May 23, 2018 • 21 mins
How old were you when you moved out of your parent's home for good? A 30 year old New York man flat out refuses to leave the nest and a State Supreme Court Judge has issued his official ruling. Justin Page of CNY Central was in the courtroom and has all the details. Now, we don't want to kill your buzz about summer but the CDC has issued their summer warning, use caution when swimming in hotel pools. Science reporter for The Verge, Rachel Becker, will explain all the little parasites lurking in that cool water. Finally, the first part in a three piece segment on the incredible collar bomb heist - we spoke to reporter Rich Shapiro and got all the details surrounding the unbelievable story behind Netflix's hit Evil Genius.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Wednesday, and this is the Daily Dive. When is
the right time to move out of your parents house?
The thirty year old Michael Rotondo, the time had come
and went, so much so that his parents took legal
action to evict him from their house. His parents sent
him a number of eviction notices and finally took him
(00:21):
to court, but Michael was still fighting to stay. We
will speak to Justin Paige, a reporter for CNY Central,
who was in court for the verdict, and will tell
us how the judge rule. I hate to burst her bubble. Now,
the vacations and Summary is on its way, but the
CDC just came out with a report that says, be
aware of hotel pools. You don't want to catch something
nasty after taking a dip. Rachel Becker, science reporter for
(00:43):
The Verge, will break down with the CDC said, but
here's the short version. Don't poop or pee in the pool. Finally,
we will speak with Rich Shapiro, journalist in New York,
to go over the incredible true story of the Collar
bomb heist. The story is the subject of Netflix's latest
true crime show, Evil Genius. It's an amazing story with
lots of twists and turns. So we will be releasing
(01:04):
this interview in three parts over the next few days.
It's news without the noise. Let's dive in. We don't
probably unel his way. So I just wanted, you know,
a reason amount of time to vacate with constipation the
tech that I was not really prepared to support myself
at the time where I was served these notices. I
don't see why the judge wants to talk it alown
(01:26):
on the street. Joining us now is Justin Page. He's
a reporter for CNY Central in Syracuse. He was in
court for this curious case of Michael Rotundo. Justin please
tell us what this whole case is about. It seems
like it's something that happens to a lot of families,
but not so publicly, definitely not as public as this.
It definitely bizarre on its surface. It's a thirty year
old guy who has been asked to leave his parents house,
(01:48):
who's refusing to do so, and they've taken him to court.
And that's where we were yesterday, where a judge did
finally rule that he does need to leave the house.
Will be signing an eviction order here shortly in giving
him what he's saying a reasonable amount of time to
pack his things and move out. But he's saying that
his fight is not over yet and that he'll be
following an appeal to get a stay and eventually stay
(02:10):
in the house. I guess that's a that's the goal.
How long was this going on for? I mean, I
imagine my parents telling me, get the heck out of
the house, and you know, in a couple of weeks
you feel the heat and it's time to leave. But so,
how long had this been happening? Well, he says that
his parents first started to mention that they wanted him
out of the house back in October, but it was
quickly after that November that they stopped paying for his
(02:31):
food and starting to do things like that. And then
it was in February when he got the first written
notice telling him that he had fourteen days and he
needed to leave. And that's when we kind of got
into this whole court mess that we're in right now.
That was the beginning of the legal action that was
taking official notice, is saying you're evicted, you need to
get out of here. Right. What was their relationship, like,
(02:52):
I mean, was he as he always lived there. Did
he move out and move back in? Did they finally
get tired of him? It's that's the most curious part.
What what happens to this family behind closed doors? I mean,
that's a great question. I think I'd love to be
a fly on the wall in there just for a day.
But he did move back with his family eight years ago,
so he's been living there for the past eight years.
(03:13):
He did move away for at least a few years
prior to that. But I think things really started to
go south just within this last year here again, starting
in about October November. So what was in some of
those letters that they sent to him. One of them
mentioned a broken down car that had been in the
driveway for an annoying amount of time to them up
on blocks. So they said that he needed to get
(03:34):
that fixed and they would even help him financially there
if they could do that by providing him eleven hundred
dollars to get that done and kind of get his
search going for an apartment and to kind of start
his the next step in his life. But the other
ones are very they've got the legal ease in there,
and they they're very blunt they just say, you have
a certain amount of time before you have to leave
this house, and he's kind of taking those and built
(03:56):
his own case against them, saying that he thinks he
deserves at least six months notice before he needs to leave.
