In the late hours of a September evening in 2005, nineteen-year-old Georgia Thompson, a recent transplant to Tempe, Arizona, was found dead in the parking lot of her apartment complex. She had been shot once in the back of the head. A native of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and the sixth of nine children, Thompson had moved to Arizona with dreams of a modeling career just six to eight weeks before her life was cut short.
To support herself, she worked as a waitress at Hooters and also at a Scottsdale topless bar called Skins. On the night she was killed, she had finished a shift at Skins and was dropped off at a local bar where she had left her car. Roughly forty-five minutes later, her body was discovered. There were no immediate signs of robbery or sexual assault; her duffel bag, a shopping bag, and her car keys were found with her body.
The investigation into her death took a bewildering turn when a Kentucky man named James Mullins confessed to the crime. Mullins, who was facing a lengthy prison sentence on unrelated charges, concocted a story about the murder after seeing a segment about it on a television show. Despite his detailed confession, investigators eventually determined it to be false, as he had never even been to Arizona. This false lead temporarily derailed the search for Thompson's actual killer, leaving her family and authorities with no credible suspects or clear motive for the slaying.
A significant breakthrough in the case came when forensic evidence connected the bullet casing found at the scene of Thompson's murder to a string of other violent crimes in the Phoenix area. This evidence linked her death to the serial killer known as the 'Baseline Killer.' The perpetrator, Mark Goudeau, was a 46-year-old man who was already serving a lengthy sentence for sexual assault. The ballistic match was a key piece of circumstantial evidence in a much larger case against him. Ultimately, Goudeau was tried and convicted for the murder of Georgia Thompson, as well as numerous other murders, sexual assaults, and robberies that had terrorized the community. A witness from Thompson's apartment complex later testified to hearing a woman telling someone to leave her alone, followed by a loud bang, on the night of the murder. Although her purse and cell phone were never found, authorities were able to trace the use of her phone to the Phoenix neighborhood where Goudeau lived.
