Daughter of U.S. Open Ref Lois Goodman Says Her Mother Is Innocent
Lois Goodman has been placed under house arrest after making bail.
Sept. 4, 2012— -- The daughter of the U.S. Open tennis referee accused of bludgeoning her husband to death says her mother is innocent and the charges against her are "completely ridiculous."
Lois Goodman, 70, a veteran line judge, was charged with first-degree murder after, police say, she hit her husband, Alan Goodman, of 50 years in their Los Angeles home April 17 with a coffee mug and stabbed him with the broken shards.
"I have never seen them fight," Allison Rogers, Goodman's daughter, said. "They were a wonderful loving couple. They were happily married. And we were a happy family. This is just completely ridiculous."
Rogers says the past few weeks have been a living nightmare for her mother, who was released on $500,000 bail Sunday and placed under house arrest after spending nearly two weeks in jail.
"When I visited her and saw her for the first time, she was just like, 'Why? I did everything they asked. I told them what I know. Why am I here?" Rogers said.
Goodman's attorney, Robert Sheahen, blamed the police for botching the investigation from the start.
"Mrs. Goodman wasn't there, she doesn't know what happened and if the police had done a good job at the beginning, we might know what happened," Sheahen said. "But instead they botched the investigation from start to finish."
Goodman called police April 17 and told officers she arrived home and found her 80-year-old husband dead. Goodman says her husband suffered a heart attack then had fallen in their home.
"She surmised that he must have had a heart attack and fallen down the stairs," Lt. David Storaker, the chief of detectives at the LAPD's Topanga station, told ABCNews.com in August.
But an autopsy revealed "deep, penetrating blunt-force trauma that was consistent with being inflicted with a sharp object."
Only then did authorities investigate the alleged murder scene.
Officers concluded that there was no sign of forced entry, and the statements Goodman made seemed suspicious, so they investigated further, Storaker said. The cause of death was multiple injuries to the head, he said.
"We located that coffee mug in several pieces at the crime scene," Det. Dave Peteque of the LAPD said.
Goodman was officiating qualifying matches for the U.S. Open in New York City when she was arrested Aug. 21 and extradited back to Los Angeles on murder charges.
"My mother would never do something like this, ever. Not in a million years. She's completely innocent," Rodgers said.
Police say they have emails from Goodman to another man, messages that mentioned "terminating a relationship" and having "alternative sleeping arrangements," according to the Los Angeles Times.
"There is no proof and no truth to the allegation that she had any type of affair," Goodman attorney Alison Triessl said. "And I think it's probably one of the more insulting things that have been disseminated. And if, in fact, the police used it as a means to get a warrant, they did so without any validation, without any truth at all."
Goodman's lawyers also claim she is too physically frail to have brutalized her husband.
"It is physically impossible for her to have committed this offense," Triessl said. "She has had two full knee replacements, she has had a shoulder replacement. She wears two hearing aids, and has rheumatoid arthritis."
Sheahen told "Good Morning America" in August, "I mean, you'd have to have Herculean strength to kill with a coffee cup, wouldn't you?"
The next court hearing for Goodman is scheduled for Oct. 3. Until then, Rogers says her mother is trying to move on and focus on the sport she loves.
"Tennis was her life," she said. "Even in our conversation ..., she was discussing with me on how she was planning on working from home, organizing the officials for the different matches."
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