Man Held in Plot to Bomb Ventura Courthouse

Undercover federal agents Wednesday arrested a Sherman Oaks man who they said plotted to blow up the Ventura County Courthouse to wipe out his upcoming trial on charges of securities fraud.

Frank Boyd Cockrell II “wanted to have maximum damage at the courthouse to obliterate all the evidence in his case” before his Nov. 3 trial, said John Torres, assistant special agent for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

“He wanted to inflict as much damage as possible,” Torres said.

Cockrell was weighing several plans for destroying the sprawling, four-story courthouse in Ventura, including using military munitions and building and detonating a truck bomb, investigators said.

ATF agents arrested Cockrell, 49, at his Sherman Oaks home and held him on charges of solicitation to murder. They then spent the day executing a search warrant on the house.

The arrest sprang out of a two-month investigation, authorities said, during which Ventura County sheriff’s deputies learned that Cockrell had formulated a complex plan for destroying the courthouse, which sits across a courtyard from the Ventura County Government Center.

Cockrell met twice with an undercover ATF agent who was posing as a member of an anti-government militia group. One meeting took place at a Marie Callenders restaurant in Sherman Oaks and the other in the parking lot of an In ‘N’ Out hamburger restaurant nearby, Torres said.

“The guy did do reconnaissance on the courthouse, and he provided photographs of the building to the agent,” Torres said. “We took the threat seriously. . . . He wanted to destroy the courthouse, but he also had a dislike for the district attorney [Michael D. Bradbury] himself.”

The plan was for the ATF agent to lure a well-to-do Sherman Oaks businessman and his wife out to a place where he and Cockrell could shoot them to death, then take their money, jewelry and other valuables to finance the bombing, Torres said. Cockrell knew the couple from business dealings.

Cockrell gave the agent a $2,000 down payment for the killings--providing agents with enough evidence to arrest him on state charges and hold him while they prepare federal charges in the alleged bomb plot, Torres said.

Cockrell was being held without bail Wednesday at a Los Angeles County jail and has chosen to be arraigned in Los Angeles County, said Ventura County Deputy Dist. Atty. Mark Aveis.

But Aveis said that if Cockrell chooses to ask for a judge to set bail, he must do so in a Ventura County court, where his no-bail warrant was issued. He would likely be returned to the Ventura County Courthouse for a hearing, Aveis said.

Cockrell was indicted on fraud and grand-theft charges by the Ventura County Grand Jury on Dec. 11, 1995, after a two-year investigation by the district attorney’s office led to charges that he had been swindling investors.

Cockrell and his wife, Grace Whest Cockrell, and four other men were accused of bilking people who thought they were buying stock in a company purported to be in the business of selling surety bonds to minority building contractors involved with the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

That company--First American Contractors Bonding Assn.--is owned by Cockrell and his wife.

Aveis said the money came from investors large and small, including a Ventura County physician who invested $400,000 of his pension in the scheme and Susan Forward, the author of the book “Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them.”

Prosecutors have evidence from multiple bank accounts that shows the money was funneled elsewhere for Cockrell’s personal use, Aveis said.

The indictment charged the couple and four other men with grand theft, securities fraud, selling unregistered securities, money laundering and tax evasion.

All pleaded not guilty.

Grace Cockrell has since fled the country and is believed to be in Europe, Aveis said. A federal court has issued a warrant for her arrest on charges of interstate flight.

Sheriff’s Capt. Keith Parks said it is unclear whether Frank Cockrell ever possessed military ordnance or simply asked the undercover agent if he was able to get military materiel capable of blowing up the courthouse.

“We’re not saying that he ever did have any in his possession,” Parks said.

“When that came up, we brought in ATF. They brought in one of their agents and that agent became an operative,” Parks said.

“The solicitation to kill the businessman happened in L.A. County, and the solicitation to bomb the Ventura County Courthouse happened in Los Angeles County,” Parks said. “It all occurred in L.A. County.”

Cockrell was out on bail on the fraud case being investigated by the Ventura County district attorney’s office. “At some point, the Sheriff’s Department got word that he was soliciting to bomb the courthouse,” Parks said.

Torres praised the cooperation between his agency and authorities in Ventura and Los Angeles counties.

“This was a significant case for the citizens of Ventura in that we were able to circumvent this catastrophe before it happened,” Torres said. “It’s not often that law enforcement is this lucky.”

Times staff writers Scott Hadly and Jose Cardenas and correspondent Scott Steepleton contributed to this story.