S L Owners

State and federal regulators assert in court documents unsealed Thursday that the late owner of North America Savings & Loan Assn. and his confidante and business manager, Janet F. McKinzie, removed documents from the failed Santa Ana institution to hinder government investigations. The business records, which regulators charge that McKinzie has refused to return, are needed to help the government operate the $219-million institution, which state regulators seized Jan.

It was November, 1985, and Charlie Keating was perturbed. His company had bought Lincoln Savings & Loan in Irvine less than 2 years earlier, and federal regulators were trying to curtail his use of new state and federal laws that gave him wide discretion to invest S&L money--mainly customer deposits--in an array of ventures. It was then that Keating offered a high-paying job to Edwin J. Gray, the nation's top S&L regulator at the time. Gray turned the job down flat. A year later, he characterized it as a brazen attempt to "buy me out."

North America Savings & Loan Assn. in Santa Ana, staggered by nearly $9 million in losses last year, was declared insolvent and seized Friday by state regulators. The takeover occurred about 9 1/2 hours after its owner, Westminster dentist Duayne D. Christensen, was killed when his speeding 1985 Jaguar smashed into a freeway piling. William J.

Federal regulators moved today to get $40.9 million in restitution from Charles H. Keating Jr. and five other officers of a Phoenix holding company that owned the failed Lincoln Savings & Loan Assn. The Office of Thrift Supervision also said it wanted to remove Keating and five other officers from American Continental Corp., which owned the Irvine, Calif., thrift before its $2-billion failure last year.

A federal judge in Los Angeles on Wednesday reduced the bail of former thrift owner Charles H. Keating Jr. to $300,000 from $2 million, but Keating was not able to immediately raise enough money to secure his release from jail. U.S. District Judge Mariana Pfaelzer reduced the bail after Keating, 68, submitted a sworn statement outlining his assets. At a hearing, defense attorney Stephen C. Neal said Keating is more than $5 million in debt. Keating, former chairman of American Continental Corp.

In a federal courtroom reconfigured to accommodate a rash of high-tech equipment, final jury selection began Monday in the civil fraud and racketeering trial of former Lincoln Savings & Loan owner Charles H. Keating Jr. and more than a dozen co-defendants. U.S. District Judge Richard M. Bilby said his courtroom looked "ready for a rock concert."

Under intense questioning, former thrift regulator Edwin J. Gray acknowledged Tuesday that he did nothing three years ago to protest what he believed was improper conduct by five senators on behalf of Lincoln Savings & Loan owner Charles H. Keating Jr. Gray, the chief witness in the "Keating Five" case, told the Senate Ethics Committee that he quickly decided while he was meeting with four of the senators on April 2, 1987, that they were making unethical demands.

Sen. John McCain, once one of Charles H. Keating Jr.'s good friends, said Friday that he rejected Keating's request nearly five years ago to act as a negotiator in resolving the long and bitter dispute between thrift regulators and Keating's Lincoln Savings & Loan.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is nearing the end of a lengthy investigation into the financial dealings of former thrift owner Charles H. Keating Jr. and has told him that it may soon take action against him in federal court. Stephen C. Neal, Keating's lawyer, said Thursday that the SEC staff sent a formal letter to the onetime owner of Lincoln Savings & Loan warning him that it may recommend to the agency that it file a civil suit accusing him of violating federal securities laws.

Saying that Charles H. Keating Jr. needs to be punished for his "callous disregard and betrayal of trust," a Los Angeles County probation officer recommended Monday that Keating be sentenced to a long prison term for his conviction last fall on state securities fraud. Thomas W. Aiken, in a report filed with Los Angeles County Superior Court, dashed any hope that the former operator of Lincoln Savings & Loan might have had for independent support for probation at his sentencing Friday.