Free Killers for Hire by Tori Richards Page A

appearances.
    Witty and debonair, he had a completely different style from either David Brent or Michael Jacobs. He uses his considerable charm, good looks and self-deprecating humor to win over jurors. Like Lillienfeld, he lulls adversaries into a false sense of security as a charming conversationalist. And also like Lillienfeld, he isn’t afraid of hard work. Jackson paid for his college education by working as a jet mechanic in the Air Force.

    Alan Jackson & Patrick Dixon (L to R)
photo by Gene Blevins
    Dixon and Jackson work out of the downtown Los Angeles Superior Court building, where a small room was cleared out for a new tenant: the Thompson case file, which arrived from Orange County in a 40-foot moving van, all 240,000 pages of it contained in 121 file boxes.
    “There was no order to it or anything, it looked like it had just been thrown in there,” Jackson said. “I opened the first box and just started reading. I removed the things that weren’t relevant and glossed through those at first. Eventually I read through the whole thing; it took me a month of 12-hour days and working weekends.”
    Meanwhile, Goodwin was making himself at home in Los Angeles County’s Twin Towers Jail. Built in the late ’90s, the 4,000-bed facility was designed to house the county’s general jail population. Twin Towers was just that—dual seven-story buildings that also contain an in-house medical facility. Two two-man cellblocks are monitored from guards positioned in an outside Plexiglas booth.

    Twin Towers Jail
courtesy Los Angeles Co. Sheriff’s Dept.
    Goodwin found himself in a high-power unit, the type reserved for celebrity defendants or those with high notoriety. The block is constructed like a horseshoe with sheriff’s deputies in the center. Each cell has a Plexiglas door that leads out into a common recreation area.
    “Typical Goodwin, he started demanding stuff from Day One,” Lillienfeld commented. “He wanted a laptop, unlimited phone access, doctor’s visits, special medication, bedding, etc. He didn’t end up having any disciplinary write-ups because he mostly stayed in his cell reading. I think he was intimidated by the other defendants.”
    As expected, Lillienfeld and Jackson became fast friends, bound by their blue-collar work ethic, wit and zealous desire to see Michael Goodwin confined to a California prison for life.
    “Mark and I got along like brothers; he’s the brother I never had,” Jackson said. “If I was ever murdered, I’d want him to investigate my case. He is like a dog without a bone. He starts sniffing it out and he latches on and gets lockjaw and will not let go until it’s brought to a conclusion.”

    Alan Jackson & Mark Lilliefeld (L to R)
photo by Gene Blevins
    As soon as Jackson got up to speed on the case, he and Lillienfeld decided to take a road trip and visit all the important players in the case so Jackson could talk to them and see how they might hold up on the witness stand. They visited Alabama, where Marc Goodwin had moved; North Carolina to see Jeffrey Coyne, who was Goodwin’s bankruptcy trustee and victim of a failed assassination plot; New York to see Goodwin’s ex-girlfriend Gail Hunter; Virginia to see Diane Goodwin, and Florida, where boat bounty hunter Mike McGhee lived.
    An avid seaman with contacts in ports throughout the Caribbean, McGhee makes a living of locating vessels that have been stolen or foreclosed by banks. Using snitches, contacts, police sources and paper trails, McGhee is a detective on the high seas who will track his prey across the globe.
    “I’ve been doing this 20 years,” McGhee said. “I’ve gotten some of the biggest boats in the business; I’ve taken boats from drug dealers in the Caribbean and wise guys in New Jersey.”
    In 1991, he was hired by the Maryland National Bank to find a yacht Goodwin had stopped making payments on—still owing $290,000. The last time the bank had heard from the Goodwins was a year earlier,