Hi everyone, I'm Lester Holt and we're talking Dateline.
Today I'm here with Keith Morrison to talk about his original podcast series The Thing About Helen and Olga, and Dateline senior producer Susan Leibowitz, who has been following the story with Keith for nearly 20 years.
It's good to see both of you.
Thanks for coming on.
Hello.
Thank you for having us on, Lester.
Before we get into the discussion, let's tell folks that we're dropping the full series of the Dateline feed as a bonus, while Dateline is taking a break for the Winter Olympics.
So go take a listen and then come right back here.
Later we'll have an extra clip from an interview that didn't make the show with the manager of a mom-and-pop lighting store in Los Angeles, who had his own encounter with Helen and Olga.
And Susan has a story about the church where Helen and Olga volunteered.
But to recap, in the late 1990s Helen Golay and Olga Ruderschmidt appeared to be two kindly old ladies helping homeless men off the streets of Los Angeles.
But as private investigator Ed Webster discovered...
Along with the LAPD and FBI and the so-called Granny Task Force.
The women were actually singling out men for insurance policies, then staging their deaths to collect big payouts.
They were convicted in the murders of Kenneth McDavid and Paul Varos and remain behind bars today.
So let's talk Dateline, shall we?
Keith, this story contains so much greed, betrayal, and good old-fashioned detective work.
It was kind of a typical Dateline plot, but not.
Let me let you kind of describe what we're talking about.
It's just the craziest story.
I could never understand why nobody made it into a movie.
Helen and Olga are these two women.
You know, we say elderly ladies who weren't that elderly when they started their scams, who just played the most interesting and patient games with men to try to take their money away, or try to take advantage of them and get money, farm them for money, if I can put it that way.
Strange, crazy story.
They were sort of Thelma and Louise of crime.
It sounds like they kind of played the long game.
You talked about they had patience.
I mean, this thing did play out over years and the victims, it appears, were identified way in advance.
Was that their secret weapon?
Is that how they were able to do what they did over such an extended period?
You know Susan, I don't know whether you heard about how they came up with the notion of doing it that way, but they were very patient and they—.
You know, they would spend two years waiting for the time when an insurance company would trust them to give them the money from the death of these homeless men who they took in housed fed, took care of for all that time so that they could score from the insurance policy when the men unfortunately suddenly died.
And they would, of course, be the ones behind that unfortunate sudden death.
So they had to be patient because the insurance companies would flag a policy if somebody tried to claim it.
So they just had to avoid the appearance of criminal activity.
Enough to – so the insurance company wasn't going to pay attention to it.
And since these were not gigantic policies, maybe they wouldn't bother spending the amount of time it would take to investigate it.
And for a while, it worked.
And Keith, this starts unraveling because an insurance investigator takes a closer look.
He was the most interesting man.
I've never encountered somebody who is quite so calm, methodical, and deliberate.
And he just would not give up until he solved this puzzle.
He was another character who could have been a lead actor in a movie in the sense that I'm talking about his character could have been because he was like a Boy Scout who wouldn't give up.
And without that determination of his, this might not have been solved.
He reminded me of like some 1970s TV detective.
You know, I don't know, is it Rockford or Mannix?
Maybe it was the mustache.
But he also was so determined to get justice for these.
He's got Kenneth McDavid and then ultimately for Vados as well.
But it was Kenneth McDavid that got him looking in.
There was something not right.
And he could not let go of the idea that these women were getting away with these terrible crimes, murders of these men that other people hadn't thought nothing of because they were homeless people.
But he was determined.
He came out here and he was just supposed to do a double check on this.
It looked a little weird and he was, he was hooked.
And Helen and Olga didn't like him.
Well, understandably so.
No, he only had bad news to give them.
Can you tell me what happened when, when he confronted them uh, And basically said we're keeping the money?
Well, that's all on video, which is awesome to see.
And they think you know.
Helen meets with the investigator and he's with an undercover LAPD detective who is recording all this.
And she thinks she's getting the big payout check and she gets a check that is a refund of what she paid for her premiums.
And she is not happy.
No, indeed.
If you're not going to pay me the full amount, this has been a total waste of my time.
I am very unhappy.
And then they go to Olga's and knock on her door.
Now, she probably already knew what was coming, and she never really opens the door.
She, like, sticks her hand out to get the envelope and slams the door.
