LOS ANGELES (AP) - Two elderly women were sentenced Tuesday to
spend the rest of their lives in prison for murdering two indigent men to collect insurance policies taken out on their lives.

Superior Court Judge David Wesley handed down two life terms each without possibility of parole to Helen Golay, 77, and Olga Rutterschmidt, 75.

The women were convicted of a scheme in which they befriended homeless men, took out policies, 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.

The judge denounced the women for their greed, saying the men they killed needed only food, water and shelter, and thought they were going to get a helping hand from the women.

"Instead, these unfortunate men were sacrificed on your altar of greed," Wesley said.

Both women were convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy
to murder for financial gain in the 1999 death of Paul Vados, 73, and in the 2005 death of Kenneth McDavid, 50.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)