Racing King’s Death Unsolved : Stack of Clues Leads Nowhere in the Mickey Thompson Slayings

There are more than 1,100 clues, but no answers.

There are files so thick with notes that stacked they would reach the ceiling of detective headquarters, but no suspects.

There was even a plea for assistance on an episode of NBC’s “Unsolved Mysteries” that aired in February and again in June.

But today, investigators are still no closer to solving the mystery surrounding the murder of racing pioneer Mickey Thompson and his wife, Trudy, than the day a year and a half ago that the couple were gunned down in the driveway of their Bradbury estate.

No Clues

“It’s just not there,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Investigator Mike Griggs, who has worked full time on the case since the Thompsons were slain on March 16, 1988. “It’s almost gotten down to the point where we need a phone call, for somebody to come forth . . . and that’s almost like winning the lottery.”

Already, hundreds of callers from around the country have claimed to recognize the two men pictured in composite sketches of the gunmen neighbors saw fleeing on bicycles shortly after the 6 a.m. murders and a sketch of another man believed linked to the murders.

Psychics have come forth to share visions of who called for the murder of the 59-year-old millionaire known as the “Speed King” and his 42-year-old business partner and wife.

Family and friends have pointed fingers at a flashy, high-rolling motocross promoter who lost a bitter lawsuit to Thompson and, the last police heard, is living in self-imposed exile on a 57-foot yacht somewhere in the Caribbean.

But of the 322 murders investigated by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies last year, this remains among the 116 that the department’s homicide detectives have not been able to solve.

“Usually, in a homicide, if the case remains unsolved after a week, your chances really start to drop,” said Griggs, a 25-year law enforcement veteran. “As time passes, the flow of information just starts to cease. There’s nothing magical you can do.”

Which is not to say that those who knew the Thompsons have lost any faith that their assailants will one day be caught.

You can’t just gun down two of the nicest people in the world and get away with it, they say of the couple who ferried guests in chartered planes to their lavish Las Vegas wedding in 1971.

You can’t just snuff out the can-opener mechanic who brought off-road racing from the desert to the stadium, the first American to drive a car faster than 400 m.p.h.

You can’t blow away the woman who adored her husband, the one who always looked as if she had just stepped out of a fashion magazine.

“As long as I have a breath in me, I’m not going to back off,” said Mickey Thompson’s sister, Collene Campbell.

Spurred Initiative Drive

Campbell has tried to channel her frustrations into an initiative drive launched last March, on the anniversary of the murders, aimed at quickening criminal trials and stiffening penalties for violent crimes.

Danny Thompson, Mickey’s 39-year-old son, has continued to pursue his racing career.

And in Bradbury, the wealthy San Gabriel Valley community that has three miles of public streets and 10 miles of gated private roads, the reminders of the city’s only murders still linger.

Just the other week, City Manager Dolly Vollaire was driving to work when she recognized the Thompsons’ old trash can--with “MT” still stenciled on it--on the street, waiting to be picked up.

“I called up the disposal company and asked them to paint over that,” said Vollaire. “It just brought everything back.”

It brought back the morning that Thompson was confronted in front of his 13-car garage as he and his wife were leaving for work.

The assailant, who apparently had been lurking in the bushes, has been described by neighbors as black, 20 to 30, of medium height and weight and wearing a dark outfit that may have been a sweat suit.

Thompson, a muscular man who believed in the old-fashioned notion that it is a husband’s duty to protect his wife, took the shots as he cried, “Just don’t hurt my baby. Don’t hurt my baby.”

But another gunman, whom witnesses also have described as a 20- to 30-year-old black man, was already heading toward Trudy Thompson, who was warming up the couple’s van.

“You think of something like that happening in another type of area, but not in Bradbury,” said Lance Johnson, a real estate agent who donated his commission from the sale of the Thompsons’ home last November to the family’s $250,000 reward fund.

The assailants fled on 10-speed bikes, a method of escape not so absurd considering the narrow road with speed bumps downhill from the house, police say.

A third man, described as white, was later seen in nearby Irwindale abandoning a bicycle similar to the ones used by the trigger men before hitching a ride on a motorcycle.

If there was any doubt that this was a professional, contract-style hit, it was erased when investigators discovered that Trudy Thompson was wearing $70,000 worth of jewelry, none of it touched, and that the couple were carrying about $4,000 in cash.

“Mickey was the kind of guy who would always say, ‘Don’t stop and think. Just keep it in gear. Stand on the gas,’ ” said Bill Marcel, who took over as president of Thompson’s Anaheim-based motor sports promotion firm after the murders.

It did not take long for the focus to fall on one name, a name that has continued to surface in conversations and court documents--that of Thompson’s 44-year-old archrival and one-time business partner, Michael Frank Goodwin.

According to an affidavit filed by sheriff’s investigators last December, a neighbor recalled that Thompson had once said that Goodwin “was going to kill him.” A woman reportedly remembered Trudy Thompson confiding that if anything happened to her or her husband, “Michael Goodwin would be responsible.”

Shortly before the killings, Collene Campbell recalled, her brother told her, “I’m afraid Michael Goodwin is going to hurt my baby.”

“I said to him, ‘Oh, Mick. You don’t really believe this,’ ” Campbell said. “He said, ‘Collene, I’m telling you, the man is capable.’ ”

Investigators have spoken to Goodwin, who declared bankruptcy after a long and messy legal battle with Thompson over their failed attempt to promote motor sports races.

But Goodwin has told officers that he was not involved in the murders and has nothing more to say.

Two weeks after the shootings, Goodwin and his wife, Diane, left town, reportedly heading toward the Caribbean. Police believe they are still living on a boat dubbed “Believe.”

“He absolutely and utterly denies it,” said Goodwin’s attorney, Allan H. Stokke, adding that he is in contact with Goodwin but will not reveal his whereabouts.

“The only thing that could be accomplished if he were to talk with police is they would interrogate him about every little detail and try to find something wrong,” Stokke said. In 1986, shortly after he was ordered by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to pay Thompson a $500,000 judgment for breach of contract in their business partnership, Goodwin told The Times:

“I’m not a people person. All I care about is results. I don’t care if people like me or how I get the results. If somebody has a contract with me and they don’t perform, I’ll take their legs off if I have to get them to perform.”

Investigator Griggs believes that sooner or later something will have to break, someone will have to talk.

But for now, the phone on his desk in the Hall of Justice rings with possible leads about the case less often. The tips that once flowed in from across the country have now trickled to about three or four a week. “I could get the big phone call right now,” he said. “Or I could go another two years and get nothing.”