Before his untimely death, aspiring but unsuccessful screenwriter Ken McDavid strikes seeming gold when Helen Golay befriends him. She takes him off the streets, pays for rent, food and clothes. But, it’s a set-up. Helen and her friend Olga Rutterschmidt are ruthless con artists who take out life insurance policies on unsuspecting men and kill them in hit-and-run "accidents."

Click ahead to find out how these "black widows" ultimately get trapped in their own web of lies and deceit.

In an upscale neighborhood near Los Angeles, a middle-aged man lies face-up in the road. There’s a bicycle a few feet away.  It appears Ken McDavid is the victim of a tragic hit-and-run accident. Police investigate, and the accident scene starts to look more and more like a crime scene.

The front wheel of the bicycle is off, as if McDavid had been working on it.

"If he's going to work on the tire, why would he put his helmet on top of his own tire? It didn't make any sense." Los Angeles Traffic Detective Nelson Hernandez says. "And why wouild he stop here? In darkness? Why wouldn't he just walk the bike down to the end of the alley where there's light?"

There are other suspicious elements of the case, as well.

McDavid has nothing in his pockets except two photo IDs.

"So it was very clear that someone wanted to tell us ... who this guy was," Hernandez says.

Hernandez also notes that McDavid's clothes are covered in grease — most likely from the bottom of a car — unusual for a hit and run.

"Usually, pedestrians will get hit and then they will either get pushed to the side of the road or will flip over the car ..." Hernandez explains.

Suspicous of foul play, Hernandez looks for surveillance cameras. One of the stores on the block has several cameras in the alley. When police review the tapes, the camera doesn't capture the victim, but there is something unusual about one of the cars that enters the alley. The brake lights come on, the headlights go out. Five minutes later, the vehicle just drives off.

Unable to make out the license plate, Hernandez goes on the only lead he has: McDavid's last known address.

The building manager at the address on McDavid's ID tells police he no longer lives there. She says that he came to Los Angeles to try his hand at screenwriting and eventually became homeless. But she says an older woman named Helen Golay took him off the streets, gave him a new apartment and paid his bills for many months.

Before Detective Hernandez can track down Golay, he finds out she has been to the morgue, claiming to be McDavid's fiancee. She identifies the body and requests that he be cremated.

Then things get stranger.

Another woman named Olga Rutterschmidt, who claims to be McDavid's cousin, shows up at the police station asking for a copy of the police report.

"Usually, when a family member comes to the station, they're hurting because their loved one died, so they want us to explain to them the report," Hernandez says.

Rutterschmidt, however, is cold and business-like, and it leaves a lasting impression on police personnel.

Then, more red flags ... toxicology reports show McDavid had large amounts of prescription drugs, including ambien, in his body.

But what's the motive? Two months pass with no new leads.

Two months after McDavid's death, a life insurance claim comes in to Mony Mutual of New York, and Insurance Investigator Ed Webster is assigned to the case. The claim is for $1 million and the beneficiaries are Golay and Rutterschmidt — McDavid's "business partners."

But Webster soon discovers that information doesn't match what the two women told police about their relationship with McDavid. He tries to schedule a meeting with them.

"Neither of these two women would speak with me, ever," Webster says. I mean, their expectation was to collect the million dollars ... answering my questions would certainly be one step towards fulfilling that goal and they just wouldn't do it."

Webster contacts Detective Hernandez, who ends up talking about the case with his colleague, Detective Lee Willmon, who sits at the desk across from him.

Hernandez details the case to Willmon, including the insurance claim citing Rutterschmidt and Golay as beneficiaries.

Something goes off in Willmon's mind. He remembers a case suspiciously similar. Too similar, in fact, to be coincidental.

"I'm thinking in my mind, 'Hey, I had this before, too,'" Willmon recalls. "I walked back to where we keep our unsolved fatals and our cold cases. Well, back in November of '99, this is who I was dealing with..."

A homeless man, found dead in an alley, the victim of a hit and run accident and two older ladies claiming to be the next of kin.

The parallels between the death of Paul Vados in 1999 (pictured) and McDavid are too close for comfort. Two homeless men with sizeable life insurance policies literally run over and crushed to death in two different alleys with the same two women as benefactors.

The detectives share their information with insurance inspector Webster, and now they're left wondering how Golay and Rutterschmidt are going about finding their victims.

"The perfect vehicle for these women to capture these fellows would be in rehabs, or AA meetings ... they can identify people that would not be missed," Webster concludes, and his hunch pays off.

Pastor Charles Suhayda confirms that Vados and McDavid were regulars at Hollywood Presbyterian Church's homeless shelter — the shelter where Golay and Rutterschmidt were seemingly good souls interested in the church's outreach program.

"My first impression of Helen and Olga was good," Suhayda says. "They were nicely dressed. They didn't talk about volunteering there or serving there at all, but they did express an interest and want to know what we were doing."

Investigators put Golay and Rutterschmidt on round-the-clock surveillance. And insurance investigator Webster is compiling a mountain of evidence.

He finds there are more than 20 insurance policies with a face value of more than $5 million. Armed with what he thinks is good cause to pull the plug on his company's insurance, he returns to Golay's and Rutterschmidt's homes to get some answers. This time, with LAPD homicide detective Rosemary Sanchez by his side.

His goal: To notify Golay and Rutterschmidt the life insurance policies on McDavid have been cancelled.

Webster and Sanchez are turned away by both Golay and Rutterschmidt. They won't open their doors. They won't talk.

"We were just reaching for anything that was going to help us build our murder case," Sanchez says. "In our minds, now we're thinking 'OK, they're murderers and we've got to get them off the street here.' "

With no smoking gun, police buy some time to continue their investigation. They build a case on the insurance policies. A mail fraud case.

"The charges fall into play when you make your monthly premium payment and you put a fraudulent application in an envelope, put a stamp on it and you put it in a US mailbox," LAPD homicide investigator Dennis Kilcoyne says. "Each time you do that, that's one count of mail fraud."

For now, it's enough to get Golay and Rutterschmidt off the streets.

On May 18, 2006, 70 agents from the FBI, LAPD and other agencies, arrest Golay and Rutterschmidt.

Rutterschmidt struggles and, perhaps because of experience, is quick to throw Golay under the bus.

"Olga is pretty predictable," detective Kilcoyne says. "She's rantin' and ravin' and she's quite the talker. We know this by now that she just never shu ... she's not crazy but she's very caustic with anybody that she comes across on the street."

Golay, meanwhile, is quite the opposite.

"She comes out and she's little miss innocent," Kilcoyne says. "'Oh, I, what's going on? You've got the wrong house. It can't be me. I haven't done anything.'"

A search of both Rutterschmidt's and Golay's homes reveals a lot — original checks written to pay insurance premiums, rubber stamps of both McDavid's and Vados's signatures, and an interesting book in Golay's home: "The Sociopath Next Door."

While investigators search their homes, detectives Kilcoyne and Sanchez take Rutterschmidt and Golay in for questioning.

What the two women don't realize is that when the detectives leave the room, their conversation is being taped.

"We put them together in an interview room, and sure enough, like a couple of convicts, they immediately start shushing each other," Kilcoyne says. "But Olga can't keep her mouth shut."

Rutterschmidt gives police a goldmine of evidence, incriminating herself and Golay in the murders.

• Visit American Greed website for show times.
• Review "The Black Widows" Case file