On August 28, 2003, pizza delivery man Brian Wells was forced to rob a PNC bank in Erie, Pennsylvania — or else be blown up with an explosive collar.
Erie Federal Courthouse/Erie Bureau of Police via WiredSecurity camera footage of Brian Wells walking toward the bank’s exit, bomb strapped around his neck, just after the robbery.
On August 28, 2003, Brian Wells’ pizza delivery in Erie, Pennsylvania went horribly wrong — when it ended with him dying thanks to a bomb locked around his neck.
Wells’ workday at Mama-Mia’s Pizza-Ria was proceeding normally when an order came in at 1:30 p.m. The 46-year-old delivery man was sent to bring two small pizzas to an address on the outskirts of town.
But when Brian Wells got to the address, everything quickly changed. Rather than a house, the location to which Wells had been sent was a TV transmission tower surrounded by woods. What exactly happened there remains mysterious, but what we do know is that someone locked a bomb collar around Brian Wells’ neck and ordered him to rob a PNC bank in Erie or else he would explode.
So began the story of the “Pizza Bomber” robbery case, one of the strangest bank heists in history.
Who Were Brian Wells And Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong?
NetflixBrian Wells, the “Pizza Bomber” forced to rob PNC bank in Erie, Pennsylvania on August 28, 2003.
Brian Wells was born on November 15, 1956, in Warren, Pennsylvania. He was one of six children and often struggled with his severe shyness in childhood.
When he was 16 years old, Wells dropped out of high school to be a mechanic. Later, he took up other jobs, including a pizza delivery driver for Mama Mia’s Pizza-Ria in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Wells maintained a strong relationship with his mother his whole life, even living with her at his time of death.
On the other hand, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong’s story was rife with conflict, long before the “Pizza Bomber” case unfolded. She was born on February 26, 1949, in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Surprisingly, Diehl-Armstrong was a high-performing student and even served as her high school’s valedictorian. In the early 1970s, she was a successful graduate student pursuing a degree in education when she began struggling with bipolar disorder.
Her mental health continued to deteriorate with age, and soon Diehl-Armstrong began exhibiting concerning violent behavior.
In 1984, she shot and killed her boyfriend, Robert Thomas, while he laid on the couch. She was later acquitted for this crime after claiming self defense. When police searched her home, they found stacks of junk and rotten food — likely a result of her bipolar-driven hoarding compulsion.
She also shot and killed her boyfriend, James Roden, in 2003 after he threatened to tell the police about the pizza bombing plot. She would later stuff his body in a freezer.
“She was a whirlwind,” her lawyer in the pizza bomber trial, Douglas Sughrue, told GoErie. “You didn’t know what you were going to get from her at anytime. In one three-hour meeting in jail, I think I got three different moods of hers.”
As expected, when Brian Wells crossed paths with Diehl-Armstrong, it eventually escalated into a nightmare scenario.
The Bizarre “Pizza Bomber” Bank Heist Unfolds In Erie, Pennsylvania
Netflix Police create a barrier between themselves and Brian Wells while the bomb is strapped to his neck.
When Brian Wells arrived at the PNC bank in Erie, Pennsylvania, he handed the teller a note demanding $250,000 within the next 15 minutes. However, the teller explained that she couldn’t gather that big of an amount and only gave him $8,702.
Even though Wells was carrying a gun and the person who’d locked the bomb around Wells’ neck told him that he was being watched, a nervous and fearful Wells left the bank with the $8,702.
Shortly afterward, the bank contacted the police, who quickly found Brian Wells standing outside his car in a nearby parking lot. That’s when things took a deadly turn and the “Pizza Bomber” incident began to hurtle toward its disturbing climax.
Wells told police that people had placed the bomb around his neck and that it would go off unless he completed a scavenger hunt. This hunt would eventually lead to keys that he could use to to free himself from the device.
As police called in the bomb squad and then took cover, Wells sat on a parking lot of an eyeglass shop near the bank.
Federal Bureau of InvestigationThe metal collar device that was locked around Wells’ neck.
The collar exploded three minutes before the bomb squad arrived and 30 minutes after the robbery. It ripped a hole in the chest of Brian Wells and he died on the pavement.
Authorities searched Wells’ car, leading them to the scavenger hunt clues — Wells had been telling the truth about that.
In fact, Wells had already retrieved the first clue between the time when he left the bank and when the cops picked him up. It was a two-page note that explained that the rest of the clues would let him live and then directed him to his next clue.