You were in court when the ruling came down yesterday,
described to us that scene. How did the judge act,
how did Michael and his parents act? The whole court appearance. Really,
the judge, you could kind of tell there was a
little bit of a smirk, a little bit of a
smile to his face at times, just the fact that
(04:17):
we were are they were arguing this in court. His
parents were sitting twenty ft away from on the other
side of the courtroom, watching their third year old son
plead his case as to why he shouldn't be kicked
out of their house. But when the ruling came down,
it did get a little testy. You could tell that
that Michael was was annoyed. He he asked for an
adjournment at one point that the judge obviously rejected. He
(04:38):
continued to give his statement there but his decision. But yeah,
he was he was very testy, and he told the
judge right away that he plans on appealing, and he
was trying to schedule his appeal during this appearance, which
of course is not not allowed. It's not proper procedure
to do that. Just from reading some of stuff going
on in the court, it said that the judge called
his demand for six more months outrage and then Rotundo
(05:01):
responded by saying, your eviction order is outrageous. So, you know,
reading these things, that just seems like wacky court, just
everything going haywire in there. It was definitely a little surreal.
It's definitely not the typical court appearance you'd you'd see,
and and that is true. He he did say that,
he did say it was outrageous. Right when the judge
gave his decision. You just heard heard him say that
(05:22):
it was outrageous. And reports also said that the judge
was had praised him for doing a bunch of legal research.
He was representing himself. But you know, they said that
he did a good job of that is is that so? Yeah?
I mean he was citing case law, he was making
his own motions. I mean, the judge really complimented for
his research and citing that case law. But the judge
said he missed at least one that UM kind of
(05:43):
didn't qualify him for that six month requirement of notice
to leave. And even when he was complimenting Michael's legal research,
Michael's downplayed it, saying it only took a few minutes
a quick Internet search and that's all it took. I
think he was trying to prove a point that this
is a clear cut case that he should be given
more time. Even downplayed the judges compliments there his praise,
I guess and after court, after the ruling came down,
(06:05):
you got a chance to speak to him. What happened there?
What did he say? Well? As soon as court ended,
Um Michael left fairly quickly. I was kind of right
near the door, so I ran out first, and I
was the first reporter to approach and to see if
he would be willing to speak on camera. I kind
of had my camera on my shoulder and he said
he kind of gave me the motion to hold on
one moment. He walked back into court to ask everyone else,
(06:28):
all the other reporters and photographers in the courtroom to
come out, and he kind of threw this impromptu press
conference where he started answering people's questions as as best
he could, and there was some strange answers in there.
What did he say? Some of the things he said,
as he mentioned in court that he doesn't think he's
a burden because he does pay for his own food,
he does his own laundry. We kind of got a
(06:48):
little bit more of an insight into the family dynamic
that they don't communicate. They don't speak at all in
the house, which is a little strange. He was very
emphatic about the fact that he doesn't live in his
parents basement. He actually lives in a bedroom in the house.
So well, he doesn't want to be considered a crazy
basement guy video game or something. Yeah, he doesn't want
to be the basement guy. So he does live in
(07:10):
a bedroom there. Does he have a job? Does he
do anything for money? Yes, he did say that he
has a job. From some of the research we've done,
we believe it's something to do with online, like an
online type job, but we're not sure exactly what that is.
And he wouldn't get into it at all. He was
very um, very closed off about his work. He would
kind of get into what line of work he's in.
He said he didn't want to drag his business into this.
(07:31):
But whatever it is, obviously it's not supporting him enough
financially too. I feel comfortable enough to make the move. Wow,
that's just an amazing story. You know, Like I said
at the beginning, what parent tells is kicking you out
of your house. I mean, you feel the heat and
you go. But this guy is fighting tooth the nail
to stay. So very good report. Thank you very much.
