Aug 29, 2006 5:20 pm US/Pacific
Lawyer: Golay's Jail Conditions Are 'Deplorable'
LOS ANGELES (CBS) ―
One of two women charged with murder in the hit-and-run deaths of two homeless men is being jailed under "deplorable" conditions, the 75-year-old defendant's attorney told a court commissioner Tuesday.
"She has never been convicted of any crime. She's miserable there at the county jail," lawyer Roger Jon Diamond told Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner James N. Bianco.
Helen Golay, of Santa Monica, is confined to a Lynwood jail cell 23 hours a day, and "(the) conditions she's living under are deplorable," Diamond told the commissioner.
Golay's attorney unsuccessfully objected the postponement of her arraignment to Sept. 13, when co-defendant Olga Rutterschmidt, 73, of Hollywood, is also set to be arraigned.
Both women were ordered held without bail pending their court appearances next month.
The two are charged with arranging the deaths of 73-year-old Paul Vados and 50-year-old Kenneth McDavid -- allegedly to cash in on about $2 million in life insurance policies they had taken out on the victims.
Vados was run over in an alley in the 300 block of North La Brea Avenue in Hollywood on Nov. 8, 1999, while McDavid was killed in an alley in the 1200 block of Westwood Boulevard in Westwood on June 21, 2005.
The case against Golay and Rutterschmidt includes the special circumstance allegations of murder for financial gain and multiple murder, which could make them eligible for the death penalty.
Golay and Rutterschmidt were arrested May 18 on federal mail fraud charges, but that case was dropped after the murder case was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on July 31.
(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
