True Crime with Kendall Rae - The Pizza Bomber Bank Robbery

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

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So today's video is very interesting and I have to tell you, it's going to be a little confusing. You're definitely going to need to strap your I have to tell you, it's gonna be a little confusing. You're definitely gonna need to strap your thinking cap on here today because it's a fascinating case, but it is complicated. So I'm gonna do my best to try to explain all of it in one YouTube video right here because this was actually a popular Netflix series

called Evil Genius. I think it came out in like 2017 or something. It's on Netflix and it's four parts. So if you miss that, you couldn't commit four hours of your life, then I will condense it here into a YouTube video for you or at least do my best because there's a lot to go over here today.

This is crazy, strap in you guys. This one is really, really weird. In this video, I'm gonna be telling you about a collection of people who all came together in a kind of strange way. I'm gonna start out by telling you about Brian Douglas Wells. He was born on November 15th, 1956, and was 46 at the time that all of this took place.

And he was currently living in Erie, Pennsylvania at the time. Growing up, Brian wasn't super into school and he ended up dropping out pretty early on. And then for 30 years, he was a very trusted employee of Mama Mia's Pizzeria, where he worked as a delivery man. Now, he was described as someone who was very likable and very friendly, outgoing, social, and a little bit naive and childish in a way.

According to his family and friends, he loved movies, he loved concerts, any type of events. He liked to go to that type of, he was really really social, and he also really loved scavenger hunts, which is random, but you know, that's what he was into. But like I said, he was definitely a little naive and could be someone that would potentially be taken advantage of by someone else. So now we're gonna jump to August 28th of 2003. Around 1.30 p.m., Mama Mia's pizza received a call, a delivery order, to have two pizzas delivered to 8631 Peachtree.

And this address was actually only a few miles away from the Pizzaria. And when this call came in, the owner of the pizza shop, Tony DiDomo actually took the call and didn't quite understand what the person was saying. So he handed it off to Brian and Brian was the one who ended up taking down the information in the directions. And that address is actually for a television station, WSEE TV. And it's their transmitter tower.

It's just at the bottom of this dirt road. So it's a totally random place to be delivering a pizza. They also later discovered that this call was made from a pay phone at a shell gas station not too far away from the delivery site. But then, at 2.28 p.m., Brian ended up walking into PNC Bank, and he was wearing a white guest t-shirt, and it had this giant bulging collar around his neck, like this big thing underneath the shirt. You couldn't quite see what was under it and I'm pretty sure that the guest shirt was worn on purpose for that reason.

He also had a short cane that he was carrying with him and once he got up to the teller, he handed them a note that set. Gather employees with access codes to the vault and work fast to fill a bag with $250,000. You only have 15 minutes. And then he lifts up his shirt and showed that that giant device on his neck was actually a bomb. Now this is a very strange shaped thing. I'm surprised more people didn't react to him

or notice that this was going on, but how did he go from delivering two pizzas to Peach Street to robbing PNC Bank? So after he hands this note to the teller the teller obviously is nervous But they tell him that there is no way to get the vault open in time to meet your time restraints here So all I can give you is what I have on hand and that was $8,702 So he hands that over and Brian takes it and he starts walking out like totally chill and on his way out he grabs a dumb dumb.

And he just walks out like everything's fine, gets in his car and takes off. So obviously they called the police, they gave a description and it wasn't long before state troopers actually saw Brian outside and arrested him. He was standing outside in a nearby empty parking lot. They put him down on the ground and kind of sat him down while they tried to figure out what was going on with him. So the police started trying to, you know, get information out of him, figure out what's going on here.

And he tells them that he was forced to wear this neck collar by a group of black men and that they told him that he had to rob the bank and he had no choice. And as they looked closer at this device, I think they started to realize that this wasn't a joke, this wasn't a prank or anything. This was a real device. I don't have a lot of time he said police wanted to talk to him Brian Wells about a bank robbery that he had pulled up but he told them that he had been set up and that the bomb he was wearing would go off.

So they started to hide behind their cars and they called the bomb squad but they would come a little bit too late because the device started ticking and beeping and Brian started scooting back as if he was going to try to escape it somehow. People said around him it looked like he at that moment just realized that it was a real device and it wasn't long before it actually did explode. It tore a five-inch gash in his chest, it killed him, it didn't take long for him to pass away and then the bomb's squad showed up two minutes later. But obviously now that this is exploded, they are thinking, okay, he didn't just rob the bank, he's not the mastermind here. Was he really forced to do this?

