DOWNTOWN LA Any hopes Helen Golay had of having her murder case thrown out of court have been dashed, at least for now.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Curtis Rappe denied a motion to dismiss the case against the former Santa Monica landlord last Friday at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center.
The 76-year-old Golay is charged with capital murder along with her alleged accomplice — 74-year-old Olga Rutterschmidt, of Hollywood. The women allegedly cashed in on millions of dollars worth of life insurance payouts after befriending two homeless men, whom they later killed.
Golay’s defense attorney, Roger Jon Diamond, filed the motion on April 3 on the grounds that his client was denied sufficient rest during the preliminary hearings held in March.
He alleges that Golay was denied her right to due process as outlined under the United States and California constitutions, and her right to a fair preliminary hearing under the California Penal Code.
Diamond plans to file a petition to the Court of Appeal within the week. If the Court of Appeal doesn’t hear the case, Diamond said he will file a petition to the state Supreme Court.
“I’ve been practicing for 40 years and nothing surprises me,” Diamond said on Monday of the judge’s decision. “I’m always prepared to go to the next level.”
The hearing on Friday was one of the few times Diamond had stood before a judge in this case without Golay at his side. Judge David Wesley had waived Golay from appearing at the hearing earlier last week.
The waiver might have caused some confusion that forced the judge to reschedule a hearing for a separate motion to dismiss for Rutterschmidt, whose attorney, Public Defender Michael Sklar, filed a motion to dismiss based on insufficient evidence a few weeks ago.
Rutterschmidt was not called out of her prison cell in Lynwood for the hearing on Friday, possibly due to confusion created by Diamond’s request to waive his client’s presence, Sklar said on Monday. The hearing has been rescheduled for May 18 — exactly one year to the date when Golay and Rutterschmidt were arrested on federal mail fraud charges.
The current sequence of events in the Golay case reminds Diamond of another case he handled two years ago.
In a felony case out of San Bernardino, Diamond said he had filed a pretrial motion to dismiss that was denied by the magistrate. He subsequently filed a 995 motion, which was also denied, and petitioned to the Court of Appeal, which decided not to hear the case.
The Supreme Court eventually ordered the Court of Appeal to hear the case and it ruled 2-1 to dismiss the case. The District Attorney appealed to the State Supreme Court, which upheld the Appellate Court’s ruling, 4-3.
“I just went through a process that kept getting conflicting rulings from judges on the same issue,” Diamond said.
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 the two men 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.
All parties are expected to meet back in court on May 23 for a pre-trial hearing.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 8, 2007. Read the original PDF.