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Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Thing About Helen & Olga

Dateline NBC

NBC News

Society & Culture, News, True Crime, Culture, Social

4.440.3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2026

⏱️ 23 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Lester Holt talks with Keith Morrison about his original podcast series “The Thing About Helen & Olga.” A team of seasoned detectives uncover horrifying murder plots in Los Angeles orchestrated by a pair of unlikely suspects: two elderly ladies named Helen Golay and Olga Rutterschmidt. Keith tells Lester who he believes was the mastermind of their devious schemes and plays extra sound from the manager of a mom-and-pop lighting store who had his own run-in with the “girls.” They’re joined by Dateline Senior Producer Susan Leibowitz, who shares a story about why she returned to the church where Helen and Olga volunteered “helping” the homeless long after reporting on the story. Have a question for Talking Dateline? DM us a video to @DatelineNBC or leave a voicemail at (212) 413-5252. Your question may be featured in an upcoming episode. Listen to the series on Apple: https://apple.co/45XHjoD Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4vda0EnXDrlzhyYAuQDqXG

Transcript

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0:00.0

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 Liebelowitz, who has been following the story with Keith for nearly 20 years.

0:21.7

It's good to see both of you. Thanks for coming on.

0:24.0

Hello. Thank you for having us on, Lester.

0:26.9

Before we get into the discussion, let's tell folks that we're dropping the full series

0:31.3

in the Dateline feed as a bonus while Dateline is taking a break for the Witter Olympics.

0:37.0

So go take a listen and then come right

0:39.2

back here. Later, we'll have an extra clip from an interview that didn't make the show with the

0:44.5

manager of a mom-and-pop lighting story in Los Angeles, who had his own encounter with Helen

0:50.1

and Olga, and Susan has a story about the church where Helen and Olga volunteered.

0:56.9

But to recap, in the late 1990s, Helen Goulet and Olga Ruddershmidt appeared to be two

1:02.7

kindly old ladies helping homeless men off the streets of Los Angeles.

1:07.8

But as private investigator, Ed Webster, discovered, along with the LAPD and FBI in the so-called

1:14.7

Granny Task Force, the women were actually singling out men for insurance policies, and staging

1:22.2

their deaths to collect big payouts.

1:24.6

They were convicted in the murders of Kenneth McDavid and Paul Vados and remained behind bars

1:30.7

today.

1:31.9

So let's talk dateline, shall we?

1:34.2

Keith, this story contains so much greed, betrayal, and good old-fashioned detective work.

1:39.3

It was kind of a typical dateline plot, but not.

1:42.6

Let me let you kind of describe what we're talking about.

1:45.4

It's just the craziest story.

1:48.7

I can never understand why nobody made it into a movie.

...

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