Anger at D.A. Led to Plot, Agent Says

Frank Cockrell was so angry about his pending prosecution on fraud charges that he tried to hire a group of anti-government militiamen to blow up the Ventura County Courthouse, according to testimony Wednesday in his fraud trial.

What he got was an undercover agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

“He told me he wanted to destroy the Ventura County Courthouse, specifically the third floor, and kill as many D.A.s, judges and investigators as possible and destroy evidence,” said ATF Agent Charles Pratt.

And that wasn’t all, Pratt testified: Cockrell also wanted to knock down two freeway overpasses with a rocket launcher, ignite a huge fire at an oil refinery, rob several jewelry stores and generally rain mayhem upon Ventura County, where he felt he was being mistreated.

Cockrell then wanted to write a movie script about the wild plot, Pratt said.

Cockrell, 49, a Sherman Oaks financial consultant, is charged with swindling investors out of thousands of dollars with phony money-making schemes, as well as bilking insurance companies.

Although Cockrell will face charges for the alleged bomb plot in a separate trial in Los Angeles County, Ventura County Superior Court Judge Vincent J. O’Neill ruled in March that testimony about the plot would be allowed in the fraud trial because it shows possible “consciousness of guilt.”

To finance the plan, Pratt said, Cockrell suggested that Pratt kidnap a Van Nuys car dealer and his wife and, while holding the wife hostage, force the car dealer to go to his various businesses and collect money. Afterward, the plan was to kill the couple and burn down their home, Pratt testified.

However, defense attorney Ed Whipple questioned the assumption that Cockrell was serious about the plan.

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“Didn’t this ever sound like a movie to you?” Whipple asked Pratt during cross-examination.

After that question drew an objection, he offered another: “Did you think this plan was absurd?” he asked Pratt. “Did it sound delusional?”

According to testimony, the agent called Cockrell late last September to tell him the kidnapping had been done and asked him to meet him at a fast-food restaurant in Van Nuys. When Cockrell didn’t show up, Pratt called him again.

Cockrell was arrested while driving to meet him, Pratt testified.

But Whipple pointed out that Pratt did not know where Cockrell was headed and suggested that his client was merely circling his home in his car to see if he was being watched.

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During cross-examination, Whipple suggested that Cockrell was distressed because he believed that he and his son had been threatened by the district attorney, that there was a plan to beat him up in jail orchestrated by the district attorney and that local police informants were solicited by authorities to rob his home.

In addition, Whipple pointed out that in the more than 15 hours of recordings the agent made of his meetings and telephone calls with Cockrell, the embattled financier never specifically said that he wanted to blow up anything.

But Pratt said such a conversation occurred.

Posing as the leader of an underground cell of anti-government militiamen from Central California, Pratt had met with Cockrell over a monthlong period last August and September.

In one of their taped meetings Cockrell said he wanted to “create, you know, havoc--to say the least.”

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In recorded telephone conversation with another undercover agent, the agent told Cockrell that Pratt had been a sniper in Vietnam and was not to be messed with.

“Well, I’m sure,” Cockrell said. “I’m not looking for Mary Poppins in the first place.”

Cockrell’s trial is set to continue Monday, when prosecutor Mark Aveis is expected to call his last three witnesses.

Cockrell is likely to take the stand in his own defense, his attorney said.