How US Open Ref, 70, Became Murder Suspect

When US Open tennis referee Lois Goodman called police to her California condo in April, she said she had returned home to find her husband in bed, dead. There was blood throughout the house, a bloody coffee mug in pieces on the floor, and his head was wounded. But 70-year-old Goodman said her husband, 80-year-old Alan Goodman, suffered from several medical ailments and must have fallen down the stairs and then made his way to the bed. Despite a suspicious cut on his head—and the fact that Lois didn't seem to be grieving—officials allowed the body to go to a mortuary with no autopsy.

It was there, three days later—the day before Alan was scheduled to be cremated—that a coroner's investigator who was to sign the death certificate noted cuts and blunt force trauma that indicated the man had been beaten with a sharp object, the Los Angeles Times reports. A murder investigation was launched, an autopsy found coffee cup shards in his wounds, and a search warrant found a blood pattern in the home that didn't fit Lois' story. Lois became even more suspect when police uncovered Internet communications between her and another man, in which she discussed "terminating a relationship" and having "alternative sleeping arrangements." She was arrested in New York Tuesday. (More Lois Ann Goodman stories.)