Because who would put a real device around their neck and rob a bank? I mean, that seems ridiculous. Inside Brian's car, they actually found this really weird two-foot-long cane which turned out to be kind of DIY crafted handmade gun and the device that was put around his neck was also handmade for sure. Look like somebody put it together and it was kind of like a big handcuff that went around his neck and kind of clumped into place. But even though it was handmade, investigators could tell that it was made using some professional tools. So they started investigating more into the scene, you know, what was Brian doing, leading up to all of this, and that's when they found some very interesting notes in Brian's car, addressed to bomb hostage.

And the note said to deal $250,000 from the bank, you know, small task, but it also was basically a scavenger hunt. It was this complex set of instructions for Brian to go all around town in order to eventually free himself from the bomb. There were keys and combinations to things and it was pretty complicated. One of the notes actually said, the only way you can survive this is to cooperate completely. It also said, this powerful booby trapped bomb can only be removed by following our instructions. Act now, think later or you will die. They started at the scene where Brian claims that he had the device put on him.

It was basically at the edge of this wooded area that they had him drive to. And they were actually able to get tire impressions and see that Brian's car was at the site. And they were also marks as if he looked like he had fought someone or tried to stop them from putting it on him and there was some type of struggle and the shoe prints that were there matched Brian's shoes. The first note said exit the bank with the money and go to the McDonald's restaurant, get out of the car and go to the small sign reading drive through open 24 hours and in the flower bed by the sign there is a rock with a note taped to the bottom sign reading drive through open 24 hours. And in the flower bed by the sign,

there is a rock with a note taped to the bottom and it has your next instructions. So they figured out that Brian followed this. And as soon as he got the money from P&C Bank, he drove to McDonald's, went to the flower bed and that's where he got the next note. And it told him to go up Peach Street to this wooded area several miles away.

So he never quite made it to this step. But the next clue would have been to drive two miles south to another wooded area several miles away. So he never quite made it to this step, but the next clue would have been to drive two miles south to another wooded area that had a road sign, and that's where he would find his next clue. But when police got to that area, they found this jar, but it was empty. So whoever did this governor hunt came and took the rest of the evidence or the rest of the clues

before the police could find out what the rest of the plan was. Now this is where it gets even more confusing. I'm sure you're already a little confused, but a couple days later, August 31st, one of Brian's co-workers and one of his close friends, Bob Penetti, was found dead in his home. Now this is really important to the overall investigation here

and a lot of things are gonna tie together because of this fine. Bob was supposed to be interviewed by the police about all of this and he was killed before he could. He was supposed to do it on a Monday morning and he died Sunday evening so it was very suspect. Now I think he was killed but he did have a drug problem and they went ahead and ruled it in accidental drug overdose without being completely sure so no one fully knows what happened to him. Now this is even more confusing because we're just adding another layer here and another person,

but three weeks after Brian Wells had passed away, police received a call from a man named Bill Rothstein. Now this is definitely an important name. Now what he had to say was pretty interesting. He called the report that there was a dead body in the freezer at 8645 Peach Street. And then he told the dispatchers that the woman who put the body there was someone named Marjorie Deal Armstrong. Now this woman Marjorie is, I don't even know how to explain her, she is something else.

But it turns out that Bill was a neighbor of Marjories, but they also dated back in the 60s and 70s. So basically, Bill told investigators that he had a body that he was storing for Margarie just to be nice. And it was because she called him up one day and said, hey man, I murdered my ex. His name was Jim Rodin, so another name here. But she needed somewhere to hide the body. So she called up Bill Rossine and he agreed to hide it in his freezer. Now for some reason he decides to call the police and let them know about this. Now he was going to go along with this and help her out until

she said that she wanted to use a meat grinder to grind the body and he decided that that was too much for him and he called the police to report his own involvement. I think he thought he was going to like get away with it because he didn't technically do anything. I don't think he thought this through too much, but his call was very angry. So the police went to the house and there's actually footage of this and it's pretty gnarly. This house is like an episode of Hortars, it's dirty, police said it smelled disgusting. I mean there's a body in there. The house was filled with just random things and stuff everywhere, trash everywhere, totally dirty, but after they saw the body they went ahead and arrested Marjorie and she said that Bill was just trying to blame it on her and that he is actually the

one who did it. So she immediately started saying that she didn't do this and it took four days for the body to defrost for them to run tests on it So pretty gnarly, but this is when they found out that Jim was indeed shot with a shotgun in the head and then put into the freezer All right, so let's talk about Marjorie deal armstrong Marjorie was actually very intelligent. She graduated 12th in her class and received a bachelor's degree in sociology and a master's in education. But even though she was really smart, she was very mentally ill and she was fully transparent about this. She would literally brag to people about it kind of get attention and tell people like right off the bat I'm bipolar. When she was only 23 years old she first brought it

