LA's "Black Widows" to stand trial for murders

from yahoo

Thu Mar 15, 7:31 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Two elderly women dubbed the Black Widows were ordered to stand trial on Thursday on charges of befriending two homeless men and murdering them in hit-and-run crashes to collect $2.8 million in life insurance.

In a case that reads like a Hollywood movie plot, Helen Golay, 76, and Olga Rutterschmidt, 74, are accused of making friends with the men, paying their rent and claiming to be a fiancee or cousin in order to take out life insurance premiums on them.

Prosecutors told a preliminary hearing in Los Angeles that after waiting for two years, the women drugged the men, ran them over with their cars in dark alleys and collected $2.8 million in the life insurance and accidental death policies they had taken out.

Paul Vados, 73, was killed in 1999 and Kenneth McDavid, 50, was killed in 2005.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Wesley ruled after a three-day preliminary hearing that Golay and Rutterschmidt should stand trial on charges of murder and conspiracy. Both women deny the charges.

Investigators said the suspects might be responsible for more deaths.

About six other life insurance policies were not paid out because they were under investigation, and other policies seeking more than $2 million in additional coverage had not been issued, insurance investigator Robert Brockway told the hearing.

The women were arrested in May 2006 on suspicion of fraudulently collecting insurance payments. The murder charges came later.

Prosecutors said the women attended an Eastern European church in Los Angeles to find their victims. They helped them find somewhere to live, paid their rent and transferred their signatures onto rubber stamps to use on the insurance forms, they said.