US:Olga Rutterschmidt and Helen Golay are accused of murdering two homeless men and collecting on their insurance policies. All their story lacks is Cary Grant, writes Karl Vickin Los Angeles
AS PROSECUTORS tell it, the two women would almost certainly have got away with driving over one homeless man to collect on the insurance policies they coaxed him into signing. But then they drove over a second one.
And so Helen Golay (77) and Olga Rutterschmidt (75) found themselves in Los Angeles superior court yesterday, facing life in prison on charges of murders that challenge even Hollywood's powers of diabolical imagination.
The pair are accused of killing Paul Vados, whose body was found in an alley in 1999, and Kenneth McDavid, whose body was also found in an alley a few miles away six years later. Each had been crushed beneath a car. And each had been housed, fed and heavily insured by the women, who collected almost $3 million from policies they had taken out on the men's lives.
The women wore matching black trousersuits to a courtroom filled to overflowing for the selection of jurors not yet tainted by the torrent of publicity.
"It sounds like Arsenic and Old Lace," said deputy district attorney Shellie Samuels, "but it doesn't have Cary Grant."
It has almost everything else. As police and prosecutors lay out the story in court documents, Vados's death raised no particular suspicion. He was 73, had fallen out of touch with his family and spent time living on the street.When McDavid's body turned up in 2005, his head crushed by the undercarriage of a car that was later linked to the two women, the Los Angeles police officer who received the call mentioned it to a colleague. The colleague thought, "'God, I had a case like that in '99," the prosecutor said. So he requested the file. "Sure enough, it's the same women, same method of death."
The discovery triggered a joint federal, state and local investigation that detailed a scheme that, if proved, was extraordinary in its coldbloodedness.
"All they have is circumstantial evidence," said Roger Jon Diamond, who is defending Golay. "They don't have any eyewitnesses. They don't have a confession. They don't have any fingerprints." The defence lawyer predicted acquittal.
But court documents show a lot for the defence to explain away.
Prosecutors say Rutterschmidt took Vados under her wing in 1997, approaching him as one Hungarian immigrant to another. She found him an apartment and persuaded him to sign life insurance policies totalling $760,000.
Insurance companies look most closely at deaths that occur within two years of a new policy. Police say that explains why Vados did not turn up dead until November 8th, 1999.
The women filed a missing-persons report 10 days later, claiming that Vados was a cousin to one and the fiance of the other. They told police they found the TV on in his apartment but no sign of him.
"We are very sorry to learn of your fiance's death," Mutual of Omaha wrote to Golay a month later, enclosing a pamphlet called " Grief and Healing".
Eight months later, Golay wrote to the insurance company to threaten a lawsuit over "outrageous delays". Within weeks she received a cheque for $25,000.
Rutterschmidt lived across town in Hollywood. It's unclear how the women became friends, though in court filings a detective quoting a relative of one said the pair "came across one another in the '70s and found that they had a common interest in fleecing people".
"Dear Helen," Rutterschmidt wrote in a May 2000 letter investigators found, "I have a few very interesting and good life insurance company listings. They pay regardless of illness, or accidental cause. (No hassle, no investigations.)"
Before signing, Rutterschmidt also hinted at her sense of humour and joie de vivre. "Regards, and kisses, Olga," she added. "I enjoy life to the fullest with my G-string friend who visits me barefoot..."
In August 2002 Golay wrote complaining of pain from plastic surgery. "I better look good after this hell and live long enough to enjoy this 'face job'.
"If only I could get a new 21-year-old body for this brain I've been working on for 70 years."
Around the same time, Golay approached McDavid (50) at an Episcopal church in Hollywood, offering him an apartment in exchange for signing a $500,000 insurance policy, prosecutors say.
Rutterschmidt had a rubber stamp made of his signature, used to sign policies that eventually were worth a total of $7 million.
His body was found on June 21st, 2005. On the same night Golay phoned AAA for a tow a block away.
The car was not her Mercedes SUV but a 1999 Mercury Sable registered to a woman whose ID had been stolen, then used to purchase the car. A neighbour happened to photograph it parked behind Golay's apartment not long afterwards.
Months after McDavid's death, police tracked down the car and traces of McDavid's blood were found on the undercarriage. A toxicology report said that traces of alcohol and sedatives were found in Golay's medicine cabinet.
"The combination of the alcohol and prescription drugs would have put him over the top," a detective speculated. "They then drove him to the alley, pushed him out of the car and backed up over him."
The detective noted the absence of leg injuries usually seen in hit-and-run situations.
Insurers paid out $2.2 million for McDavid, most of which went to Golay.
"They were paying - well, most of the time Helen was paying - premiums on 15 policies, paying rent, paying utilities," Samuels said. "Gotta be $3,000 a month. They've got a huge investment in this guy." Investigators found evidence that Golay tried at least once to get Rutterschmidt's name removed from a policy.
Though police found more rubber stamps with signatures of other names, investigators say they know of no other victims. They did inquire into the death of Fred Downie (97) who was hit by a car in 2000 after selling his house and giving Golay the profit. But the driver stopped.
"We think that's all of them," Samuels said. It remains impossible to know for sure.
"We still get all the mail," said Marlene Blum (25), who rents Golay's former apartment.
"Recently a letter came from an insurance company and I held it up to the light - and there was a cheque in it for $45,000."