Racing Figure Thompson, Wife Slain Outside Home

Millionaire racing promoter and pioneering speedster Mickey Thompson and his wife were ambushed and shot to death in the driveway of their walled foothill estate in Bradbury Wednesday morning as they were about to leave for work.

Sheriff’s deputies found Thompson, 59--the first American to break the 400-m.p.h. land speed mark--and his wife, Trudy, 42, dead outside their spacious house moments after the 6 a.m. shooting. Both had been shot several times in the upper torso. Deputy Richard Dinsmoor characterized the crime as “an assassination.”

Thompson had recently told friends he had received death threats.

“He said that he’d gotten these threats, but that he could handle them,” said longtime friend Ernie Alvarado.

But another longtime acquaintance said he was inclined to be “skeptical,” and had never heard any corroboration of the threats. A sheriff’s spokesman said Thompson had never called deputies about the threats.

Deputies launched a search for two men who were seen bicycling away after the shooting at the home on Woodlyn Lane, a quiet exclusive street in Bradbury, a well-to-do two-square-mile town with a population of fewer than 1,000.

Four hours later, deputies found a gray 10-speed Columbia model bicycle down the hill from the Thompsons’ home, but would not say whether they believed the killers had used it.

The killings--the first in Bradbury’s 30-year history--jolted the neighborhood out of its morning calm. Several terrified neighbors telephoned authorities to report six to eight gun blasts.

“We heard a lot of gunshots and screaming,” said neighbor Marilyn Difilippo. “I didn’t see anybody. I just heard Trudy screaming.”

Her husband, Mike, heard Trudy Thompson shrieking “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” Difilippo said. “We looked out the window and Trudy was lying in the gutter.”

The bullet-pierced body of Trudy Thompson was found a few yards inside a front gate, sprawled near a tan-colored Toyota van. The van had apparently rolled down the driveway after the shooting. The driver’s door was still open and the driver’s window was shot out. The left turn signal was still blinking when sheriff’s deputies arrived.

Thompson was found about 10 yards from his wife, near a 1979 Lincoln Continental, one of several vehicles he owned.

The house was locked and had not been ransacked, deputies said.

Thompson’s mother, Geneva, 88, was admitted to an intensive care unit at an Arcadia hospital less than four hours after the slayings. A neighbor said she had suffered a heart attack upon hearing the news.

The Thompsons were married in a lavish 1971 Las Vegas ceremony for which Thompson chartered three planes to ferry guests from Long Beach.

Part of Daily Routine

The couple routinely left for work about 6 a.m., neighbors said.

Neighbor Walt Dahlen said that he drove by the house three minutes before 6 a.m. and did not see anyone--including the Thompsons.

Thompson had recently moved his highly successful off-road racing promotions business out of his house to an office in Anaheim Stadium.

A friend, Deke Houlgate, who wrote about Thompson both as a sportswriter and as the author of a book on land speed records, said Thompson “finally got the business around to where it was sort of taking care of itself,” and “wanted to spend more time with (Trudy) . . . He was going to turn things over to other people in his organization and not spend as much time as he spent, 20 hours a day for the last seven or eight years.”

“They loved each other very much,” said Thompson’s sister, Collene Campbell. “And so maybe the saving grace in this is one wasn’t left without the other.”

Although its setting appears isolated, the Thompson home is next to Mt. Olive Drive, which gives quick access to the 210 Freeway two miles below. The 3,558-square-foot home, purchased by the couple nearly 11 years ago, is just outside a combination-lock gate that protects the rest of Woodlyn Lane.

Surrounded by Wall

The house is surrounded by a concrete-block wall, topped in places by metal spikes. Push-button coded security devices are at each gate. But deputies said there was no evidence of enhanced security at the house, in spite of Thompson’s widely known remarks about threats.

Anaheim Stadium general manager Greg Smith said he and Thompson were generally the last to leave the stadium each evening. When they parted Tuesday night, “We talked about the future, how we could build events, sell more seats, create more interest in the sport. . . . There was no apprehension or worry.”

Houlgate said Thompson had built his career with an energy that allowed him to work two and three jobs, without sleep or food, for three and four days. He was a “legendary” figure, and “so much of the mythology of Mickey Thompson is mixed up with the reality, it’s almost impossible to separate the two, so I never tried.”

But neither Thompson’s personal nor professional life had been free of worries.

In July, the second of two defendants was convicted of robbing and killing Thompson’s nephew, Scott Campbell, and throwing his body out of a plane near Santa Catalina Island in 1982.

Thompson’s sister had pressed authorities to investigate her son’s disappearance. After police got involved and the case was prosecuted, the two men were convicted and sentenced to prison. A Superior Court judge found that the primary motive was probably a drug-related revenge slaying. Thompson testified at the trial that he had recovered his nephew’s car from a garage belonging to one of the defendants, Deputy Dist. Atty. Tom Avdeef said.

Over the last few years, Thompson had become a dominant force in racing promotions in California and nationwide, a position which brought him into legal conflict with a fellow promoter Mike Goodwin, with whom Thompson waged an ongoing battle of lawsuits. In the latest round Thompson won an $800,000 court judgment.

There was hardly an area of motor racing that Thompson had not touched.

While still working as a pressman at The Times in 1947, Thompson attempted to set a land speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. He succeeded in bettering the record with a run of 406.6 m.p.h. in 1960, but was unable to make a return run and make the record official.

His next passion was speed boats. He entered 27 consecutive races without winning. That phase of his career ended with a high-speed crash in 1960 that broke his back and temporarily paralyzed his legs.

In drag racing, he built and raced top-fuel dragsters, becoming the first driver to exceed 150 m.p.h. in his home-built “slingshot” dragster that revolutionized the sport.

Thompson also was a pioneer in off-road, desert racing in Baja California. During one race, after his car broke, Thompson flew over the race course and got the idea of moving the excitement of desert racing into a stadium.

Birth of a Sport

It was the birth of off-road racing as a spectator sport. First, he promoted racing at Riverside International Raceway and then refined it to create stadium racing at such sites as the Coliseum, Rose Bowl, Pomona Fairgrounds and Anaheim Stadium.

At a press conference at Anaheim Stadium Wednesday, Thompson’s associates mourned the deaths, but said operations of the small, close-knit company would continue uninterrupted.

Thompson is survived by a 37-year-old son and a 35-year-old daughter by a previous marriage.

Times staff writers Shav Glick, Kim Murphy, Carla Rivera, Lois Timnick and Nancy Wride contributed to this story.