DOCUMENT: Crime

"Collar Bomb" Victim Was A Plotter

Feds: Pizza delivery guy was in on scheme to rob Pennsylvania bank

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"Collar Bomb" Victim Was A Plotter

JULY 11--The Pennsylvania pizza delivery man who stuck up a bank and then was killed when a bomb attached to his neck exploded was a coconspirator in the bizarre 2003 scheme. In an indictment unsealed today, Brian Wells is identified as a participant in the plot to rob a PNC Bank branch in Erie. A copy of the indictment can be found below. According to investigators, Wells and several other coconspirators hatched the robbery scheme, which involved Wells going into the bank with a homemade bomb locked around his neck. Wells is pictured at right in a bank surveillance photo. After he walked out with $8702, Wells was apprehended by cops. At that point, he claimed that the device was strapped on him by unknown gunmen who accosted him after he delivered pizzas to them. While waiting for the bomb squad to arrive and examine the homemade device, it exploded, killing the 46-year-old Wells. The three-count indictment charges Marjorie Diehl Armstrong and Kenneth Barnes with bank robbery, conspiracy, and weapons possession. Armstrong allegedly hatched the plot because she needed money to pay Barnes to kill her father. While it does not appear her father was murdered, Armstrong was subsequently convicted of killing James Roden, her live-in boyfriend, 'to keep him from disclosing the bank robbery plan that was being formulated by the co-conspirators.' A fifth plotter, William Rothstein, died in 2004. Roden and Rothstein are referred to by their initials in the indictment. (9 pages)