Bomb Plot Suspect Had Broad Plan, Official Says

Frank Boyd Cockrell harbored grander plans than blowing up the Ventura County Courthouse with a firebomb just to foil his fraud trial, according to court documents.

He also wanted a movie deal.

The balding, bespectacled Sherman Oaks consultant plotted to cripple the Ventura Freeway with rockets or bombs, set an oil refinery ablaze and paralyze the city of Ventura, according to a federal agent who posed as an anti-government militiaman to gain Cockrell’s trust.

What’s more, testified Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agent Charles M. Pratt, “Cockrell from the very beginning told me that when this was all over he was going to write a book about this and he would like to produce a movie about this.”

Pratt testified at a hearing Monday to ask Ventura County Judge Robert C. Bradley to issue a no-bail warrant for Cockrell’s arrest.

After hearing only part of what Pratt was prepared to say about the alleged plot, Bradley quickly signed the warrant, saying, “I find Mr. Cockrell to be a serious, serious threat to public safety.”

Cockrell, 49, was arrested quietly Wednesday at his home, where agents seized four rifles and numerous documents during a search.

The ATF hopes to charge him with the alleged bomb plot in U.S. District Court, said John Torres, assistant special agent in charge of the ATF’s Los Angeles office.

Cockrell now sits in the Los Angeles County lockup at the Van Nuys Courthouse, where prosecutors say they will charge him Monday with soliciting the murder of a Van Nuys car dealer and his wife to help finance the bomb plot.

But before that case goes forward, Cockrell will probably be transferred back to Ventura County, prosecutors say.

There, in the very courthouse he allegedly wanted blown to bits, Cockrell still must face the Nov. 3 fraud trial that authorities say he so badly wanted to avoid.

Indicted by the Ventura County Grand Jury in December 1995 on charges of fraud, grand theft, money laundering and tax evasion, Cockrell and five other people were accused of bilking investors who thought they were buying stock from a company that sold surety bonds to minority building contractors involved with the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

Desperate to thwart his trial, Cockrell allegedly proposed a reign of terror, according to the transcript of Monday’s warrant hearing.

“His allegation was that the government of Ventura County was corrupt and they had conspired to bring false charges against him and to cause him to lose all of his worldly possessions,” testified Pratt, who posed as a former mercenary and leader of an anti-government militia.

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Pratt said Cockrell told him in an Aug. 17 meeting “that the government of Ventura County should be destroyed, and he wanted the courthouse destroyed in order to kill as many judges [and] D.A. investigators as he could and also to destroy any evidence against him.”

Cockrell specifically wanted to demolish the third and fourth floors of the sprawling, four-story courthouse, which contain the prosecutor’s office and the county’s Superior Court rooms.

And he wanted the bomb to go off “sometime around 9:30 or 10 o’clock in the morning in order to have maximum effect,” Pratt testified.

When Pratt pressed him for specific targets, “the only one he mentioned by name was [Ventura County Dist. Atty.] Michael Bradbury,” Pratt said.

Bradbury has declined to comment on the case.

Cockrell’s attorney, Edward Whipple, has also declined to comment.

Pratt said Cockrell planned other crimes meant to paralyze the city of Ventura and tie up fire, medical and police services, including:

* A rocket or bomb attack on two overpasses of the Ventura Freeway, to collapse them onto the road.

* The arson of an oil refinery near the road from Ventura to Ojai.

* Attacks on jewelry stores, gun shops, banks and armored car companies.

But Cockrell realized his grand plan was costly, and he was ready to murder someone to raise the money, Pratt testified.

“I told him that based upon my experience that the bombing of the Ventura County Courthouse and the paralyzing of the city of Ventura would cost a half-million dollars and I would need 25 people to do it,” Pratt testified.

Cockrell balked, then offered this plan, Pratt said:

He suggested Pratt kidnap the owner of a Mercedes-Benz/Rolls-Royce dealership, and his wife.

While holding the woman hostage, Pratt said, Cockrell wanted him to take the auto dealer around to the dealership and three pawnshops he owns, gather up as much cash, jewelry and guns as possible and turn the loot over to Cockrell who would then sell it. The money would go to Pratt and his “partners” to finance the operations in Ventura.

Then, Pratt said, Cockrell wanted him to kill the couple and destroy their home in a fire.

The kidnapping was to have taken place Wednesday, and the courthouse was to have been bombed by Nov. 3, Pratt testified.

Cockrell seemed paranoid about being watched by police, and swept Pratt with a radio-frequency detector nearly every time they met to make sure he was not wearing a radio transmitter.

In fact, Pratt testified, he taped most of his meetings with Cockrell.

Cockrell also offered a $2,000 cash down-payment for the kidnap-murder of the car dealer and his wife--but handed Pratt a dummy payment package at first.

Pratt made as if to leave their meeting, and Cockrell stopped him and revealed he had paid the agent with an envelope full of blank paper cut to the shape and size of cash, according to testimony.

Cockrell then handed the real cash to the undercover agent, saying the dummy was a safeguard “to see if we were being watched because he figured if we were . . . ‘jumped’ and ‘arrested’ that he would not have given me any money,” Pratt said.

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At several points, Pratt testified that he questioned Cockrell’s intentions.

“I have asked him on several occasions, ‘Frank, you realize that this is real, that people are going to die, innocent people are going to die in this situation?’ ” Pratt testified.

“And he said, ‘I can’t do anything else. I have to do this. They’ve driven me to this and they deserve it.’ ”