This is money's check.
What is this?
What is this $1,800?
What is this?
It's a refund for the premiums that you paid.
No, we don't have that.
What is it?
Read it.
Read the policy there.
I don't see it.
Thank you.
Yes, that was because that's the end of, you know, several years of waiting.
And it was also recognition.
OK, maybe this is the jig might be up here.
We might not be able to do this anymore.
I was I was curious.
What's the story behind this granny squad?
So Detective Dennis Kilcoyne asked for guys to follow these old women.
I remember they were trying to follow Olga, who was 75 at the time, 70-something.
And she would go on these crazy hikes in Runyon Canyon, which I don't know if either of you have done that.
It's very uphill.
And the cops following her could barely keep up with her.
They did encounter her at a Kinko's where she was ordering credit cards in other people's names.
And they also saw her talking to another potential victim.
So I mean, there was a good reason to follow them around, but it was a funny thing to have to, you know, surveil women in their 70s.
Well, it sounds like the police had kind of figured out what was going on, but they really couldn't make the case for a long time.
Just proving a case can be very difficult with these ladies.
They were apparently trying to come up with a way to present the case was the recreation in the middle of the night, where they tried to recreate the running over of one of these elderly men in the back alley in Westwood.
And so, at 2 o'clock in the morning, they're out there trying to recreate the scene in order to, I guess, come up with some kind of theory or evidence that they could use against these women.
I was going to ask, Susan, you were there at this recreation, right?
Yeah, it was a huge team of people.
They had some really grainy video of a car going through that alley.
At the time they believed Kenneth McDavid was killed.
So they used the same type of car, what they thought was the same type of car, and they wanted it to match the speeds.
It hit the different cameras.
So, with the car and that surveillance video in hand, Detective Kilcoyne asked for help from the California Highway Patrol.
Okay, here's what we're going to do tonight.
The CHP marked where the body was found, where the bike was, the glasses.
They added in the location of the cameras and what they could see on that fuzzy videotape.
And they put it all together to figure out exactly what happened in that dark alley to Kenneth McDavid.
To be honest, I was telling Keith this.
I never completely understood what they were trying to prove, but they were trying to figure out if there was something they could do to help make their case.
And yes, and I was there, and I was there until 2 in the morning, until the detective was like you have to go home because I was pregnant.
My daughter's about to go to college now.
Okay, you just dropped that in.
And the detective was like, you have to go.
I was like, okay.
Did that video or that recreation ever come of any use?
Not for them.
It was quite useful for us.
It was interesting to see how they do that, but it was not used in the trial.
They changed prosecutors and the second prosecutor wasn't interested.
When we come back, we're going to play that interesting interaction involving the two women at a lighting store in Los Angeles.
We're back after this.
We've been talking in Los Angeles terms of Runyon Canyon and things like that.
Part of the story plays out actually in New England.
And can you explain that story?
So there's another man named Fred Downey.
And Fred Downey is not part of the criminal case that played out in Los Angeles.
He was...
Fred Downey was this old 95, 96, 97, really old man who lived alone, who had no kids.
He lived in Cape Cod.
And he meets Helen Golay's daughter, Keisha, and they become friends.
Keisha's a 20-something, and he's a 90-something, and she spends all her time with Fred.
And Fred eventually moves to live with Helen and live out his last years in beautiful Santa Monica of Which is inexplicable, by the way, to his family because he's crossing the country to live way over far far, far away from them, with this person they don't really know, in Santa Monica, on the other coast.
And he sells his house to Helen and Keisha for $100, a house on Cape Cod.
And he writes letters to his niece mildred, about how wonderful it is, it's amazing, santa monica.
And then the letters become not so happy and and they're not feeding him very much and he's not sure he made the right decision And he gets run over by a car on Ocean Park Boulevard.
So we went to talk to Fred's niece.
And Keith made this amazing discovery while we were at the cemetery where Fred was buried.
Keith, you want to talk?
You remember that?
Yeah.
I do remember that.
It wasn't such an amazing discovery.
We're standing in the cemetery and there are leaves in the ground.
It's autumn, I guess.
And I'm just shuffling my feet around where the gravesite is.
And there are two more gravestones there. for Keisha and Helen, right?
So they're going to be buried beside poor old Fred Downey, and Fred's relative is very very, very unhappy about that.