up to a therapist that she thought something was wrong with her mind. She had trouble making close relationships and she had really crippling anxiety. And over the years, various professionals have diagnosed her with a bunch of different things. By polar disorder, mania, pressured speech, narcissism, and severe personality disorder. And life was no walk in the park for her. She definitely struggled a lot in her life. She had difficulty keeping a job,

keeping relationships, and just struggled to get through her everyday life. In her life, she was briefly married, but her husband actually died from falling and hitting his head on a coffee table, which is questionable. But before he died, he stayed in the hospital, and she actually ended up suing the hospital for negligence and one.

She was known for being very smart and very manipulative. But just a little off. Like, for example, when her husband died, she asked to keep one of his bones, his leg bone, because she wanted to one day clone him. And this isn't her only case of bad luck when it comes to men. There were actually five men in her life that died from pretty strange causes. For example, one of her boyfriends killed himself right after she moved out, and then in 1984, she was actually arrested for killing her boyfriend, Robert Thomas. But then she went through court and was acquitted due to grounds of self-defense. So a lot of questionable things have happened in Marjorie's life.

But when she was arrested again for this latest body they found Jim wrote in, she claimed that she was completely innocent once again. And since this house was on Peach Street, they definitely thought, you know, maybe Marjorie could be involved in this. And they started to question her for that. But she insisted that she was not involved with it at all

and that the only way that she could have been involved in it is if Bill Rossstein was involved in it and she blamed Bill for killing Jim, her ex, who was in the freezer. But as far as she goes, she said, I am completely innocent, you know, you're the wrong person. So they brought Bill in to take a polygraph test and he didn't pass this, but there was one thing that he kept from them and that was about his previous roommate named Floyd Stockton, who moved out of his house conveniently on the same day that the robbery of Pancy Bay happened.

Now he was actually being held for other charges but they interviewed him and gave him a polygraph test which he also passed so him and Rothstein were cleared. Then in January 2004, five months after Jim wrote and died, Marjorie is in jail. She's there on murder charges. And Bill ended up testifying that the reason Marjorie did it is because they were fighting over financial issues. The judge ordered Marjorie to stand a trial. But Bill Rossy, on the other hand, he didn't get off completely Scott-free. I mean, he did hold a dead body for someone.

You can't just do that. But he got a fairly good deal because he cooperated a lot. He helped the police and he had good behavior. So he would only spend a few years in prison with a couple small charges like abuse of corpse, for example. But Marjorie continued to state publicly that she was innocent and that Bill was the real guilty one. She said that he did kill Jim Rodin, her ex,

and Brian Wells and committed the robbery of PNC Bank. So that following July, Bill Rothstein actually ended up checking himself into Mill Creek community hospital where he ended up dying seven days later from Hodgkin's Lin-Felma. This was extremely frustrating for investigators because he was helping them so much, and they really were expecting to have them around a lot longer to get information from. And oddly enough, Marjorie ended up confessing to the murder of Jim Rodin. She said that they had to fight about another woman

and she shot it, but she claims that she wasn't in her right mind and she wanted to get a pleetial. And at this point, she was given a seven year minimum sentence with the option of parole for good behavior and stuff. And after her sentence, she would have to go to a mental institution and get help. But it doesn't stop there because while Marjorie was in jail, she wrote a to whom it made concern letter to the police. And this letter was an attempt to bargaining with the police

because Marjorie was known as being extremely manipulative. She was always wheeled and dealing with people and you never quite knew what she was going to offer you or trick you on. Like she was very hard to read, but she was like oddly contagious. She was very good with people and sickeningly likable in her own weird way. Marjorie is a very strange person, but of course she wanted to bargain with the police. And this is when she wanted to give them some information about a different cold case, not the bank robbery. Now, this case involved a guy named Ken Barnes,

who was an old fishing buddy of Margaries. But unfortunately, after she sent the letter, the police ended up not really giving in to her. They just didn't want to feel like they were wheeling dealing with a criminal, you know? So nothing ever came out of that. And so she hatched up another plan. She said that she had a lot of information about other crimes, but she also had information about the pizza bomber case, and she claimed that she had proof that Bill

Rostin was the criminal here. She didn't give any more details about it, but she said he for sure has something to do with it. So the FBI ended up feeling like they had enough now to really feel like Marjorie was involved since she claimed to have Inside knowledge on it as well. So they got a warrant to go through her personal belongings, and this is when they found a letter. This was a very angry letter that was written to the bank, and this is where this case just is so confusing, but basically a while before all of this Marjorie's father and her did not have a good relationship they were kind of estranged and Marjorie had a safety deposit box with PNC bake where she had personal items stored and PNC went ahead and let her dad have access to this safety deposit box when she claims he should not have gotten access to it and this made her extremely mad because he got everything that was in that box. So she had beef with the bank.

