GIVE THAT MAN A DARWIN AWARD!! Erie pizza bomber Brian Wells was both victim and con

[samanthajane13]

Thursday, July 12, 2007
John Caniglia
Plain Dealer Reporter
Erie, Pa.

He sat on the road with his legs twisted under him and his hands cuffed behind his back. His oversized glasses drooped as he cried for help.

Brian Wells, a pizza deliveryman, was caught in a bizarre bank robbery Aug. 28, 2003. He had a bomb strapped to his neck, and no one dashed to help him. No one knew what was going on or seemed to understand how a simpleton got involved in such a vicious plot.

Except Wells. He knew he had been double-crossed. His accomplices had told him the bomb was a phony, a prop to fool bank clerks into giving up money. But just as they planned to click it around his neck, they told him the truth: The bomb was real, and it would kill him if he didn't do exactly what he was told.

Investigators revealed Wednesday that Wells, 46, was actually in on the plot, both a victim and an offender in the same crime.

Fifty-five minutes after his cohorts strapped the bomb on, 40 minutes after he robbed the bank and 20 minutes after police caught him, the device blew a softball-sized hole into Wells' chest and killed him.

The slaying stunned this city 90 minutes from Cleveland. For nearly four years, everyone assumed Wells was a tragic and unsuspecting victim. But authorities said he mentally rehearsed the robbery plan for days and even sat for fittings of the device on the belief the bomb was a fake.

Federal indictments unsealed Wednesday blame Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong and Kenneth Barnes in Wells' death.

The Erie residents are charged with conspiracy, bank robbery and weapons violations and accused of planning the robbery to gain enough money for Diehl-Armstrong to pay for a hit man to kill her father.

A third person involved in the planning, convicted rapist Floyd Stockton, was given immunity in a deal with prosecutors. His attorney, Charbel Latouf, refused to comment.

The man authorities called the plot's mastermind and bomb-builder, William Rothstein, is dead. He died of cancer July 30, 2004 -- one of a trio of other deaths linked to the case.

"Greed was their inspiration; death was just a byproduct," FBI agent Ray Morrow said.

Wells' family exploded at Wednesday's news conference that outlined his role. His sister, Barbara White, railed that her brother was a victim, not a criminal.

"Liar! Liar," she yelled at U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan.

How did simple man get involved in plot?

But in truth, Brian Wells was a follower who was in the thick of the plot, according to the indictments and interviews with investigators and defense attorneys. The indictment called him "a co-conspirator."

He was known as a man with simple tastes, caring for his three cats, eating Sunday meals with his family and fixing his subcompact cars. He was a high school dropout, and in the last decade worked on and off delivering food at Mama Mia's Pizzaria, a cramped, five-table restaurant that catered to construction workers for lunch and young families for dinner.

What people didn't know about was his affection for a prostitute, investigators and defense attorneys said.

Wells met approximately twice a month for about five years with Jessica Hoopsick, who fed her cocaine habit through prostitution, her attorney, Daniel Brabender, said. The two regularly used a home in Erie managed by Barnes, a convicted cocaine dealer who rented rooms in exchange for drugs and cash. Hoopsick even testified before a federal grand jury about Wells' link to Barnes, Brabender said.

In July 2003, Barnes had offered to do a favor for a fishing friend, Diehl-Armstrong: kill her father, Harold, for an estimated $125,000.

Diehl-Armstrong, who has bipolar disorder, is bipolar and often flies into screaming rages when she becomes annoyed or doesn't get what she wants. Her father earned his daughter's ire by refusing to turn over more inheritance money from her mother's death in 2000, federal agents said.

However, by 2003, the inheritance had largely disappeared. Agnes Diehl's estate was once valued at about $500,000, but it had dwindled. Harold Diehl gave his daughter more than $50,000, according to court records. He said he didn't give her more because the money was running out.

"She wouldn't kill me, but she probably would get somebody else to do it," Harold Diehl said in an interview earlier this year. "She tends to be greedy. I just don't trust her."

Unable to come up with money to pay Barnes, she approached her good friend, Rothstein, whom she knew for years and almost married. He also was being hassled by a family member over money, and they discussed various schemes, including a bank robbery.

The indictment said Diehl-Armstrong provided Rothstein with two egg timers for use in building the bomb.

As the robbery plan crystallized, the group pulled Wells in with a lure of cash. Wells helped plan the robbery, authorities said, and his partners told him the bomb would be fake. If arrested, he was told to tell police he was a hostage and that three black men had forced him to do it, Buchanan said.

