Insurer Fought Women Over Payout

Six years before a pair of women were charged with fraudulently collecting life insurance on two homeless men, an insurance company claimed in court papers that the women may have “intentionally and feloniously” caused the death of one of the men.

Monumental Life Insurance Co. made the assertion in 2000 when battling Olga Rutterschmidt, now 73, and Helen Golay, 75, over whether the company should pay them claims totaling $188,250 in the death of Paul Vados.

Vados, 73, was found dead in an alley off La Brea Avenue in Hollywood on Nov. 8, 1999, in a hit-and-run case that remains unsolved.

Although the Los Angeles County coroner’s office had ruled Vados’ death an accident, Monumental filed court papers citing a Los Angeles Police Department detective’s “adamant refusal to clear Rutterschmidt and Golay as suspects” in Vados’ death.

Monumental argued that because the detective labeled Vados’ death as “suspicious,” it should not have to pay the women until the case was closed.

But a year later, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge awarded Rutterschmidt and Golay more than $150,000 as part of a settlement.

Then last June, a second homeless man, Kenneth McDavid, was run over by a car in a Westwood alley in another unsolved hit-and-run. Rutterschmidt and Golay were the beneficiaries in at least 16 life insurance policies they allegedly secured for him, according to prosecutors.

The women were charged last Thursday with mail fraud in federal court, and LAPD detectives said they are suspects in the deaths of McDavid and Vados.

But the court records in the Monument case indicate that insurers and the LAPD had questions about Vados’ death and the women’s possible involvement years earlier.

Becky J. Belke, who represented Monumental in the case, referred questions to the insurer. Susan Fischer, senior counsel for Monumental’s parent company, Aegon, declined to comment.

Authorities believe that in all, the women purchased at least 19 life insurance policies on the two transients before the men died. They allegedly collected more than $2 million.

In McDavid’s case, the court documents say, Golay approached him at church and offered to get him off the streets in exchange for signing an application for a $500,000 life insurance policy.

According to documents filed by federal prosecutors, the women paid the rent on apartments for Vados and McDavid in order to keep track of the men’s whereabouts for two years, the period during which an insurer can contest information provided on the application.

The women also allegedly invented elaborate family and business connections to the men in an effort to justify their role as beneficiaries and avoid suspicion on the part of insurance companies.

The two were listed on insurance applications as the men’s aunts or cousins or business partners, and Golay was listed as a fiancee, according to court records.

Monumental got involved in the Vados case after the women threatened to sue the insurer because it would not immediately pay the claim, according to records in that case. The insurer filed papers in a Los Angeles court asking a judge to determine whether the women should receive the money. Monumental hoped to pay the $188,250 to the court and let a judge sort out the details.

Golay and Rutterschmidt responded with their own court filing, saying that the insurance company’s statements about Vados’ death amounted to defamation.

At the same time, Vados’ children had asked the court to give the insurance money to them, also suggesting the women may have played a role in his death.

In the end, however, the children settled with Golay and Rutterschmidt, receiving about $20,000. The women received most of the remainder.