That is terrible.
Look at that.
Fred, Meryl, and Keisha.
I never knew they were here.
That is horrible.
I'm going to put sand on them and gravel or something and put grass seed.
That is horrible.
Oh, I just can't get over that.
I had no idea.
No.
It's upsetting.
But she hadn't discovered that before.
And Susan tells me that those graves are still empty, still kind of waiting for somebody who probably won't get there.
So you guys have immersed yourself in this story.
Who was the leader of this group?
Could they have pulled this off singularly?
I mean certainly.
They were both apparently scheming and conniving people who were looking for an easy mark.
I got the impression that Helen was the one who was scheming and coming up with these ideas.
And what's the backstory between how they linked up and became friends?
Well, Dennis Kilcoyne, the detective, told us he believed they met at the gym.
But we don't know.
Yeah.
We don't know the details of that.
Were they both on the bicycles next to each other?
I have no idea.
But they're unlikely friends.
Have either of you been able to hear from friends or people close to Helen and Olga who might be able to provide some extra insight?
People didn't want to talk.
Helen's ex-husband didn't want to talk.
Helen's daughter didn't, who lives in Cape Cod, didn't want to talk and we went and knocked on her door.
There was a guy who had maybe dated Helen, I talked to on the phone.
He didn't want to talk.
People wanted to keep them at arm's length.
I know that people in Olga's apartment building didn't like her, that she was always yelling at people and complaining about their music being too loud and things like that.
Olga's husband had left the country before her.
We got on the story.
And I tried to talk to Keisha, but she didn't want to talk to me.
Yeah, we didn't get very far with people who knew them.
Do you think there's more to be uncovered in this story?
Yes, I do.
I think that there's other things that Helen did and maybe other things that Olga did.
And I tried to find out.
There's...
There's a guy who Helen worked for who was some sort of real estate development guy.
At some point, he dies, and a lot of his property goes to Helen by quick claims.
His family sues her, saying that she stole it, and his family loses.
Is there more to that story?
I don't know.
Given what happened since, it makes you want to look at it more carefully, all right.
Right.
And I think these women were energetic, you know.
They were not sitting around counting their money.
They were sitting around thinking about how to get more money.
So go into more detail, if you will, about this interaction in the lighting store in Los Angeles.
What I remember, so I tried to get a hold of people who had been sued by them.
So this was the store called Royal Lighting.
I don't think it does say more, but maybe it does.
And I talked to one of the owners, and he said the two women were there.
They were just looking around, which he said was unusual in lighting stores.
Usually you come in and you say, I need... a lamp to go next to my bed or I need a standing lamp.
Like, you know what you want when you walk in.
And at one point he hears crash.
And when one of them, I think it was Olga is, has been hit by one of their lamps.
And then the other one was Helen said, Oh my God, I have a camera.
Let me take a picture of this for you.
And, um, and then later on the store gets a lawsuit.
Let's take a listen to that.
It was in the corner back here.
It was a lamp that we had that was, uh, either attached to the wall or a floor lamp.
And in order to have that lamp hit you, you'd have to.
First of all, the lamp was too tall in order for the top of it to hit you.
And you'd have to go out of your way and bend back.
Now that I think about it, it actually was a very tall lamp.
And you'd have to go out of your way.
Bring the lamp low enough to have this hit you in the head to begin with.
So it just seemed peculiar at the time.
And they got money from the lawsuit.
That's what I heard.
Yeah, the insurance company paid that money, I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that was hard.
They were mom and pop store.
Like, you know, it hurt them more than a bigger place.
I think they also sued Jack LaLanne's Gyms at the time and I don't know a couple other Vons grocery store.
There were a bunch of lawsuits.
Involving what potentially were staged incidents?
Yes, exactly.
That's what it seems to be.
And I tried to find all the lawsuits, and I don't know if I found them all.
And I went to.
There's this archive of old court records in the basement area under the county record building.
And it's this creepy place where, like the ceiling's falling down and you go into this room that's, you know, fluorescent lighting really low.
And then you ask for the cases.
And a lot of them, the documents had been removed.
You know, I got empty files.
Like someone else had taken them.
Maybe Olga went down there and took them.
Who knows?
Wouldn't put it past them.
But that's when things were kept on paper and things disappeared.
And I just remember it was like this creepy place to go to.
