THE HIDDEN LIFE OF FRED GOETZ

3/21/1934 - Created and mentored by Al Capone for "special" jobs like the elimination of New York gangster Frankie Yale and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, with the notorious Scarface in prison for income tax evasion, afraid capture for bank jobs could bring forth testimony on mob activities, new Chicago headman Frank Nitti does some housekeeping, eliminating 37-year-old "American Boy" killer Fred Samuel Goetz (aka "Shotgun" George Ziegler), the man many crime historians believe planned assorted crimes for the Chicago mob and the Barker-Karpis gang of the 1930s, courtesy of three shotgun blasts to the gunman's face and chest (a fourth blast misses).

An unusual criminal, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde style double life of Goetz begins with his 2/13/1897 birth in Chicago, to German immigrants, Samuel and Ottilie Goetz (Samuel is a baker of European pastries at the city's famous Viennese restaurant, Henrici's).  The only boy (he has an older sister, Sophie) and youngest member of the family, Fred grows up on Chicago's north side, a handsome 5'9" muscled youth with blue eyes and sandy blonde hair, graduating from Lane Technical College Prep High School in 1914, seemingly leading a normal life, with no indications that he will someday become a multiple time murderer.  With the advent of WWI for the United States, Goetz enlists in the military and becomes a Second Lieutenant pilot in the United States Army Aviation Branch. Honorably discharged at the conclusion of the war, upon his return to Chicago, Goetz enrolls at the Champaign branch of the University of Illinois ... thriving in Academia, he studies business and engineering, becoming an honors student, joins the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, is known as "Fritz" to his classmates, is elected to the local American Legion's board of directors, joins the school's aviation club, and plays on the freshman basketball team and makes the college's Varsity football team.  In front of his happy parents, Goetz graduates with a business degree in 1922.

Out of school, still searching for exactly what he wants to do with his life, Goetz fills his summer's by life guarding at Chicago's Clarendon Beach, and it is as such that he lets the public view his Mr. Hyde persona for the first time in 1921 ... seeing a group of men attack fellow lifeguard Roger Bessner (the altercation involves insults exchanged with a female bather) with broken bottles, Goetz leads a rescue that results in he and his comrades, using oar handles and a hammer, beating the snot out of the upset beach goers (the left eye of one man, Harry Brown, is knocked out, and it is reported that he is still pummeled after becoming unconscious) and instigating a 500 person riot that police have to be called in to suppress.  First taste of being a bad boy, the tipping point takes place in 1925, when 7-year-old Jean Lambert is sexually assaulted in a basement near her home, and Goetz is arrested fleeing the scene.  Out on bail, knowing his case will go to trial and that he needs a good lawyer, Goetz seeks legal funds for his situation by robbing Dr. Henry Gross and his wife ... but makes things even worse, getting into a gun battle that wounds the doctor and kills the doctor's chauffeur, Bonificias Hernandez. Ratted out by an accomplice that is also wounded in the gun fight, Goetz will be on the run the rest of his life ... nine years.

