LOS ANGELES, July 15 (UPI) -- Two elderly Los Angeles women received life sentences Tuesday for taking two homeless men off the streets in order to insure them and kill them.
Helen Golay, 77, and Olga Rutterschmidt, 75, are not eligible for parole, the Los Angeles Times reported. Prosecutors reportedly did not ask for the death penalty because they expected that the women, if sentenced to death, would die of natural causes while appealing it.
Investigators said that the women provided homes for their victims, Kenneth McDavid, 50, and Paul Vados, 73, for two years before staging hit-and-run accidents. They said that Golay and Rutterschmidt took advantage of a law that allows life insurers to contest payment only if death occurs within two years of a policy taking effect.
At the sentencing hearing, Superior Court Judge David Wesley rejected a motion for a new trial.
The two women collected $600,000 after Vados died in 1999. In 2005, they became suspects when they claimed McDavid's body after he was killed in a similar manner, and sought payment from insurers.
