Killers for Hire (9 page)

Undaunted, Benice appealed the jurisdictional issue to a California appellate court but wouldn’t see the fruits of his labor. He wasn’t getting paid and quit two weeks before the appellate court sided with him and dismissed the case.

Unbeknownst to Goodwin, Orange County prosecutors had been meeting with their Los Angeles counterparts just in case matters didn’t go their way. So when the dismissal happened, Los Angeles was ready and gave Goodwin what he wanted—a case filed in the jurisdiction where the crime happened. But unlike a liberal O.J. Simpson jury from downtown, this time it would be in Pasadena, 10 miles from Bradbury. An upscale area of white-collar professionals, Pasadena was almost as bad as Orange County from a defense standpoint.

Lillienfeld drove Goodwin to the Los Angeles County Jail after the case was filed on June 8, 2004. Any time a suspect or defendant in one of his cases needs to be picked up and transported to jail Lillienfeld does it himself, always hoping to lull his target into some sort of an admission regarding the crime along the way. It’s worked in some cases, but not with Goodwin.

“On the ride up there he basically talked about what an asshole I was, a puppet for Collene (Campbell), a crook, etc,” Lillienfeld said. “The standard stuff.”

The case was assigned to Patrick Dixon, the head deputy of the major crimes unit, which prosecutes cases involving public officials, celebrities and other high-profile defendants. Tall and distinguished looking with gray hair and a commanding presence, Dixon is a legend of sorts within his office and is known as a master trial strategist. “I’m not a genius on the law or like some others who are good at investigating cases,” Dixon said. “But if I do have any skill, it’s tactical strategy during trial and knowing how to put on a case.”

He joined the DA’s Office in 1976 because the idea of not having to work with a client appealed to him. Rather, he wanted to be in court “seeking truth and justice, as Pollyannish as that sounds,” he said.

Dixon decided to approach the case in a different way than his predecessor. Instead of focusing on the conspiracy of planning the murders in Orange County, Dixon didn’t even want to make that an element. Rather, he wanted to show a pattern of guilty behavior that would leave jurors with the consensus that no one else could be responsible.

Once Dixon filed the case, he looked for an assistant to help bring it to trial. Deputy District Attorney Alan Jackson had been in the major crimes unit just a month when Dixon asked him if he wanted the case. Young, good looking and on his way up the ladder, Jackson had been in the DA’s Office nine years prosecuting juveniles, miscellaneous felonies and gang members, winning 29 murderer convictions.

“I knew who Mickey Thompson was, having grown up in Texas and following racing in my early years,” Jackson said. “When I was younger, I had a hot rod with Mickey Thompson parts in it. I was not only flattered but awed that the office would trust me to work on this case and with someone like Pat Dixon. It was by far the biggest case I’ve ever been given.”

In fact, Jackson would be the main attorney responsible for preparing the case for trial and attending all court appearances.

Witty and debonair, he had a completely different style from either David Brent or Michael Jacobs. He uses his considerable charm, good looks and self-deprecating humor to win over jurors. Like Lillienfeld, he lulls adversaries into a false sense of security as a charming conversationalist. And also like Lillienfeld, he isn’t afraid of hard work. Jackson paid for his college education by working as a jet mechanic in the Air Force.

Alan Jackson & Patrick Dixon (L to R)
photo by Gene Blevins

Dixon and Jackson work out of the downtown Los Angeles Superior Court building, where a small room was cleared out for a new tenant: the Thompson case file, which arrived from Orange County in a 40-foot moving van, all 240,000 pages of it contained in 121 file boxes.

“There was no order to it or anything, it looked like it had just been thrown in there,” Jackson said. “I opened the first box and just started reading. I removed the things that weren’t relevant and glossed through those at first. Eventually I read through the whole thing; it took me a month of 12-hour days and working weekends.”

Meanwhile, Goodwin was making himself at home in Los Angeles County’s Twin Towers Jail. Built in the late ’90s, the 4,000-bed facility was designed to house the county’s general jail population. Twin Towers was just that—dual seven-story buildings that also contain an in-house medical facility. Two two-man cellblocks are monitored from guards positioned in an outside Plexiglas booth.

Twin Towers Jail
courtesy Los Angeles Co. Sheriff’s Dept.

Goodwin found himself in a high-power unit, the type reserved for celebrity defendants or those with high notoriety. The block is constructed like a horseshoe with sheriff’s deputies in the center. Each cell has a Plexiglas door that leads out into a common recreation area.

“Typical Goodwin, he started demanding stuff from Day One,” Lillienfeld commented. “He wanted a laptop, unlimited phone access, doctor’s visits, special medication, bedding, etc. He didn’t end up having any disciplinary write-ups because he mostly stayed in his cell reading. I think he was intimidated by the other defendants.”

As expected, Lillienfeld and Jackson became fast friends, bound by their blue-collar work ethic, wit and zealous desire to see Michael Goodwin confined to a California prison for life.

“Mark and I got along like brothers; he’s the brother I never had,” Jackson said. “If I was ever murdered, I’d want him to investigate my case. He is like a dog without a bone. He starts sniffing it out and he latches on and gets lockjaw and will not let go until it’s brought to a conclusion.”

