Bomb-Plot Suspect Has Host of Legal Woes

How many kinds of trouble can one man face? Frank Boyd Cockrell II might have a good idea.

The 49-year-old Sherman Oaks businessman has been accused of plotting a campaign of murder, robbery, arson and sabotage to support an even more violent plan--blowing up the Ventura County Courthouse.

He has been slapped with a temporary restraining order by his ex-wife, who apparently has fled the country with three of his children, say sources close to the investigation.

And he still faces a trial--which prosecutors say he hoped to erase by destroying the courthouse--on charges that he swindled investors of millions of dollars with a bogus construction bonding company tied to the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.

On Wednesday, Ventura County’s Superior Court judges will rule on whether Frank Cockrell is simply too hot--legally speaking--to continue handling.

Cockrell has asked the court to set bail for him so he can be released until his Nov. 3 trial.

But Judge Vincent J. O’Neill Jr. has expressed doubt that any Ventura County judge could rule on any matter related to someone accused of plotting to destroy the very building where he and other judges worked.

If not, the fraud and bomb-plot cases likely will be handed over to an out-of-county judge.

Cockrell’s attorney, Edward Whipple, has instructed him not to talk to the press, and Whipple himself declined to comment.

But people close to Cockrell say he is just not capable of what he is accused of: plotting to destroy a government building with a truck bomb during business hours so as to kill as many judges and prosecutors as possible.

“You never know somebody all the way, but I’ve known Frank a long time, and it’s kind of surprising to me he’d even attempt something like that,” said John Cade, a friend of Cockrell’s since 1980. “This to me is very [farfetched]. This is something a movie would be made out of.”

Veteran defense attorney James Farley represented Cockrell after the Ventura County Grand Jury indicted him and five others in 1995 on charges of grand theft, securities fraud and money laundering, some of which allegedly occurred in Ventura County.

“I don’t think that there’s much validity to [the fraud charges] myself from what I know of the case. I think the majority of them are very far-reaching by the prosecution,” said Farley, who bowed out of the case after six months because of an unidentified legal conflict.

“I don’t believe for one minute that Frank would blow up anything,” Farley added. “But you know, he’s been under a lot of stress--the fraud trial and the allegations that there are against him.”

Born in Northern California to parents linked to the Sears, Roebuck empire, Cockrell was schooled in government and the law, weaned on local politics and honored for his achievements with small-time political appointments, according to court documents.

He married a former Sorbonne (Paris) university student 14 years his junior who is related to high-ranking justice officials in Senegal, and fathered two children with her. Cockrell also has children from previous marriages.

Cockrell’s achievements read like a Who’s Who entry--as, in fact, they are, in at least five editions of Who’s Who in California, Who’s Who in the West and Who’s Who in Entertainment.

Why, then, has Cockrell been accused by an undercover federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent of this: paying the agent $2,000 to kidnap, rob and kill a Sherman Oaks car dealer and his wife to help finance a string of crimes that would have included rocket attacks on the Ventura Freeway, the arson of a Ventura refinery and the courthouse bomb attack meant to kill Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury?

His biography offers no clue.

*

Born May 3, 1948, in Redding, Frank Cockrell was the son of career teachers Alfred Marion Cockrell and Blanche Delma Cockrell.

He grew up in Redding, eventually earning an associate’s degree from Shasta Junior College in 1968 and a bachelor’s degree in government from Cal State Sacramento in 1970. He also took two years of law classes at the McGeorge Law School in Sacramento, according to court documents.

“Frank’s father was an inventor, and is credited with inventing the portable riveting gun to build airplanes during World War II, and assisting with the design of the Boeing DC-3,” wrote lawyer George Eskin, in a plea to have bail reduced in 1995 for Cockrell’s wife and co-defendant in the securities fraud case, Grace Whest Cockrell.

“Frank has continued his family’s tradition of industry by working his way through college, holding a variety of jobs,” says Eskin’s biography of the Cockrells. “And he raised money for children-oriented charities” and worked as a volunteer teacher for the Job Corps.

Cockrell held a variety of jobs: janitor, grocery clerk, gas station attendant, mechanic, jewelry salesman and U.S. Forest Service employee, the biography states.

His Who’s Who entries list his hobbies as karate, scuba diving, movies, swimming and boating. And the entries say he spent some time in politics, working on gubernatorial campaigns such as Ronald Reagan’s and serving on the state Republican Central Committee.

