Mickey Thompson achieved the fast track to fame literally, as it was the fast track that brought him wealth and notoriety. Among his many innovations to auto racing were the “slingshot” dragster and the home built “Challenger 1,” which in 1960 became the first automobile to break the four-hundred mile-per-hour barrier. His pioneering designs changed the face of racing, and he also proved he was an adept businessman as he created a successful indoor stadium-racing venture. Viewed as an almost godlike figure in the auto racing world, the life of the fifty-nine-year-old king of the motorway was cut short on March 16, 1988.
That morning, Mickey and his forty-one-year-old wife, Trudy, were shot to death outside their home in a wooded mountainous area near Bradbury, California, an affluent isolated community of approximately 1,000 people in the San Gabriel Valley region of Los Angeles County, approximately twenty miles northeast of the city of Los Angeles. The killers of the auto racer who boasted of incurring more broken bones than Evel Knievel, and who had been left paralyzed for several months following a speedboat accident, fled the scene riding bicycles.
A former business associate has been convicted of orchestrating the hit on the hotrodder, but the actual gunmen remain unidentified.
Mickey And Trudy Thompson
The Thompsons’ neighbors awakened to the sounds of gunshots shortly before 6:00 a.m. on March 16, 1988. Lance Johnson ran to his window and heard his neighbor, Mickey Thompson, screaming, “Please don’t hurt my wife! Please don’t hurt my wife!” before hearing another series of shots followed by silence.
Lance then grabbed his gun and returned to the window. He and several other neighbors saw two black men wearing what appeared to be hooded jogging suits speeding from the Thompson residence on bicycles. Lance yelled at them and fired several shots, but the men did not flinch one iota.
Gunshots at The Thompson Residence
Multiple people had phoned the police. When they arrived at the Thompson home, they found Mickey and Trudy lying dead on their driveway; Mickey at the top, Trudy near the bottom, each having been shot multiple times.
Mickey was likely killed shortly after walking out of the garage. He had been hit seven times; three times in his stomach, twice on the back of his right hand, and once in his hip and behind his right ear.
Trudy had incurred two gunshot wounds, one to her lower stomach and the other to the back of her head. She appeared to have been initially shot while backing their van from the garage as the key was in the ignition and the left turn-signal was blinking.
Ambushed Outside Their Home
A robbery gone wrong was quickly dismissed as Trudy was wearing over $70,000 worth of jewelry and, between them, the Thompsons were carrying approximately $4,000 in cash. The house was undisturbed.
Police believe the killers had hidden in the woods, waiting for the Thompsons to come out of their home with the purpose of executing them.
Robbery Ruled Out
The perpetrators may have later been seen in a 1988 maroon Mazda or Volvo, perhaps driven by at third man who was white. They may have made their getaway in this vehicle as the Bradbury community is only two miles from Los Angeles’ Foothill Freeway.
Two gray ten-speed (some sources say they were twelve-speed) bicycles were found abandoned in a wooded lot along the road leading away from the Thompson home four hours after the shootings. No fingerprints or any other physical evidence was found on them.
Composite sketches of the gunmen were created based on witness descriptions. As the Thompsons’ murders received national attention, multiple people reported seeing two men resembling the composites across the country in Pensacola, Florida, in the weeks after the murders, but they have never been identified.
Composites Of The Gunmen
When police asked friends and acquaintances of anyone who would want the Thompsons dead, one name was repeatedly mentioned. Although he was clearly not one of the gunmen, many believed Mickey Thompson’s former business partner Michael Goodwin was the architect of the assassinations.
In the three years since the men’s partnership had dissolved, Thompson’s businesses continued to profit while Goodwin’s suffered. The letter blamed the former for his misfortunes.
Michael Goodwin
Mickey Thompson formed SCORE (Southern California Off Road Enthusiasts) International, a sanctioning body for the sport of desert racing, in 1973. Six years later, he and Trudy created the Mickey Thompson Entertainment Group (MTEG), another sanctioning body sponsoring indoor motocross and off-road vehicle racing shows and competitions in arenas and stadiums.
Michael Goodwin ran Stadium Motor Sports Corporation, a similar business promoting stadium motorcycle racing.
Thompson and Goodwin entered a joint business venture promoting their respective stadium motor sports events in 1984. The deal involved a stock transfer agreement with the parties combining their businesses and sharing profits and losses, with seventy percent going to Goodwin and thirty percent to Thompson.
Within months, their business relationship deteriorated; in October, the men filed civil lawsuits against one another. Goodwin claimed Thompson had defaulted, entitling him to take over Thompson’s company. Thompson countered that Goodwin refused to advance money for an event as agreed in the formula.
Business Relationship Sours
In February 1986, the trial court dismissed Goodwin’s claim and rendered a judgment for Thompson totaling nearly $800,000. Goodwin appealed, but the California Supreme Court affirmed the ruling on January 29, 1988.
Goodwin Loses
Following the decision, several friends said they heard Goodwin say he was going to kill his former business partner but thought he was merely blowing smoke, saying the motorhead was also a hothead who often made outrageous statements.
When the Thompson’s were killed six weeks later, however, they, along with authorities, wondered if he had done more than vent.
Goodwin Had Made Threats . . .
No physical evidence connected Goodwin to the Thompson murders. He owned several guns, but not none were found to have been the weapons used in the killings. He also possessed a stun gun similar to one found at the crime scene. It was presumed to have been left by the killers, although it was not used.
