The Bizarre Bank Robbery That Involved a Pizza Deliveryman With a Bomb Chained Around His Neck

A pizza delivery man robbed a bank in Pennsylvania, and soon died in a bomb blast as police tried to get hold of him. The case continued to boggle investigators for years, revealing one twist after another.

In 2003, the perpetrator, Brian Wells, entered a bank in Erie, Pennsylvania, threatening the teller to give him $250,000, Metro reported.

Wells told the teller that he had a bomb attached to him and would go off if he was not given the money, Metro reported. The teller tried to open the vault but couldn't, and in the end, Wells left the bank with just $8,702 in his hands and was soon arrested.

During questioning, Wells confessed that the threat was genuine and he did have a collar bomb attached to him, Metro reported.

The pizza deliveryman pleading for help from police bomb squad officers was aired on local TV stations, BBC reported. By the time bomb squad officers arrived it was too late. The bomb had exploded and killed Wells. His family criticized the police for not being fast with their life-saving measures.

Marshall Piccinini, Assistant United States Attorney, does not think the police were to blame for Wells' death, BBC reported.

"The collar bomb was designed in such a way that any attempt to manually deactivate it would have set it off. The only person who could safely disarm it was the person who created it," Piccinini explained.

Wells had claimed before his death that three black men put the collar bomb on him, Metro reported. Police followed the lead but to no avail. Before the robbery, Wells had delivered pizza to a TV transmission tower.

A month later, Bill Rothstein, who lived beside the tower called the police to report a frozen dead body of James Roden in his freezer, Metro reported. Rothstein claimed that Roden's ex-fiancee, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, was the one responsible for the death.

The crime was reported after Rothstein had kept the body in his freezer for five weeks, Metro reported. The man alleged that he did so because he was afraid of Diehl-Armstrong.

Diehl-Armstrong was arrested for Roden's death. She pled guilty to the murder charge and was sentenced to 20 years in prison after proving that she was mentally ill.

Before Roden's death, Diehl Armstrong's ex-boyfriend Robert Thomas was shot by her, but she was acquitted after she claimed that the attack was done in self-defense.

Diehl-Armstrong made a deal with officials to get a transfer to a minimum-security prison, Metro reported. In exchange for the move, she confessed to being involved in the Erie bank robbery.

She agreed to have supplied the kitchen timers for the bomb. The woman alleged that the mastermind behind the robbery was Rothstein. The confession came in 2005, and Rothstein had already died in 2004 due to cancer. She alleged that Wells was in on the robbery.

A few months after the confession, another co-conspirator, Kenneth Barnes, was nabbed by police, Metro reported. He claimed that Diehl-Armstrong was the mastermind behind the robbery.

According to Barnes, Diehl-Armstrong planned the robbery as she needed money to pay him in exchange for killing her father. She wanted to kill her father because she believed he was wasting away her inheritance.

An informant claimed that Roden was killed by Diehl-Armstrong because he wanted to tell somebody about the robbery, Metro reported.

Police also got to know from a tipster that Wells did not know initially that the bomb he was wearing was real. He was double-crossed and the group allegedly wanted him to die after being caught up in the hoax scavenger hunt, the outlet reported.

In 2008, Barnes was tried and sentenced to 45 years in prison on bank robbery, conspiracy, and weapons charges, Metro reported. Diehl-Armstrong was sentenced to life in prison in 2011 for her part. She died in 2017.  

Wells' family never fully believed that he willingly became a part of the robbery, BBC reported.

Piccinini claims that all evidence indicates Wells' direct involvement.  "We have evidence that Mr Wells was at various meetings with the conspirators and he was witnessed driving from Rothstein's house the day before the robbery. He wasn't just an uninvolved target," he said.