Defense suggests charges be dropped
DOWNTOWN LA The Santa Monica landlord who stands accused of murdering two former homeless men in an elaborate insurance scheme is tired.
Following a late finish to the third day of her preliminary hearing on Wednesday, an already exhausted 76-year-old Helen Golay did not return to her jail cell in Lynwood until well after midnight.
At 3 a.m., she was awoken by the guards and sent back to the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center for a fourth day of proceedings Thursday to determine whether she and her alleged accomplice should stand trial on multiple murder charges.
Again, Golay’s defense attorney, Roger Jon Diamond, pleaded with Judge David Wesley to change the early morning rise-and-shine hours, requesting that the fourth and final day of the preliminary hearing be vacated so his client could get some rest.
Declined. However, Golay won’t have any more early morning wake-up calls until March 29, when she and fellow defendant Olga Rutterschmidt, 74, are arraigned for the murders of 50-year-old Kenneth McDavid and 73-year-old Paul Vados, who were killed in separate, yet similar, hit-and-run incidents in 2005 and 1999, respectively.
“It’s clear to me if this matter goes to trial, this won’t be acceptable,” Wesley said at the beginning of Thursday’s proceedings, adding that special arrangements will need to be made to wake up Golay and Rutterschmidt at a reasonable hour.
After hearing from more than 20 witnesses during a preliminary trial that began on Monday, the final day was dedicated to finishing up testimonies and cross-examinations of witnesses who previously took the stand.
A toxicology report found traces of the drug hydrocodone, marketed as Vicodin, in McDavid’s body.About five bottles of the same drug were found in Golay’s medicine cabinet in her Ocean Park home, according to FBI Special Agent Sam Mayrose, who investigates fraud.
In his cross-examination of Mayrose, Public Defender Michael Sklar, who is representing Rutterschmidt, asked the agent if a search of Rutterschmidt’s home also turned up any bottles of hydrocodone. Throughout the preliminary hearing, Sklar has asked questions of witnesses in an apparent attempt to distance his client from her friend of 20 years.
No bottles of the drug were found in Rutterschmidt’s Hollywood home, Mayrose replied.
Testimony by LAPD Detective Dennis Kilcoyne suggested a link between In Wednesday’s hearing, car salesman Mario Medina said he sold a 1999 Mercury Sable to Rutterschmidt. The elderly woman claimed she was buying the car for a friend, Hilary Adler, who later testified that same day that she never asked Rutterschmidt to buy her a car. Instead, Adler alleged that her driver’s license was among several belongings stolen from her purse a few years ago at a fitness club in Santa Monica.
The car has been registered under two different license plate numbers, Kilcoyne said. In January 2004, the DMV reported that the Mercury’s license plate was 4FYR482, sold by Mexicar Auto Sales to Adler in Los Angeles. In July of 2005, about a month after McDavid was killed, the car was impounded in a tow lot in Hollywood, just four to five blocks from where Rutterschmidt lived.
The impounded car was sold to a couple who affixed a new license plate and number to the car, the reason being that the car came with no plate.
“Hollywood Tow could not explain what happened to the plate when it was in their possession,” Kilcoyne said.
That same car was caught in a surveillance camera taken the night that McDavid was believed to be killed and the same night Golay’s AAA membership card was used for a tow service just blocks from where the murder occurred.
Though there is no surveillance video, investigators do have snapshot photos taken of the alley,which shows a Mercury Sable.
“At this point, from what I have seen, you cannot make out who was in the car,” Kilcoyne said.
In his closing statement for the preliminary hearing, Sklar asked that the murder charges against his client be dropped, admitting that her potential role in insurance fraud was inappropriate, but that it doesn’t connect her to the murders.
He mentioned bits and pieces from testimonies over the last week in justifying his request, saying that Rutterschmidt was Vados’ friend and tried to get the former homeless man back on his feet. He reminded the judge that it was Golay, not Rutterschmidt, who called a life insurance company and requested an increase in the policy about a month before McDavid was killed.
Walking around the podium and pausing on occasion to squeeze four days worth of testimonies into one argument, Sklar told the judge that on the night McDavid was killed,a tow truck was called to pick up an elderly woman a few blocks away, at the corner of Santa Monica and Westwood boulevards.
That tow truck driver dropped the woman off in Santa Monica near Golay’s home, not in Hollywood.
Deputy District Attorney Shellie Samuels gave her closing argument, saying that the only reason the women pulled life insurance fraud and broke the law was because they wanted the policy holder to die. One of the victims was 50 and the two women are in their 70s.
They aren’t going to wait around for the victim to die on his own, Samuels said, adding that it is clear the women conspired to take out various life insurance policies in an attempt to cash in on the homeless men whom they assumed were not cared for by anyone in the world.
The judge ordered the women to return for their arraignment in exactly two weeks.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 16, 2007. Read the original PDF.