Racer-Promoter Mickey Thompson and Wife Slain Outside Their Home

Millionaire off-road racer-promoter Mickey Thompson and his wife were ambushed and shot to death in the driveway of their walled foothill estate about 6 a.m. today, gunned down by at least a half-dozen shots as they left for work, authorities said.

“It was a double homicide, an assassination,” said Sheriff’s Deputy Richard Dinsmoor.

Several acquaintances said Thompson had received death threats. “He said that he’d gotten these threats, but that he could handle them,” said longtime friend Bernie Alvarado, who said Thompson last mentioned the threats to him on Sunday.

Deputies were searching for two black men who witnesses saw riding bicycles away from the Thompsons’ house on a quiet, exclusive street of expensive homes in Bradbury, in the San Gabriel foothills.

Heard Shots and Screaming

“We woke up early this morning and we heard a lot of gunshots and screaming,” said a neighbor, Marilyn Difilippo, one of several who reported hearing six or eight shots. “I didn’t see anybody. I just heard Trudy screaming.”

The body of Trudy Thompson, who married Thompson in Las Vegas in 1971, was found a few yards inside a front gate, sprawled not far from a tan-colored van, which evidently rolled down the sloping driveway to a retaining wall after the shooting.

The driver-side door was open and the driver’s window was shot out. The key was in the ignition and the left turn-signal was still blinking when the first sheriff’s car arrived at 6:02 a.m.

Thompson, 59, who first earned a name 25 years ago as a record-setting “speed king” driver, was found about 10 yards from his wife, not far from a Lincoln Continental.

Bicycle Found Abandoned

Sheriff’s spokesman Hal Grant said he believed the killer or killers used handguns, but he was not certain. Deputies found a gray 10-speed Columbia-model bicycle about four hours after the shooting, down the hill from the Thompsons’ Spanish-style home on a wooded lot.

Bradbury is a two-square-mile community where 1,000 people live. It is fairly isolated, but is only about 2 miles from the 210 Freeway.

Deputies were not sure whether the gunmen were on the grounds when they fired the shots, or fired the fusillade from the street beyond one of the two gates to the Thompson property, which is surrounded by a block wall, bristling in places with foot-high spikes.

House Undisturbed

Deputy Dan Cox said the house was locked and had not been ransacked.

Neighbor Difilippo said the couple had received threats, but when asked for details, she added, “I don’t think I should say anything.”

Said Alvarado, “I don’t know why Trudy had to be involved, because she was just a sweetheart. . . . Mickey was well liked. He had lots of enemies, but who doesn’t?”

Thompson was the first American to break 400 m.p.h. at the Bonneville Salt Flats in 1960. He helped to pioneer the rear engine racing car at Indianapolis, invented the slingshot dragster, and won the famed Baja 1000 before exploiting a national love affair with hot-rodding into a multimillion-dollar business that staged shows to capacity crowds in such sites as the Rose Bowl.

Neither Danny Thompson, Thompson’s 37-year-old son, nor his daughter, Lindy, 35, both from his first marriage, was immediately available for comment.