Discovering he enjoys the criminal life, and that it can be extremely lucrative during hard times, Goetz lives in plain sight as George Ziegler (he also masquerades as a George Von Ash and about twenty other aliases), operates a garage in Cicero, Illinois, has a resort on 400 acres of wooded Wisconsin real estate (Al Capone will be a frequent visitor and he nicknames the non-Italian killers Goetz associates with "The American Boys"), and becomes heavily involved in armed robbery, bootlegging, and making hits for Mr. Capone, often partnering with killers Fred "Killer" Burke and Gus Winkler.  A quick study in the art of mayhem. Goetz soon has a criminal resume that among other heinous acts includes a $12,000 heist of cash and jewelry, a failed armored truck robbery in 1927 (one of the men in the caper forgets to bring dynamite for the two safes that are stolen, and the robbers miss out on $200,000) during which he kills police officer George Zientara, the New York assassination of former Capone friend, gangster Frankie Yale, a $93,000 robbery of the First National Bank of Peru, Indiana, a $350,000 robbery of the Farmers and Merchants Bank of Jefferson, Wisconsin, loosing a torrent of lead into members of the George Moran gang during the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in which seven men are killed (1929), running liquor from Havana to Miami, participates in the Barker-Karpis gang robbery of a postal carrier in downtown Chicago (1932), participates in the Barker-Karpis gang kidnapping of brewer William Hamm (1933), for awhile, is mistakenly identified as one of the killers at the Kansas City Massacre, joins the Barker-Karpis gang for the Chicago robbery of a mail truck in which one police officer is killed (the garage Goetz owns creates an armored getaway car that can release clouds of blinding smoke) and a St. Paul, Minnesota job in which two police officers and an innocent bystander are gunned down, and helps the Barker-Karpis gang kidnap banker Edward Bremer in 1934 (the best educated of the crew, Goetz rents the house Bremer is held in, is in on the snatch, types up the ransom demand letters and instructions, and he is the one that scoops up the loot when Bremer's family meets the kidnapper's terms of $200,000 in ransom).  And all the while, Goetz appears to be a wealthy businessman, living with a beautiful wife (his girlfriend, Irene ... he also has a secret apartment for a mistress) in the best parts of town, with taste for fine foods and music, gardening, and a huge passion for the game of golf.

Federal and local heat covering the Midwest underworld due to the antics of John Dillinger, the Karpis-Barker gang, Baby Face Nelson, and other desperadoes, when Goetz is identified as a suspect in the Bremer kidnapping, Frank Nitti and other Chicago Outfit mobsters decide they can not risk the gunman's capture, and the chance that he might someday try to buy his way out of the capital offense by trading mob information for a lighter sentence, and a hit is contracted.  Racing each other to find Goetz first, Chicago gunmen beat the Federals to the wanted man on a cool Wednesday evening in the town of Cicero.

At around 11:00 in the evening, Goetz is standing on the sidewalk, in front of a tavern called Minerva, lighting a cigarette, when a touring car suddenly comes screeching around a corner, jumps the curb, and men inside fire four shotgun blasts at the hitman and robber.  A buckshot mess, dead instantly, when police examine the outlaw's corpse they find membership cards in the name of George Ziegler for the Chicago Yacht Club, the Onwentsia Golf and Country Club, the Elks Club, the Oakdale Riding Club, and the Mohawk Country Club, the Associated News Service, the Sheriffs and Police Officers Association, and the American Landscapers Association.  They also find a single $1,000 bill in Goetz's wallet ... and within his belt, six small steel saw blades suitable for instigating jail cell leavings. Names and hangouts investigated, despite the corpse's mangled face (he will be identified by marks on his body by his sister), it soon becomes clear that justice of a type has finally caught up with Fred Goetz.

Secrets taken to the grave, the mystery of who actually pulled the triggers at the St. Valentine's Day Massacre is buried with Goetz (Fred "Killer" Burke dies of a heart attack while in jail in 1940, and much like Goetz himself, Gus Winkler will be shotgun assassinated in 1933, with some saying Goetz actually does the job himself) ... just as the Chicago mob wanted ... and no suspects are ever arrested for the murder. 

O.K. CORRAL PAYBACK

1882 - Payback for the O.K. Corral gunfight!  After taking in a Saturday night performance of the musical, "Stolen Kisses," at Tombstone's Turnverein Hall (the performance lasts abot three hours), Wyatt and Morgan Earp decide to play a few rounds of billiards at the town's Campbell & Hatch Billiard Parlor before going home to their sweethearts.  It is a very, very bad idea (just the day before, Wyatt is warned that there is a plot against the Earps from a local named Briggs Goodrich, who has a lawyer brother that does legal work for a number of Cowboys)!

