Killers for Hire (8 page)

Brent picked up where Jacobs left off. Only this time, he wasn’t going to give immunity to Diane or Goodwin. A new grand jury had been empanelled in July and new subpoenas went out. But one of the witnesses wouldn’t be showing up.

Boat broker Bill Redfield, who was caught on a wiretap asking Diane if a “weak link” existed pertaining to the murders, had died of an illness. It was a major blow to Lillienfeld and Brent; they wanted to ask him about that conversation.

Goodwin was called as a witness and told the grand jury that he wanted to talk so the truth would come out, but he wouldn’t be able to do so. Instead, he read a prepared statement saying he had a Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

The grand jury didn’t produce any spellbinding evidence, but it did cement Brent’s and Lillienfeld’s perception that Goodwin was guilty.

Both Lillienfeld and Brent were getting close to pulling the trigger on Goodwin: They wanted to charge him with murder, arrest him and search his Dana Point home—all without any fanfare. They didn’t want him to learn about the events and disappear again or, worse yet, use one of his several guns he said were missing. An arrest and search warrant were signed on Dec. 7, 2001, and placed under seal by the court. Brent filed a criminal complaint the same day, charging Goodwin with one count of conspiracy and two counts of murder with the special circumstances of multiple murder, lying in wait and murder for financial gain. It made him eligible for the death penalty. The arrest went down on Dec. 13, around 3 PM.

Police knocked first and then broke the door down when no one answered.

Ironically, a camera on loan from the CBS newsmagazine show “48 Hours” was sitting on a tripod and rolling at the time.

On the tape, knocks were heard and then Goodwin can be seen grabbing a back brace and hurriedly putting it on. “Just a minute,” he yelled, walking toward the door. He never got there. It flew open and several armed deputies charged in, grabbing Goodwin and pointing guns at his brother, who was on the couch. The search took 15 hours.

Goodwin’s three-bedroom trailer was sordid: Dirty dishes were piled in the sink; trash, clothing, debris and miscellaneous papers littered the home; cockroaches and ants had free rein. One of the bedrooms had been turned into an office with floor-to-ceiling metal industrial shelving containing a sea of three-ring binders. In all, they contained about two million pages, Lillienfeld speculated. It looked as if Goodwin had been running an entire law office from the confines of Space 47 at 34202 Del Obispo St.

“We took about 500,000 pages and left behind the rest,” Lillienfeld said. “It took a long time to sort through all of that.”

The list of items Lillienfeld carted out read like something out of a sitcom. In the end, there would be 120 boxes. He described the items in a 20-page court document. Among the items seized:

• Booklet titled
  I Want You to Ignore Justice Department Crimes
  (Vol. 1: False Arrest) (defendant’s writings on the “7 year vindictive prosecution of M. Goodwin 1986-1995”)
  

• 8-1-00 letter from M. Goodwin to Frank Goodwin re: repayment by Mike Goodwin to Frank Goodwin of $1,000,000
  

• Box containing approximately 2,000 pages of misc. transcripts, motions and pleadings regarding the Goodwin bankruptcy, fraud and related cases
  

• Misc. loose documents relating to the bankruptcy and subsequent legal actions taken by Goodwin against a variety of parties.
  

• AA rehab center videotape
  

• State of California campaign statements forms showing contributors to Tony Rackauckas’ 1998 campaign for DA
  

• Three bound documents: “Collene Campbell Crimes” and “Convicted by the Media”
  

• Misc. loose folders containing copies of the Goodwin screenplay “Bury Him”
  

• Misc. catalogued pornography, indexed and alphabetized, including still photos and video
  

Three months later, Lillienfeld returned 114 of the boxes to Goodwin’s home and kept the rest for his burgeoning case.

During the search, Goodwin had been taken to a police station, where he sat in an antiseptic interview room that contained only a table, four chairs, a telephone and a small trashcan. Lillienfeld arrived at 6 PM to talk to him.

The adversaries greeted each other cordially. It was the first time they’d seen each other since Lillienfeld had showed up at Goodwin’s job site. They began with idle chitchat about the housing conditions at Orange County Jail and a lineup Goodwin had been forced to endure. To an outsider, the pair seemed almost friendly.

LILLIENFELD: I’m not very bright, as I told you before
.

GOODWIN: Umm-hmm. That’s a lie
.

