Woman convicted of second murder

The deliberations got loud at one point, and a couple of holdouts delayed the final two verdicts. But in the end, jurors plowed relatively quickly through a mountain of circumstantial evidence to convict a pair of elderly women in the life insurance murders of two homeless men.

On Monday, jurors found Olga Rutterschmidt, 75, guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy in the 1999 killing of Paul Vados. Last week, the panel convicted Helen Golay, 77, of the same charges, and returned guilty verdicts against both women in the 2005 murder of Kenneth McDavid.

Jurors were unmoved by the defendants’ advanced ages, according to prosecutors.

The women were accused of killing the destitute victims in staged hit-and-run accidents to collect $2.8 million in life insurance. The prosecution said the defendants enticed the men off the street with promises of help, and then put them up in apartments for two years -- the period after which insurers cannot contest most policies.

Jurors left the downtown Criminal Courts Building without commenting Monday, but prosecutors who spoke to them related some details of the two to three full days of deliberations, which capped a monthlong trial.

“They seemed to be a very cohesive group,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Grace said. “They were pretty convinced of the McDavid murder right away.”

Two jurors had more trouble deciding whether Rutterschmidt was guilty of Vados’ murder. On Thursday, the foreman said they were hopelessly deadlocked, by votes of 11 to 1 and 10 to 2, on the Vados counts against Rutterschmidt.

Superior Court Judge David S. Wesley had asked them to try again after a three-day weekend, and that appeared to have done the trick. The jury reached Monday’s verdicts within an hour of reconvening.

“I think it just took the weekend for those one or two jurors to realize that the evidence as to the Vados count was not any different than the McDavid murder,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Truc Do said.

Jurors had asked for more argument on Rutterschmidt’s involvement in Vados’ death. Do said the jury might have been slower to convict Rutterschmidt because some evidence showed that she had a “care-taking relationship” with the victim.

She also said that a challenging element of the case for the prosecution, as well as for the jurors, was that all the evidence was circumstantial.

There were no known witnesses to the killings. But the prosecution introduced a long paper trail of insurance policies and payouts, the record of a key phone call to a towing company, and a DNA match between McDavid and blood and tissue found on the car used in his killing.

The jury was particularly impressed with the evidence that, about the time McDavid was run over in a Westwood alley, Golay called for the tow not far from the murder scene, Grace said.

Los Angeles Police Det. Rosemary Sanchez said investigators had felt the same way when they tracked the call down after the women’s arrest. “There was a call made right there,” she said.

Golay and Rutterschmidt face mandatory sentences of life in prison without possibility of parole. Both defense attorneys said they plan to appeal the verdicts.

“We’ll begin the process now of evaluating whether we wish to file a motion for a new trial,” said Deputy Public Defender Michael Sklar, Rutterschmidt’s lawyer.

Golay’s attorney, Roger Jon Diamond, said that his appeal would focus on whether a surveillance tape of the defendants discussing the case was obtained improperly.

Jurors apparently did not put much stock in Sklar’s contention that Rutterschmidt was a “stupid” accomplice of Golay in an insurance fraud scam, and knew nothing about the murders, Grace said.

“They felt Olga was just as big a part of the whole scheme as Helen Golay,” he said.

He added that the prosecution’s biggest worry was that the jury might believe that Vados’ murder had been an accident, and that the women merely “got lucky” by taking life insurance out on him.

“We’re really happy,” Grace said. “The jurors were able to wade through all this stuff.”

Jimmy Covington, a homeless man who prosecutors said almost became another victim of the women, also expressed gratitude for the verdicts. As a prosecution witness, Covington testified that Rutterschmidt provided him with shelter in an office space, but that he fled after becoming suspicious. Evidence showed that the women began applying for an $800,000 policy on his life.

“I was always confident of their guilt,” said Covington on Monday, adding that he wished the jury had moved even faster.

“It was a little frustrating that it did take a while to find them guilty on all counts.”

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victoria.kim@latimes.com

paul.pringle@latimes.com