. . . But Nothing Links Him
In 2001, following a rebroadcast of the Thompson murders on America’s Most Wanted, Ronald and Tonyia Stevens, who lived near them at the time of the 1988 killings, came forward saying they had seen two men in a parked 1973 Chevy Malibu station wagon looking through binoculars at the Thompson home in the weeks before the murders. They identified one of the men as Michael Goodwin and say the other bore a resemblance to the composite of one gunman.
The Stevenses told the current investigators they had informed police of the sighting several times shortly after the murders and were told a detective would be contacting them. No one did.
Police theorize the two men, one of whom was believed to be Michael Goodwin, were studying the Thompson home and neighborhood, and learning the couples’ daily routine. Still, with nothing directly linking Goodwin to the murders, Los Angeles County prosecutor Gil Garcetti chose not to indict him.
Was Goodwin Stalking The Thompsons?
In 2006, however, new county prosecutor Steve Cooley reviewed the evidence and deemed it sufficient to bring charges.
The following year, Goodwin was convicted of the Thompson murders as he was found to have hired the unidentified hitmen to kill his former business partner and his wife. He was given two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Goodwin’s appeal of his conviction was denied in 2015 and is incarcerated at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in Los Angeles. He maintains his innocence.
Goodwin Convicted
In May 1988, two months after the Thompsons’ murders, Goodwin purchased $275,000 worth of gold coins and wired $400,000 to banks on the island of Grand Turk and Caicos, a British overseas territory in the northern West Indies. Three months later, he and his wife Diane purchased a yacht and traveled to the Caribbean where they stayed for two years. Investigators believe the gunmen may be Caribbean natives and that Goodwin paid them for the murders while living there.
In 1996, Goodwin was convicted of fraud and sentenced to thirty months in prison for filing false loan statements for the yacht.
Caribbean Payoff?
Even with Goodwin’s conviction, the murders of Mickey and Trudy Thompson remain open as the hunt for the hitmen continues.
Both of the gunmen are black. In 1988, they each appeared to be about six feet tall and in good physical shape, although one was slightly stockier than the other. Both men were wearing dark colored jogging suits and were skilled at riding bicycles. They were likely in their twenties or thirties, meaning they would be in their fifties to sixties today.
The calm demeanor of the killers while being yelled at by neighbors and their not panicking even while being shot at lead most investigators to believe they could be professional hit men. Rumors persist the pair worked for years as hired guns in the Caribbean.
If they were professional hitmen, however, some are puzzled as to why they did not used a silencer and fled the scene on bicycles. A few detectives suspect the killers may have planned on abducting the Thompsons and force them to drive to another location but that something went wrong resulting in their murders.
A $1 million reward is being offered for each man’s identification and apprehension. If you believe you have information relating to these men’s identities or whereabouts, please contact the Los Angeles Police Department Homicide Division at 213-486-6890.
Age Progression Images
Of The Hitmen
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6919/mickey-thompson#
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6920/gertrude_thompson
Mickey Thompson’s murder overshadows his monumental accomplishments in auto racing. The most notable is his setting a land-speed record and becoming the first American to break the four-hundred-mile-per-hour barrier in 1960, driving his Challenger 1 to a one-way top speed of 406.60 miles-per-hour at the Bonneville Salt Flats in the Great Salt Lake Desert in northwestern Utah.
Mickey And His Challenger I
The Challenger 1 driven by Mickey Thompson in eclipsing the four-hundred-mile-per-hour barrier is displayed at the National Hot Rod Association Museum (NHRA) in Los Angeles.
The Displayed Record-Breaking Vehicle
Mickey Thompson was posthumously inducted to the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America and the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1990, the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2007, and the Automotive Hall of Fame in 2009.
An Automotive Icon
The businesses formed by Mickey Thompson continued after this murder. Although the Mickey Thompson Entertainment Group (MTEG) went bankrupt in 1996, SCORE International celebrated its fiftieth year of sponsoring off-road racing in 2023.
Legacy Lives On
Danny Thompson, Mickey’s son from his first marriage, followed in his father’s footsteps. He began racing at age nine and won his first quarter-midget championship at age ten.
Following the murders of his father and step-mother, Danny assumed control of the Mickey Thompson Entertainment Group.
In 2008, Danny was behind the wheel of the world’s fastest Ford Mustang.
Mickey and Danny,
Like Father, Like Son
On August 12, 2018, using an updated and restored version of his father’s 1968 prototype streamliner, Danny Thompson broke the overall piston-driven land speed record, traveling 448.75 miles-per-hour in the Challenger II.
Danny Sets A Record
The murders of her brother and sister-in-law were the second devastating trauma endured by Collene Campbell, Mickey Thompson’s younger sister. The first was the disappearance of her twenty-nine-year-old son Scott in 1982. Authorities believe he was murdered during a drug related robbery aboard a private airplane flying near Catalina Island, off the coast of southern California in the Gulf of Mexico, and then thrown into the Pacific Ocean.
Two men have been convicted of Scott Campbell’s murder, even though his body has not been found.
Scott Campbell
Spurred by the murder of her brother and sister-in-law and the likely murder of her son, Collene Campbell became an advocate for victims’ rights. She also later became the first woman mayor of her hometown of San Juan Capistrano in southern California.
Collene Campbell
Mickey Thompson’s Sister
Sources:
- America’s Most Wanted
- Car and Driver Magazine
- 48 Hours
- Fox News
- Los Angeles Times
- Motorsport .com
- Mickey Thompson Website
- Unsolved Mysteries
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