FBIThe scavenger hunt note discovered in Brian Wells’ car.
When police followed the trail to the next clue in the “Pizza Bomber” case, they found that someone had already deliberately removed it. Now authorities had more reason to suspect that Brian Wells had been telling the truth and that there were other conspirators involved in this bizarre plot, one of the strangest heists in modern history.
The Police Try To Uncover The Full Story Behind Brian Wells’ Death
ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock PhotoFBI Evidence Response Team Members collect evidence in the Brian Wells Case.
Not only was the story of Brian Wells and the “Pizza Bomber” bank robbery downright bizarre, it was extraordinarily complicated and fraught with conflicting stories from those involved.
Things grew more complicated three weeks after the botched bank robbery when a man named Bill Rothstein called police to confess that there was a body in his freezer. Police soon found that the body belonged to James Roden, Diehl-Armstrong’s former boyfriend.
Initially, Rothstein told police that Roden’s death had nothing to do with the Brian Wells case. Instead, he said that his ex-girlfriend, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, had killed Roden in a dispute over money and contacted Rothstein for help in disposing of the body. He’d initially agreed to help but now decided he couldn’t go through with it.
Later, Rothstein claimed that Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong hatched the “Pizza Bomber” bank robbery plot because her father was squandering her multimillion-dollar inheritance and she needed money to pay a hitman to kill him before all the money was gone. Diehl-Armstrong then killed Roden when he threatened to tell police about the whole thing.
Erie Federal Courthouse/Erie Bureau of Police via WiredBill Rothstein, the man who confessed to the police about the plot.
Police now had enough to arrest Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, but Rothstein’s role in the whole affair remained unclear. Was Diehl-Armstrong actually the mastermind and was he as relatively innocent as he presented himself to be?
Those questions would become harder to answer after Rothstein died of lymphoma in 2004 before he could be brought to justice for his part in the Brian Wells “Pizza Bomber” case.
Investigators Close In On “Evil Genius” Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong
Erie Federal Courthouse/Erie Bureau of Police via WiredMarjorie Diehl-Armstrong, the suspected “Evil Genius” behind the “Pizza Bomber” bank robbery.
It soon began to look like Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong was the actual evil genius after all. She’d already pleaded guilty to the Roden murder and received seven to 20 years for it in 2005, but her role in the “Pizza Bomber” bank robbery was harder to suss out until another conspirator came forward.
In 2005, a man named Kenneth Barnes was turned in to police by a family member after speaking freely of his involvement in the Brian Wells case. Once in custody, Barnes cooperated with police and, like Rothstein, claimed that Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong was the mastermind behind the whole operation.
Furthermore, with help from Barnes, authorities soon came to realize that Brian Wells wasn’t an innocent pizza delivery guy who simply got unlucky. In fact, Barnes told authorities that Wells was in on the plot from the beginning.
As Wells understood it, the bomb around his neck was supposed to be a fake, a decoy that he’d use to threaten the bank employees. With the cash, Wells planned on settling some of his debts.
However, when he went to the secluded area by the TV tower, he learned that the other conspirators led by Diehl-Armstrong had changed their minds and put a real bomb around his neck.
Was Brian Wells A Victim Or A Perpetrator In The “Pizza Bomber” Robbery?
Brian Wells’ family was shocked by the announcement. To this day, they maintain that he was an unwitting victim in a bizarre chain of events. The family says that the authorities bungled the investigation of the “Pizza Bomber” case from the beginning. They also believe the co-conspirators simply lied about Wells’ involvement as a cover story.
However, Barnes stuck to his story about Wells’ involvement. And even though he’d cooperated with authorities, he was still sentenced to 45 years in prison after pleading guilty to bank robbing charges in 2008.
Two years later, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, the woman who everyone had called the mastermind, got her day in court in the bank robbing case. She appeared unhinged on the stand as she ranted unceasingly and ignored the judges’ demands to control herself.
The jury easily convicted her on the bank robbing charges and sentenced her to life in prison. That life wouldn’t last long, however, as she died of cancer in 2017.
But was she the mastermind in the Brian Wells “Pizza Bomber” case all along? At least one investigator, retired FBI agent Jim Fisher, believes that Rothstein was the one who actually had the bomb-making abilities to concoct the whole plot. We may never know who the true evil genius of the Evil Genius case was for sure.
After this look at Brian Wells, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, and Evil Genius, read about 11 murder-for-hire plots that went totally wrong. Then, watch a murderer give an interview about his deceased neighbor before he was caught.
