One Detonation From Murder

One Detonation I’m sure you’ve seen some video or coverage of this story in the past. I remember when I did and it made me nauseous. It made such an impression that I’ve not forgotten about it, shockingly. I didn’t know much of the story behind it though, so I wanted to delve into the details. Speaking of details, this case has many twists and turns so I’ll try to make it as clear as possible. On August 28 of 2003, a man walked into a PNC bank in Erie Pennsylvania with a bomb fastened around his neck and carrying a cane that was also a gun. He was calm and unhurried as he walked up to the tellers, handed them a note and pulled a lollipop out of the basket at the teller desk. The note wasn’t like the usual ones bank robbers give to tellers that say something like, “I’m armed, give me all your money.” This note was a very long-ass note. It was 9 pages of rambling instructions. Some of the pages were meant for the teller, some for the police and others were instructions for the bank robber himself to follow. The note for the bank demanded $250,000 and there was limited time before the bomb would go off. Instead of 250k, the robber walked out of the bank (nonchalantly with the sucker in his mouth) with only around $8000. He leaves the bank, and is quickly stopped by police. The man, looking odd with a bulky object under a shirt around his neck is pulled out of his car and handcuffed by police. He tells police he has a bomb, they pull up the t-shirt wrapped over the bulky object and see a blinking light on a large object that is locked onto his neck with something that looks like a handcuff, but sized to fit around a neck. They immediately back away and draw their guns, leaving the man sitting on the pavement near his car. They create a perimeter and close off the road near their location and call the bomb squad. Unfortunately, the bomb squad is 10 miles away and with the major road loaded with traffic from the road closure, the going is slow. The robber, who was calm, begins to get agitated when a beeping sound begins. He’s begging police to read the notes he had that would tell them where to get the keys to take the bomb off. He told them that some black men had put the bomb around his neck when he delivered a pizza to them and told him to follow instructions on the notes they gave him. He was to rob a bank, head to further locations and eventually get the keys to unlock the bomb and drop the money at a location for the kidnappers. The beeping gets faster and the bomb squad still isn’t there. The cops can also hear the beeping and realize the robber isn’t lying, that the bomb is real. Then a loud explosion shakes the area as the bomb detonates. The bomb squad arrives a short bit after; they had been 4 blocks away when the bomb had exploded. The robber was killed when a hole about 8” x 10” was blown in his chest by the bomb. So the bomb squad clears the area, making sure he isn’t booby-trapped with more bombs. The neck cuff is actually still attached to the robber, but they don’t find any more bombs in his car or on him. In his car, they find the cane gun which is a working device that was loaded. They also find the notes the robber was telling the about. Police decide to follow the lengthy clues written on the notes. They were so detailed, it was weird. They even had really well-drawn directions on it that showed exactly where drop offs of the next clues would be. They find the next clue in a coffee can next to a yield sign a short way from the bank then follow that clue to a forested area. From across a clearing past the wooded area, police see a man starting to walk towards the area they were headed towards. When the figure spots the police, he quickly turns around and books it out of there. Cops try to hurry after him, but just see him at a distance, drive away in a blue van. So they start their investigation with finding out more about the man who robbed the bank. He is 43-year-old Brian Wells, a pizza shop worker. A call came in that day to the pizza parlour at 1:30pm. The owner of the pizza shop initially took the call, but then handed the phone off to Brian as he couldn’t hear well what was being said. Brian took the order and wrote down directions to the area he was delivering the pizza to. The place he delivered the pizzas to was a remote area with just a radio tower on it and wasn’t an actual address really, so that’s why he had needed the directions. Police go to Brian’s house and search it. Inside Brian’s home, which he rented from a woman that lived on the same property, police didn’t find anything damning. They did find an address book with the names and numbers of local prostitutes, so they took that. They go to the site where the pizza was delivered, and they find tire impressions that match Brian’s car and even shoe prints that match his shoes. They also note that there were scuffle marks in the dirt, indicating a struggle of some kind. At the coroner’s office, they begin trying to figure out the bomb collar still