Black Widow Murders

Helen Golay and Olga Rutterschmidt, elderly women living in the Los Angeles area, were convicted in April 2008 of conspiring to murder two homeless men in separate incidents years apart in order to collect proceeds from life insurance policies they had secretly taken out on the victims. The case became known colloquially as the "Black Widow Murders."

The first victim, 73-year-old Paul Vados, a Hungarian immigrant who had come to the United States in 1956, was found dead in an alley near 307 North La Brea Avenue in Hollywood, California, on November 8, 1999. His death had the appearance of a hit-and-run. Two years earlier, in 1997, Golay and Rutterschmidt had begun applying for life insurance policies on Vados, naming themselves as beneficiaries. After his death, the two women collected on eight separate policies taken out on him.

The second victim, 50-year-old Kenneth McDavid, originally from northern California and a former Sacramento State University student, was killed on June 21, 2005, when he was struck by a silver 1999 Mercury Sable station wagon, an incident captured on surveillance video. Between November 2002 and March 2003, Golay and Rutterschmidt had taken out thirteen separate insurance policies on McDavid totaling $3.7 million, variously describing themselves on the applications as his business partner, cousin, or fiancée. Before their arrest, Golay had received more than $1.5 million in insurance proceeds from McDavid's death, and Rutterschmidt nearly $675,000.

At trial, a third homeless man, Jimmy Covington, testified that Rutterschmidt had approached him, offered him food and promises of housing assistance, and later sought his personal identifying information for what turned out to be an insurance application; he said he left after growing suspicious. Prosecutor Shellie Samuels compared the case to the film "Arsenic and Old Lace." Secretly recorded jailhouse conversations between the two women were also presented as evidence, including a remark by Rutterschmidt to Golay warning that taking out excessive insurance had raised suspicion. Investigators became aware of the pattern after a detective overheard a colleague discussing a case with similar features.

In April 2008, a Los Angeles jury convicted both women of conspiracy to murder Vados and McDavid and of the first-degree murder of Vados; Golay was additionally convicted of the first-degree murder of McDavid. Both were sentenced to consecutive life terms in California state prison without the possibility of parole. Their convictions and sentences were upheld on appeal, first by the California Court of Appeal in 2009 and ultimately by the California Supreme Court on October 28, 2012. Rutterschmidt served her sentence at the Central California Women's Facility, and Golay at the California Institution for Women.