2 get life sentences in insurance killings
LOS ANGELES - Two senior citizens - one with ties to Massachusetts - were sentenced to life in prison without parole yesterday for murdering two indigent men to collect insurance policies taken out on their lives.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Wesley sentenced Helen Golay, 77, and Olga Rutterschmidt, 75, to two consecutive life terms each.
In April, the women were convicted of a scheme in which they befriended homeless men, took out insurance policies on them, and then killed them in murders staged to look like hit-and-run auto accidents. Prosecutors say the women collected $2.8 million before the scheme was uncovered.
The judge denounced the women, saying the men they killed needed only food, water, and shelter and thought the women were going to help them.
"Instead, these unfortunate men were sacrificed on your altar of greed," Wesley said.
Both women were convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to murder for financial gain in the 1999 death of Paul Vados, 73, and the 2005 death of Kenneth McDavid, 50. Both men were run over by cars in dark alleys. Police linked the cases when a detective investigating one overheard a colleague describe a similar case.
Defense attorneys had acknowledged that the women were involved in insurance fraud but denied they had formed a murder conspiracy. Golay's lawyer, Roger Jon Diamond, said during the trial that the idea was to insure old, sick, homeless people who would die more quickly.
The jury that convicted the women in April saw a secretly recorded videotape of the defendants in a lockup after their arrests. Rutterschmidt berated Golay, saying her actions in taking out 23 insurance policies raised a red flag when the men died.
"It's your fault," Rutterschmidt told Golay. "You can't have that many insurances. . . . You were greedy. That's the problem."
In 2006, after the women were charged, Los Angeles authorities investigated their possible link to the death of Fred Downie, 96, a retiree from West Harwich who had suddenly moved to California with Golay's daughter in 2000.
Downie's niece said he sold his house to the mother and daughter for $1, and they sold it for $200,000. The daughter, Kecia Golay, became executor of Downie's estate. Within eight months of moving out West, Downie was struck by a car in a Santa Monica crosswalk and fatally injured.
Lieutenant Paul Vernon, Los Angeles Police Department spokesman, said Downie's death "appears to have been a straightforward traffic collision where the man ended up dying."