Justin Paige, reporter for CNY Central and Syracuse. Thank you
(07:53):
for joining us, Thanks for having me. Cryptospritium is a
tough little parasite. It can survive even in a clean,
you know, well disinfected pool for days. Joining us now
is Rachel Becker, Science reporter for The Verge. So summertime
(08:17):
is coming, vacations are coming, everybody's going out to hotels,
water parks, things like that. I will tell you just
for me personally, I never had a pool growing up,
So whenever I get out to a hotel, whether permitting,
that's one of the first things that I'm always looking
forward to is getting in the pool, getting a great
swim going. But the CDC just came out with a study.
(08:37):
They were looking at a bunch of outbreaks over the
past years, and they noticed that hotel pools specifically are
one of the worst places to be going into What
did they come out with their findings? So they looked
at about five outbreaks between the years two thousands and
ten that were linked to pools, spas, water parks, and
(08:58):
these outbreaks me more than seven thousand people sick, and
they found that about a third of the outbreaks could
be traced back to hotels, motels, inns, lodges and their
pools and hot tubs. One of the simple, big, simple
rules that they say, I thought it was kind of
funny and says don't let your your kids swim if
they're sick with diarrhea. I feel like that's a no brainer.
(09:19):
But what else did they say about that? Right? I know,
it's like, the last thing I want to do is
if if I have diarrhea is going to swimming pool.
But they said, uh, don't swim or let your kids
swim if sick with diarrhea. And the CDC's website actually
says that swims who were sick with diarrhea or who
have been sick in the last two weeks risk contaminating
(09:40):
the pool water with germs, and some of those germs
can include this one bug specifically called cryptosporidium, which is
a parasite that's really hard to kill with disinfectants. Okay,
I want to come back to that one because there's
a little bit more on that. But there's a couple
of other infections diseases that you can get being in
(10:00):
some of this dirty water. One of them could lead
to Legionnaire's disease. That's right. Yeah, it's called it's a
bacteria called legion Ella, and it can cause this dangerous
pneumonia called Legionnaire's disease, and also flu like illness called
pontiac fever. And that's one of the ones that older
people need to be more mindful of and getting in
a hot tub specifically. Yeah, that one is spread through
(10:22):
uh drop airborne infected droplets, So if you inhale them,
it's a it's a problem, especially for people who are older,
who have compromised immune systems, who have lung disease, or
are smokers. There's another infection that you can get could
cause some skin rashes what people call swimmer's ear. Which
one are we talking about here, Yeah, that's pseudomonius and
(10:42):
that's spread if you touch contaminated water, and it can
cause rashes, can cause swimmer's ear, as you said, all right,
and the major culprit I know, we already talked about
it briefly, but crypto spiridium this is the one that
gives you diarrhea. The one that you do do not
want to get chlorine and bromine, things that they usually
used to help sanitize the pools. These bugs can survive
(11:04):
that stuff. They don't. They're not easily killed by the chlorine. Yeah,
it's cryptos Prydium is a tough little parasite. It can
survive even in a clean, you know, well disinfected pool
for days. One of the grossest parts of this that
I found, and if you can shed some light on it,
it says that the bacteria forms together and it creates
(11:25):
something called a biofilm. What is this biofilm? Oh goodness,
it's hard to figure out how to explain biofilms. They're
basically this like slimy aggregation of bacteria. It's it's especially
tough and they can sort of protect one another. They're
hard to clean off of surfaces, so they clump together
and they you know, greater in numbers kind of thing,
(11:47):
and then it the chlorine doesn't really kill them, Yeah, exactly.
So I'm curious and I don't know, if you know,
is this something that forms like on the top of
the water, it can stick to the floor or something
like if I step in a pool and I feel
something slippery and slimy, is that what this is? I
don't know. That's a really good question, OK, just because
I'm I read these stories and now I'm hyper aware
of it, so I'm gonna keep looking out for these things.
(12:08):
The CDC suggested that people buy their own test strips
to test pH levels, and that just seems really like
I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to
go to the store and buy a test trip test
the water, and then if I see something nasty, I'm
going to notify everybody and be the guy that killed
everybody's vacation. But but that's what's something that they're advocating for,
(12:29):
to buy these test trips and and do your due
diligence before you get into pool. CDC has this really
handy dandy checklist for how to make sure that the
pool you're going into is healthy. One of them is
to kind of you basically do your own inspection. So
you can buy these little pH strips that change color
and can tell you about the acidity level in the pool.
