COCKRELL CRAZY BUT NOT GUILTY, ATTORNEY SAYS.

Byline: Michael Gougis Staff Writer

Paranoid, suspicious and going broke, discredited Sherman Oaks financier and convicted felon Frank Boyd Cockrell borrowed tricks from crime novels and movies to play the role of mad bomber simply to find out who was trying to set him up, his attorney said Friday.

``There's a backdrop of a little bit of craziness ... actually, a lot of craziness,'' defense attorney Robert Schwartz said in closing arguments Friday in the trial of Cockrell, 55, on four counts of solicitation of murder.

``Cockrell believed he was dealing with an undercover agent right from the beginning ... who obviously would not carry out murders, bombings, etc.''

But Deputy District Attorney Paul Sergojan told jurors that no matter who Cockrell thought he was dealing with, the moment he offered to pay someone to destroy the Ventura County courthouse and kill the people inside it, he was guilty of soliciting murder.

``You don't speculate; you don't bring conjecture in,'' Sergojan said. ``Convict him as judges of fact in this case.''

Incensed, prosecutors said, by fraud charges pending against him in Ventura County, Cockrell paid an undercover agent for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms $2,000 as a down payment for a series of attacks against freeway bridges, an oil refinery and the Ventura County government complex.

Cockrell took photos of the intended targets and gave them to the agent. Cockrell also gave the agent the names of people who could be kidnapped and killed to raise money for the operation, photos of their businesses, and a hand-sketched drawing of their homes.

Cockrell said he was simply playing along with the agent, trying to determine whether he was - as Cockrell suspected - an informant for prosecutors trying to set him up on further criminal charges. At the time, Cockrell was facing 24 felony charges of theft, grand theft, fraud and other financial misdeeds.

At one meeting, Cockrell had a wad of newspaper cut up to appear to be a stack of cash that he planned to hand to the agent - although he wound up giving the agent the real money.

``I figured they'd identify themselves, arrest me, then let me go because I'd given them paper,'' Cockrell testified Friday, laying out another plan he'd taken from a John Grisham novel.

``But then I'd know who they were.''

Cockrell's son disputed that, saying the real money was to make sure the ATF agent would stay interested in the plot.

But Sergojan argued that, in addition to the federal agents, Cockrell also had met with at least two other people who were not federal agents, trying to find someone who would build him a bomb, and walked away from those plans only because he lacked the cash to carry them out.

Cockrell was convicted in 1998 on 13 felony counts and sentenced to 10 years in prison. If convicted on all counts, he could be sentenced to 36 years in prison.