Mickey Thompson and his wife, Trudy Thompson, were shot in the driveway of their Bradbury, Calif., home on March 16, 1988.
Known as the “Speed King,” the off-road racing legend revolutionized the racing world as a drag racing driver, builder and promoter. Known for his motto, “Stand on the gas,” Mickey began racing professionally by 25 years old, according to CBS News and set about 500 speed records, per Reuters.
Mickey’s most iconic moment remains when he broke the land-speed record in 1960. On the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, he became the first American to reach 400 miles per hour while powered by a piston engine, clocking in at 406.60 miles per hour in his Challenger I car, per the Automotive Hall of Fame.
In 1988, Mickey’s life was tragically cut short when he and his wife, Trudy Thompson, were shot execution-style in the driveway of their home around 6 a.m. in March 1988. Witnesses testified that they saw two Black men shoot and kill 59-year-old Mickey and 41-year-old Trudy before fleeing the scene on bicycles.
The investigation into Mickey and Trudy’s murders went cold until more than a decade after their deaths, when Mickey’s former business partner, Michael Goodwin, was arrested in 2001 and charged with orchestrating the killings.
Despite multiple documentaries and shows made about the murders — including Unsolved Mysteries, 48 Hours and the Netflix docuseries Homicide: Los Angeles — the two gunmen who killed Mickey and Trudy have never been identified.
The racing legend was posthumously inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America and the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1990 and the Automotive Hall of Fame in 2009. One of Mickey’s children, his son Danny Thompson, carries on his legacy as a racer himself, speaking at events and even beating his father’s racing records.
So who killed Mickey Thompson? Here’s everything to know about the drag racing legend’s life leading up to his unexpected death.
Mickey was born in 1928 in Alhambra, Calif., and bought his first car at 14 years old — a 1927 Chevy that he purchased for $7.50. He built cars by hand out of his home before he was even legally allowed to drive, according to the Automotive Hall of Fame.
Mickey quickly pursued a career in racing, designing the “slingshot dragster” racing car in the mid-1950s, whose pioneering design placed the driver behind the car’s rear axle rather than in front of it.
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