In a case that drew worldwide attention, a jury has convicted a 77-year-old woman of murder and her 75-year-old co-defendant of conspiracy to commit murder in a chilling slow-motion plot to kill two homeless men for $2.8 million in life insurance.
Jurors are still considering two murder charges and a second conspiracy count against the younger woman, Olga Rutterschmidt.
She and Helen Golay, who was convicted of all four counts Wednesday, were accused of plucking Kenneth McDavid and Paul Vados off the streets, putting them up in apartments for two years and then having them run over in dark alleys. Two years is the period after which most insurance policies cannot be contested.
Golay faces life in prison without the possibility of parole. She buried her head in her hands after the jury's decision was read.
Rutterschmidt could be sentenced to 25 years to life on the conspiracy conviction. As the verdict was returned, she put her chin on her fist and looked blankly around the small, softly lighted courtroom.
The jury, which received the case late Monday, will continue deliberating the remaining counts against Rutterschmidt today.
Golay's attorney, Roger Jon Diamond, indicated that she would appeal. "The ladies did not do very well today," he said.
Diamond said his case was damaged when Rutterschmidt's lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Michael Sklar, blamed Golay for McDavid's murder. Sklar declined to comment on the verdicts.
In prepared statements, relatives of the victims praised Wednesday's outcome. "Their plots were pure evil," Stella Vados, the murdered man's daughter, said of Golay and Rutterschmidt. "We have no pity for these women."
The prosecutors, Deputy Dist. Attys. Truc Do and Robert Grace, said they would withhold comment until the jury completed its deliberations. Los Angeles Police Det. Dennis Kilcoyne, the lead investigator in the case, said: "So far, so good."
At the jury's request, Superior Court Judge David S. Wesley directed the attorneys to reargue the evidence today for one of the unresolved counts against Rutterschmidt, the conspiracy to murder Vados in 1999.
From the start, the defendants' advanced ages kept the case in the headlines, drawing comparisons to the play and film "Arsenic and Old Lace." The killings came to be known as the Black Widow murders.