attached to Brian. In the note they recovered, it had said that the bomb was booby-trapped so that if they were to forcefully try to remove it, it would explode. So, they’re understandably afraid to mess with it much. The decision was made to decapitate Brian to remove the device. Police were able to put together the bomb and find most of the components. The first timer in the bomb was activated by pulling a pin out like you would on a grenade. The thing that stuck out to officials on the device was all of the red herrings involved in it. They believed it was designed like that to prevent the bomb squad from tampering with it. It had things like wires that didn't do anything and a cell phone in it that didn't have anything to do with the bomb. Another interesting thing was there were all of the warning labels all over the device. It was similar to the instructions given to Brian in that it was overly wordy and alluded to lots of different booby traps to probably put the bomb squad off of solving it correctly and taking more time to do so. The neck device was unique in that it had four key locks and a Tumblr lock so it would be hard to get it off of Brian’s neck. Police don’t believe he was ever going to get those keys, that the culprits meant to have him die. Police felt the scavenger hunt was also a diversion or red herring to lead the police on a wild goose chase. Police reenacted the scavenger hunt themselves to see if it was even possible to complete. They quickly realized there was no way to finish it in the allotted time. When studying the notes from the kidnapper or kidnappers, police were hoping a handwriting analysis would lead them somewhere. However, they figured out that the note had been traced from a typed note so there was no way to match it since it wasn’t actually handwriting. They did find that it had been done on a pad of paper, so they were able to take impressions from a note that had been written on the pad of paper prior to the scavenger hunt note. It didn’t seem to say much from what they could tell, but they did get some impressions of actual handwriting. FBI profilers said the mastermind of this scheme had to be mechanically inclined, likely frugal and extremely smart. Police make an appointment to meet with one of Brian’s co-workers and friends named Bob Pinetti at the pizza parlour. However, he calls and reschedules with them for another day. Things just get weirder when the day before their meeting, Bob is found unresponsive in his home. This is just 3 days after Brian’s death. Apparently, right after Brian’s death, Bob had become very paranoid that someone was coming for him. After his autopsy, his death is ruled an accidental overdose. So, police don’t know if this is related to Brian’s case or if it’s a weird coincidence. Police were considering three scenarios. 1) that Brian committed the heist by himself, but then why would he use a live bomb and risk killing himself. 2) that he was abducted by others and told he had 55 minutes to rob a bank and get back to them with the money before the bomb would go off. 3) that Brian and his coworker Bob planned the robbery together. Then again, why a live bomb? 3 weeks after Brian’s death, police get this 911 call. Play call. Police recognize the name of the caller, Bill Rothstein. He happened to be related to one of the cops through marriage. Bill says that the man in the freezer is an ex-boyfriend of Marge’s that passed away. He tells police that Marge is highly intelligent and manipulates people easily and he has known her for something like 50 years. Bill tells them that Marge is bipolar and that she has been asking him to put the frozen body in a wood chipper. Coincidentally, this house all this is happening at, which is Bill’s house, is just down a short road from the radio tower area Brian had delivered the pizzas to. Police wonder, what are the chances that those 2 incidents would occur within a month of each other right in the same area. Police take Marjory Diehl-Armstrong into custody and bring Bill in for questioning. Bill tells them that Marge had called him a while back and asked him to help her get rid of a body. Bill has always been a sucker for Marge since the time they were young. They had dated at one time but remained lifelong friends. Now, they’re in their 70’s and it seems that anything Marge asks of Bill, he will do. He claims she told him that she had killed her boyfriend, Jim, and that she needed his help getting rid of the body. He told police Marge had killed Jim because he knew Marge was involved with the bank heist and was going to turn her in. So, he brings Jim’s body back to his house, wraps him in a tarp, tapes it all closed and jams him into a freezer in his garage. Marge tells police that she had nothing to do with her boyfriend, Jim Roden’s death. She claims she had come home one day and found him dead at her house. She thinks Bill kills him, and since she’s been so close to Bill for so long, she doesn’t want to turn him in. When asked why Bill would