Detectives Hope to Crack 10-Year-Old Case

Sheriff’s Det. Sgt. Mike Robinson often wakes up in the middle of the night thinking about the case, trying to make sure he hasn’t forgotten a clue, trying to make connections he may have overlooked.

“I go to my office and start drawing charts,” the Los Angeles County lawman said. “I fantasize mostly.”

Other times he and his partner come in on their days off, as they did Monday when they worked nine hours on the case. “I feel guilty having tasks undone,” Det. Mark Lillienfeld said.

Since taking a renewed interest in the 1988 murder case of racing promoter Mickey Thompson and wife Trudy--killed outside their home in a wealthy section of the San Gabriel Valley--the detectives have spent months reading files, sifting through the 1,360 clues and making notes. Hoping to trace DNA on postage stamps and to check fingerprints, they have used technology that didn’t exist when the Thompsons were killed 10 years ago.

The detectives believe they know who hired the two men who shot Mickey Thompson outside his garage and then killed Trudy Thompson as she sat in the couple’s Toyota van. The killers then pedaled away on bicycles.

But despite the detectives’ work in the past 14 months, and the work of a swarm of investigators before them, no one has ever been charged for the murders. The investigators have hit a dead end.

“A couple of heavily armed cowards execute two unarmed people in their driveway,” Robinson said. “It’s just not right.”

They are hoping that will change after Mickey Thompson’s sister, San Juan Capistrano Councilwoman Collene Campbell, announces today that she is putting up $1 million for information leading to the arrest of the killers, one of the largest rewards ever. “It’s a 10-year-old case with a lot of leads that have gone nowhere,” Robinson said. “We need someone to do the right thing and give us a call.”

A decade later, Campbell still tears up when she talks about her brother, who was 59 when he died. In her living room is a portrait she painted of him as a knight. “I gave it to him for Christmas. I said, ‘This is how I feel, Mickey. You’re my knight in shining armor.’ ”

Thompson and Campbell were the children of the Alhambra Police Department’s chief of detectives, and they spoke daily. When Thompson became the first person to drive a car faster than 400 mph, Campbell was at the Bonneville salt flats in Utah assisting him.

Campbell keeps busy working with the families of crime victims, and plaques from President Bush and Gov. Pete Wilson hang in her house praising her work. Six years before Thompson’s death, Campbell’s son was strangled and his body thrown from a small airplane off Santa Catalina Island. The killers were caught, mainly through the efforts of Campbell and her husband. The two murder cases are unrelated.

Campbell started her own victims’ rights group, Memory of Victims Everywhere, which tries to pass legislation to help cut crime.

But she continues to be frustrated at the lack of progress toward arresting her brother’s killers. She speaks to the detectives about once a week, but that doesn’t seem to be enough.

“There’s something strange inside me that makes me feel guilty I haven’t been able to do what needs to be done, whatever that is,” she said. “I had a brother who could make anything happen, and if the tables were turned, he’d be doing the exact same thing--and he’d get something done.”

Which is why she and her husband decided to use their own money to offer the reward. “We’re not doing this $1-million thing because we want to give away our retirement,” Campbell said. “We want to catch the killers of Trudy and Mickey.”

Police have named Michael Goodwin, who lost an $800,000 lawsuit to Thompson when their partnership dissolved, as their prime suspect. He has never been charged.

“Everything in this case points to him,” Robinson said. “Hundreds of clues, hundreds of statements, hundreds of reasons.”

Goodwin, just as flamboyant in his way as was Thompson, was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison in 1996 for making false statements to three banks while trying to borrow nearly $400,000.

The investigators keep close track of Goodwin.

Asked where he is today, Lillienfeld answered, “He was in Ventura County. He was released from federal prison July 22 at about 8 a.m.”

Then the detectives rattle off some of the evidence.

Robinson: “Goodwin never provided information to his whereabouts or what he was doing on that time and date. He refuses to make a statement to investigators and leaves the country [a few weeks later] and is incommunicado.”

Lillienfeld: “He sold his house in Laguna [Beach] at a huge loss. Prior to leaving is when he defrauded the financial institutions.”

They are tight-lipped about other evidence. They won’t comment on the DNA, for example, or what they found when they looked at Goodwin’s financial records.

Goodwin did not return interview requests made through his attorneys. “I’m going to advise him not to talk to anyone,” said Allan Stokke.

The murder doesn’t make sense as a random crime. It took place in the exclusive Bradbury Estates. Nothing was taken from the Thompsons’ house, and the couple died carrying $70,000 in jewelry and cash. “It’s almost as if there was a message that this was not a robbery gone bad but a personal thing,” Robinson said.

The detectives’ office is at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s homicide bureau in an industrial park in Commerce, something out of the set of “L.A. Confidential.” The 88 homicide detectives sit in rows of ancient desks, not a computer in sight. If the phrase “Just the facts, ma’am” could be turned into a design statement, this would be it.

The files on the Thompson case take up a file cabinet and eight file boxes, not including the evidence, which is stored elsewhere.

The murder had been assigned to the unsolved crimes unit, with Lillienfeld as the backup investigator, when the lead detective got busy on other cases. Robinson and Lillienfeld talked about the murder and were interested in working together on it. The other investigator wrote a memo to the captain saying maybe it was time to bring fresh eyes to the case. The two detectives started by spending three months with the files. While they are assigned to another murder case, the Thompson case is where their hearts are.

“Generally our victims bring the murder on themselves, with drugs or gangs or [a love triangle], but when you have a pure victim, it cries to be solved,” Robinson said.

The two detectives make an interesting contrast. Robinson, 56, is 6 feet 4, slender, with a thick white mustache and gray hair. Lillienfeld, 41, is about 5 feet 8, stockier and clean shaven.

In his younger days, Robinson attended drag races Thompson put on at a raceway in Long Beach, and he once met Mickey and Trudy at a race in Ontario or Pomona. And a cousin of Robinson’s raced for Thompson twice in the Indianapolis 500 in the ‘60s.

While Lillienfeld never met Thompson, he feels as if he did. He can tell you about the patents Thompson had for automobile safety equipment, such as the yellow crash barriers. “You get to know more about some victims than they know about themselves,” he said. “Their habits, their likes, their dislikes.”

Robinson had planned to retire last March, but he put it off until January, after 35 years as a deputy. While he’ll get a better pension, a big reason he’s staying is because he wants to solve this crime.

Lillienfeld figures he has another 19 years on the case if it’s not solved. “Come 2017, I’ll pass it on to someone else,” he said.

Added Robinson: “And you will talk to Collene Campbell every week of those 19 years.”