Slain Racing Promoter Complained of Death Threats, Neighbors Say

Friends of millionaire racing promoter Mickey Thompson and his wife, who were fatally shot at their San Gabriel Valley estate 10 months ago, have told homicide detectives that the Thompsons complained of death threats from his former business partner, court documents show.

In an affidavit filed with Los Angeles Municipal Court to support issuance of a search warrant last month, a sheriff’s investigator said the acquaintances claimed that the couple told them the threats had come from Michael Goodwin.

Goodwin, 43, of Laguna Beach and Thompson, 59, the first American to break the 400 m.p.h. land speed mark, had a falling out in 1985 and filed several lawsuits against each other. Goodwin and his company declared bankruptcy after a court ordered him to pay Thompson $500,000.

The Thompsons were gunned down as they were leaving their Bradbury home early on the morning of March 16, 1988. Two men were seen leaving the scene on bicycles and a third man abandoned a bicycle in nearby Irwindale, hitching a motorcycle ride out of the area.

Goodwin’s Santa Ana attorney, Alan Stokke, said Wednesday that his client would have no comment on the statements by Thompson’s friends reported in the court document, “other than to say that he absolutely and completely denies that he had any part of it.”

One of Thompson’s neighbors, according to the affidavit filed by sheriff’s homicide investigator Cheryl Lyon last Dec. 9, recalled that Thompson told him 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.”

According to the affidavit, a business associate said the famed racing figure once told him over the phone, “Can you believe this? The guy threatened to kill me if he lost the civil suit.”

Thompson reportedly went on to say--in the witness’s words--that “the guy would not only kill him, but his whole family.”

In her affidavit, Lyon said Goodwin’s attorney had “thwarted” attempts to ask Goodwin if he was the source of the death threats or a “link with the suspects who were hired to kill the Thompsons.”

The search warrant was for records at a Los Angeles cellular telephone billing office and was prompted by what Lyon said had been a call from Goodwin’s 57-foot boat, Believe, to a number here.

Lyon told the court that she believes the phone subscriber “will assist in obtaining further evidence of the persons involved in the death of the Thompsons.”

Sheriff’s homicide investigators would not say whether they had found the person they were seeking.