‘Rainbow Man’ Guilty in Airport Hotel Siege

A man known for wearing a rainbow-colored wig and waving religious placards during televised sports events was convicted Friday of taking a maid hostage and making terrorist threats during a standoff last September at an airport-area hotel.

Rollen Frederick Stewart, 48, who testified that he held police at bay while the maid cowered in a bathtub because he needed to “explain the love of God and how it plays out,” faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

“I don’t think there was anyone on the jury who didn’t feel sorry for him,” juror Ernest Roberts said after the verdict. “But you can’t break the law because you feel strongly about your religion.”

The Los Angeles Superior Court jury found Stewart guilty of six counts stemming from the incident at the Hyatt hotel near Los Angeles International Airport. The jury acquitted him of charges that he set off two stink bombs in the downtown offices of The Times.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Sally Lipscomb said she will ask for the maximum penalty when Stewart is sentenced July 13.

“I would say it is appropriate,” Lipscomb said in an interview after the verdict was read. “In my mind, this man is very dangerous.”

Stewart, a former cattle rancher from Washington state, told an interviewer 10 years ago that, after a rural life that “revolved around sex and drugs,” he became a born-again Christian.

A frustrated actor, he soon found that he could grab the spotlight at major sporting events such as the summer Olympics, the Super Bowl, the World Series and the NBA playoffs by donning a rainbow-hued wig and hoisting placards with biblical messages.

Santa Ana Police Investigator Ferrell Buckles said this behavior took an ominous turn in April, 1991, when Stewart allegedly set off remote-controlled smoke bombs as Jack Nicklaus was about to putt during the Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, Ga. Stewart, nicknamed “Rainbow Man” was released when tournament officials declined to press charges.

A few weeks later, Stewart became a fugitive after he was accused in an arrest warrant of setting off stink bombs at the Crystal Cathedral and a Christian bookstore in Garden Grove, at the Trinity Broadcasting Network studios in Tustin and in the lobby of the Orange County Register newspaper building in Santa Ana.

Stewart was later named a suspect when stink bombs were planted at The Times and at a church in Torrance, and charges were eventually filed in connection with the incident at The Times.

Detectives say that on the morning of Sept. 22, 1992, Stewart picked up two transient laborers in downtown Los Angeles, promising them plumbing jobs. Dressed conservatively in a dark pin-stripe suit, Stewart allegedly took the men to the seventh floor of the Hyatt, where, apparently at random, he selected a room in which 39-year-old maid Paula Madera-Chan was cleaning a bathroom.

Police said that when Stewart, who had a pistol, tried to force the men into the bathroom with Madera-Chan, a scuffle broke out and the men escaped. Madera-Chan locked herself in the bathroom and phoned her supervisor, who notified police.

Stewart set off a smoke bomb in the hotel corridor before nailing the hotel room door shut and posting religious placards in the windows so they could be read from the ground, detectives said.

The officers said they established telephone contact with Stewart, who threatened to harm his hostage and to begin shooting at planes en route to the airport.

“We believed the safety of the hostage was deteriorating quickly,” Officer Bill Frio, an LAPD spokesman, said later.

Shortly before 6 p.m., police smashed through the hotel room door to find Stewart lying on a bed, his hands clasped behind his head. Near his feet lay a loaded .45-caliber pistol, a supply of food, some religious tracts and “the infamous wig,” Frio said.

As they led him away, Stewart told police that his intention had been to get the news media to spread the “good news” that the second coming of Christ was imminent.

Madera-Chan, who suffered no physical harm during her ordeal, was offered a free vacation at any Hyatt hotel in the United States by her employer.