Tombstone, Arizona - 1881

Cowboys Killed At The O.K. Corral - Tom McLaurey, Frank McLaurey, And
Billy Clanton

The Campbell & Hatch Billiard Parlor 

At about 10:50 in the evening, Morgan is playing a game of pool against the establishment's owner, Bob Hatch, while Wyatt, Dan Tipton, and Sherman McMaster watch.  Lining up a shot, gunfire suddenly erupts through the upper window of a door leading out to a dark alley at the back of the property.  Standing only ten feet away from the door when bullets are pumped into the parlor, Morgan is struck in the right side by a rifle round that shatters his spine, passes through his left side, and comes to rest in the thigh of parlor patron and local mining foreman, George Berry (another round, lodges in a wall, only inches above Wyatt's head).  Rushing to his brother's side, Wyatt and Morgan's friends try to stand up the fallen lawman, but the wounded Morgan pleas, "Don't, I can't stand it.  This is the last game of pool I'll ever play."  Doctors summoned, Morgan is looked at by physicians William Miller, James Matthews, and George Goodfellow (the nation's leading expert on treating abdominal gunshot wounds) ... all agree that the lawman's wounds are fatal.  Moved to a clean spot on the floor near the door to a card room in the parlor and then placed on a lounge, Morgan dies less than an hour after being shot ... his last words honoring an agreement the brothers have about reporting dying visions of the next life, Morgan whispers to Wyatt before passing, "I can't see a damned thing" (Wyatt's original story of the moment has Morgan expressing sorrow he will not be able to get even with his killers, and Wyatt responding that he'll take care of it).

Morgan Earp

Wyatt Earp

True West Magazine - Last Seconds

Pissed already at the crippling of his brother Virgil in another Tombstone ambush in December of 1881, law be damned, Wyatt makes a personal decision to kill the men he believes are responsible (and any of their friends that might not like it and get in the way) ... and soon, begins stalking Cowboys, Pete Spence, Indian Charlie (Florentino Cruz), Frank Stilwell, and Frederick Bode ... revenge which begins only days later (3/20/1882) at the Tucson, Arizona rail yards, where Cowboys are set up to go after Virgil Earp again (with his wife Allie, on his way to his parent's home in Colton, California).  

Virgil Earp

Stilwell
 
Pete Spence & Florentino Cruz

In the ongoing feud, this time the Cowboys are the victims of an ambush (along the train tracks, about a hundred yards from the Porter Hotel) that leaves surprised outlaw Frank Stilwell with a load of buckshot in his legs, a load of buckshot in his chest, and four "finishing" bullet wounds in his chest and head (a local will state that Stilwell's is the worst shot up body he's ever seen ... some of the buckshot is fired at such close range that Stilwell's clothes catch on fire and he has wounds with a radius of three inches in his body ... studying the corpse, the Tucson coroner will state the Cowboy has been shot by five different weapons). 

True West Illustration - The Stilwell Crime Scene

Stilwell Gets His - True West Magazine

Goodbye Stilwell - True West Magazine

Life Size Statue of Wyatt And Doc Holliday
At The Spot Where Stilwell Is Killed

What will be called "The Earp Vendetta" ride has begun ... and by the time its over, by either Wyatt's hands, Wyatt's friends, or from the guns of others, along with Stilwell, Florentino Cruz, Curly Bill Brocius, Billy Claiborne, Johnny Ringo, and Ike Clanton will all go adios to bullet deaths.

The Vendetta Ride - True West Magazine

Where Morgan Sleeps

THE ASSASSINATION OF RACER MICKEY THOMPSON

3/16/1988 - Falling in love with cars and speed since he builds a soapbox derby vehicle as a child out of the family washing machine and the wheels from his sister's skates, Marion Lee "Mickey" Thompson becomes one of the greatest names in automotive and car racing history. Nicknamed "The Speed King" by his many fans, Thompson puts together a career in racing and business that includes competing in 10,000 races (of which he wins 500), building the first slingshot dragster in 1954 (it will be the template for other drag racers until "Big Daddy" Don Garlits introduces the rear-engine digger in 1971), going 272.31 mph in a car he designs and builds (1958), a year later, increasing his speed to 332.809 mph, and in 1960 at the Bonneville Salt Flats, setting a world record and becoming the first American to go over 400 mph on the ground (406.60 in his four engine Challenger 1, breaking the mark of British racer, John Cobb), being an owner or partner in 27 companies, holding 100 major patents, designing the tire that has now become the standard for Indy 500 races, creating an early version of the rescue equipment now known as "The Jaws of Death," inventing a water-filled plastic vehicle barrier (and there is also time for two wives and a baby son) ... a life that brings him millions of dollars and even opens the doors to the White House (he is a JFK guest after setting his speed record).  Setting more speed and endurance records than anyone else in automotive history, it is also a life that has been a dance with death that Thompson has somehow survived more times than a cat with its full quota of lives  ... two speedboat crashes and 27 hospital stays for broken bones (that includes breaking his back four different times) and other injuries. Though not racing at all, in 1988, Thompson's luck with the Grim Reaper finally runs out.

