Thompson’s kin says promoter threatened her

The man on trial for allegedly murdering sports legend Mickey Thompson threatened a decade later to kill Thompson’s sister, she testified Monday.

Outside the presence of the jury, Collene Campbell, 74, testified briefly but dramatically in court in Pasadena against Michael Goodwin, Thompson’s estranged business partner, who is charged with arranging the deaths of Thompson and his wife, Trudy, 18 years ago.

“I’m going to try to give it my best shot at exactly what he said,” Campbell said.

She said Goodwin made the threat 10 years after the murder when Campbell, acting as executor of her brother’s estate, sought to force Goodwin to make good on debts outstanding to Thompson.

“I’m going to kill you too, bitch,’ or ‘I’m going to get you too, bitch.’ And that was all that was said,” Campbell testified.

Campbell’s formal court appearance may be her only official involvement in the prosecution of the man whose trial she had sought for almost two decades.

Prosecutors called Campbell, the former mayor of San Juan Capistrano, to testify to bolster another witness, but prosecutors said they did not intend to put her before the jury.

Her legal crusade has been recounted on 10 television specials and dozens of stories in national publications, most recently in the current People magazine.

Part of Goodwin’s defense is that Campbell pulled political strings to ensure that he would be charged. His attorneys say her interference tainted the police investigation.

Campbell said Goodwin made the threat when she was in court in 1996 for his sentencing in a bankruptcy fraud case. Thompson’s estate had won a judgment for $512,000 against Goodwin for a failed joint venture to produce arena motorcycle and off-road races.

Campbell, as executor of the estate, continued to fight Goodwin in court for payment of the debt.

The case bankrupted Goodwin, and prosecutors contend that he sought revenge.

Campbell said she did not immediately report the threat to police because Goodwin “threatens everybody.”

Campbell’s account was supported by Lance Johnson, a psychology instructor at Pasadena City College, who testified that he overheard Goodwin utter the threat. Johnson delivered his account in front of the jury.

Johnson, Thompson’s friend and next-door neighbor in the San Gabriel Valley community of Bradbury, also gave a chilling account of the killings.

He testified that he was awakened by gunshots on March 16, 1988.

“There was silence for 15-20 seconds, and all of a sudden, I heard Mickey Thompson screaming, ‘Please don’t hurt my wife! Please don’t hurt my wife!’ Screaming, several times,” Johnson said.

He then heard another series of gunshots. Johnson said he grabbed his .357 magnum gun out of a drawer, then saw two African American men, wearing sweatsuits, riding bicycles down Thompson’s driveway.

“I screamed at them. I yelled, ‘Stop!’ ” Johnson said. “They didn’t look in my direction, as they continued on. I took a shot at them with the .357 magnum from my home. With that gun, at 6 o’clock in the morning, it was extremely loud. Nobody looked up at all.”

Johnson said he “saw Trudy Thompson lying at the foot of the driveway with blood coming out of her head and her eyes wide open. She appeared to be dead.”

He bristled when defense attorney Elena Saris asked why he would shoot at men when he had not seen them commit a crime.

His testimony, however, also reinforced a recurring defense theme: how media interest in the old case may have skewed the prosecution.

Johnson acknowledged he had appeared on the television show “Unsolved Mysteries” and narrated an account of the crime that included details that he himself had not observed. He denied embellishing his account for television.

Although prosecutors have no physical evidence tying Goodwin to the slayings, they have presented a bevy of witnesses who heard him make threats on Thompson’s life as he was losing their bitter business feud.

“I’m not afraid of that bastard,” Campbell said outside court. “I should be. Everybody else is. But he’s such a coward.”

She said her brother called her three days before his death and said he was worried that Goodwin would try to hurt his wife.

“Collene, I’m telling you, the guy’s capable of it, and I feel it in my bones,” Campbell quoted Thompson as saying.

The defense is scheduled to begin presenting its case next week.

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john.spano@latimes.com