How was Mickey Thompson from Homicide: Los Angeles killed? Drag racer’s grim fate explained

Homicide: Los Angeles is a Netflix true crime docuseries that premiered on July 16, 2024. Produced by Law and Order series creator Dick Wolf, it follows several high-profile murder cases in California's capital city.

The second episode of Homicide: Los Angeles deals with the murder of drag racer Mickey Thompson, who was shot along with his wife in the driveway of their home in Bradbury California.

According to reports, while he begged for his wife to be spared, she was nonetheless shot first before the shooters turned their guns to him.

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Who was Mickey Thompson from Homicide: Los Angeles?

Mickey Thompson co-designed the record-breaking Challenger I. (Image via Wikimedia Commons)

Mickey Thompson's brutal murder was covered in the second episode of Homicide: Los Angeles.

He was born in December 1928, and had a passion for automobile racing and tuning from a young age. He spent his 20s as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times while indulging in his hobby of hot-rodding, or vehicle tuning, on the side.

Mickey later became a significant player in the emerging sport of drag racing and surpassed his peers in setting up speed and endurance records. Mickey was responsible for pioneering drag racing vehicle designs such as the slingshot dragster, which debuted in 1954.

He was also a major player at the Indianapolis 500-Mile Sweepstakes competitions from 1962 to 1964, and although he continued to compete in Indianapolis until 1968, he stopped qualifying in the contests from 1965 onwards.

In his later years, Mickey focused on tuning vehicles for off-road racing competitions, and he was the founder of SCORE International, which was established in 1973 to supervise off-road racing in America.

He and his wife Trudy also co-founded the Mickey Thompson Entertainment Group, which showcased both off-road and indoor motocross races in the American metropolitan areas.

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Who killed Mickey Thompson?

As chronicled in Homicide: Los Angles, Mickey Thompson and his wife were shot dead in the driveway of their home in Burbank, California.

Homicide: Los Angeles recounts the grisly turn of events as the killers waited to ambush them and opened fire as Mickey and Trudy were preparing to leave the house. No valuables were taken from their bodies, causing the police to eliminate robbery as a motive.

Police sketches described the gunmen as two hooded individuals who were potentially Black men. The gunmen have never been caught and remain at large as of writing.

However, one of Mickey Thompson's former associates was eventually convicted of masterminding the murder. Michael Frank Goodwin had worked with Mickey Thompson before having a falling out with him. At the time of the murder, he owed Mickey more than $768,000 in settlement money.

Two months before the murder, Frank Goodwin and his wife had made preparations to skip town by buying $275,000 worth of gold coins and transferring $400,000 to offshore accounts on Grand Turk Island. The two left the United States five months after the murder and didn't return for the next two years.

Goodwin was eventually arrested in Orange County in connection to the murders in 2001. The case was subsequently transferred to Pasadena, with the judge of the Pasadena Superior Court ordering Goodwin to be tried.

Though there was no hard evidence connecting Goodwin to the crime, he was ultimately convicted based on the heavy circumstantial evidence pointing to him as the mastermind, including witness testimony wherein he was heard explicitly threatening to have Mickey murdered.

Goodwin was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

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Homicide: Los Angeles chronicles the murder of Mickey Thompson, along with several other high-profile crimes that made the headlines in the city.

Homicide: Los Angeles is currently available on Netflix in all regions.