So now they're starting to really connect the dots here. Eventually she was able to get officials to move her to Cambridge Springs after she gave some more details of other secrets she has. When the robbery took place, Bill had his blue van toad off his property and it didn't return until after he had been cleared by the FBI.

So she really started convincing police that Bill really did have something to do with this. So they started looking back at him, even though he had already passed away. And when they looked back at that old video of them walking through Bill's house and his garage, they saw that in the garage there was a diagram on his desk and there was a drawing

that had a little hand drawn arrow that looked Identical to the arrow that was drawn on the instructions of the bomb and then they also did the classic sketch pad thing Which if you've never heard of this it's a great little tip to make you feel like an investigator if there's ever a Notepad and you want to know what was written on it before it was ripped off You just take a pencil and shade over the paper that had been underneath the one that was written on and the indents from the pencil or pen will show up and you can normally read the letter. So they actually used this method and this is when they were able to get his handwriting and they were able to match his handwriting to some of the scavenger

hunt notes. And Bill was really good with all this type of stuff building and everything so they started to realize Bill was the one who built this device. And they think he was the one who wrote the clues, but unfortunately by the time that they had actually made these discoveries, Bill was long gone. So then the tip came in in summer of 2005. So quite a bit of time after this. A man named Professor Sedwick came forward and said

that he was driving south on I-79, not far from where Brian Wells died, and he reported seeing a Gold car driving right along the barrier coming at him full speed and he said that this person clearly made eye contact with him And he said that it was Marjorie However, even though she admitted that she was on the highway that day She did not admit that she had anything to do with the robbery and there was no proof But a little while after this some women came forward from the jail who were inmates with Marjorie and they claimed that she was talking about doing the robbery in

jail. There was this one inmate who even took notes on what Marjorie was saying. And the notes literally included her saying that Bill was the one who built the neckbone but that they all worked on it. And this inmate also had written down the name Floyd Stockton. I mean, how would she have known about him? So that's when they realized that he was involved. And apparently, Marjorie had hinted that Brian Wells was involved himself.

And she said something along the lines of, it's not like we didn't measure his neck for the collar. So they obviously had some type of relationship with him. So this is when they decided to have a look at Ken Barnes, Marjorie's fishing buddy, who was a pretty interesting dude. He was a drug dealer, and he was self-named Cocaine Ken, and he was also described as a manipulator. And during a series of interviews in 2005, police realized that Ken and Brian also had a connection into this woman named Jennifer Hoopsick. I told you, there's a lot of names in this case.

But basically, Brian would drive Jessica to go pick up cocaine from Ken a lot. They tried to interview Jessica, but she has refused to speak to anyone about Brian. So authorities did end up doing a search warrant on Ken Barnes House, and when they went in his house, it was absolutely disgusting, just like bills, but even worse, like dog shit on the ground. Random mattresses on the floor are like totally filthy. And when they were in his house, it was absolutely disgusting, just like bills, but even worse, like dog shit on the ground.

Random mattresses on the floor are like totally filthy. And when they were in the house, they didn't find anything in particular that linked Ken directly to the PNC bank robbery as well. But they did find magazines talking about electronics and like building things. So they thought maybe that could be used as evidence. So then they kind of put the heat on him and started telling him, you know, we think we have a case here against you buddy, and he just started spilling. He just straight up admitted that Marjorie was the one who solicited him to join in on this bank robbery

that she had planned, and then she was going to use the money that they got from the bank robbery to pay Ken to go and then kill her dad. I know, this is a very confusing case, like I said. But if you remember, Marjorie was angry with her father because he had taken whatever was in that deposit box out and they had other things going on in their relationship as well and she hated him.

