Women, 75 and 77, get 2 life terms for murders

July 16, 2008 at 12:00a.m.

LOS ANGELES — Two older women were sentenced to life in prison without parole Tuesday for murdering two indigent men to collect insurance policies taken out on their lives.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Wesley sentenced 77-year-old Helen Golay and 75-year-old Olga Rutterschmidt to two consecutive life terms each.

In April, the women were convicted of a scheme in which they befriended homeless men, took out insurance policies on them and then killed them in murders staged to look like hit-and-run auto accidents. Prosecutors say the women collected $2.8 million before the scheme was uncovered.

Marriage-law repeal vote

BOSTON — The Massachusetts Senate voted Tuesday to repeal a 1913 law used to bar out-of-state gay couples from marrying in the state, a law that critics say was originally aimed at interracial marriages.

The law prohibits couples from obtaining marriage licenses if they can’t legally wed in their home states.

The House is expected to vote on the repeal measure later this week. The Senate action came on a voice vote.

After Massachusetts became the first state to allow gay marriages in 2004, then-Gov. Mitt Romney ordered town clerks to enforce the then-little-known 1913 law and deny licenses to out-of-state couples.

Afghan militants killed

KABUL, Afghanistan — Seven insurgents were killed in a military operation near where militants this week breached a U.S. outpost in eastern Afghanistan, the Afghan Defense Ministry said Tuesday.

Separately, Afghan troops killed 12 insurgents west of the capital, Kabul, the ministry said in a statement.

The Taliban-led rebellion appears to be intensifying despite the largest presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion that ousted the hard-line regime in 2001.

More than 2,500 people — mostly militants — have reportedly died in insurgency-related violence this year.

Sweet honor for Elton

MONTPELIER, Vt. — Ben Jerry’s has done it again: Hoping to honor rocker Elton John before his first Vermont performance, Vermont’s crazy-cool confectioner has whipped up a flavor just for him — “Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road.”

The limited-batch ice cream, made from “an outrageous symphony of decadent chocolate ice cream, peanut butter cookie dough, butter brickle and white chocolate chunks,” is a take-off on his 1970s album and song “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”

It will be available from Friday to July 25 in the company’s Vermont scoop shops, with proceeds going to the Elton John AIDS Foundation, officials said Tuesday.

It’ll also be doled out in cups, cones and dishes at John’s sold-out Champlain Valley Expo show Monday.

Kucinich gets a hearing

WASHINGTON — Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s single impeachment article will get a committee hearing but not on removing President Bush from office.

The House on Tuesday voted 238-180 to send the article of impeachment — for Bush’s reasoning for taking the country to war in Iraq — to the Judiciary Committee, which buried Kucinich’s previous effort.

This time, the panel will open hearings. But House Democrats emphatically said they will not be about Bush’s impeachment, a first step in the Constitution’s process of removing a president from office.

Instead, the panel will conduct an election-year review — possibly televised — of everything Democrats consider to be Bush’s abuse of power. Kucinich, a Democrat from Ohio, is likely to testify. But so will several scholars and administration critics, Democrats said.

Associated Press