Criminalists link women to deaths

Criminalists testified Tuesday in the trial of two elderly women who allegedly ran over and killed homeless men for insurance benefits.

Cheryl Will, a supervising criminalist for the Los Angeles Police Department, testified that she found blood and human tissue in eight spots on the undercarriage of the 1999 Mercury Sable that prosecutors say was used to run over victim Kenneth McDavid.

Samples collected from the car matched McDavid’s DNA, with a one in a quadrillion chance that it was a random match, said Stephanie McLean, a serology and DNA specialist.

Helen Golay, 77, and Olga Rutterschmidt, 75, stand accused of killing two homeless men, McDavid and Paul Vados, and pocketing $2.8 million in life insurance benefits.

Also Tuesday, a coroner who performed the autopsy after the 1999 death of Vados testified that the 73-year-old man suffered the same type of injuries as McDavid, who was killed in 2005. Both men had cuts and scrapes to the upper body, with fractured ribs, pelvic bone and spine but had no injuries to the legs.

The wounds implied that both victims were lying on the street and run over, said Louis Pena, a forensic pathologist for the county coroner’s office.