They said police would then let him go and he would later collect some money.

Wells betrayed as scheme unfolds

On Aug. 28, 2003, Rothstein, Barnes and Diehl-Armstrong went to a nearby gas station and called Mama Mia's Pizzaria and ordered two pizzas. The gas station's surveillance cameras saw them make the call and later speed away.

About 2 p.m., Wells drove to a wooded lot near Rothstein's home on Peach Street in Erie. Rothstein, Barnes, Stockton and Diehl-Armstrong confronted Wells there, and Wells, for the first time, learned that the device was real, authorities said.

He wrestled with the men and tried to flee, but one of the men fired a gun, causing Wells to stop. They then restrained him and forced the device onto his neck. They gave him an oddly shaped cane, which was actually a gun, and told him to threaten someone with it if he found trouble at the bank.

Why the double-cross?

Buchanan, the U.S. attorney, said it was simple: It was one less witness.

The accomplices gave Wells a nine- page note that put Wells on a scavenger hunt for clues so that he could pry off the bomb after the robbery.

"This powerful, booby- trapped bomb can be removed only by following our instructions," the note said. "Using time attempting to escape it will fail and leave you short of time to follow instructions. Do not delay."

The bomb had a timer that gave Wells 55 minutes to complete the scavenger hunt. Despite the note, investigators said, Wells could have gotten out of it. The device appeared to be sophisticated, but agents said it was built like a child's toy bracelet that would have snapped open, given the proper pressure and instructions.

Part 2 coming

[samanthajane13]

With the bomb yoked to his neck, Wells drove to the PNC Bank branch in a shopping center on Peach Street, with Diehl-Armstrong and Barnes following and watching with binoculars in one car, and Rothstein trailing in another. About 2:20 p.m., Wells walked inside the bank and appeared oddly calm, twirling a sucker in his mouth, according to pictures taken by the bank's video surveillance cameras.

He told the clerk that he had a bomb and showed her a gun that looked like a walking cane. He demanded $250,000; he got $8,702.

Rothstein, according to inves tiga tors, stood in the parking lot adjacent to the bank, waiting to grab the money from Wells. But as Wells left the bank, a cus tomer followed him out, thinking that something was odd about Wells' behavior.

Rothstein panicked. He fled to his car and sped home empty-handed. Diehl- Armstrong and Barnes were waiting back at his house.

Diehl-Armstrong fumed when Rothstein returned without the money. She believed Rothstein had double-crossed her by hiding the money along the route. She jumped in Rothstein's car and drove back toward the bank looking for a place Rothstein may have pitched the money, according to federal agents.

At one point, she drove the wrong way on Interstate 79 searching for dropped cash.

As Diehl-Armstrong searched, Wells' life ticked away. Using the nine-page letter as a guide, he bolted for clues. After the bank, his first stop was at a nearby McDonald's drive-through, where a note was hiding under a rock, the FBI said.

Officers stopped his car shortly after that and arrested him. They backed away, leaving him on the ground, quivering.

"Why isn't nobody trying to come get this thing off me?" he said. "It's going to go off. I'm not lying."

At 3:18 p.m., the bomb exploded.

Investigation begins with bomb victim

Authorities began the investigation with the pizza deliveryman. His family said in vestigators cut his head from his body to be gin analyzing the bomb.

Police also went to his home. The FBI blew the door off its hinges to get into his small apartment during a search in the middle of the night. The bi zarre case began taking sharp turns.

Three days after Wells' death, his co-worker, Robert Pinetti, died of an overdose of methadone and antidepressants mixed with cold medication, leaving investigators to guess whether there was any connection. Officials suspect there is a link between the deaths, but they are not sure.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the FBI then turned to Rothstein because as he lived so close to where Wells made the pizza delivery. The initial interviews were hardly pleasant. Rothstein taunted officers, telling them that they would never find anything.

But they did.

Rothstein once had written a suicide note, which began in much the same way as one of the notes Wells carried with him in the final minutes of his life, investigators said.

ATF and FBI agents also interviewed Erie store clerks, who said Rothstein and the collaborators had purchased a number of items that were used for the bomb at local stores.

At Rothstein's home, officers found Stockton, a fugitive accused of raping a 19-year-old disabled girl. He was shipped back to Washington state, where he was charged and later sentenced to two years in prison.

They also found the body of James Roden stuffed in a freezer.

Roden, Diehl-Armstrong's boyfriend, was killed Aug. 11, 2003, and put in a chest freezer at Rothstein's garage. Authorities found the body in September, weeks after the slaying. Diehl-Armstrong pleaded guilty to the slaying and cited mental illness as playing a role in the case.

