Greedy golden girls
How far would these little old ladies go for a payday?
For Kenneth McDavid, Los Angeles truly was the city of angels. Kenneth, 51, was a homeless schizophrenic with no-one to turn to, until he met Helen Golay, then 72, and Olga Rutterschmidt, 70, at the Hollywood Presbyterian Church’s homeless program, in 2003.
There, lifelong pals Helen and Olga gave him hot meals. And when they learnt Kenneth was estranged from his family, they vowed to help.
They became his guardian angels. Put him up in a flat Helen owned, for free, covered his bills, bought him food, even helped him get a job in telesales.
Over two years, Kenneth’s life got back on track.
But then, on 21 June 2005, tragedy struck.
Kenneth’s body was found in an alleyway, the victim of a suspected hitand-run.
Helen identified his body, and shortly after, she and Olga paid for his cremation.
But there were no witnesses, little evidence, and the case looked like it’d remain unsolved.
That is until insurance investigator Ed Webster began asking questions...
He was looking into two life-insurance policies in Kenneth’s name. They added up to around $1 million (about £730,000) – with Helen and Olga the sole beneficiaries.
The documents said the women were investment partners in Kenneth’s screenwriting career.
But the police report said Helen and Olga were his fiancee and cousin.
Inconsistencies
Something wasn’t adding up. And, digging deeper, Ed found more inconsistencies.
Firstly, there was something a bit off about the crime scene.
According to reports, Kenneth’s bike was found nearby, with the front wheel taken off. The police assumed he’d stopped to fix a puncture – yet the tyre wasn’t flat or damaged.
Then there were his injuries. The post-mortem found he had lacerations to his spinal cord and scalp, three broken ribs and a fractured pelvis, yet none of these were usual for a hit-and-run.
Normally, the injuries would be below the waist, not above. And toxicology reports showed high levels of sedatives in his blood.
What’s more, another 15 insurance policies had been taken out on his life.
Ed brought the case back to the attention of the police.
And, as he discussed the case with detectives,
another officer overheard.
He remembered a hit-andrun he’d worked on with remarkable similarities.
On 8 November 1999 – as with Kenneth McDavid – the broken body of Paul Vados, 73, had been found in an alley.
He, too, had lived alone, had had problems with alcoholism and previously been homeless.
Alarmingly, he’d also had eight life insurance policies against his name.
All of which had been paid to two women: none other than Helen Golay and Olga Rutterschmidt.
The two women had even been the ones to report Paul missing, before claiming his body as next of kin.
Coincidence? Or perfectly planned? It was hard to believe the latter – after all, both women were in their golden years, seemed pillars of the community.
Just two good Samaritans to those they’d helped.
Still, the police couldn’t ignore the evidence – and, in mid-2006, Helen and Olga were charged with two counts of firstdegree murder and two counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
They denied everything, and in March 2008, their trial began.
The Post-it note
The prosecution claimed the women rescued the destitute men from the streets and insured their lives for millions.
Then, after enough time had passed not to arouse suspicion, they staged hit-and-runs, had the men drugged and run over in dark alleys.
It wasn’t specified who was behind the wheel, but prosecutor Truc Do told jurors, ‘They started this murder plot with greed, and you’re going to see that, even when the jig was up, these defendants remained greedy.’
Rubber stamps of Paul and Kenneth’s signatures, used to fill out insurance forms, had been found at Helen’s house. And the murder weapon – a 1999 silver Mercury Sable – was caught on CCTV in the alley, the night Kenneth was killed.
Officers soon tracked it down, found hair and flesh matching Kenneth’s DNA right there on the damaged undercarriage.
The car’s licence-plate number had also been found written on a Post-it note in Helen’s home.
The prosecution claimed to have found another potential target, too.
Jimmy Covington, 48, testified that Helen and Olga had given him a place to stay in 2002.
He’d moved out when he grew suspicious about papers they’d asked him to sign.
Helen and Olga’s defence teams admitted the women were involved in fraud. But not murder.
Helen Golay’s lawyer Roger Diamond told the jury the idea was to insure old, sick homeless people who’d die more quickly.
But he claimed his client was far too feeble to be capable of such meticulously murderous behaviour.
‘Helen Golay is a little old lady who could not have done what is alleged in this case,’ he told the jury.
Golay went so far as to blame her daughter for running over Kenneth.
Olga Rutterschmidt’s lawyer tried to shift responsibility onto Golay.
He claimed Golay was ‘dazzled by Rutterschmidt’s lifestyle’ and Golay had ‘gone along with the insurance fraud, somehow unaware it would involve killing two men’.
Too frail?
On the final day of the trial, an FBI recording taken after the women’s arrest was played.
In it, Rutterschmidt can be heard blaming Golay for taking out too many insurance policies.
‘It’s your fault,’ she says. ‘You can’t have that many insurers. You were greedy, that’s the problem.’
In closing statements, prosecutors emphasised that both Golay and Rutterschmidt were ‘the worst of the worst’, who’d made $600,000 (around £440,000) on the life of Paul Vados and $2.2 million (around £1.6m) on that of Kenneth McDavid.
Still, the defence maintained both women were too frail to commit such heinous crimes.
So, were these elderly ‘guardian angels’ really capable of murder..?
The verdicts dripped in over the course of a week, but Helen Golay, then 77, and Olga Rutterschmidt, 75, were both found guilty of the firstdegree murders of Paul Vados and Kenneth McDavid, for financial gain.
The women were also convicted of conspiring to commit the murders of the two men.
The prosecution decided not to seek the death penalty, believing the pair’s advancing age meant they’d die behind bars before exhausting the lengthy appeals process.
In July 2008, Superior Court Judge David Wesley sentenced both women to two consecutive life terms in prison each, without the possibility of parole.
The judge condemned them both, saying Paul and Kenneth only needed food, water and shelter and believed the women were genuinely going to help.
‘Instead, these unfortunate men were sacrificed on your altar of greed,’ said Judge Wesley.
Golay and Rutterschmidt have since separately tried to appeal their convictions – but, in both cases, the verdicts were upheld.
The compelling story of the old lady killers has been the subject of several documentaries and dramatisations.
Neither Golay or Rutterschmidt have been reported to have died.
If still alive and serving their time, Golay would be 90, and Rutterschmidt aged 88.