blame Jim’s death on her, Marge says it’s because she had thought that Bill was involved with the bombing case and he wanted to frame her for something to get her to shut up. For police, looking into Marge’s past is like opening up a can of worms. Marjorie grew up as an extremely intelligent woman who got a master’s degree in education. She was also strikingly beautiful when she was young and men flocked to her. Unfortunately, at age 23, she sought out the help of a doctor because she was aware something was terribly wrong for her mentally. She gets diagnosed with many mental illnesses from bipolar disorder to dissocial disorders and everything in between. The mental illness makes life difficult for Marge. She couldn’t hold down jobs and relationships don’t last long. She had a brief marriage but was widowed when her husband fell and hit his head on a coffee table and died after which Marge sued the hospital for negligence and won a $175,000 settlement. Strangely, before her husband was buried, Marge asked for a piece of his leg bone to keep in case she was able to clone him in the future. And then there were her other dead boyfriends. In fact, there were at least 5 men who died in questionable circumstances in Marge’s life. Somehow, Bill had been the one who evaded her curse. Though the two had dated early in life, I think their 20’s, Bill had never dated another woman after Marge. She had always had a power over him and could get him to do anything for her. Bill himself was described as extremely intelligent, kind and generous. However, a friend did describe him as “not a finisher.” He was the type of person who always started ambitious things like college or earning a pilot’s license, but he would never finish. Even though Marge actually had quite a lot of money due to many lawsuits she won for various matters, Marge’s mental illness exhibited itself in major hoarding problems. Her home is filthy, covered wall to wall in junk with dead animals mixed in. Actually, Bill was also a hoarder and his house mirrored Marge’s. Digging up info from her long, tumultuous life, police find that Marge had been in trouble before. In 1984, she had gone on trial for murder. She had shot and killed a boyfriend named Robert Thomas. Robert had been sleeping on the couch when Marge had unloaded a shotgun on him. She was acquitted when she pled self-defense because of an abusive marriage. As for Jim, the man in the freezer, it turns out his body was in the freezer for 3 weeks before the bank heist. The corpse was in the freezer the whole time the police were searching the area just down the road. It took 4 days for Jim’s body to thaw so that the medical examiners could examine him fully. He had been shot to death with a shotgun. Ken Barnes, a fishing buddy of Marge’s claimed that Marge and Jim fought constantly and that Marge would always talk about how someday she would kill Jim. He says she even asked a friend how she should get rid of him. Bill is cooperating with police, taking them through the crime scenes and giving all the details he can, so for his cooperation, he’s free on bail for now. He also took a polygraph test which he passed, but, being highly intelligent, police assume he knows how to beat one. Something that perked up cop’s ears was when they found out Bill had had a roommate that had moved out of Bill’s house the day after the bank heist. This character’s name was Floyd Stockton. Marge was actually the one who told police about him. He had told her that he was fleeing town because there was too much heat near them because of the bombing case. It turns out that Floyd was living with Bill because he was on the run. He was wanted for a rape charge in another state. So, police track him down, wondering if he’s involved with the bombing and robbery. However, they hit a dead end with him and he and Bill are cleared by the FBI, although the state police felt strongly the two were likely involved in the heist. So, Marge goes to trial for Jim’s murder and Bill cut a deal for cooperating and spent only a few years in prison on misdemeanor charges including abuse of a corpse. Marge always insists that Bill was involved in the bank heist, though. The FBI was very aware of how much Bill fit their profile for the heist’s mastermind, so they always kept an eye on him, hoping he’ll brag to someone about it or something. So, when Bill is hospitalized with terminal cancer, they jump at the chance that he may give them a deathbed confession. They ask him if he had anything to do with Brian’s death or the bank heist. Bill couldn’t speak, so he used his arm to spell the word “no” in the air. He soon dies in the hospital. People who knew Bill speculated that he was the type of person who would revel in leaving the police with an unsolvable mystery that would go down in history. As for Marge, she does a sudden turnaround and confesses to shooting Jim after they had a fight over another woman. Marge gets a plea deal because she’s able to claim insanity and is parolled after a couple