LOS ANGELES, April 17 (UPI) -- A jury in Los Angeles has convicted an elderly woman and her accomplice in a plot to collect $2.8 million in life insurance by killing two homeless men.
Helen Golay, 77, was found guilty of murder and co-defendant Olga Rutterschmidt, 75, was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in a case reminiscent of an old Hollywood movie, The Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.
The women were accused of plucking two homeless men, Kenneth McDavid and Paul Vados, off the streets, providing them with apartments for two years and then having them run over in dark alleys.
The plot and the defendants' ages prompted comparisons to the film "Arsenic and Old Lace," starring Cary Grant in which two elderly sisters kill lonely men with arsenic-laced wine.
Prosecutors built the case against Rutterschmidt and Golay through fragmentary testimony and a long paper trail of insurance documents and rent checks.
Golay, a former Santa Monica real estate agent, and Rutterschmidt, a native of Hungary, have known each other for at least 20 years, prosecutors said
