FROM TRIAL PAGE 3 Golay trial goes to court
DOWNTOWN LA The murder trial of an elderly Santa Monica landlord — a bizarre tale that is the subject of an upcoming Hollywood movie — will finally get underway this fall following months of delays.
The trial date for Helen Golay, of Santa Monica, and Olga Rutterschmidt, of Hollywood, has tentatively been set for Sept. 4. The septuagenarians stand accused of murdering two former homeless men in an insurance scheme aimed at collecting on their life insurance payouts.
The defense and prosecution met Wednesday at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Downtown Los Angeles, agreeing on the trial date as a benchmark for when the trial would actually begin. Under law, the trial would now have to begin within 60 days of Sept. 4.
The Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office has not yet determined whether prosecutors will seek the death penalty against the 76-year-old Golay and 74-year-old Rutterschmidt,said spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons.
Meanwhile, the California Supreme Court instructed the state Attorney General to file a response to a petition filed by Golay’s defense attorney, Roger Jon Diamond, challenging the validity of the preliminary hearings.
The District Attorney has assumed the responsibility of responding to the petition and Diamond said he expected to receive it on Thursday. The defense will then have 10 days to respond, and once the brief is filed, the California State Supreme Court will have 60 days to decide whether it will grant or deny the petition.
The Sept. 4 trial date is one day after the Supreme Court would decide whether it would hear the petition.
“That was encouraging,” Diamond said, adding that most petitions to the Supreme Court do not generate a formal response.
In his motion to dismiss, Diamond alleges that his client was denied sufficient rest during the preliminary hearings, held from March 12-15. Throughout the proceedings, Diamond requested the judge grant Golay a later wake-up time on court hearing days, claiming she was not mentally alert since she was constantly called out of bed around 3 a.m. to be shuttled from the women’s detention center in Lynwood to Downtown Los Angeles.
Golay has been granted a waiver since then, allowing her to stay put on hearing days concerning small routine matters.
Both Golay and Rutterschmidt are charged with the murders of Paul Vados and Kenneth McDavid, who were killed in separate, yet similar hit-and-run incidents in 1999 and 2005, respectively. Investigators believe the elderly duo befriended Vados and McDavid when they were still homeless, setting them up in apartments and gaining their trust. The women then allegedly convinced Vados and McDavid to sign them onto their life insurance policies before they were killed.
The evidence the prosecution presented during the preliminary hearing included life insurance applications showing the women had claimed to be fiancées, business partners and relatives of Vados and McDavid on varying policies.
It is estimated that the women cashed in on more than $2 million from the life insurance policies.
The case has caught the eyes of Hollywood producers, who have lined up stars such as Shirley MacLaine, Lindsay Lohan and Rosario Dawson to star in “Poor Things,” a film based on the events of the Golay-Rutterschmidt murder case.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 22, 2007. Read the original PDF.