Elderly women face jail over insurance killings

It was a murder plot on slow burn. The two women, both in their 70s, would befriend the homeless in Hollywood, put them up, and insure their lives for millions. Then the women would cash in, dispatching their victims in staged hit and run accidents in dark alleys.

But yesterday a jury in Los Angeles found Helen Golay, 77, guilty of the murder of Paul Vados, 73, and Kenneth McDavid, 50. She faces the possibility of a life sentence without parole and will probably end her days in jail.

Her friend of 20 years, Olga Rutterschmidt, 75, was convicted of conspiracy to murder, which could lead to a 25-year prison term. The jury was to consider murder charges against Rutterschmidt yesterday.



The time delay between the murders - Vados was killed in 1999 and McDavid in 2005 - had allowed the two women to escape suspicion until two years ago when a detective overheard a colleague investigating a strikingly similar case.

But their trial, punctuated by tape recordings of the two women squabbling in jail, has exposed a murder plot reminiscent of the film Arsenic and Old Lace.

Golay, a former estate agent in Santa Monica, and Rutterschmidt, who had once owned a coffee shop with her husband, were both Hungarian-born.

Photo from here.