John Goodman Offered to Pay Post-Accident Witness

pembletonfarms.com

Lisa Pembleton urged Goodman to call 9-1-1.

​On the cold February morning when horse trainer Lisa Pembleton woke to find a tequila-breathed, disheveled man in her camper asking for help, she was in for plenty of surprises.

Pembleton, 26, soon learned that the man, multimillionaire polo mogul John Goodman, had been in a serious car crash near the farm where she was staying in Wellington.

Goodman borrowed Pembleton's cell phone and used it to call his girlfriend, telling her that "he had really f----d up.".

He asked Pembleton if he sounded drunk. He hesitated to call 9-1-1 because  "he did not want to get into trouble," Pembleton later wrote.

And then, just as he was getting ready to leave, Goodman pulled out a wad of cash and tried
to pay Pembleton for her help.

"I don't need your money," she told him, according to her sworn interview with a Palm Beach County sheriff's deputy. So Goodman stuffed the cash back in his pocket.

"Did you think it was odd that he had offered you money?" the deputy later asked Pembleton.

"I did," she said. "Because I was just giving him a phone and gave him water."

But Goodman was a trust fund heir, and a highly successful polo patron with 200 employees at the International Polo Club Palm Beach. He gave money to charity, he bought $200 rounds of drinks for friends at the bar. He was accustomed to paying people for everything.

Now, he'd allegedly caused a drunken car crashed that killed a 23-year-old recent college grad. Pembleton was the only post-accident witness. Is it any wonder that he offered her cash?