Killers for Hire (12 page)

Collene Campbell
photo by Gene Blevins

After the sentencing Campbell happily waved a racing flag as she spoke to the media outside the courthouse.

“By gosh, we’ve never driven an endurance race like that,” she said, looking skyward toward heaven. Campbell had always insisted that Mickey and Trudy were guiding this case and now everyone else was starting to believe it too.

“Thanks for being such a good brother and sister,” she said to her slain siblings. “I’ll be up there soon you guys, with this old face I can’t be down here too long. But boy did you put me through a long one. Love you guys, God bless you.”

Lillienfeld allowed himself a brief victory lunch with the prosecutors and then started concentrating on his next murder case.

“There are times when I doubted I’d get here, but it was never an option to give up,” he reflected.

If the case hadn’t been filed this time around, Lillienfeld would have spent the rest of his days before retirement dogging Goodwin. With a hellish existence like that, maybe Goodwin was better off behind bars.

It was about six weeks after Goodwin’s sentencing, and Mark Lillienfeld was in a corner booth at an Orange County diner ordering his standard breakfast of oatmeal, whole wheat toast and iced tea. He’d been working nonstop since Goodwin’s trial, and it was the first time since then that he’d allowed himself to sit down in a restaurant for a leisurely meal.

“I’m supposed to be at an autopsy now, but my partner is going instead so I can be at this breakfast with you,” he volunteered. “I’ve been doing well….a little tired, so I’m going to take a vacation at the end of this month.”

Whether he liked it or not, the reluctant hero had been quite a star. A week after the Goodwin case wrapped, Lillienfeld had a major coup with his second most famous case: a defendant in a cop killing was extradited from Mexico after a lengthy legal battle that reached all the way to the White House and the Mexican Supreme Court.

Armando Garcia was accused of killing fellow Sheriff’s Deputy David March during a 2002 traffic stop, then fleeing to his native Mexico to avoid prosecution. An international incident ensued as Congress, then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and even President George W. Bush opened a new debate on the illegal alien issue: the United States’ inability to extradite suspects facing the death penalty or life in prison here. Mexico’s Supreme Court reversed its ruling regarding life in prison, and two years later—on Jan. 11, 2007—Garcia stood inside a Los Angeles County courtroom for an arraignment.

Six weeks later, Lillienfeld started trial on a case involving another murdered Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy. The defendant was convicted and received a death sentence. Then Armando Garcia pleaded guilty in a deal to avoid the death penalty.

“I’ve had quite a good run here lately,” Lillienfeld admitted.

Meanwhile, “America’s Most Wanted” had broadcast the Goodwin case after the conviction, and it brought a whole new round of tips regarding the shooters. Most didn’t pan out, but there were several that looked promising, and Lillienfeld scheduled a trip to the East Coast to follow up on leads.

“There are the other two guys running around and I’d like to prosecute them. In a way, Goodwin still kind of got away with it because those two guys are out there. That bugs me.”

Goodwin had wanted to spend his last days on earth at a prison in the beach resort town of San Luis Obispo nicknamed “The Country Club.” But Lillienfeld didn’t like that and wanted something more notorious, like Folsom, San Quentin or Pelican Bay.

To help this decision along, the detective sent a letter to prison officials outlining Goodwin’s perceived evils. Lillienfeld started with the murders of the two unidentified men in the 1960s, graduating to Goodwin’s stormy personality and tumultuous relationship with Mickey and the murders, the failed assassination of Jeffrey Coyne, the bank fraud conviction, his escape to the Caribbean and the pathological way he hid assets.

“He isn’t beyond plotting someone’s death from prison and that includes mine. If you’re asking me whether I plan on keeping tabs on him for the rest of his life in prison, the answer is yes,” Lillienfeld said. “His lack of liberty doesn’t hold him back from enjoying life—reading, talking on phone to people and spreading his venom.”

Lillienfeld answered a cell phone call and checked his watch. The breakfast was winding down.

He had been assigned another murder case recently, and it was time to go back to work.

As the old saying goes, crime doesn’t take a holiday. Lillienfeld’s 300-some cases were still waiting for a solution, the victims demanding justice from the hereafter. If he worked them as hard as he worked Goodwin, perhaps there would be a solution. But there are just so many hours in a day.

Alan Jackson and Pat Dixon were not prepared to go away silently into the night. The next big Los Angeles celebrity murder case loomed on the horizon and they were prosecuting it. The trial of music mogul Phil Spector for the 2003 death of actress Lana Clarkson was scheduled to go to trial in two weeks and that didn’t leave much time for preparation. They would later win a conviction after two trials.

“I don’t have time to revel in any glory at all, I’m up to my eyeballs in this case,” Jackson said at the time.

Dixon said he wasn’t paying any attention to the media whirlwind surrounding Spector.

“If you think about, ‘Oh my God this is Phil Spector or Goodwin, what will happen if I lose?’ you’d throw yourself into a tizzy and wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing.”

Regarding Goodwin, Dixon offered this final thought: “Michael Goodwin is going to have to meet his maker and deal with that. He reminds me of the Woodman brothers, who were two of the defendants in the Yom Kippur murders who hired killers to murder their parents. They were greedy and wanted more. They are out of the same mold. When I first looked at this case, I immediately thought Goodwin reminded me of that.”

Even with Spector looming large, Jackson’s mind still wandered back to the last two years of his life.

“I think about Goodwin every single day. You know…I was on my way to work the other day and I passed by a county jail bus on the freeway. I was thinking to myself, ‘I wonder if Goodwin is on that bus?’”

Jackson was unaware of Lillienfeld’s letter to the California Department of Corrections, and he perked up considerably when he heard about it.

“Knowing that Mark Lillienfeld is on Goodwin’s shadow for the rest of his career, I can sleep better,” he said.

This wasn’t the last Jackson heard from Lillienfeld. Besides becoming great friends, the detective would later testify in the Spector case because he assisted the lead detective for a brief time. And in addition, if Lillienfeld ever catches the Thompsons’ shooters, Jackson said he wants to be the one to file the case.

Lillienfeld left that Orange County diner and stood in the parking lot, attempting to push Goodwin to the back of his mind and concentrate on more important things.

“Except to you and a few other people, I never want to talk about this case again,” he said. Reveling past achievements is not something he’s comfortable with.

“This is not fun for me, it doesn’t benefit my life. It wastes time that I’ll never get back again. People constantly say, ‘Oh, you’re
that
guy. I saw your name.’ I don’t
want
to be the guy who had the Mickey Thompson case. I have 320 other cases, and I don’t want to go through life being THAT guy.

“I don’t want that being the first line in my friggin’ obituary that I was the guy who got Michael Goodwin.”

Editor’s Note:
Michael Goodwin now calls High Desert State Prison home—a dreary, gang-filled facility filled with mostly maximum security cons and located on the northern Nevada border. He arrived there on April 11, 2007, and Lillienfeld has called prison officials every month to monitor his nemesis, making sure none of those death threats are carried out. He still searches for the shooters.