1 – Nothing to Lose. Everything to Gain

November 16, 2021·32 min·2 clips

Kenneth McDavid was found dead in a Westwood alley with tire marks across his chest — and Helen claimed his body as his next of kin.

The old ladies looked predictable. Helen moves through Santa Monica rich, polished, and hard to rattle, with jewelry and a white Mercedes doing plenty of talking for her. Then Paul Thaddeus turns up dead. At first, a rainy alley can sound like a bad accident. The evidence makes that harder to believe. The investigator keeps coming back to the wet night, the alley, and the body. Nobody seems to have raced through. Paul was crushed in a way that suggests a slow push over him, not one hard hit. Helen pays for the burial, using a plot she owned. Olga cries when she tells Paul's landlady. Helen stays stoic. And the women keep moving. Nearly three years later, Jimmy Covington is the next man they approach. Then Ed Webster opens the McDavid case and finds two survivor's claims, not one. A million bucks points to two beneficiaries listed as McDavid's partners in some kind of investment business. The names are the part that lands hardest: Helen Golay and Olga Rutter-Schmidt. Webster needs to talk to them. Simple procedure, suddenly with teeth.

As heard by us

Helen and Olga turn a routine of help into something colder, one burial at a time.

Helen and Olga begin in ordinary routines, and then the story tilts. Helen is the wealthy one, leaving her Santa Monica apartment each morning in polished clothes for Izzy's on Wilshire Boulevard. Later, Olga spots another man in Hollywood and decides he might need their help.

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Why you'd press play

Two women, one burial plot, and a death that turns into a wild, bizarre investigation.

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