LILLIENFELD: It’s true…Now, I know you and I had this discussion before, and I made this offer before, but this would be a great opportunity for you to say, ‘You know what kid? Go in this direction or go in that direction…’

GOODWIN: Well, the only thing that I would give you is stuff that would exonerate me and you won’t—please forgive me if I respectfully say—

LILLIENFELD: I know, you think I’ll twist that and manipulate it—

GOODWIN: Well…

LILLIENFELD:—cause I’m a bad man
.

GOODWIN: I didn’t say you were…

LILLIENFELD: Yeah!

GOODWIN: …a bad man. I say that I believe that witnesses have been threatened, intimidated and—

LILLIENFELD: You think I have this big grudge for you and for some reason, Mike…

GOODWIN: I know
.

LILLIENFELD: …I don’t quite get that
.

The pair continued to discuss their differences, with Lillienfeld repeatedly saying that he had no vested interest in the Thompson case, and Goodwin countering that Lillienfeld would stop at nothing to convict him.

GOODWIN: It’s unfortunate, because you are a very personable guy
.

LILLIENFELD: Well, thanks
.

GOODWIN: I’m not trying to defend myself. In fact, there’s things I’ve admitted to my attorney and said, “Boy, I wish I wouldn’t have done these things.” It just looks weird. Follow me? Uh, but you—but I don’t understand why you lied
.

LILLIENFELD: I understand. I-I-I take full responsibility for my actions Mike, and—and if you believe that, I don’t have a problem with that. I think—not to be impolite, you’re a real personable guy too. I think you’re a little bit off. I-I wouldn’t know—you need help maybe? I don’t know
.

GOODWIN: I can understand—

LILLIENFELD: I’m not saying it to be rude or mean. That’s just what I think. But you—you’re really—you’re like obsessed with this case, you’re obsessed with Collene Campbell. You breathe and live it every day, and most regular guys that are, you know, under the magnifying glass, under the gun, they—they don’t act that way. You act very peculiar. And it doesn’t make you a bad guy, and it doesn’t make you guilty, but it definitely makes you different, remarkable and unique, unlike—

GOODWIN: I—

LILLIENFELD: —other people
.

GOODWIN: I am different
.

LILLIENFELD: Yeah, you are. You are a strange guy
.

Then the men talked about Goodwin’s dad and a trip they took to Ireland. Goodwin gave Lillienfeld a DNA sample. The conversation lasted 45 minutes.

Four days later Goodwin was arraigned. A preliminary hearing was set for Jan. 30, 2002. If the case had moved slowly during the investigative stage, Lillienfeld was about to discover that the judicial system wouldn’t provide any respite.

Michael Goodwin was settling into the Orange County Jail, but he didn’t plan on being a permanent resident. His lawyer, Jeff Benice, was working on a myriad of legal options to get him released.

Goodwin was all too aware that if it weren’t for his relationship with Mickey, he wouldn’t be in this predicament. Even in death, the racing legend was reaching out to strangle Goodwin’s livelihood and make his life miserable. Being held accountable for Mickey’s death would be something Goodwin would fight with every fiber of his being. Part of this involved clearing up loose ends, and he’d soon get that chance.

When Goodwin arrived in jail, a middle-aged man incarcerated on a drug charge watched with interest. The inmate, who called himself “Steve,” had seen the spectacle of Goodwin’s arrest on television just a few minutes earlier and wondered how Marc Goodwin was holding up. Both Steve and Marc were drug addicts and had met on numerous times on the streets of Orange County trying to feed their habits.

“Marc was a shell of a man who was in pieces,” Steve said later during a phone conversation from a prison in California, where he had served time for a drug conviction and was due to be released soon. “A lot of it had to do with Mike. Marc did his bidding for him. Mike was the dominant, alpha-type and at first it was out of loyalty to his brother. Then he started giving Marc money, then drugs, to control him.”

Goodwin entered jail in typical fashion, carrying himself with a larger than life air and commanding the attention of those around him. As the weeks dragged on, Goodwin and Steve had numerous conversations, mostly bravado about how Goodwin was on the verge of the next great business empire and Steve would be wise to make a small investment to get in on the ground floor.

“He was the most pompous ass of a person you would ever meet,” Steve said. “He’s such a self-serving person, anything to serve himself and his cause, he’ll do.” Goodwin worked his considerable charisma on the guards in order to get special privileges and the ability to go talk to other inmates of his choosing.

