LOS ANGELES — A professional tennis referee from Los Angeles who for years has officiated matches between the game’s top players was arrested Tuesday in New York City on a felony warrant charging her with killing her elderly husband in April.

Prosecutors said 70-year-old Lois Ann Goodman, a longtime line judge on the tennis circuit, was taken into custody as she prepared to work at the U.S. Open tournament.

She was charged with murdering her 80-year-old husband, Alan Goodman, in their home in Woodland Hills, Calif. Prosecutors allege she bludgeoned him to death with a coffee mug on April 17.

When the death was reported, Lois Goodman told police it appeared to have been an accident and she had been out all day refereeing a tennis match, according to Lt. David Storaker of the Los Angeles Police Department.

“She arrived home and she said the house was locked up,” he said.

When Goodman found her husband unresponsive in bed, “she said she surmised he had fallen down the steps, had a heart attack and managed to get back upstairs to the bed,” Storaker said.

“It was a suspicious death from the beginning,” he added.

Los Angeles County coroner’s office spokesman Ed Winter said Alan Goodman’s body was immediately transported to a mortuary.

“We sent investigators to the mortuary, and we noticed that his injuries were inconsistent with a fall,” Winter said. “The autopsy revealed he had multiple sharp force injuries about the head.”

Storaker said officers later returned to the scene with a search warrant.