Collene Campbell arrived in court Thursday wearing the St. Christopher medal her brother, slain racing legend Mickey Thompson, wore during his races. It lay over a diamond necklace her mother gave her on her deathbed 11 years ago, asking Campbell not to take it off until her brother's killer was brought to justice.
On Thursday, after nearly 19 years, 74-year-old Campbell was released from those mystic bonds.
A Pasadena jury convicted Michael Goodwin of murdering his former racing-promoter partner and Thompson's wife, Trudy, in 1988, thus writing the climactic chapter in one of Los Angeles County's most enduring murder mysteries.
"I wish I could look up and touch Mickey and Trudy and say, 'We won!' " Campbell said after the verdict, her eyes welling with tears. Later she waved a black-and-white checkered racing flag in triumph.
Campbell, a former mayor of San Juan Capistrano, fought tirelessly on behalf of her brother, who was killed a few years after her son -- whose body was thrown from an airplane in an unrelated case.
In the Thompson case, after almost two decades of police investigation and 10 shows about the crime on national television, jurors said no one believed that Goodwin -- inventor of Supercross, motorcycle races staged in NFL stadiums -- was innocent. They said they never considered that they would not reach a unanimous verdict, and the fact that Goodwin did not testify did not matter.
"All I could say to her [Campbell] was, 'I'm glad you're pleased,' " said the jury foreman, who asked not to be identified by name. "We didn't do it just for her, but because we wanted to do the right thing. We all hope this will bring an end to a long, painful period in her life."
Goodwin, who has been in custody five years, is to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. His lawyer, deputy Public Defender Elena Saris, said she planned to appeal and would ask for a new trial.
Pleading for her client, she argued during trial that Goodwin might have been a "jerk," an "egomaniac" and a "braggart" but was not a murderer.
The Thompsons were gunned down in the driveway of their home in the eastern Los Angeles County community of Bradbury on March 16, 1988, by two hooded gunmen who escaped on bicycles. The killers were never identified or charged, and there was no crime scene evidence connecting Goodwin to the slayings.
