Attorney: Wife played role in husband's death

Joann Goldstein didn't pull the trigger on the rifle that shot her husband to death almost six years ago, but the former Lake in the Hills woman encouraged her father to do it for her, an attorney for her onetime father-in-law told a McHenry County jury Monday.

The allegation came at the outset of a civil court trial pitting Goldstein against her former in-laws, who say she bears part of the blame for their son's 2003 murder.

Their lawsuit, which seeks at least $50,000 in damages, claims Joann Goldstein conspired to have her father, Adriaan Vlot, kill her husband to put an end to a bitter child custody fight she was losing.

Joann helped and encouraged her father so she could get custody of her kids and get Phil out of the way," said Frank Andreano, the plaintiffs' attorney. It was the only way she could get what she wanted."

Vlot, 78, shot Philip Goldstein to death Nov. 5, 2003, as he pulled out of a parking spot at a Crystal Lake apartment complex. The Goldsteins' daughters, ages 10 and 9 at the time, were in the back seat of their father's car when Vlot approached with a rifle and fired on his son-in-law.

Vlot then fired three shots into his own head in a failed suicide attempt. He was convicted of first-degree murder in 2005 and now is serving a life sentence.

Vlot, through various court filings, has indicated that he alone was responsible for the shooting.

The murder came amid a contentious divorce and custody battle between the Goldsteins, and on the same day both were due in court to argue over Joann's plans to take the children to visit her parents in Texas over Thanksgiving. Philip Goldstein was opposed to the proposed trip, alleging in court documents that the girls were unsafe with their maternal grandparents.

Andreano said Philip's resistance to the trip, along with his being awarded physical custody of the children a few months earlier, interfered with Joann's plans to move to Texas with the girls and launched the murder plot.

"Widows don't need court permission to move," Andreano said.

Joann Goldstein's attorney disputed Andreano's account, telling jurors that contrary to claims of a conspiracy, his client had told her father not to travel from his Texas home to attend the court hearing over her Thanksgiving plans. He came anyway, and brought with him a gun he kept hidden from his daughter, her attorney, Peter Carroll said.

Joann didn't know what he intended to do with the gun he brought to Illinois," Carroll said. She never saw that he had a gun."