(12:53):
You can also buy little kids that tell you how
much chlorinees in the water. They tell you to look
at whether the drain of the deep end of the
pool is visible, but I think that probably tells you
if the water is murky or not. But I mean,
in the end, these these are microscopic bugs, right, so
even if the water is clean looking, there still might
(13:14):
be something in it that could make you sick. Right.
And then they also stress you know, taking showers before
you get into the pools, cleaning off the sweat and
the oils and the body because that interacts with the
chlorine and might not get all the cryptosporidium or anything
like that if not disinfect properly. So I know that
that's another big thing. Take a shower, and obviously don't
pee in the pool. Don't pee or poop in the pool,
(13:35):
I think is the big takeaway from both of these things. Yeah, seriously,
please don't poop or pee in the pool. The showering
is to get the your sweat and your lotions off
of the off of your skin before you get in
the pool, because those proteins can interact with the chlorine
and form something called chloramines, and those can be irritating
for you to breathe. They sort of float off of
the surface of the water and can can irritate your lungs.
(13:58):
All right, Well, hopefully none of us come down with
any of this stuff. And I'm gonna keep it. Like
I said, I'm gonna HyperWare now, so I'm gonna keep
looking at all the pools. Rachel Becker, science reporter for
The Verge, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks
for having me to be device suddenly started emitting an
(14:22):
accelerated beeping noise. Be the beep that ended with it
exploding and Brian Wells tragically dying in the force of
the blast. Joining us now is Rich Shapiro. He's a
journalist based in New York and he followed this specific
case we're gonna be talking about for years when it
was happening. Rich. Thank you for joining us, my pleasure.
(14:45):
The story we're gonna talk about is the incredible true
story of the Collar bomb heist. It's the subject of
Netflix's latest true crime show, Evil Genius. The true story
of America's most diabolical bank highest But this is really interesting.
There's a couple of key players that we can it too.
I know it's a long story and we don't have
much time, but let's start off with pizza deliveryman Brian Wells.
(15:06):
This is how everybody kind of came into the story.
It was just so amazing, so crazy. What happened to him? What?
What happened to Brian Wells? On August two thousand three,
Brian Wells walked into a bank in Erie, Pennsylvania. He
had a something bulging from the under the collar of
(15:26):
his T shirt, and he had would look to be
a cane in his hand. He handed the bank teller
a note basically announcing that it was a robbery and
revealing that the device kind of dangling from his neck
was in fact the bomb. The teller handed him a
(15:48):
bag filled with cash. Brian Wells casually walked out of
the bank and drove off, but he didn't make it far.
He was surrounded by Steve troopers less than a mile away,
and he was cancuffed and put on the street. Um
he pleaded with those state troopers. He said that he
(16:10):
has a bomb around his neck and that it's going
to go off. Several minutes passed as the state troopers
awaited for the bomb squad to arrive, and then the
device suddenly started emitting an accelerated beeping noise. Be the
beep that ended with it exploding and Brian Wells tragically
(16:36):
dying in the force of the blast. Now I've been
able to see some video of this. Local news was
there on the scene. They were getting this stuff, and
the video is dramatic. You hear the beeps and the
explosion comes and his chest literally blows up right there.
They tackled the police tackled him down, you know, and
it wasn't until he said I have a bomb here.
That complicated things because they had to call the bomb
(16:58):
squad and followed procedure. But it goes on beyond that,
you know. It's he had this elaborate caller. That's what
they call it the collar bomb. It was like a
handcuff around his neck and attached to that was the
bomb and there was like a series of locks on it. It. Uh.
