A ‘Majestic’ Claim to an L. A. ‘Empire’ : Grant Deed Filings Raise Questions of Flaws in System
By some accounts, the woman who calls herself “Her Royal Majesty Queen Rose Mary J. (for Jesus) Windsor” doesn’t seem like the type of person who’d feel at home in Buckingham Palace.
Her modest garb would clash with the regal dress of the British monarchy; the tiny apartment she calls home is hardly fit for a queen.
And she certainly doesn’t seem like the type of person who owns the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and at least 11 other local buildings worth more than $1 billion--even though records at the county recorder’s office and several computer firms that service the real estate industry indicate that she does.
The escapades of Windsor--who hasn’t purchased any of the properties, but has filed grant deeds with the county saying that she has--are generally considered little more than harmless fantasies.
Flaws in System
But they also spotlight some flaws in the system the county uses to record real estate transactions, and, perhaps, raise some questions about the state regulations governing the conduct of notaries public.
By spending about $100, Windsor--who, Beverly Hills notary Dorothy Ward says, claims to be the daughter of the Duke of Windsor and actress Jean Harlow--has laid claim to several of Los Angeles’ most prominent and valuable landmarks. In addition to the swank Beverly Wilshire, Windsor has filed grant deeds for:
--Chase Plaza, the 22-story office tower at 8th Street and Grand Avenue that was purchased last year by Japanese real estate giant Shuwa Investments Corp. for more than $100 million.
--International Towers, a 20-story office and retail complex at 9th and Figueroa streets.
--One Westwood, a 17-story office tower nearing completion at Wilshire and Veteran Avenue.
--The 25-story, bronze-glass World Savings Bank Building at Wilshire and San Vicente Boulevard.
--First Federal Square, the 12-story office complex at 4th Street and Wilshire in Santa Monica that serves as corporate headquarters of First Federal Savings Bank.
Santa Monica Properties
Windsor also has recorded deeds indicating ownership of several other Santa Monica properties: A Vons grocery store and nearby bank on Wilshire; a residential building on Euclid; trendy Cafe Casino on Ocean Park Boulevard; the 11-story Wilshire Palisades on Ocean Avenue, and a new building rising on the Santa Monica Mall. She also filed a deed with the county saying that she owns the apartment building she rents, plus the apartment complex in front of hers.
Several attempts to reach Windsor over a two-week span were fruitless.
Windsor’s phantom holdings began coming to light when David Ower, owner of the Hollywood brokerage firm Commercial Properties, wanted some information about a tenant who rents office space in the World Savings Bank Building.
Ower couldn’t locate the tenant’s phone number, so he asked Dataquick, a computer firm tapped into the recorder’s records, to look up the owner of the building with the hope that the owner could put him in contact with the tenant.
Dataquick said the owner was Rose Mary Windsor, who recorded the purported purchase with the recorder’s office on April 21. Since the purchase was fairly recent, the address to which property tax bills were to be mailed didn’t appear on the computer printout.
Surprised by Results
Ower asked the computer firm to search for other properties Windsor might own, hoping to find her mailing address.
“You can imagine how surprised I was when I got a computer readout that said she owned six other buildings, most of them along Wilshire Boulevard,” Ower said. Even more surprising, the computer search showed that she had apparently purchased all the properties in March and April.
Ower, his curiousity piqued, asked a local title insurance company to send him copies of some of the grant deeds Windsor had filed with the county recorder’s office.
The deeds showed an “H.R.M. Rose Mary J. Windsor” deeding the properties from herself to herself. In most normal transactions, a grant deed shows title transferring from a grantor, or seller, to the grantee, or buyer.
A later check by The Times turned up five other properties Windsor had deeded to herself, including the Beverly Wilshire and Chase Plaza. Since Windsor had filed all the deeds with the county, the recorder’s office and all the computer firms that rely on those records now show her as the owner--even though she hasn’t paid a nickel for any of the properties.
‘A Bit Chilling’
Notaries who dealt with Windsor, plus government officials interviewed by The Times, doubt that Windsor is trying to defraud anyone. However, Ower says, “the fact that the integrity of the recording system has been so easily compromised” is “a bit chilling.”
“I don’t think Windsor is trying to rip anybody off, but the way she was able to fill out all these grant deeds, get them notarized and get them recorded makes me wonder how easy it would be for someone to pull off a fraud,” Ower said.
For example, Ower said, Windsor might be able to list the properties she has purportedly acquired as assets on a credit application for a new loan. The lender might be misled into advancing the money if it merely relied on the data supplied by computer firms.
“Even if someone didn’t get ripped off, something like (what Windsor has done) is going to cause problems sooner or later,” Ower said. “When the property tax bills get mailed out later this year, they’re all going to go to the home of Her Royal Majesty--not to the real owners. And if one of the owners tries to sell his property, the county’s records are going to show the Queen as being the current owner.”
‘Through the Cracks’
Ower finds it surprising that five different people notarized the grant deeds despite the irregularities of the documents, and that “the documents slipped through the cracks at both the notary and recorder’s level.”
But even though the entrance of Windsor’s grant deeds into official county records could cause some problems for the buildings’ real owners in the future, neither the notaries nor the clerks appear to have failed their responsibilities.
Currently, clerks who work in the recorder’s office are expected to examine the signature on a grant deed an individual attempts to file, and to make sure the document has been notarized, said Richard Hughes, the county’s assistant registrar recorder. But the clerks aren’t required to check whether the grantor listed on the deed actually owns the property--a fact that could be ascertained by looking at the most recent grant deed on file at the recorder’s office.
Unfortunately, Hughes said, additional research of grant deeds submitted for recordation would raise the fees individuals must pay to file, and “would be a tremendous undertaking that would require a huge increase in our work force.
“Right now, we have about 15 clerks to process 8,000 grant deeds a day,” Hughes said. “We’re already working as hard as we can.”
Title Insurance
Hughes also said he doubts that any serious problems will arise from Windsor’s actions, in part because most buyers purchase a title insurance policy that protects against defects of title.
Windsor’s actions did not surface earlier because she did not purchase a title policy for any of her alleged purchases.
To what extent are the five notaries public who notarized Windsor’s grant deeds responsible for what has happened? Even Ward says she thought the two deeds she notarized for Windsor were “unusual” because Windsor was both the grantor and grantee. Ward also says that conversations convinced her that Windsor “certainly wasn’t the Queen of England.”
However, Ward said she notarized the deeds after Windsor, whom she described as about 60 with reddish hair, produced identification that said she was “Queen Rose Mary Jesus Windsor.”
“If Her Royal Majesty presented satisfactory evidence that she is who she says she is, the notary has probably fulfilled her responsibilities,” said Tony Miller, chief deputy secretary of state. “A notary’s signature doesn’t attest to the validity of the document--it attests to the fact that a person appeared before the notary on a certain date, presented satisfactory identification and signed a particular document.”
Penalties for Notaries
Notaries can be punished with suspension or revocation of their commission if they notarize a document they know is fraudulent, or if they notarize a document that a reasonable person would believe was fraudulent based on available evidence.
Notarizing a deed in which a woman who calls herself “H.R.M. Rose Mary Windsor” grants an interest in a property from herself to herself--without presenting any evidence that she has the legal right to do so--”may or may not be a violation,” Miller said.
Hughes says a case like Windsor’s pops up only once every several years, which “proves that our system of recording is working.
“To some extent, it’s a system based on honesty,” he said. “But it has worked pretty well for more than 130 years.”
