April Goodman was sentenced Monday to 30 years in prison for attempting to have her ex-husband, multimillionaire arts patron Albert Goodman, murdered.
Goodman was convicted Oct. 5 of solicitation to commit murder for hiring an undercover police officer in August 1998 to kill her second husband.
Judge John Moran denied Goodman’s request for a new trial in December, rejecting defense claims that Goodman was framed by her former boyfriend, Barry Wolf.
On Friday, Goodman’s first husband, Paul Leventhal, testified during the sentencing hearing that he began wearing a bulletproof vest regularly after he received a phone call from a woman who identified herself as Goodman’s psychologist or psychiatrist.
Leventhal was one of three witnesses who testified for the prosecution Friday during the sentencing hearing.
Goodman was found mentally fit for the sentence hearing in December after a report by a psychiatrist issued by the Forensic Clinical Services Department of the Cook County Circuit Court.
Dr. Mathew Markos said in the report that Goodman suffers from mental illness, but that her condition is in remission because she’s on psychotropic medication. She takes three such medications: an anti-psychotic drug, an anti-depressant and a drug to treat bipolar disorder.
Markos testified Friday that although April Goodman suffered from bipolar disorder for nearly 10 years, her condition was in remission at the time of the offense. Nothing about bipolar disorder would cause someone to hire a hit man, he said.
Goodman’s mother, Sylvia Vanderbilt, tearfully testified Friday that her daughter was a model student and happy person until she went to graduate school at Indiana University to study optometry. While there, she cooperated with police to snag a drug dealer who was an acquaintance, and after the man’s arrest, she began getting death threats.
Vanderbilt testified that after her daughter moved to Chicago, she was raped, suffered a nervous breakdown and was diagnosed with bipolar illness.
Assistant State’s Atty. Michael McHale argued that Goodman’s scheme was motivated not by mental illness but by her desire to get Albert Goodman’s fortune, estimated at between $30 million and $100 million.
Albert Goodman’s family fortune helped underwrite the North Loop Chicago theater that bears his family’s name. Albert Goodman is the theater’s honorary chairman.