The biography also reports that Cockrell worked as the chief consultant to the state Senate Committee on Elections and Reapportionment. Legislative records only show that he was employed by the Senate at some point.

From 1976 to 1978, Cockrell ran companies called Al’s Towing and Storage Co. and Compacts Only Rental Cars.

About the same time, Cockrell apparently joined two acting unions--the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Actors. Both unions verified to The Times that Cockrell had been a member, although AFTRA has record of membership for him only in 1977, and SAG noted that he was not active among its members after 1995.

*

Cockrell also claimed some experience as a movie producer, actor and comedian, although this cannot be verified beyond his listing as chairman of a company called Cockrell Productions in his biographies.

The biography also says that Grace Whest Cockrell traveled to Los Angeles in 1979 to pursue an acting career, but that eventually took a back seat to her marriage to Cockrell and caring for the children. Hollywood stuntman John Cade, a Sylmar resident, said the Cockrells sometimes brought their children to his house to play with his kids. The two men grew to be friends, and occasionally talked about the movie business. Cockrell, he said, seemed very interested in producing some kind of movie.

When Cade was badly burned during a stunt accident on the set of TV’s “The Fall Guy” 13 years ago, he recalled, “Frank was driving up north to go see his mother. He turned around and came back when he heard about [the accident] on the radio, and rushed back to the hospital to make sure I was OK and I was going to make it.

“Frank always . . . tried to see the best in people, although sometimes it didn’t work out,” Cade added. “When his wife broke up with him, he wanted to get back together, and I warned him about it, but he got back together and she did it again.”

When the Cockrells were indicted in December 1995, Cade posted his house for bail so they could be released pending trial. A year later, as divorce proceedings for the Cockrells were in full swing, Cade said he reluctantly decided not to renew the bond because he could not be sure it would weather the couple’s dispute.

*

After agents arrested Cockrell last month on suspicion of attempted murder and solicitation of murder, Cade said, he could not believe the news.

“They said he was planning to do all this crazy stuff, and I don’t see that in Frank,” Cade said.

But Cockrell’s foot-thick court file shows he bore increasing animosity toward Ventura County prosecutors as his fraud case progressed--and that he particularly disliked Bradbury, whom he accused of having people killed to further his political ends.

Bradbury has refused to comment on the case, as has the lead prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Mark Aveis.

But court files show Cockrell and his attorneys have made numerous attempts to quash his prosecution, filing several motions for court orders to remove Bradbury, his staff and even Superior Court Judge Vincent J. O’Neill from the case.

In one motion that he wrote, Cockrell accuses Bradbury of using “Gestapo tactics” and “making death threats.”

In late January, Cockrell wrote and filed a motion in neat penciled cursive on blue-lined paper, seeking access to records of Bradbury and O’Neill’s work.

“The defense intends to show that Michael Bradbury, the Ventura County District Attorney, has a history of making death threats, using his political power from his office to carry out the death threats, abuses his political power to support judges who act in Mr. Bradbury’s favor when called upon, thereby creating injustices,” Cockrell wrote. “Mr. Bradbury has a history of killing or destroying individuals for political purposes.”

*

The motion was denied.

Meanwhile, Cockrell’s fraud case is proceeding toward a Nov. 3 trial date.

He, his wife, Grace, and three others are accused of swindling people who believed they were buying stock in a company that sold surety bonds to minority building contractors involved with the 1996 Olympics.

Prosecutors say they have evidence from multiple bank accounts that shows the money paid to First American Contractors Bonding Assn. was funneled elsewhere for Cockrell’s personal use.

Even if he succeeds in persuading O’Neill to hear his case Wednesday, set bail and release him, Cockrell would be quickly arrested by Los Angeles authorities on a warrant for attempted murder and solicitation for murder in connection with allegations he paid the undercover ATF agent to kidnap, rob and murder the Sherman Oaks car dealer and his wife.

At the same time, the ATF is still investigating the bomb-plot allegations, said John Torres, assistant special agent in charge of the bureau’s Los Angeles office.

“We are conducting interviews with various witnesses in this case, and are attempting to locate more,” Torres said Friday.

The bureau is also looking for clues about associates of Cockrell’s by tracing four rifles--including a Galil assault rifle--that agents seized in a search of Cockrell’s house last month, Torres said.

He added, “We believe that Mr. Cockrell was serious in his attempt to hire a person to do his dirty work.”