Killers for Hire by Tori Richards Read Free Book Online Page B

Goodwin.

Chapter 7: Setting a Trap
    Orange County is the most conservative county in California. Nestled along the coast between Los Angeles and San Diego, it’s a relatively wealthy retreat against the decay and crime offered by its neighbor to the north. Shootings, robberies and carjackings are not the norm.
    Its jury system is extremely pro-law enforcement and the DA’s Office often has to self-police itself against asking for the death penalty because it will usually get it.
    Orange County’s successful felony prosecution rate is in the low 90 percent range, compared with the high 80s for Los Angeles. As a result, defense attorneys often look for ways to move cases out of Orange County on a change of venue motion.
    In California, a murder case can be prosecuted either where the plot was hatched or where the killing occurred. Lillienfeld felt Goodwin planned the Thompsons’ deaths, bought the weapons and likely paid the killers all from Orange County and so that’s where he wanted to take the case.
    “Of course I’m going to go to the county where I’ve got the best jury pool, I’d be stupid not to,” Lillienfeld later said. “It was never my intention to try this case in Los Angeles.”
    Lillienfeld’s first meeting was with five DA officials including Assistant DA Mike Jacobs, who supervised the homicide unit.

    Mike Jacobs
courtesy Mike Jacobs
    “Here was this little guy who comes in like Sherlock Holmes, with his notes, his books and all his crap,” Jacobs recalled. “We hit it off really well. He has a funny sense of humor, a smart guy; hardworking with a lot of energy. From what I knew about the case, it was a difficult one, a lot of work and not a feather in the cap.”
    Lillienfeld’s notebooks were full of leads that went nowhere. He had tried to boil the case down to six three-ring binders, of which only two were relevant, Jacobs said.
    “I went through all the information and concluded, just like he did, that there wasn’t enough to file,” Jacobs said.
    In the end, Jacobs agreed to take the case and see if he could help Lillienfeld obtain more evidence to justify charging Goodwin. A burly, brusque career prosecutor, Jacobs was the type of guy who would take on a seemingly impossible case without worrying about when or if he was going to file it.
    As a crack homicide prosecutor who has handled more than 100 murders either as a prosecutor or supervisor, he had sent five people to death row. Only four still live there; one has already been executed.
    Seeing Goodwin’s obsessive business habits as a possible road to conviction, Jacobs began subpoenaing every bank document and phone record he could think of. This led him all over North America and the Caribbean. It took months and months, and many of the banks were unyielding. The documents filled Jacobs’ office and consumed him.
    “One of the major problems in the case was that we didn’t have the killers,” he said. “We wanted to find some connection that he hired someone. So we went through his bank records and ended up worse than we started.”
    Unfortunately, he proved that Goodwin didn’t buy anything illegally. Bank fraud and swindling people were one thing. Paying a killer is another.
    Jacobs decided to take a run at Diane Goodwin again and sent Lillienfeld back out to Virginia with an offer of immunity if she gave a detailed statement implicating Goodwin. Instead, Diane recanted her previous statement that Goodwin was responsible for the killings, saying either she had been misunderstood or Lillienfeld was mistaken.
    Lillienfeld would later write in an affidavit: “It’s your affiant’s opinion that Diane Seidel Goodwin has knowledge about the planning, payment and implementation of the Thompson murders. It is your affiant’s opinion that Diane Seidel Goodwin very likely withdrew the money and/or wrote the checks that constituted payment to the killers of Mickey and Trudy Thompson. It is also your affiant’s opinion that