Alan Jackson & Mark Lilliefeld (L to R)
photo by Gene Blevins

As soon as Jackson got up to speed on the case, he and Lillienfeld decided to take a road trip and visit all the important players in the case so Jackson could talk to them and see how they might hold up on the witness stand. They visited Alabama, where Marc Goodwin had moved; North Carolina to see Jeffrey Coyne, who was Goodwin’s bankruptcy trustee and victim of a failed assassination plot; New York to see Goodwin’s ex-girlfriend Gail Hunter; Virginia to see Diane Goodwin, and Florida, where boat bounty hunter Mike McGhee lived.

An avid seaman with contacts in ports throughout the Caribbean, McGhee makes a living of locating vessels that have been stolen or foreclosed by banks. Using snitches, contacts, police sources and paper trails, McGhee is a detective on the high seas who will track his prey across the globe.

“I’ve been doing this 20 years,” McGhee said. “I’ve gotten some of the biggest boats in the business; I’ve taken boats from drug dealers in the Caribbean and wise guys in New Jersey.”

In 1991, he was hired by the Maryland National Bank to find a yacht Goodwin had stopped making payments on—still owing $290,000. The last time the bank had heard from the Goodwins was a year earlier, when they were awarded a $54,000 claim for lightning damage.

McGhee soon found the boat docked in Pensacola, and Marc Goodwin was aboard with two black men who looked like the composite drawings of the Thompsons’ killers. Michael Goodwin wasn’t there.

As McGhee walked up the dock toward the boat, Marc “went ballistic,” McGhee said. “He screamed at me and threatened to kill me.” One thing that is different between McGhee and his land-based counterparts: He locates the boat but doesn’t actually seize it; that part is left to a repossessor.

The boat was not seized in time and left Florida. McGhee started his search anew, focusing on dive spots in the Caribbean. It took three months before he hit pay dirt—Goodwin was found in Belize, swimming, lying out in the sun, laughing and joking with his brother and the two black men.

As the bounty hunter approached Goodwin’s boat, named the Scalawag, “he knew exactly who I was,” McGhee said. “He said, ‘I know why you’re here. What do you think you’re doing? You think you’re slick!’

“I said, ‘It’s all over Mr. Goodwin. Your boat is the bank’s and you know it.’ “

At that point, Goodwin’s face turned red with rage as he screamed and cursed at McGhee, threatening to kill him.

McGhee watched the boat for 12 days, waiting for a moment when everyone would be on shore so it could be repossessed. That didn’t happen, and it went back to Florida and then to Guatemala, where it was eventually repossessed.

“When Goodwin found out the boat was gone, he went crazy,” McGhee said. “He rented a helicopter and flew around looking for it.”

Goodwin claimed to be indigent, so his case was assigned to the Public Defender’s Office. Deputy Public Defender Elena Saris became his attorney. The judge was Teri Schwartz, a former gang prosecutor who had a reputation of being extremely methodical to the point of plodding.

From the start, Saris and Jackson rubbed each other wrong. Each accused the other of procrastination and unethical tactics. Dixon was a mediator of sorts between the two because he got along well with Saris. Court hearings were peppered with sarcastic comments like, “As Mr. Jackson well knows…” and “Ms. Saris knows that’s not true…”

Goodwin was ordered to stand trial after a one-week preliminary hearing in October 2004. Several witnesses recounted hearing Goodwin threaten to kill Mickey, and ex-girlfriend Gail Hunter testified that Goodwin confessed to murder following the airing of an episode of “Unsolved Mysteries” depicting the case.

“There’s simply no one else the court can say committed this crime,” Schwartz ruled.

While this was going on, Lillienfeld received a phone call from an interesting witness. The man, identified as Rick, said he had heard that the case was going to trial and had some information. He had known Goodwin since his rock star promoter days in the late ’60s and the pair struck up a friendship. In 1969 they decided to drive down to Baja California with Diane for an extended dive vacation.

One night they were sitting on the beach and talking about work. Goodwin was recalling how he hired two young men and showed them how to become successful rock promoters. But instead of staying with Goodwin, they branched out on their own and started taking away his business. Goodwin was livid.

“They were alcoholics and I got lucky,” Goodwin told Rick. “The dumb bastards got drunk one night and drove off a cliff.”

The way Goodwin stated that fact—evenly, with a sense of retribution—took Rick aback. “There was no question in my mind that he killed those guys who went off that cliff,” Rick said. “He’s egotistical as hell and doesn’t like losing.”

A few weeks later, Rick, Goodwin and Diane were sitting in a Mexican restaurant with several locals and had gone through five or six rounds of drinks. Their new friends said they had poached shrimp during a recent dive and paid off the police with 100 kilograms of their catch.

“What would it cost to get someone hit?” Goodwin asked, while on the subject of paying someone off.

“50 bucks,” one of the men replied.

Goodwin turned and loudly whispered to Diane: “To think it cost me 10 grand to get those two fuckers hit!”