How a conspiracy to commit murder involved a bank robbery, a bomb, and a Pizza Man
They say that there’s no honor among thieves. That saying has never echoed more down the corridors of dishonesty than it has for the group of individuals gathered together to rob a bank, just so they could commit a murder.
The conspirators were Kenneth Barnes, William “Bill” Rothstein, Floyd Stockton, all led by Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, and followed by Brian Wells, the Pizza Man.
Money was the motive, the driving force, a major problem for all of them. They all had empty pockets, big bills, and no way to pay them. Fortunately, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong had an inheritance coming her way that could more than solve all of their financial woes. The only obstacle was that her father was still very much alive.
Barnes, a longtime friend of Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, offered to remedy that situation – for a price. For $200,000 he would kill Harold Diehl, Marjorie’s father.
Without hesitation, she was all for the solution. Except for the simple fact that she didn’t have that kind of money, or she wouldn’t have had any money worries in the first place. That’s when the initial idea of robbing a bank arose and bringing Brian Wells into the fold.
Wells held down a regular job of delivering pizzas. It wasn’t exciting, it wasn’t paying all the bills, it wasn’t getting him anywhere in life. So, when the bank idea was proposed he was more than up for the job.
The five cohorts got together and set the complex series of events in motion.
It was August 2003 and they were all, as the saying goes, as thick as thieves, bonded together from their individual brushes with the law and neither of them had any compunction, doubts or regrets that they were about to break the law again. One of them had a secret, though, that could have easily derailed the whole sinister project.
What they didn’t know was that Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong was a stone-cold killer, and just couldn’t be trusted. In fact, she was something of a serial killer.
Back in 1984, claiming self-defense to avoid going to prison, she shot her then-boyfriend, Robert Thomas, six times as he sat on the couch, and was acquitted. Emboldened after getting away literally with murder, several of her partners died under extremely suspicious circumstances. Her present partners in this upcoming criminal endeavor were completely unaware that among them lurked an unbalanced serial killer with mental problems.
All either of them had on their minds was the money they were going to steal from the bank that would pay Barnes to kill Harold Diehl, so Marjorie could get her inheritance and make all their money worries go away.
The bank in question was a PNC bank in Pennsylvania. The day of the robbery was going to be 28 August 2003. The man doing the robbing was going to be Brian Wells.
On the surface, the plan appeared simple, foolproof.
The idea was for Wells to casually walk into the bank, slip a note to the teller demanding $250,000, or the bomb strapped around his neck was going to be detonated remotely in 15 minutes. This way it would appear that Wells was an unwilling participant, was in fact a hostage, and that any suspicious fallout afterward would fall well away from him.
At age 46 he was ready to take a monumental risk to ensure he had a future worth looking forward to. At the moment his future wasn’t so bright. If he had to wear a fake bomb, carry an unloaded homemade shotgun into a bank, hand over a hand-written note, then walk out with more money than he had ever held in his life. Well, he reasoned, the small risks involved were more than worth the rewards.
To set up his alibi, Mama Mia’s Pizzeria received an order at 1:30 pm and sent Wells to deliver two pizzas to 8631 Peach Street. Once he arrived there, Wells was shocked to discover that the homemade collar bomb that Stockton locked around his neck was real.
No way was he going to go through with it now. A gun brandished in his face soon convinced him that the choice was no longer in his hands.
At 2.30 pm when Wells entered the PNC bank, he didn’t have to fake the terrified look on his face as he handed the note over to the teller, even after the assurances of Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong that there was no danger of it going off prematurely.
The note stated that the money, $250,000, had to be handed over within 15 minutes or the bomb would go off. And if the authorities were contacted then it would be detonated remotely as Wells was under surveillance.
Flustered, the teller was unable to access the vault within the time specified, handing over just $8,702 instead.
Wells couldn’t wait. He had his own timed instructions or he was a dead man walking. He had to embark on a treasure hunt to collect keys hidden in certain places close by that would delay the detonation, and then follow further instructions that would disarm the device completely. If he didn’t make the stops in time…
He exited the bank quickly without drawing attention to himself, or so he thought, hastily followed the written instructions given to him by Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, found the first key, and managed to delay the detonation.
On the way to the second location, he was stopped by the police who had been alerted previously by a witness to the bank robbery.
They listened to his story about being a hostage, sat him down handcuffed in front of his car, and called the bomb squad. The time was now 3.04 pm. At no time did they attempt to disarm the make-shift bomb that looked like it could go off at any moment. Instead, they secured the area and moved pedestrians, and a TV crew from a local station, away from the potentially explosive hazard.
There was a timer on the collar bomb, but not one with a tik or a tok counting down the seconds to define how much time was left. Sitting there, isolated in the parking lot, Brian Wells could clearly hear the imaginary booms in his head as the seconds ticked and tocked by while he waited for the bomb squad to arrive and set him free. He was, however, starting to regret the risk he had taken for the reward he may never get to spend.
The bomb squad was scheduled to arrive at 3:21. At 3:18 the bomb went off. Live on TV.
A crater-sized hole shattered the chest of Brian Wells, killing him instantly.
No doubt the other gang members had witnessed the gruesome end to the Pizza Man on TV. No doubt Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong was calculating how she could cover her tracks, how any loose ends could be tied up.
Two days later the body of Robert Pinetti, a worker at Mama Mia’s Pizzeria who Marjorie feared Wells may have confided in, was discovered dead from a drug overdose. One month later, on September 20, with the FBI closing in, a tip-off from Rothstein told the police that he had discovered the body of James Roden in a freezer.
James Roden was the boyfriend for 10 years of Marjorie Diehl- Armstrong, and it was obvious as the case was exposed that she had had no reservations about eliminating anyone who could point a finger in her direction.
The first to crack when they were eventually all scooped up was Stockton. He quickly realized that serious jail time was on the cards for all of them. So, for immunity from prosecution, he spilled all the beans he had to the federal agents.
It took years for the FBI to join all the dots together for the complex plot, to confirm whether Brian Wells was actually a co-conspirator or an unwitting dupe. When the sentences were handed down, they were damning.
Barnes was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison, William “Bill” Rothstein died in prison while waiting for his trial, and Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong received life imprisonment for murder, robbery, conspiracy, and weapons charges.
During this period, a police officer, out of curiosity, traveled the final leg of Brian Well’s scavenger hunt for the keys. His findings highlighted the mindset of Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong.
She was ruthless, the evil genius behind the whole complicated scheme, a great manipulator, and a heartless killer. Her plan from the outset was that the bank robbery would be done by just one person, so that only one person would be implicated, and that the trail would end with him.
She was a serial killer, but she wasn’t stupid.
So, when the police officer’s findings showed that there was no way Brian Wells was ever going to get to the final key before the collar bomb exploded, it came as no surprise.
As soon as the collar bomb had been snapped tight around his neck, The Pizza Bomber’s fate had been sealed just as tightly.