Dateline's Helen & Olga: Elderly Women's Insurance Fraud & Murder Scheme

The Helen & Olga Case Overview

• 💡 Keith Morrison discusses his podcast series, "The Thing About Helen & Olga," detailing a true crime story involving two elderly women.
• 🎯 Helen Golay and Olga Rutterschmidt were convicted for the murders of Kenneth McDavid and Paul Vados, orchestrating their deaths for insurance payouts.
• 📌 The full podcast series is being released in the Dateline feed as a bonus during the Winter Olympics break.

The Devious Scheme Uncovered

• 💰 The women posed as kindly helpers, targeting homeless men in Los Angeles to take out life insurance policies on them.
• ⏳ Their "secret weapon" was patience, waiting up to two years for insurance companies to trust them before staging the men's deaths to collect payouts.
• ⚠️ An insurance investigator was crucial in unraveling their scheme, refusing to give up despite the women's attempts to evade detection.

Investigation Challenges & Discoveries

• 🕵️‍♀️ The LAPD and FBI formed a "granny task force" to surveil the women, finding it challenging to keep up with Olga, who was in her 70s and hiked vigorously.
• 🎥 Police attempted to recreate a crime scene in Westwood to gather evidence, but the resulting video was not used in the trial.
• 🏠 Another victim, Fred Downey, a 90-year-old from Cape Cod, was exploited by Helen and her daughter Kesha, selling his house for $100 before his suspicious death in Santa Monica.

Additional Exploits & Conviction

• 💥 Helen and Olga were also involved in civil lawsuits for allegedly staged incidents, such as a lamp "accident" at Royal Lighting and other businesses like Jack LaLanne's gyms.
• ⚖️ Despite Helen attempting to blame her daughter, the juries found both Helen and Olga guilty of murder, sentencing them to life in prison.
• ⛪ Dateline Senior Producer Susan Leibowitz shared a personal anecdote about sending her child to the Hollywood Presbyterian Church preschool, where Helen and Olga had volunteered and found victims.

Current Status & Reflections

• 🔒 Helen, now 95, and Olga, 92, remain in separate California prisons, with no chance of release, having served a significant portion of their life sentences.
• 💬 Attempts to interview the women or those close to them were largely unsuccessful, as people were reluctant to talk or the women sought money for appeals.
• 🧠 The story highlights the endlessly fascinating and sometimes "really bad" nature of human beings, as reflected upon by Keith Morrison.