U.S Open tennis referee charged with murdering husband with coffee mug

Professional tennis referee, Lois Ann Goodman, from Los Angeles was in New York for the U.S. Open when she was arrested and charged with killing her elderly husband.

ABC News reported Goodman, 70, called police on April 17 and told officers she had been out refereeing a tennis match and arrived home to find her husband dead.

She told detectives she found her husband unresponsive in bed and surmised "he had fallen down the steps, had a heart attack and managed to get back upstairs to the bed," police said.

Fox News said police believed it "was a suspicious death from the beginning".

"We sent investigators to the mortuary, and we noticed that his injuries were inconsistent with a fall," Los Angeles County coroner's office spokesman Ed Winter was quoted in Fox News.

"The autopsy revealed he had multiple sharp force injuries about the head."

As a referee for decades on some of tennis’s biggest stages, Lois Goodman umpired John McEnroe and Martina Navratilova, Roger Federer and the Williams Sisters.

Goodman is accused of bludgeoning her husband with a coffee mug, allegedly using the shards to further inflict injury.

CNN reported Goodman was detained by detectives outside a luxury hotel in midtown New York yesterday and was later charged with the death.

She was awaiting extradition to Los Angeles, according to the LAPD and the L.A. County District Attorney's office.

Prosecutors say they plan to request $1 million bail.

If convicted, Goodman could face up to life in prison.

The couple had been married for several decades and had three children.