> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Murder trial nearing end - URL: https://www.smdp.com/murder-trial-nearing-end/ - Published: 2008-04-09T15:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-24T19:10:34.000Z - Author: Melody Hanatani - Tags: Crime, Downtown, #archive-import, Homeless *Jury to begin deliberations on Friday in Golay murder trial* DOWNTOWN L.A. The murder trial of a former Santa Monica landlord accused of killing homeless men in an elaborate insurance scam wrapped up witness testimonies on Tuesday, less than 24 hours after the case took a bizarre turn. Closing arguments are expected to take place on Thursday for the criminal case tying 77-year-old Helen Golay and 75-year-old Olga Rutterschmidt in the hit-and-run murders of Paul Vados and Kenneth McDavid. Jurors are expected to begin deliberations on Friday. After the prosecution spent nearly three weeks calling witnesses to testify, from a tow-truck driver who allegedly drove Golay back to her Santa Monica home after one of the hit-and-run incidents to a former homeless man believed to have been a target of the septuagenarians, the defense spent just a few hours calling witnesses. Public Defender Michael Sklar, who represents Rutterschmidt, did not call any witnesses. A day after telling jurors that Golay was framed by her daughter, Kecia, defense attorney Roger Diamond spent part of Tuesday morning unsuccessfully trying to convince Judge David Wesley to allow him to admit a previous civil suit between the younger Golay and her ex-boyfriend as evidence. Kecia Golay served some time in jail last year on stalking charges. Diamond argued that the lawsuit is an example of Kecia Golay exhibiting irrational and erratic behavior. The Santa Monica-based attorney also pointed to the fact that the mother and daughter had filed numerous lawsuits and restraining orders against one another, a love-hate relationship in which Diamond believes Kecia was trying to get back at her mother by framing her. “Their relationship is hot and cold, sometimes they’re close and sometimes they hate each other,” Diamond said. “It’s not normal for mother and daughter to sue each other a number of times.” Wesley did not admit the lawsuit, saying it was hearsay. Diamond stressed that Kecia had pleaded guilty to felony charges, mentioning that the daughter also destroyed her boyfriend’s apartment as alleged in the suit. “I would think it would be irrational behavior... to vandalize (the apartment),” Diamond said. The defense attorney alleged on Monday that Kecia Golay was behind the purchase of the station wagon that struck and killed McDavid in a Westwood alley in 2005 and that Helen Golay,at the old age of 77,would not be strong enough to lift McDavid to place him on the road to be hit. Diamond said that Kecia Golay,who has a membership at the Spectrum Club, would have the strength. On Tuesday, Diamond called just four witnesses to the stand, including Michael Jones, who performed a forensic video analysis of surveillance footage from the Bristol Farms on the corner of Ohio Avenue and Westwood Boulevard. McDavid was struck in the alley just a few stores south of the grocery store. Jones, who owns the firm Digital Evidence, presented a series of 11 different video sequences —taken from pieces of surveillance footage and sewn together — showing cars going into and out of the alley from the late evening hours of June 21 to June 22, ending past midnight with an ambulance rolling through the parking lot and into the alley. Before the video was presented to jurors, Jones commented that there was one car which wasn’t a station wagon that showed up in multiple sequences, seemingly making circles through the alley. That comment was omitted before the jury at the request of Deputy District Attorney Truc Do, who asked that Jones defer from making any judgments on the video. Do pointed out that while the video shows a number of cars going through the alley, only one, with the exception of the ambulance, heads south — a station wagon. Just further south from Bristol Farms, at the end of the alley, is a Chevron gas station from where the AAA tow truck was called for service on a station wagon. Prosecutors believe that Golay, who owned three apartment buildings in Ocean Park, and Rutterschmidt, a Hungarian immigrant who resided in Hollywood, befriended Vados and McDavid when they were homeless, fixing them up in rent-free apartments in exchange for naming the women on their life insurance policies. The two women pulled out multiple policies, naming themselves as beneficiaries — Golay always the fiancé and Rutterschmidt the cousin. The women would wait two years after the policies were put into place before murdering the victims, Do said during her opening arguments last month, noting the state’s two-year incontestability clause under which a claim cannot be contested two years after a life insurance policy is signed,except in cases of non-payment. McDavid and Vados were killed in separate yet similar hit-and-run incidents. *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 9, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/040908.pdf?ref=smdp.com)