwin talking about murder and his brother. Goodwin told the inmate that Lillienfeld and Jackson “set someone up to murder my brother. My brother knew a lot about the murders and could clear me. Someone slipped him bad drugs and killed him.”

While Goodwin blamed others for the death of his brother, he took credit for the attempted murder of former bankruptcy trustee Jeffrey Coyne, targeted at work by would-be assassins.

“He said the lawyer had to go, he had to whack him,” the inmate said. “He said if you hire a professional to do the job right, then the job gets done right. You’re a gangster, you know what I’m talking about.”

Goodwin talked about “hiring some Italians to do the job”—the same description of two men who were looking for Coyne’s car the day the Thompsons were murdered.

“He said the lawyer was a person who had to go, for several reasons,” the inmate said.

Goodwin didn’t talk about the Thompson case much other than to say that a double homicide would cost $250,000 “to have it done right.”

The men talked about their addictions, and Goodwin said his were cocaine, alcohol and rage. But while in jail, he was more of a prescription drug addict, the inmate said.

“He had a registered nurse who got him any kind of pill he wanted. He would take handfuls at a time,” the inmate said. Goodwin had a prescription drug dictionary in his cell that he constantly read. He also read true crime books including Jack Ruby’s biography, the inmate said.

Lillienfeld worked with the inmate and tried to get him to lull Goodwin into a taped conversation regarding the Thompsons, Coyne or his brother. But Goodwin was apparently too sly and didn’t repeat anything.

The case had been nearing a trial date, and suddenly Jackson found himself with more investigation that needed to be done. He wondered if the Italians mentioned by Goodwin were middlemen who hired the shooters in the Thompson case. He looked for the security guard at Coyne’s work who actually saw the men, but he didn’t work there anymore and was nowhere to be found. Just like the Thompsons’ two black shooters, these Italian men would remain unidentified.

In November 2006, the jury was seated: four men and eight women ranging in age from early 20s to retirement. Both the defense and prosecution said they were happy with the result.

“There are times when you need a street-smart jury and times when you want book smarts,” Jackson said. “We needed both.”

It had taken Mark Lillienfeld 4,451 days to get to Nov. 6, 2006. Opening statements in the case of The People of the State of California vs. Michael Frank Goodwin.

The detective woke up around 5 AM and donned his traditional dark gray suit, white shirt, dark patterned tie and black shoes. He drove in the semidarkness from his beach community home toward the Pasadena courthouse at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. Los Angeles traffic begins early and if Lillienfeld was on the freeway by 6 AM it would be a breeze.

He got to Pasadena early, worked out at a gym and was at the courthouse by 7:30 AM to meet with the prosecutors to discuss witness testimony. It would be a scenario Lillienfeld repeated Monday through Friday over the next two months.

The courtroom was packed with Mickey’s friends, family, members of the media and law enforcement. Collene Campbell and Danny Thompson sat in the center section near the front. The attorneys made their grand entrance shortly before 9 AM, pushing metal carts filled with boxes and files.

Goodwin was brought in by a bailiff and flashed a smile at a friend.

Michael Goodwin in court
photo by Gene Blevins

Opening statements began and Jackson projected a smiling photo of Mickey, Trudy, and their dog, Punky, onto a screen. “It’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it?” Jackson asked the jurors. “In fact, it’s been a longer time—18 years—to get to this point.”

A PowerPoint presentation began of Mickey’s life and how it unraveled after meeting Goodwin.

“Michael Goodwin had grabbed a tiger by the tail, but didn’t know it. Mickey Thompson was not the most educated person, but he was brilliant. He was self taught and could rival the best of ’em. Mickey Thompson wasn’t going to get screwed by anyone,” Jackson said.

Then the prosecutor parroted several of Goodwin’s quotes to colleagues, including:

“I’m going to kill that son of a bitch!”

“I’m gonna kill that motherfucker!”

“Thompson is destroying me; I’m going to take him out!”

“I hate him. I’d like to kill him.”

“Mickey doesn’t know who he’s fucking with. He’s fucking dead!”

Gory crime scene photos were displayed as jurors stared at the collection with even gazes. A series of guilty actions attributed to Goodwin were parlayed, and two hours later, Jackson was finished.

Saris stood and challenged the jurors to look upon the case like the fable of the emperor who had no clothes—lacking evidence, thorough investigation and motive. She repeatedly called it a Hollywood version of events aimed at prosecuting a sports celebrity.

“It will fall apart like a house of cards,” she said, hinting that it was likely a robbery gone bad.

The prosecution called a string of witnesses who backed up the statements that Goodwin threatened to kill Mickey. After each one, Jackson put the smiling Mickey/Trudy/dog picture back up on the screen. Then they called the three attorneys who had been threatened by Goodwin following his bankruptcy.