She was sentenced to seven to 20 years in prison.

The indictment said Diehl-Armstrong killed Roden "to keep him from disclosing the bank robbery plan that was being formulated by the co-conspirators."

Once in prison, Diehl-Armstrong began looking for a way to get out. She wanted to parlay her knowledge of Wells' slaying into a shorter sentence, and she began meeting with authorities about it.

She also talked with several cellmates and friends in prison, who were happy to squeal on her, investigators said.

Stockton met with the FBI and ATF about the bombing and worked out a deal with prosecutors to testify against Barnes and Diehl-Armstrong.

Barnes, serving 23 months for a cocaine conviction from 2006, also met with federal investigators. He and Diehl-Armstrong blamed Rothstein for the robbery plan and the bombing and claimed they were being framed. Her attorney, Lawrence D'Ambrosio, said she was an ill woman who couldn't possibly have helped.

She and Barnes bemoaned their fates -- never remembering the simple man who liked delivering pizzas, believed in a robbery plan and scurried through the city, looking for clues in a deadly game that ticked away on a busy street.

That's where he sat for more than 20 minutes with a bomb around his neck, waiting for help that never came.

News researcher Jo Ellen Corrigan contributed to this story.

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Can you say DUMB-*****?????

[samanthajane13]

Text of prosecutor's comments on Brian Wells' role in bank holdup

By The Associated Press
The Associated Press

Text of comments by U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan at a news conference in Erie, Pa., on the role of Brian Wells in the 2003 bank robbery that ended with his death when a collar bomb locked around his neck exploded.

--

Earlier today, we met personally with the family of Brian Wells. As prosecutors and investigators, we have not been able to discuss with them the details of this investigation.

For some time, they have wanted us to publicly disclose the role of their family member. We can only make decisions in a case based upon what the facts actually are, not what we want them to be.

Unfortunately, our investigation has led to the belief that Brian became involved in a limited role with a group of individuals who planned to rob the PNC Bank.

We do not know the extent to which the others planned on him dying that day. But we do know, unfortunately, that Brian participated in a limited role in the planning and in the carrying out of this robbery. Sadly, the plans of these other individuals were much more sinister ... and he died as a result. It may be that his role transitioned from that of the planning stages to being an unwilling participant in this scheme.


July 12, 2007 1:00 AM

[samanthajane13]

Lawyer floats alibi in death of pizza man - another deathBy Jennifer C. Yates
Associated Press
PITTSBURGH - Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong's lawyer has floated an alibi for her in the bizarre death of one man: the bizarre death of another man.
James Roden's body was in a freezer in August 2003, when Brian Wells robbed a bank with a bomb locked to his neck. Before the explosive killed Wells, the pizza deliveryman told police he had been forced to commit the crime.

Authorities announced Wednesday that Diehl-Armstrong and a friend, Kenneth E. Barnes, had been charged with the deadly robbery, after a nearly four-year investigation. They say she hatched the plan so she could pay someone to kill her father.

Federal prosecutors believe Wells was involved in planning the crime but may have become an unwilling participant.

Diehl-Armstrong is in prison for murdering Roden, a former boyfriend. Her attorney, Lawrence D'Ambrosio, told the Associated Press he believed she was too obsessed with that killing to have been involved in the robbery plot. She has a tendency to focus - and even obsess - on major events in her life, he said.

The indictment says she killed Roden to keep him from disclosing details of the robbery plot.

Diehl-Armstrong, 58, was valedictorian of her high school class, but her trial in Roden's death showed that her life since was full of severe mental problems, including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia - and a deep hatred of men. Two decades earlier, she was acquitted in the killing of another boyfriend, Robert Thomas, that she said was in self-defense.

Diehl-Armstrong had been repeatedly questioned about Wells' death. All the while, she asserted her innocence in letters to news outlets.

"I'm sane, not on psych[iatric] meds" and have the "equivalent of five college degrees with honors," she wrote to ABC News.

In 2005, Diehl-Armstrong pleaded guilty but mentally ill to murdering Roden on or around Aug. 13, 2003, about two weeks before Wells' death. Roden's body was found in a freezer at the home of another former boyfriend, William Rothstein, after he tipped off police in September 2003.

Rothstein, who has since died of cancer, said he came forward after Diehl-Armstrong suggested using an ice crusher to get rid of the remains.

