Tennis Judge Beat Hubby With Mug: Police

By Blair Thornburgh August 22, 2012

It sounds like a scene from a bizarre round of Clue: the tennis judge, in the living room, with the coffee cup.

But according to a criminal complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, prominent tennis referee Lois Ann “Lolo” Goodman was dead serious when she bludgeoned her husband to death in their Woodland Hills, Calif. home earlier this year.

The 70-year-old Goodman was arrested Tuesday at her Manhattan hotel, where she was preparing to serve as a judge at the U.S. Open. Goodman waived her right to fight extradition, electing instead to remain in custody in New York before returning to California to meet with her attorney.

Alan Frederick Goodman died April 17 at 80 years old, supposedly from a fall down the stairs after a heart attack. Suspicious amounts of blood throughout the house, as well as a broken coffee cup matching contusions to Mr. Goodman’s head, led investigators to declare the death a homicide on Aug. 2.

“There was an awful lot of blood,” Los Angeles Police Department Lieutenant David Storaker told the New York Times. “It just didn’t match the fact that he had just fallen down the stairs.”

Los Angeles police collaborated with their New York counterparts to make the arrest outside the Sheraton Hotel in midtown Manhattan, just before the beginnings of the tournament’s qualifying rounds.

Officials at the U.S. Open, where Ms. Goodman had served as an independently contracted line judge for at least 10 years, said they were unaware of her involvement in a murder investigation. Prosecutors have asked for $1 million bail.

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