Thompson

Thompson

With Callenger I Car And Team

Speedboat Mickey

Leaving their gated-community, up-scale home (the house includes a 13 car garage) in Bradbury, California (about 45 miles north of the Orange County community of Irvine, just east of Monrovia in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains) in the 5:55 dark of an early morning (for separate trips by Mickey, to a just joined Irvine health club, and by Trudy, his wife of 17 years, to the office of the Mickey Thompson Entertainment Group at Anaheim Stadium), Mickey opens the garage door to let his wife back the couple's Toyoda van out, while he walks towards his own car.  And then the normal morning quiet is destroyed as two armed black men in jogging attire, each about six feet in height and somewhere between 20 to 30 years in age, step out of the bushes decorating the front yard and open fire on the Thompson's ... Mickey is shot in the legs and abdomen, while Trudy is wounded and begins crawling away from the vehicle.  Pleading, "Please don't hurt my wife!  Please don't hurt my wife!" Thompson is forced to watch one of the gunmen put a killing bullet in his wife's head, then the other gunman does the same to Mickey.  An obvious hit and not a robbery ($4,000 in cash is on the pair and Trudy is wearing over $70,000 in jewelry), the killers flee on 10-speed bikes, almost colliding with a neighbor taking her dog to a behavior class, go through a break in a fence, down an embankment, and vanish along a jogging path that had once been a railroad right-of-way.

Mickey & Trudy

The Investigation Begins

Crime Scene

Some Of The Untouched Jewelry

Alerted by neighbors responding to the sounds of gunfire (one rushes out of his house and chases after the men, firing a round from his revolver at the men before they vanish), police soon arrive at the scene and begin investigating the crime ... and in asking the standard question of friends and family of the deceased pair, "Do you know anyone who might have done this or were their enemies?" one name is continually stated and becomes the #1 suspect in the case, Thompson's former business partner, Michael Frank Goodwin.

Goodwin

A Navy brat from Pensacola, Florida ... Goodwin is an intelligent over-achiever who loves talking about himself and getting his way, with a very violent temper (running his own company, he will go through crying secretaries as if they are kernels of popcorn).  Enrolling at San Diego State, he goes from studying mechanical engineering to seeking a degree in marketing, makes money hosting TGIF parties in which he charges women fifty cents and men a dollar fifty for entry, and drops out of school six credits shy of graduation. Joining a small promotion firm, with his gift of gab on full bore, he soon cons his way upward, and becomes a major rock promoter, living the life of an emperor in an ocean-view mansion in Laguna Beach while orchestrating concert tours for Ray Charles. Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, the Supremes, Sonny and Cher, Petulia Clark, and Janis Joplin.  Weary of the unrelenting stress of managing massive entertainment egos, after coordinating Janis Joplin's final tour, Goodwin and his wife buy a beat-up Volkswagen van and spend a couple of years lazily touring North and South America ... relaxing, until Goodwin reads a motorcycle magazine in a bathroom in a Belize hotel and comes up with the idea of presenting motorcycle races in football stadiums, what he will call "the Superbowl of Motocross."  A huge success almost immediately (at one point, Goodwin will claim to make $600,000 in a single day), but still looking for more, in 1984, he approaches Thompson about combining forces in an expanded, merged company (Thompson has started managing stadium shows featuring racing trucks) that will feature the world famous racer's name.  

