It’s an image seared in the minds of Americans — a pizza delivery man, seated on the ground in front of a patrol car, handcuffed, with a collar bomb around his neck, minutes after robbing a bank in Erie on Aug. 28, 2003.
And then the unthinkable happened, on live television — the collar bomb exploded, killing Brian Wells and setting off a bizarre criminal case with links to crack cocaine, a dead body in a freezer, a murder-for-hire plot and even a plot to kill the federal agents working the case.
On Tuesday night, lead investigator Dr. Jerry Clark, a former FBI agent, talked about the case at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford. More than 100 people were in attendance for the presentation.
Clark began by explaining the “pizza bomber” case is counted as a FBI major case, as are cases such as Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing, the Olympic park bombing and perhaps the biggest of them all, Sept. 11, 2001.
“Tucked in there with these major cases is Erie, PA,” Clark said. “August 28th, 2003, for me it changed what I do and who I am. It’s interwoven with everything I do.”
The incident began with the bank robbery at PNC Bank on Peach Street in Erie, not far from the Millcreek Mall. Showing still photos from the bank’s security cameras, Clark explained Wells entered the bank and said it was a robbery and he needed $250,000 in cash. “This picture told me a number of things,” Clark said, pointing out dirt on Wells’ pants — “why?”— something carried in his right hand — “a cane?” — something under his shirt — “one of those halos you wear when you have neck surgery?” — and something in his mouth. “It was a sucker, a lollipop he took off the counter at the bank. Does a guy who has a bomb around his neck have the wherewithal to grab a sucker?”
After the robbery, people in the bank called 911, and one witness watched Wells’ movements until the police arrived moments later. Laying out a time line for the incident, Clark said at 1:30 p.m., Mama Mia’s pizza on Peach Street in Erie gets a call for a pizza delivery from a payphone. At 1:47 p.m., Wells leaves the restaurant with the pizza. At 2:27 p.m., Wells enters the bank, at 2:38 p.m., he exits. At 2:47 p.m., he is arrested in the parking lot of Eyeglass World on Peach Street and at 3:18 p.m., the collar bomb detonates, killing Wells.
During the time Wells was in police custody, he proclaimed his innocence, saying he had been kidnapped when he delivered the pizzas and was forced into the collar bomb, and then forced to rob the bank. However, Clark said, the FBI investigation later showed that Wells was in on the plot, but did not know the collar bomb was the real thing.
Law enforcement eventually discovered the plan had Wells robbing the bank, passing off the money in the parking lot to co-conspirator William Rothstein, who would hide the money for another person to pick up. Then Wells was to follow a “scavenger hunt” to get the keys to unlock the bomb from around his neck.
“They never meant for this device to come off his neck,” Clark said.
A few days after the robbery and bomb detonation, a second delivery driver from the same pizza place was found dead of a drug overdose. Three weeks later, Rothstein called 911 to say he was planning to kill himself and had a dead body in his freezer. When police searched his home — which was next to the site where Wells delivered the pizzas right before he went to the bank — they found the body of Jim Roden. And they found Rothstein’s suicide note, which said, “This has nothing to do with the Wells case.”
It turned out that it did. Rothstein, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, a prostitute named Jessica, a fugitive named Floyd Stockton and a crack addict named Ken Barnes were all involved, Clark explained. Roden had been Diehl-Armstrong’s boyfriend, but threatened to turn the group in to the police. So she killed him, Clark said. At one time, she and Rothstein had a relationship, and the two hid Roden’s body in Rothstein’s garage inside a freezer.
The crux of the case, Clark said, was a plot by Diehl-Armstrong to kill her father for his money. Barnes said he would do it for $250,000, so the group hatched a plot to rob a bank for the money. The death of the second delivery man was connected, too, Clark said, as he was recruited to help convince Wells to rob the bank in the first place.
Clark explained that during the investigation, Diehl-Armstrong spoke extensively to jailhouse informants, who told investigators she was trying to hire someone to kill them.
Speaking of the investigation, Clark said he and Erie Times-News reporter Ed Palattella co-authored a book, “Pizza Bomber: The Untold Story of America’s Most Shocking Bank Robbery.”
“It took a long time to get where we got,” he said, explaining the plot and its in-depth contents are revealed in more detail in the book.
“The whole plan was just very overcooked,” Clark said.
Rothstein died of cancer before being officially linked to the crime. Diehl-Armstrong is serving a life sentence for her part; Barnes was sentenced to 45 years; Stockton was never charged, as he’d agreed to testify. However, he had a heart attack during Diehl-Armstrong’s trial and never testified.
After Clark’s presentation, he took questions from the crowd. One person asked the questions on the minds of most — without Rothstein’s phone call, would the case have been broken?
“I don’t know,” Clark said honestly. “It would have been difficult to do.”
Wells’ family still maintains his innocence in the case, saying he was a victim and not a conspirator.
