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Lois Ann Goodman, US Open Referee, 'Calm' After Husband's Coffee Cup Murder: Police

Police: US Open Ref 'Calm' After Husband's Coffee Mug Murder
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Senior Editor, HuffPost

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It took police several months to connect a 70-year-old US Open ref to her husband's murder in Los Angeles.

Neighbors and police told the New York Post that Lois Ann Goodman was so calm on April 17, immediately after 80-year-old husband Alan died a bloody death. So much so that she didn't immediately look suspicious.

Goodman initially reported that she'd found her husband dead in their Los Angeles home after she umped a tennis match. She figured he'd had a heart attack and had fallen down the stairs.

"There was a lot of blood inside the apartment, and there was no sign of forced entry," an LAPD source told the Post. "Obviously, he was killed by someone who knew him and had a key."

But investigators didn't suspect Goodman until her husband's death was ruled a homicide on Aug. 2.

"She has always been very cool, calm and collected," the source said.

Goodman was arrested in New York City, where she keeps an apartment.

Police allege that Goodman and her husband had been fighting, and that she bludgeoned him to death with a coffee mug, ABC News reports.

A coroner's report weeks later indicates that Alan Goodman had not fallen down the stairs.

Goodman's Los Angeles neighbors told the Post that she "didn't seem at all upset" when she had contractors come to clean her husband's blood off her carpets. Neighbor Adriana Rudchenko also told the Los Angeles Daily News that the alleged killer didn't like her husband.

"One time, when I saw [Lois] in front of our garage while her husband was taking out the trash, she told me, 'He’s driving me crazy,'" Rudchenko told the paper.

If convicted, Goodman could face life in prison.

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