Olga Rutterschmidt: The Black Widow Murders

Olga Rutterschmidt: Gangster Granny

On April 18, 2008, Helen Golay 78, formerly of Santa Monica, California, and Olga Rutterschmidt 75, formerly of Hollywood, California, were convicted of the murders of two homeless men—Paul Vados in 1999 and Kenneth McDavid in 2005. According to reports, Golay and Rutterschmidt staged Vados and McDavid's deaths to appear as hit and run incidents in order to collect on multimillion dollar life insurance policies they had taken out on the men. See Wikipedia full article
here: 

Dubbed “The Black Widow Murders”, both women were charged with murder, and both are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole. "The Black Widow Murders" are featured on episode of American Greed on CNBC. On September 10, 2009, the case was profiled on an episode of Deadly Women entitled "Behind the Mask". On November 13, 2013, "Elder Skelter" featured a story about Ken McDavid's death. The episode was called "Death, Lies and Security Tap".

My own involvement with Olga Rutterschmidt is somewhat more personal. You see, I was her Bunkie at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, California. Yes, that’s right- I slept above Olga.

How to begin describing her personality…? You might read about her and think she’s simply a deranged old lady, but I’m here to tell you that even at 81 (her current age)- she’s as sharp as a tack. She’s also quite a handful for everyone who needs to deal with her, but her age doesn’t slow her down, mentally or physically.

My first introduction to Olga came while I was out on “the yard” walking laps with a friend. We noticed an old lady sporting running shoes (that didn’t match) who was in the exercise area doing leg lifts. We continued to watch, thinking she looked somewhat comical, when all of a sudden she started doing men’s style crunches on a plank! Next, she pulled herself up on a chin up bar and held her full weight for about a minute! We sat there with our jars dropped to our waists. It was incredible, and being involved with sports my entire life, I had to meet this tiny dynamo I had heard so much about. She is rather infamous at Chowchilla.

As we walked up to her, we couldn’t help to notice the bright fuchsia pink lipstick she was wearing, nor could we miss the matching shade liberally applied to her cheeks. She’s definitely a fan of a multi-tasking make up- whether the shade is right or not. Appearances aside, the first thing you notice about Olga is her accent. She hails from Hungary (as did Zsa Zsa Gabor), and her speech is inflected often with “…darling this or darling that”. There’s also a deeply developed cynicism that one can’t help to notice. She told me she’d developed that while incarcerated, and I tend to believe that’s true. She was, and is, a broken woman.

That meeting led to a daily exchange of “hellos”, and eventually we sat down and she shared part of her story. I will be writing about that in my upcoming posts, as well as giving personal information from Olga herself that she would like the public to hear. You see, she has no one, so I am her liaison. Lucky me.

I hope you find my stories entertaining, and should you care to contact Olga, please email me and I’ll furnish you with that info.

I’ll be covering several notorious women in these segments, including Diane Downs and Jennifer Henderson (Deleon).