Suspect Loses His Bid to Remove Local Prosecutors

Frank Boyd Cockrell II, the man accused of launching an elaborate plot to blow up the Ventura County Courthouse, lost a bid in court Friday to have local prosecutors removed from a separate fraud case.

Cockrell was indicted two years ago on charges of swindling investors in a bogus stock scheme. Now, he also faces separate charges of attempted murder and solicitation to commit murder in Los Angeles County for allegedly masterminding a bomb plot.

In court Friday, defense attorney Edward Whipple urged a judge to remove Ventura County prosecutors from the fraud case on the grounds they had become potential victims and could no longer be evenhanded.

But Superior Court Judge Vincent J. O’Neill said that since the bomb plot did not come close to fruition, local prosecutors were only “hypothetical and distant” victims.

He said no misconduct or bias has been shown on the part of prosecutors, and decided that the fraud case should stay with local authorities.

“We have in this situation a prosecuting office doing its job in its lawful authority in response to the alleged actions of someone they were prosecuting,” the judge said.

The judge added that Cockrell’s fraud case had been filed two years before the alleged bomb plot came to light.

And to let a case be handed over to a different prosecuting agency simply because the defendant made threats, he said, would set a dangerous precedent: allowing a defendant to dictate where and by whom he would be prosecuted.

Cockrell, a 49-year-old Sherman Oaks businessman, was scheduled to go to trial on the fraud charges this week. It was the Nov. 3 trial date that authorities say Cockrell had hoped to avoid by firebombing the courthouse.

In the fraud case, Cockrell and four other people are accused of scamming investors who thought they were buying stock in a company that sold surety bonds to minority building contractors involved in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.

But the fraud case took an unusual turn when an agent from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms alleged that Cockrell had tried to hire him to destroy the courthouse with a truck bomb to eliminate all the evidence against him.

Defense attorney Whipple sought a postponement on the recusal motion Friday, arguing that prosecutors had not turned over all their reports from the federal investigation of the alleged bomb plot.

Whipple said he needed the documents to better understand the level of emotional involvement on the part of local prosecutors to the case. But Deputy Dist. Atty. Mark Aevis said that he had not received the reports from federal agents yet and was unable to provide them to the defense.

O’Neill refused to delay the case, telling the lawyers that reports and transcripts would make no difference to the issue before them Friday.

The next scheduled hearing in the case is set for Dec. 9, when Cockrell is scheduled to go to trial on the fraud charges.