Preliminary date postponed yet again for pair
DOWNTOWN LA Helen Golay has tired of playing the waiting game.
In what has become a defining characteristic in the murder trial of the so-called “Black Widows,” the preliminary hearing scheduled for Tuesday was delayed yet again. The new hearing date is scheduled for March 12, according to Jane Robison, spokeswoman for the LA County District Attorney’s Office.
The 76-year-old Santa Monica landlord and her alleged accomplice, 73-year-old Olga Rutterschmidt, of Hollywood, stand accused of murdering two homeless men and collecting millions of dollars in their life insurance payouts.
Upon receiving a hefty 1,000 pages of discovery from Deputy District Attorney Shellie Samuels, Public Defender Michael Sklar, who is representing Rutterschmidt, requested that the long-awaited preliminary hearing be delayed another month. Over the objections of Golay’s defense attorney, Roger Jon Diamond, the request was granted.
Sklar was not available for comment on Tuesday.
“I objected to the continuance as I had throughout (the case),” Diamond said on Tuesday.
Diamond just finished thumbing through the thousand pages of discovery a few days ago and said he would’ve been prepared by the original preliminary hearing date.
“I read it, took notes and analyzed everything,” Diamond said. “I’m ready to go.”
It’s been a story of delays since the elderly duo was arrested in May of last year on federal insurance fraud charges. Those charges were dropped in the summer when murder charges were filed against the women on July 31.
For months, the attorneys would meet in the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Downtown Los Angeles in an attempt to set a date for the preliminary hearing. Each time, Sklar, who joined the case several months after Diamond, would request more time, further postponing the proceedings.
Things seemed to look brighter for the Golay camp on Jan. 18 when prosecutors dismissed the charges against her, immediately refiled them and arraigned Golay again.
Judge David Wesley granted Diamond’s request to dismiss the charges after the Court of Appeals ruled in a different case on Jan. 10 that a preliminary trial must be set no later than 60 days after the arraignment.
Golay was originally arraigned in September.
If Rutterschmidt’s defense is unprepared by the scheduled March 12 preliminary hearing, only one week will remain before Diamond can request that the charges be dismissed again, with March 19 being exactly 60 calendar days after the second arraignment date.
Investigators contend that Golay and Rutterschmidt are responsible for the murders of Paul Vados, 73, and Kenneth McDavid, 50, who were killed in separate, yet similar, hit-and-run crashes in 1999 and 2005, respectively. They believe that Golay and Rutterschmidt concocted a scheme in which they befriended McDavid and Vados when they were still homeless, setting them up in apartments and gaining their trust. The women then allegedly convinced Vados and McDavid to sign the women onto their insurance policies.
Golay, who owned three apartments in Ocean Park at the time of her arrest, has come a long way from her comfortable living conditions in Santa Monica.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 21, 2007. Read the original PDF.