LOCAL ‘Black Widows’ to meet again on Thursday
DOWNTOWN, LA The attorney for Santa Monica resident Helen Golay, who stands accused of murdering two homeless men in an elaborate insurance scheme, is demanding her murder charges be dropped because she has been denied the right to a speedy trial.
Attorney Roger Jon Diamond filed papers last week asking the court to throw out murder charges filed against Golay, 75, the Santa Monica landlord arrested along with co-defendant Olga Rutterschmidt,73,on May 18 on federal mail fraud charges, which were dropped in favor of the murder charges on July 31.
Over Diamond’s objections, the scheduling of a preliminary hearing has been postponed repeatedly, most recently on Dec. 13. The delays were requested by Rutterschmidt’s attorney, Public Defender Michael Sklar, who joined the case months after the charges were filed and kept asking for more time to gather his defense.
Neither Diamond nor Sklar could be reached for comment on Monday.
During the most recent hearing, Sklar told Commissioner James Bianco that he expected to be ready to schedule a preliminary hearing date when the attorneys met again at the Downtown LA Criminal Courthouse on Thursday.
The “Black Widows” — so-called because they are accused of befriending two homeless men, convincing them to sign the women onto their life insurance policies, and killing them in separate hit-and-run incidents — are being tried together, thus preventing Golay’s case from moving forward.
Investigators believe that Rutterschmidt, of Hollywood, and Golay cashed in on more than $3 million in life insurance payouts for the deaths of Kenneth McDavid and Paul Vados. McDavid, 51, was killed in 2005, and Vados, 73, was killed in 1999 in similar, but separate, hit-and-run incidents that both occurred in alleys.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 16, 2007. Read the original PDF.