In February, she focused her anger on Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera. In papers filed in Erie County, she preserved her right to sue him down the road over a 2005 broadcast report on her criminal past and how she came to be linked to the bank-robbery investigation.

[samanthajane13]

Published July 13, 2007 12:13 pm -

Former FBI agent blasts U.S. Attorney in bombing case


By NANCY LOWRY
New Castle News


Former FBI agent Jim Fisher doesn’t understand why federal prosecutors felt it necessary to ruin the reputation of Brian Wells. At a press conference at the Federal Courthouse in Erie Wednesday, U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan accused Wells — the pizza deliveryman who was blown up when a collar bomb strapped to his neck and chest exploded on Aug. 28, 2003 — of being an accomplice in the bank robbery that preceded the explosion. Calling Wells, 46, an “unindicted co-conspirator,” Buchanan alleged the deliveryman participated with Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, Kenneth Barnes and others in planning to rob the PNC Bank on Peach Street in Erie. Diehl-Armstrong and Barnes will be charged with bank robbery, conspiracy to commit bank robbery and a weapons violation. But no one has been charged in Wells’ death. Reputation ruined “This was an unsatisfactory ending, a sad ending because Brian Wells was implicated in planning the bank robbery,” said Fisher, a Wilmington Township resident who has been studying the case. “It was unkind on the part of the federal government to do this, to offend his family. Brian Wells’ reputation is shattered forever and that was not necessary.” He said that is what turned Wells’ family on Buchanan and caused them to heckle her. Fisher explained when Buchanan left the lectern Wednesday, Wells’ brother, John continued the press conference. “Where is the evidence?” John Wells asked. “You cannot link a man when there is no evidence.” He said his brother had been accosted at gunpoint and taken from his job. “Brian did not put that collar on himself,” John Wells said. Not shocked Fisher said he was not shocked to hear Brian Wells might have been involved, but he still believes he was a victim. “(Buchanan) could have said Wells was aware, involved but changed his mind and was forced to go into the bank,” Fisher said. “There is evidence he was forced to put on the collar. That would have given the family something to hold onto. “What did they gain? They should have let that come out at the trial.” Buchanan, Fisher said, has refused to say that Brian Wells was the victim of a murder or that he was murdered. “He certainly didn’t kill himself, he didn’t die of natural causes and it was not accidental. It was a homicide.” said Fisher, who has taught law enforcement at Mercyhurst College and Edinboro University. After studying available information, Fisher said, he resolved early in 2004 that the mastermind of the operation was William Rothstein. Rothstein died of cancer on July 30, 2004. The indictment, Fisher said, suggested the bank robbery was necessary to finance a hit — Diehl-Armstrong wanted Barnes to kill her father so she could inherit his money. But Fisher does not accept that. “He (Rothstein) had been Diehl-Armstrong’s long-term boyfriend,” Fisher said. “Rothstein was intelligent, educated and bored. He wanted to commit the perfect crime to show how smart he was.” He said Diehl-Armstrong and Barnes were “not capable of this degree of planning.” Fisher said he believes it was Rothstein who planned the bank robbery, designed and built the collar bomb that killed Wells, and constructed a gun shaped like a cane which Wells carried into the bank. NO HOMICIDE CHARGES Fisher said Thursday he is surprised that Diehl-Armstrong and Barnes were indicted only on the bank robbery. “I believe there were other, greater crimes — bombing and murder. The indictment doesn’t even use the word bomb. They call it a ‘destructive device.’” To not charge anyone with Wells’ murder, Fisher said, is to ignore the evidence. Both Diehl-Armstrong and Barnes are already in jail on other charges, he noted. “The government may have concluded that additional charges are unnecessary.” Fisher believes Brian Wells was set up to be caught and “there is more to this than bank robbery. “I believe they convinced or forced him to go into the bank wearing a bomb around his neck. He was supposed to give them the money then go on this scavenger hunt to find keys that were supposed to enable him to remove the bomb. They probably told him if he was caught, he could say that he had been forced to do it. “But he was set up to die,” Fisher said. “The bomb was on a timer. He could not have taken it off even if he’d found the keys. He was marked for death. He was supposed to get them the money then die, eliminating him as a witness.” Fisher said he believes answers might come out at the trial when Floyd Stockton testifies. Stockton, he said, had lived with Rothstein and left the area after Rothstein’s death. “I don’t know how credible he will be, but he broke and smoked out the others,” Fisher said. “That is why this took four years. “He may have been involved in the early plan, I don’t know,” Fisher said. “Wells is more of a victim than a criminal. Nothing I heard at the press conference or read in the indictment changed my mind.”