But I tried to find—that's why I found Royal Lighting's details.
We were able to interview them.
We should point out that Helen and Olga were never charged in connection with any civil lawsuits.
And we never got a chance to ask Helen and Olga about the Royal Lighting lawsuit or any civil lawsuits.
Although that scene in the low-ceilinged room with the fluorescent light and the missing files would be a fabulous little scene in the movie, don't you think?
I know.
I guess I should write that down.
You remember it when we write the movie, Keith.
Right.
So let's talk about the trial.
The police finally make their case, and this just goes before a jury.
Any surprises there?
I mean, I think Helen pointed at her daughter which I don't know if that was a surprise as the real culprit.
And we should say Keisha Golay, Helen's daughter, has never been criminally charged in connection to those lawsuits we've talked about or in the deaths of Fred Downey, Kenneth McDavid or Paul Vados.
It wasn't a surprise, but boy, was it ever in character.
But the jury didn't seem to have any trouble reaching a verdict in Helen's case.
But they talked a little longer about Olga before they finally came to a conclusion.
The jury found Helen and Olga guilty for the murders of Kenneth McDavid and Paul Varos, and they were sentenced to life in prison.
Okay, after a short break, why Susan went back to the church where Helen and Olga found their victims.
Well, welcome back, everyone.
Susan.
There's an interview in the series with a pastor from the Hollywood Presbyterian Church, where Helen and Olga volunteered.
This was not your last time at that church, was it?
No.
And I'm not a Presbyterian, but it wasn't.
So when we're doing the interview, I just come back from maternity leave.
And at the very end, the pastor said, you know, we have a preschool here.
And I'm thinking no way am I sending my child to the preschool where these women found their victims.
And that's exactly where I sent her because it was perfectly between work and home.
And they were lovely people.
And they fed the homeless on the north side of the church.
And the preschool was on the east side of the church and there was a security guard that stood in between, making sure nothing went awry.
And the preschool kids made sandwiches for the homeless, and it was a wonderful, wonderful place.
But people would ask me, how did you find your preschool?
And I said, well, I was on this dateline, and these women were killing homeless guys.
Oh, no.
No, you didn't.
I didn't.
Oh, goodness.
All right.
Well, reporting on these stories, they become so much more than a day job.
We have a question about how we disconnect from work.
So, Keith, Susan, I'll put the question to both of you.
How do you disconnect from stories like the one you just told, Susan?
Life can be tragic for people.
And you live in those moments.
You feel tremendous empathy for people who are the victims of crime.
And you feel whatever you feel for the people who committed it, sometimes more angry than other times.
Sometimes they're pathetic.
Sometimes they're really quite evil people.
But you leave it behind and then move on to the next one.
Human beings are just endlessly fascinating in their variety, in their goodness and in their ability to be really bad when they want to be.
Susan and Keith, I know you've been kind of loosely at least tracking them and where they are right now.
What do we know?
They're in two separate prisons in California.
They have never, as far as I know, been in the same prison, perhaps for good reason.
And they have you know, whatever else prison life has done for them, it has not harmed their longevity whatsoever.
Helen has just turned 95.
Olga is 92, about to turn 93, as far as we know.
And they're going on about their lives in prison.
They've been there for quite some time now, and there's no chance that they're getting out.
They'll die there.
But they may die there a long time from now, the way things go with them.
Have you been able to talk to either of them over the years?
No.
Susan has tried endlessly, and I would love to.
I've written to them in prison over the years and gotten responses like if you can loan me the money for my next appeal, I promise I'll pay you back when I get out.
And then maybe we can talk.
I have not loaned them the money.
I didn't think you did, but thanks for clarifying.
Yeah, that's right.
Well, Keith and Susan, what an amazing story.
Thanks for coming on and sharing it.
Thanks so much.
Lester, thank you.
A delight to talk to you and a delight to talk about this story, the thing about Helen and Olga.
So thank you.
Well, that's going to do it for our Talking Dateline this week.
We are not on the air on NBC for the next two weeks for the Winter Olympics, but you can tune in to our Dateline 24-7 channel for our On Thin Ice marathon streaming Thursday through Tuesday.
And on Monday, we'll drop another of Keith's original podcasts right here.
And he'll be back again next week to talk Dateline.
So get your questions ready for him.
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Thanks for listening, everyone.
