By LINDA DEUTSCH, The Associated Press
Nov 6, 2006 9:38 PM (1 day ago)
Jew Threatens Thompson:
PASADENA, Calif. – Nearly 19 years after Mickey Thompson and his wife were slain, three witnesses testified Monday that a former business partner made threatening remarks about the racing legend just weeks or months before the couple was gunned down by killers who escaped on bicycles.
The testimony against Michael Frank Goodwin came after a prosecutor told jurors it was a professional hit engineered to make Thompson see his wife killed before a bullet was fired into his brain.
“As he was shot, over and over the mantra he repeated was the same, ‘Please don’t hurt my wife,'” Deputy District Attorney Alan Jackson said, quoting neighbors who heard the couple’s cries.
Thompson had won a $793,000 judgment against Goodwin in a lawsuit and after legal wrangling Goodwin had been forced to declare bankruptcy, Jackson said in outlining a circumstantial case.
Goodwin’s public defender, Elena Saris, countered in her opening that there is no forensic evidence, no murder weapon, no proof of a payout to anyone or a money drop to pay assassins.
“This is the story of a botched investigation and a Hollywood series of events based on false assumptions,” she said.
Thompson, who was 59 when he died in 1988, competed in numerous auto sports and was the first person to travel more than 400 mph on land. He was inducted posthumously into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America.
The 61-year-old Goodwin, whose fame was in staging Supercross motorcycle races, is charged with two counts of murder with special circumstances and faces life in prison if convicted. His prosecution came about after years of pressure by Thompson’s sister, Collene Campbell.
Saris told jurors that most prosecution witnesses emerged after they saw TV shows about the case and learned there were large rewards. She acknowledged that the prosecution’s first witness didn’t fit that profile.
Bill Wilson, a former police commander and later manager of the Rose Bowl and Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego, testified that he and his wife hosted a dinner party for Goodwin and his wife a little more than a month before the killings. Wilson said it was he who had introduced the two men and suggested they do business together.
Wilson said he knew there were problems between the two but was stunned when Goodwin told him: “Thompson is killing me. He’s destroying me. He’s taking everything I’ve got. I’m gonna take him out.”
Wilson said he replied, “Nobody wins that one. Mickey’s dead and you’re in prison.”
Wilson said he was upset.
“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He was going to kill a friend of mine,” he testified.
Wilson said before the conversation ended Goodwin looked at him and said, “You know I’m just kidding. I couldn’t do anything like that.”
Asked if he believed Goodwin’s comments, Wilson said, “Nothing led me to believe the defendant was making a joke.”
Wilson’s wife, Nina, gave a similar account of the conversation. She said that when Wilson told Goodwin he would go to jail, Goodwin responded, “Oh no, I’m too smart for that. Nobody will pin it on me.”
Neither of the Wilsons said they reported anything to police after the dinner.
The third witness, Karen Dragutin, testified that some months before the murder she encountered Goodwin at dinner with a friend and she joined them.
“They started talking about the lawsuits and problems with lawyers,” Dragutin said.
She said Goodwin’s attitude became “cocky and arrogant and he was pretty mad. I remember them talking about Mickey Thompson.”
She testified that Goodwin “made a statement somewhere along the line that the only way to get out of the mess was to take care of Mickey Thompson.”
On further questioning she added that Goodwin said “the only way he was going to get out of it was if Mickey Thompson died.”
Dragutin, who said he also talked of getting a boat and going to Bermuda, testified she did not contact police until she saw the case on the TV show “Unsolved Mysteries” and “thought that what I had heard was relevant.”
She said she called a hot line, a detective came to interview her and she picked Goodwin out of a photo lineup. She said she also called after a “48 Hours” show and the lead officer on the case called and took information.
On cross-examination, Dragutin said she couldn’t remember if there were large rewards offered in the case.
During the prosecution’s opening, Jackson showed pictures of the couple lying in pools of blood in their driveway.
“Although they died March 16, 1988, their demise started four years earlier when they went into business with Michael Goodwin,” Jackson said.
The prosecutor said Thompson, who was known for staging Motocross races, went into business with Goodwin because he felt it was time to cut back on his grueling schedule.
But Thompson realized he was being cheated by his new partner and began filing “crushing” lawsuits that led Goodwin to develop a “vendetta,” Jackson said.
Jackson alleged Goodwin hired two hit men to go to the Thompsons’ house in the gated Los Angeles suburb of Bradbury, which he had scoped out beforehand, to shoot them and escape on a bicycle route.
“It was a professional execution,” Jackson said.
Jackson said he will call neighbors who came forward years after the killing to say that they saw a man resembling Goodwin checking out the bicycle path with binoculars days before the killings.
Shortly after the killings, he said, Goodwin liquidated assets, sold his home, transferred money to an account in the Caribbean and bought a $400,000 yacht on which he and his then-wife left the United States for three years.
Defense attorney Saris acknowledged harsh words were spoken between Goodwin and Thompson, but said that “folklore was generated by the media” which led witnesses to come forward.
She acknowledged her client had refused to pay the judgment Thompson won.
“You might not think of this as honorable behavior, she said, “but it is not evidence of murder.”
She claimed the two men had reached a settlement days before the murders.
She also disputed the claim that Goodwin fled, saying he often flew back to California to take care of business, that police knew his whereabouts and his lawyers had offered to make him available.