Attorney and Consultant

You should recall the story of the Black Widows who ran a variation on the Agatha Christie novel, “Arsenic & Old Lace”, Helen Golay, 77, and Olga Rutterschmidt, 75 were convicted of murder as part of an insurance fraud scheme. The two women cashed in $2.8 million in life insurance by insuring the life of homeless men and then murdering them. Judge David S. Wesley on July 15 sentenced each to two consecutive sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole. After handing down the sentence, Wesley told the defendants that McDavid and Vados "needed only food, water and shelter. They needed a helping hand...instead, these unfortunate men were sacrificed on your altars of greed." He also sentenced each of the women to two 25 year-to-life sentences for conspiracy to commit murder for financial gain but those sentences were stayed. According to the Los Angeles Police Department, the fraud was uncovered during the investigation of a fatal hit-and-run collision in 2005. One of the investigators had casually mentioned in the squad room how unusual it was that two women had taken out large life insurance policies on the hit-and-run victim, McDavid. Another investigator then recalled a similar case in 1999, where two elderly women had a life policy on Vados. The two investigators compared notes and found the beneficiaries in both cases were Golay and Rutterschmidt. The police said once Golay and Rutterschmidt had the men''s signatures, they would allegedly order stamps of the signatures and use them to complete insurance forms. The women would provide room and board to the men for as long as two years. The sentences were appropriate and the arrests and convictions only came about because the two men murdered were considered the victims and there was no need to hold up to the jury the fact that the insurers were also victims who will never recover the money they paid out for the fraud.