Someone using Golay's auto club membership called for the station wagon to be towed around the time that McDavid was killed, according to testimony. After the women came under suspicion, authorities tracked down the vehicle and found McDavid's DNA on the undercarriage.
Prosecutors said the similarities between the two deaths were too uncanny for coincidence. The Los Angeles Police Department concluded that the killings were connected when two investigators bumped into each other, compared notes and realized the same pair of odd women had claimed both men's bodies.
Jurors heard damaging statements from the defendants themselves, even though neither took the stand. A conversation at Los Angeles police headquarters immediately after their May 2006 arrests on fraud charges was secretly videotaped, and the recording was played for the jury.
On the 30-minute tape, an animated Rutterschmidt angrily bangs on a table, shakes her finger and accuses Golay of inviting scrutiny by greedily piling on numerous insurance policies.
"You did all these insurances extra. That's what raised the suspicion. You can't do that. Stupidity," Rutterschmidt tells Golay, who repeatedly admonishes her in a calm voice to be quiet.
"No, you're going to go to jail, honey. They going to lock you up," Rutterschmidt says in a thick accent.
On the recording, the women never mention murder, although they had been notified that they were under investigation for the deaths. Prosecutors argued that an innocent person would have expressed shock at the murder allegations.
Sklar, Rutterschmidt's attorney, said the conversation showed that his client did not know about the killings. He said Golay kept his simple-minded client in the dark about the murder plot.
Golay's attorney, Diamond, argued that Rutterschmidt and Golay's daughter, Kecia, conspired to kill McDavid.
Kecia was not charged in the case.
Experts said the defendants made the prosecution's job easier by turning on each other. Attorneys for both women conceded in their closing arguments that McDavid was murdered, but each pinned the killing on the other.
Prosecutors did not say who was driving the cars that killed McDavid and Vados. But they argued that both women, whether they were behind the wheel or aided and abetted the plot, were equally guilty of the murder charges.
Jurors also heard from a man who prosecutors said had narrowly escaped the women's grasp. Jimmy Covington, who was brought from Northern California to testify, described Rutterschmidt's approaching him on the street, when he was homeless, and offering to help.
Although she seemed sincere at first, moving him into an office space and taking him to Burger King, Rutterschmidt asked for more and more personal information and yelled at him when he refused to answer, Covington testified. He left after about a week. By that time, the two women had already requested an application for an $800,000 policy on his life.
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victoria.kim@latimes.com
paul.pringle@latimes.com