Goodwin - Center

Contracts signed, with an 18-month "engagement" period in which either partner can back out of the agreement, Thompson and Goodwin start fighting over finances almost immediately, the plug is pulled on the merger, and the lawsuits begin ... fourteen in all that inch there way through the Southern California judicial system, that upset the men more and more, with the 6'3", 200 pound Goodwin spluttering out death threats against Thompson and his family to seemingly anyone who will listen ... death threats which Thompson takes seriously.  Suits finally heading for a climax (Thompson will win a judgment of $768,000 which causes Goodwin to declare bankruptcy in a move to keep his assets from his former partner), the racer hires a guard to watch his house, asks the Sheriff Department for more patrols, begins wearing a bullet-proof vest, loads a shotgun with buckshot for home protection, avoids standing in front of lit windows at night, and varies his work routine ... precautions that all prove in vain.

Danny & Mickey Thompson

Suspect identified, it at first appears that Goodwin will escape judgment for the twin murders ... transferring over $400,000 to an off-shore banking account in the Caribbean, grabbing $200,000 in gold coins, with his wife, the businessman sails away from the States in his 57-foot, single-masted yacht, "Believe."  Far away from angry partners and lawsuits, he spends two years spear fishing and taking underwater photography, then spends another two years enjoying the ski life of Aspen, Colorado.  Believing his own words when discussing taking out Thompson, "They'll never catch me.  I'm too smart," in 2001 he returns to Southern California and is quickly arrested for the murders ... his smart has been checkmated by the relentlessness and determination of Thompson's sister, Collene Campbell.

Campbell

Composed of the same Irish grit as her brother, Thompson's sister leads a hugely successful life in Orange County in which she becomes mayor of San Juan Capistrano and is connected to political movers-and-shakers at the state and national levels ... and she has experience with the judicial system and cold cases.  In 1983, when her 27-year-old son vanishes, Campbell personally solves the case, discovering her son, in a drug deal gone bad, has been flown out to sea from a Fullerton airport and dropped in the ocean from 2,000 feet (the killers will eventually get life sentences for the crime).  Three days before his murder, Thompson calls his sister and discusses his fears about murder, and with that seed planted, when Thompson is actually killed, Campbell begins a mission to put Goodwin behind bars ... keeping the case in the news, getting the crime highlighted on TV shows like America's Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries, hiring private investigators, maintaining contact with the police and prosecution, and offering a $1,000,000 reward for information that results in the capture and conviction of the killers.  Wearing the St. Christopher medal her brother wore in races, and diamond necklace her mother gives her on her deathbed, with the demand her daughter not take it off until her son's killer is brought to justice, she attends over a five year period before the case comes to trial. all 70 court appearances of Goodwin, and is in attendance for each day of the six week trial that finally starts in November of 2006, and its five days of jury deliberations.

Goodwin And Public Defender Elena Saris

A case that produces 40,000 pages of discovery (in 114 boxes), 1,000 "witness" interviews, is supervised by four different lead investigators, and creates a sixty-one volume police murder book, at trial, fifteen individuals will testify to hearing Goodwin make death threats against Thompson's life, and lots of other compelling circumstantial will be presented, but what sways the jury most is the testimony of neighbor Ronald Shields.  Dots connected after watching the case discussed on TV (compliments once again of Collene Campbell ... another witness at the same time comes forth with details on Goodwin personally confessing to hiring the murders, but prosecutors decide not to use her testimony during the trial), Shields testifies to the presence of a man in a rusted out Chevy Malibu station wagon, days before the murder, watching the Thompson house through a pair of binoculars ... a man, 13 years later, Shields picks out of a lineup ... Michael Goodwin.  On January 4, 2007, nineteen years after the twin killings, despite a lack of any physical evidence of a connection to the deaths, Goodwin is found guilty of two counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole ... bowing his head at the announcement of his sentence, Goodwin mutters, "I didn't do it. I didn't do it."

Goodwin

Sentence appeal denied, Goodwin's home is now a cell at California's High Desert State Prison.  Case not fully closed however, with the $1,000,000 reward for information about the slayings still open, so far the actual trigger men in the murders have not been located.

Witness Recreations Of The Culprits

3/16/1988 ... the sporting world loses one of its giants with the assassinations of Mickey and Trudy Thompson

Thompson