So she wanted to rob the bank in order to get money to pay Ken to do the dirty work. Her father was gonna be giving away some of her inheritance that she thought rightfully belonged to her and she was mad about this. So she thought that this was the only way to get revenge. So then finally, on December 9th, 2005,

Ken fully admits that he was involved in the bank robbery. He said that a bunch of them were involved in it, but basically Marjorie was the leader of the whole thing, the mastermind behind the whole plan, and that's the thing with Marjorie is she thought she was very smart, but honestly, for there to be so many of them in this group,

this collection of kind of shit humans that have done this, it's very odd, because they really set him up for failure. I mean, the amount of time that they allocated for him to do this whole thing and get the collar off didn't make any sense. It was barely enough time and didn't even like really take into account what if they were all red lights or what if he's pulled over by police or really anything. But a lot of people think that their plan all along was to kill Brian. That Brian

himself was in on it but obviously he didn't think they were gonna kill him. What investigators think for the most part is that Brian was involved to some extent. But he thought they were putting on like a fake bomb And maybe he realized it was a real bomb. We don't know at what point But I don't think he agreed to this plan by any means, but I'm pretty sure he was involved to some extent Because why would he make up this whole story about how it was some group of black guys that forced him to wear this collar? If he wasn't trying to protect people he was working with, he would just be honest and tell them it was Bill and Marjorie and all of them.

But Ken was the one who really spilled the beans on everything. He said the day before the robbery they had a meeting. This meeting was held at Bill Ross team's house and they discussed all the parts that everyone would play and how it would work. And he claimed that Brian was there, Marjorie was there, Floyd stocked in was there, himself Ken Barnes was there,

Bill Pinede, and also Brian Wells. Ken said his role was to kind of be look out during all of this. Ken and Marjorie actually went to a shell station, and they were the ones who called the Pizzeria, placed the order, and kicked it all off. And they think when Brian got there, he gave it in the pizza, was waiting to be paid, and that's when they brought out the device, which he probably already knew about, strapped it on him and they think that at this point Brian realized that maybe it was a real device on a fake one Or maybe he didn't want to actually go through with it and he tried to bail and that's why there's kind of like foot scuff marks From them fighting that they think that Marjorie or someone grabbed him and according to Ken

Marjorie was the one that said if anyone anyone catches you, tell them a bunch of black guys did this to you. And then they all watched their plan unfold. Some of them were even watching with binoculars from across the street from the bank to make sure that Brian did everything. So after all this info came out, the one person left that they hadn't gone after

was Floyd Stockton. Now remember, he's Bill Rothstein's roommate and he was living in Bill's house at the time of all this until the robbery happened and then he moved out of that day. So he finally got in touch with Floyd and they made a deal with him that if he agreed to testify that he wouldn't get in any trouble himself.

They were so desperate to figure out this whole case and what happened. So in March 27th, 2007, three and a half years after the robbery, Floyd stalked and confessed to everything. He said that he was ordered by Ross Dean to put the device on Brian Wells' neck so it really seemed like Bill and Marjorie were the main two running this whole thing and he said that he saw fear in Bill's eyes and it disturbed him so much that he bailed on everything. He literally moved. He got the hell out of dodge So then four years after the bank robbery on July 9th, 2007,

officials finally charged Marjorie with the PNC bank robbery. They also charged Ken Barnes. And what's so crazy is it seems like all these people were in need of money, but it wasn't that much money that they were looking to get. Like 250,000 out of the bank for all these people to be involved, it seems kind of stupid, honestly. But like I said, in the end, the investigation came to the conclusion that Brian Wells did have some involvement in this. They don't know to what extent he agreed to participate. They believed he was forced at some point. There was a point where he was participating up to some level, but then he didn't want to, they believe, and he was forced the rest of the way. So there were no charges made against Brian Wells,

even though he's gone in anyway. And what's crazy is no one was actually charged with his murder. Marjorie was offered a plea deal, but she actually turned it down. She actually wanted to prove that she was now mentally competent to stand a trial. So she got her wish on October 15, 2010,

seven years after the robbery happened, they went to trial. Marjorie ended up being found guilty on all counts of her actions. She was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years on February 28th, 2011. And she actually died in 2017, but up until her death, Marjorie claimed that she was innocent. She said that she did not do this.

It was really more Bill. It was always between her and Bill. They had some major beef there towards the end. I thought it was just such a crazy story. I know it's really confusing. Props to you if you stuck through that one. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this case. And if you've heard about it or remember when it happened,

let me know your theory. If you don't think Brian was involved or do you think he was more involved, do you think he knew that it was a real device? Do you think he didn't? What do you think? That is gonna be it for me today, guys. Thank you for joining me for another episode.

And make sure you follow the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. It really does help me out. If you wanna watch the video version of this show, you can find it on my YouTube channel, which will be linked, or you can just search Kendal Ray. I will be back with another episode soon,

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