Bondholder Hits Keating With Wig Outside Court

LOS ANGELES —  For a second time in a month, the criminal securities fraud trial of Charles H. Keating Jr. was disrupted Tuesday by a bondholder who accosted the former owner of Lincoln Savings & Loan during a break in proceedings.

As Keating was returning to the courtroom, Skip E. Lowe, 62, a West Hollywood comedian, pulled a powdered blond wig from an MGM movie travel bag and hit Keating twice near his right shoulder.

“This is for America,” Lowe said as he took a swipe. “And this is for the senior citizens you ripped off.”

Keating blocked the attack and continued on to the courtroom where he is standing trial on 20 counts of duping small investors into believing that risky bonds issued by Lincoln’s parent company were safe. Sheriff’s deputies removed Lowe from the building.

The failure of Irvine-based Lincoln is the biggest to date, costing taxpayers $2.6 billion. Many investors lost their life savings on Keating’s junk bonds, including at least one who committed suicide, and the case has become a symbol of the nation’s S&L; disasters.

The wig incident prompted court bailiffs to escort Keating through the hallways of Los Angeles County Superior Court. Judge Lance A. Ito, who was initially told that Keating had been attacked by an elderly woman, said he was “concerned that we continue to have little old ladies approach Keating.”

“If little old ladies can get this close, I’m concerned that someone with more serious intent can get close,” he said.

Last month, an elderly woman approached Keating in court, tugged at his lapels and shouted that he had taken all her money. That incident prompted Ito to have metal detectors installed outside the courtroom and to take other precautionary measures.

Keating’s attorney, Stephen C. Neal, said he and his client worried more about any adverse impact that continued scenes might have on the trial. But he said he didn’t know whether any jurors saw the incident and also said, “We have no complaints about security.”

Lowe, who hosts a public access celebrity interview show for cable TV viewers in Los Angeles, said his attack was not a publicity stunt. He said he lost close to $80,000, which a former business manager had invested for him without his knowledge.

“I hated his grinny face and attitude,” Lowe said about Keating. “I did something I had to do. It was not just for me but for all senior citizens and for all American people, who have to pay for what he did.”

Keating has denied that he deceived investors. The former chairman of Lincoln’s parent company, American Continental Corp. in Phoenix, said that he relied on top lawyers and accountants in setting up the bond sales and that regulators approved the sales.

The 22 bondholders expected to testify in the criminal case lost $1.8 million. They are part of thousands of small investors who lost more than $250 million in the 1989 collapse of Keating’s financial empire.

One of those bondholders, Robert N. Bowlus, 52, of Rancho Palos Verdes, testified Tuesday that he knew that he was buying an uninsured bond. But he said Lincoln employees told him and his wife that “next to being federally insured, (a bond) was the safest thing we could invest in.”

He paid $110,000 for bonds in four separate transactions in 1987 and 1988 and renewed two of them before the company went bankrupt and the whole amount was wiped out.

He acknowledged under cross-examination, though, that much of the negative information he said he never knew about was indeed contained inside two prospectuses he received with his initial purchases.

He said he had tried to read the documents, which were aimed at disclosing the risks inherent in the bonds, but found it “somewhat frustrating” and “very difficult to understand.”