Erie, Pa. – A pizza delivery man robs a bank, takes off in his Geo Metro and is surrounded by police minutes later in a parking lot. A bomb is attached to a triple-banded metal collar locked around his neck; the handwritten instructions he was given say he can free himself by going on a sort of scavenger hunt.
“It’s going to go off,” Brian Wells told police. “I’m not lying.” The scene of Wells’ death, just outside Erie in 2003, couldn’t have been more tragically bizarre. Or so it seemed until today, when prosecutors said the convoluted plot was, at least in the beginning, partially his.
Wells is listed as an unindicted coconspirator in indictments unsealed today against Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong and Kenneth E.
Barnes.
Authorities said Diehl-Armstrong, a former teacher and high school valedictorian, hatched the robbery plan with her friend Barnes so she could pay someone to kill her father. She killed her boyfriend before the robbery to keep him from disclosing details of the plot, according to the indictment.
Wells, to some extent, helped plan the 2003 robbery and then got caught up in something “much more sinister,” U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan said today in the first accounting of the baffling and sensational crime.
“It may be that his role transitioned from that of the planning stages to being an unwilling participant in the scheme,” she said.
Wells, 46, had told police before the bomb exploded that he was an innocent victim and had been forced by gunmen to rob the bank.
Wells’ brother, John Wells, angrily denied that his brother had anything to do with the scheme. Wells and his family have been critical of the investigation, and set up their own Web site at one point to try and generate information about the case.
“I can’t imagine they’re trying to get the public to believe this,” Wells said. “I have not seen any evidence to suggest he knew these people in any way, other than he might have delivered them a pizza the day before.” Diehl-Armstrong, 58, and Barnes, 53, contrived a series of notes to make it appear Wells was “merely a hostage,” authorities said in court papers. Diehl-Armstrong and Barnes also planned to get the robbery money from Wells so that, if he were caught, he could claim he was a hostage and an unwilling participant, authorities said.
Buchanan described Wells as having a limited role in the plot and said it was unclear if his coconspirators planned on him being killed.
Diehl-Armstrong and Barnes used a live bomb to assure that Wells completed all their instructions and turned over the money, according to the indictment.
“If he died, he could not be a witness,” authorities said in the indictment.
Diehl-Armstrong and Barnes were each charged with bank robbery, conspiracy and a firearms count.
In separate statements, attorneys for Diehl-Armstrong and Barnes said their clients are innocent.
“Like all citizens, Mrs. Diehl-Armstrong is presumed to be innocent, and she hopes that the media and the public will withhold judgment until all the facts have been presented in court,” said a statement released by her federal public defender, Thomas Patton.
Barnes’ attorney, Alison Scarpitti, said her client “denies any culpability in this case and continues to assert that he is innocent of all charges.” In letters sent to several media outlets earlier this year, Diehl-Armstrong claimed she knew something about Wells’ death but had nothing to do with the scheme.
Diehl-Armstrong is currently serving a state prison sentence for killing her boyfriend, James Roden. She pleaded guilty but mentally ill and is serving a sentence of seven to 20 years in state prison.
In the indictment, authorities say she killed him in the weeks before the robbery to keep him from disclosing details of the plan.
Barnes is jailed in Erie County on unrelated drug charges.
In the indictment, Wells was identified only by his initials.
The same is true for William Rothstein, a former boyfriend of Diehl-Armstrong who admitted to helping her dispose of Roden’s body.
Rothstein had been questioned in Wells’ death before he died of cancer in 2004. The indictment said Rothstein helped Diehl-Armstrong make the time bomb that was placed on Wells.
On Aug. 28, 2003, Wells set out to deliver an order for two pies – sausage and pepperoni – to a mysterious address that turned out to be the location of a TV tower near Rothstein’s house. Wells turned up about an hour later and roughly two miles away at a PNC Bank branch in Summit Township, with a note demanding money and saying he had a bomb.
Wells took about $8,700 from a teller and fled, but state troopers soon pulled him out of his car and handcuffed him. The collar and bomb hung from his neck under his T-shirt. While police waited for the bomb squad, the bomb exploded, killing Wells.
“The bomb was detonated by a timing device and it was a predetermined, preset time in which the bomb would be detonated,” Buchanan said.
Police found a gun resembling a cane in Wells’ car. They also found a nine-page handwritten letter that included detailed instructions on what Wells was to do with the bank money and how he could unlock the collar by looking for clues and landmarks. The note also included a list of rules and a threat that Wells would be “destroyed” if he failed to complete his mission.
Barnes was expected to appear Thursday in Erie for his initial court appearance and Diehl-Armstrong was expected to appear Friday.
Diehl-Armstrong was charged in 1984 with the shooting death of her boyfriend, Robert Thomas, according to court records and law enforcement officials. She said she had been a victim of physical and sexual abuse and shot Thomas before he killed her. She was acquitted of homicide in 1988.