of years. Marge also claims knowledge about the bank heist and agrees to speak about it if she can get legal help. She ends up getting herself on the radar of the FBI for it. When she had been arrested for Jim’s murder, police had moved all of Marge’s belongings into storage. So, the FBI decides to sift through the piles and piles of junk. They come across an angry letter Marge had written to a bank. The bank manager had let Marge’s dad empty out a safety deposit box with valuables belonging to Marge. The bank she was very angry at was PNC bank, the same bank that Brian had robbed. Kind of makes her look suspicious, but it could be a coincidence. She says that Bill was the mastermind of the heist who wanted the money to help settle some money disagreements with his siblings. Another detail she gives is that Bill had a blue van that Bill had towed away immediately after the heist and then had it towed back after he’d been cleared by the FBI. The FBI decides to start over and go over all the evidence they had collected. In the walkthrough video of Bill’s house, they notice a drawing on a desk. They zoom in and notice the drawing is a diagram with arrows drawn exactly the same way as some that had been drawn on the bomb. Another lifelong friend of Bill’s is asked to look at the heist notes with the impression on them. He recognizes the handwriting as Bill’s. Investigators think Bill masterminded the scavenger hunt. Though Marge always insisted she had nothing to do with the heist, a witness came forward saying they saw Marge driving around the scavenger hunt area. A UPS driver also says that he had seen Marge and Bill at the payphone the time and day where the phone call had been made to order the pizza. While in jail, cell mates claimed that Marge told them she had shot her boyfriend Jim because he was going to turn her in for the bank heist. She had also told them that Bill had made the neck bomb and that his friend Floyd was also involved. However, all of her cellmates believed Marge was likely the mastermind because she was so smart and detailed. The FBI gets wind that Ken Barnes, Marge’s old fishing buddy, has more information. They search his house and don’t really find anything related to the heist other than magazines on building electronics. He told them that Marge solicited him at one point to kill her dad who she felt was wasting her inheritance. She had said she was going to rob a bank to get ken the money to pay him to kill her dad. Now that that Ken had started talking, the floodgates broke open. He confessed to knowing the whole bomb and robbery scheme. He says he was in on it and Marge was the mastermind. He says that the day before the robbery, there was a meeting at Bill’s house to discuss what roles each person would play. He says Bill, Marge, Floyd, Bob and Brian were all there. Ken’s role was a lookout. The day of the heist, Marge picked Ken up and told him he’s driving the getaway car. They went to a shell station, Bill made the pizza call, then they headed to the tower site to wait for Brian. Brian delivered the pizza. He wasn’t aware he was going to be wearing a bomb. He looked terrified and tried to run. Bill pulled out a gun and while they held Brian down, they strapped the bomb on him. He was yelling that he didn’t want to do it. Marge put the t-shirt on him to cover up the bomb. She told him that if he were to get caught to tell them some black guys held him down and put the bomb on him. They gave him the cane gun, told him if he had any trouble, to use it. Then they go up to a parking lot across the street from the bank. Marge and ken sat in the car and watched the bank being robbed. The cops started coming in and the pair drove to Bill’s house. Ken said later he watched the news and felt bad, he thought the bomb had been a fake. So, now that they have Ken’s confession, they go to confront Floyd who Ken said put the device on Brian’s neck. Floyd right away knows he’s cornered and he gets an amazing deal for his confession. He gets immunity if he testifies against Marge. Floyd says he did help make some of the pieces for the bomb collar, but that Bill did most of the work. He did put the bomb on Brian then ran away, feeling he was going to get shot in the back by the others. In 2007, charges were filed against Marge for armed bank robbery, conspiracy and using a destructive device in a crime of violence. Because Brian had something to do with the heist, though it seems he started out willing then later became a victim, the death penalty is taken off of the table. Marge was found mentally competent to stand trial and she was found guilty and is serving life plus 30 years. Marge always insisted she had nothing to do with the heist and she died of cancer in 2017. No one was ever charged with Brian Well’s murder. Ken Barnes was sentenced to 45 years in jail for his part. Since he testified against Marjorie, his sentence was cut in half. He later died in 2019 Evil Genius: The True Story of America's Most Diabolical Bank Heist in 2018.