Helen Golay & Olga Rutterschmidt: “The Black Widow Trial” | S5 E5

Dirty Money Moves: Women in White Collar Crime

Fred Downie, the elderly man who’d moved to Southern California to live out the rest of his years under the care of Helen Golay and Olga Rutterschmidt, had died under mysterious circumstances. Even so, his death was ruled an accident and there was nothing to stop a man from giving his fortune away. Although Fred’s case was off the table, in March 2008, the Black Widows were going on trial for the murders of Paul Vados and Kenneth McDavid.

Prosecutors felt fairly confident in their case. After all, they’d linked Helen and Olga to the crimes in more than one way. Though, their case was largely built on circumstantial evidence. Confident or not, the state likely didn’t see the defense's strategy coming. Helen’s attorney was about to tell the jury who REALLY killed Kenneth McDavid, and it wasn’t going to be Helen or Olga. Let’s just say it was Helen-adjacent.

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Dirty Money Moves is a collaboration between MURDERISH and Cloud10 Media.

Executive Producers are: Jami Rice and Sim Sarna

Research and writing by: Zach Selwyn

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