Still, the confident veneer was showing signs of cracking.

“Mike was under a lot of stress regarding his brother and said Marc would be the downfall of him,” Steve said. “He said Marc got some people to come over to do a job for him.” In another conversation, Goodwin said: “I gotta do something about Marc; I don’t know what to do.”

Ironically, Marc showed up in the jail on a drunk driving arrest a few weeks later. Steve talked to him to find out how he was doing. Marc “leaned on me to help him with his brother,” Steve said. “He said, ‘Mike thinks I’m gonna talk and make problems for him because of what I know and (I) could get him in trouble.’” Echoing his earlier wiretap conversation, Marc added, “I’m not going to say anything. I wish he would leave me alone.”

According to Steve, Marc was “petrified” of Mike and “thought Mike would kill him some day.”

Steve tried to help Marc out by broaching the subject to Goodwin about getting Marc into a sober living situation. The idea was dismissed. Instead, Goodwin asked the jailers to let him talk to his brother in a separate block. Apparently the jailers weren’t aware that Lillienfeld considered Marc an accomplice in the Thompson murders and should be kept away from his brother in order to prevent collusion.

After the meeting, Goodwin sought out Steve. He said Marc was due to be released, and he wanted to know if Steve would find a suitable place for him to live where he would be kept “occupied.” Then Goodwin whispered, “Anyone you trust? You know, the right position so they could give him a hot shot?”

A hot shot is slang for a fatal injection of heroin or cocaine.

Steve was stunned at what he just heard and at the same time angry that Goodwin would consider him capable of such a deed. “Why would you ask me to do this?” he demanded. Goodwin offered shares in one of his business ventures as compensation, but still Steve balked and later contacted a jailer regarding Goodwin’s solicitation. This led to a conversation with Lillienfeld.

Lillienfeld admitted that he believed Steve’s account of what happened.

“His story was full of unique details that only Goodwin could have provided (to him),” the detective said. “He also provided the motivation that Goodwin expressed for wanting Marc dead, and was very articulate in his reasons for it.”

In addition, Steve provided Lillienfeld with several letters and documents that Goodwin had given to him.

Marc was soon released from jail and Steve never saw him again. Marc turned up dead four years later of the very thing Goodwin had requested: an overdose of synthetic heroin administered by a syringe.

“I have no doubt in my mind that Goodwin did this, it doesn’t matter that it was a few years later. It takes time to recruit someone to kill somebody,” Steve said later. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

As if to prove this point, Goodwin would describe his brother’s death as a murder years later in another jail with another inmate.

According to his autopsy report, Marc Stephen Goodwin died at age 49 on March 24, 2005, of an overdose of oxycodone, a powerful prescription opiate. The painkiller Trazodone was also present in his bloodstream and heart. Marc’s body was discovered by his father on a boat docked in the San Pedro Harbor that the two men called home. A syringe was next to Marc’s foot and a needle mark was on his right big toe along with abrasions on his chin, chest, left arm and right leg. His right hand had a large bruise. It appeared to be just another one of the numerous drug addict suicides in the City of Angels and was labeled accidental by the coroner.

Lillienfeld looked at the case to see whether he could find some connection to Goodwin, some sort of evidence that this was murder beyond just a set of highly suspicious circumstances. He couldn’t. Marc had been a drug addict for most of his life.

Regardless, the timing of his overdose couldn’t have been more perfect for Goodwin. Like thousands of cases that go through the coroner’s office with the probability of another story to tell, this one wouldn’t have another chapter.

“We get a lot more drug deaths that are really murders than we can ever prove,” said one of the coroner’s top investigators, Lt. Cheryl MacWillie, as she glanced at the autopsy report.

A preliminary hearing was held that featured Lillienfeld as the star witness. Goodwin was ordered to stand trial.

Benice filed a motion to dismiss the case that ultimately failed, going into elaborate detail about the prosecution’s lack of evidence and Lillienfeld’s alleged misconduct in an effort to render his testimony at the preliminary hearing useless. Benice claimed that Lillienfeld threatened Diane Goodwin and a Goodwin business partner in order to obtain damning statements and then proceeded to search Goodwin’s home office even though a sign on the door said “Do Not Enter.”