Two weeks went by before the prosecution got to the murder and all the witnesses that went with it. Their star was Allison Triarsi, that 14-year-old girl who was the only one to see the shootings of both Mickey and Trudy. She was now a newscaster in her 30s.

“Mickey was being held toward the top of the driveway … the man who was with him had a gun and was directing him to go in certain directions. Mickey was trying to get to his wife and the gunman was not letting him. He was saying, ‘Please don’t kill my wife,’” Triarsi testified.

The gunman held him back and at one point Mickey began staggering and limping, “holding his body in certain positions and struggling to stand but he couldn’t do that.”

Triarsi simulated the shooting with her arm outstretched. She said the event traumatized her to the point that she had nightmares for years and sought therapy.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Rey Verdugo recounted the crime scene, and Jackson played a portion of Griggs’ crime scene video without audio on a small television set in front of the jury box. The grainy 19-year-old color film was a silent witness to the tragedy of that day, freezing forever the scene of a steep driveway littered with evidence and two bloody bodies.

How the killers got paid was never discussed openly in court, but Jackson had a Perry Mason moment when Orange County DA’s investigative auditor Karen Stephens Kingdon went through the Goodwins’ finances and testified about how Southwest Bank listed $20,000 missing from Diane’s account on March 16, 1988—two days before the murders.

“Southwest Bank was unable to come up with the offset. There was no personal check listed; it was likely that it was either a cashier’s check or cash. The bank had no records,” she testified.

The prosecutors rested their case after 15 days.

Saris had her own ideas about how the murders went down and none of them coincided with the prosecution’s. For one thing, she believed Thompson purchased a large amount of gold shortly before he died. Gardeners and plumbers working at the home could’ve been aware of this, which culminated in the robbery. Jackson and Dixon labeled the theory ridiculous with no evidence to back it up.

Detective Griggs was called to the witness stand, his first public appearance in the Thompson case since that abrupt retirement more than a decade ago. Griggs didn’t hide his disdain of this spotlight and gave terse, clipped answers to questions deemed to show he botched the investigation. The same happened with other detective witnesses, including a smirking Lillienfeld, who made no secret about his dislike for Saris. In one humorous exchange, she wanted to know why he never tested a hair found on duct tape holding the stun gun together. Lillienfeld said he wasn’t aware of it.

“How did you become aware?” Saris asked.

“Through you,” Lillienfeld answered.

“You didn’t ask for a test to be done on that?”

“That would be fair to say.”

“Did you forward clippings and scrapings for testing?”

“No.”

“It was done at whose request?”

“You.”

“So it’s just sitting there in an evidence locker?”

“That’s correct.”

Saris’ final and most entertaining witness was retired Sheriff’s Detective Gerald Jansen, who had been Rey Verdugo’s partner. Jansen was built like a refrigerator: tall, wide, and with a crew cut-topped head that disappeared into his shoulders. He plopped into the witness chair, an irritated look on his face. When words started coming out of his mouth, they matched his expression. Every answer was a clipped “yes” or “no.” He never even remotely smiled. In fact, it would be difficult to imagine him ever smiling.

Jansen had opened the Thompsons’ safe with the help of a locksmith and Saris wanted to show that the safe had damage, presumably by robbers. As with the other detectives, the testimony was more comedy than gripping theater.

After a lengthy discussion about Jansen’s notes from the scene, Saris asked him how he would be able to tell later whether the locksmith created the damage.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember,” he answered.

Frustrated, Saris asked: “Would you have attempted to make your notes clear and understandable?”

“When?”

“When you were writing them?”

“I thought they were clear.”

Jansen finally admitted that he thought the locksmith damaged the safe.

“When would you have made these notes regarding the condition of the safe, before a locksmith acted upon it or after?” Saris asked.

“Acted upon what?”

“The safe. Did a locksmith act upon the safe that day?”

“What does ‘Act upon a safe’ mean?”

Saris also called a criminalist and a memory expert to attack prosecution witnesses. She tried to introduce evidence that Joey Hunter, the blond man seen with a bicycle following the murders, was somehow responsible, but the judge wouldn’t allow it. Then after a jury tour of the crime and getaway route, the testimony in the case was over.

Closing arguments happened on Dec. 18. The courtroom was packed with the usual characters from the opening statements.

Lillienfeld, who had been a silent fixture throughout the trial save for his one-day stint on the stand, sat in a front row seat behind the jury. His hands were clasped as if in prayer and he rested his chin on them. Most of the time, jury instructions are boring, boiler plate renditions of legal jargon that few non-lawyers can understand. This case had some of that, but there were portions that stood out like a glaring neon sign, blaring the words “Vote Guilty.”