We found out later through the investigation that it was
at you know, that he had instructions on how to
(17:21):
unlock the caller. It was almost like a scene from
the movie Saw, where you gotta follow his instructions and
play the game and then you could possibly get out
of this. And that kind of leads us into all
the other players in this story. Tell us a little
bit about the note that he had, and then how
everybody else figures into this story. The investigators when they
went into his car, they found that he had these
(17:43):
handwritten notes that essentially laid out what was a scavenger hunt,
with Brian Wells being directed to various locations in Erie,
at which point he would receive a clue, a key,
and a clue for the next for the location of
the next site. The notes said that he had to
(18:09):
complete this in a in a specific period of time.
If he didn't, he would he would die. The bomb
would go off, and the only way for him to
actually survive this was to complete this scavenger hunt and
get the four keys that were required to actually unlock
(18:30):
the device that was strapped around his neck. Later we
found out that whether the people perpetrating this on him
gave up or not, there was really never any chance
he had to take this color bomb off. He was
going to go either way. That's right. The investigators say
that that the device was raped such that it was
inevitable that it was going to explode, and that there
(18:54):
was actually no way to actually disable it. So let's
forward wind in the story a little bit. There's two
major players here that were involved that we're kind of
quote unquote the masterminds. It seems like they came up
with most of this plot, and it was let's see
Marjorie Deal Armstrong and Bill Rothstein. How do they figure
(19:15):
into this? It's a good it's a good question. They're
they're they're both very bizarre characters with a complicated past.
But basically, the authorities say that this, this entire plot
was started with Marjorie Deal Armstrong who wanted to hire
a hitman to kill her father, and the way that
(19:37):
she was going to pay that hit man was by
using the proceeds from this bank robbery. Um, that's Marjorie
Deal Armstrong's involvement, and that's kind of how the crime
came to be according to investigators. Then you have her
former boyfriend, a man named Bill Rothstein, who was a
(19:58):
an eccentric, very elligent handyman who lived in in Erie, Pennsylvania,
and he was someone who lived not far from the
location where Brian well delivered, made his final pizza delivery,
and Bill Rostein ended up dying before the police actually
(20:24):
brought charges, and even up until even on his deathbed,
he denied that he had anything to do with this.
But other other members of this crime say otherwise. Okay,
(20:46):
we will leave it there for today and pick it
up tomorrow. Tomorrow will explore one of the strangest elements
of the story. Brian Wells, the man who was blown
up by the bomb, reportedly helped plan the bank heist.
Join us on social media at Daily I've pod on
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(21:07):
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Anders in Los Angeles and this was your Daily Dive.
It's Wednesday, and this is the Daily Dive. When is
the right time to move out of your parents house?
The thirty year old Michael Rotondo, the time had come
and went, so much so that his parents took legal
action to evict him from their house. His parents sent
him a number of eviction notices and finally took him
(00:21):
to court, but Michael was still fighting to stay. We
will speak to Justin Paige, a reporter for CNY Central,
who was in court for the verdict, and will tell
us how the judge rule. I hate to burst her bubble. Now,
the vacations and Summary is on its way, but the
CDC just came out with a report that says, be
aware of hotel pools. You don't want to catch something
nasty after taking a dip. Rachel Becker, science reporter for
(00:43):
The Verge, will break down with the CDC said, but
here's the short version. Don't poop or pee in the pool. Finally,
we will speak with Rich Shapiro, journalist in New York,
to go over the incredible true story of the Collar
bomb heist. The story is the subject of Netflix's latest
true crime show, Evil Genius. It's an amazing story with
lots of twists and turns. So we will be releasing
(01:04):
this interview in three parts over the next few days.
It's news without the noise. Let's dive in. We don't
probably unel his way. So I just wanted, you know,
a reason amount of time to vacate with constipation the
tech that I was not really prepared to support myself
at the time where I was served these notices. I
don't see why the judge wants to talk it alown
(01:26):
on the street. Joining us now is Justin Page. He's
a reporter for CNY Central in Syracuse. He was in
court for this curious case of Michael Rotundo. Justin please
tell us what this whole case is about. It seems
like it's something that happens to a lot of families,
but not so publicly, definitely not as public as this.
It definitely bizarre on its surface. It's a thirty year
old guy who has been asked to leave his parents house,
(01:48):
who's refusing to do so, and they've taken him to court.
And that's where we were yesterday, where a judge did
finally rule that he does need to leave the house.
Will be signing an eviction order here shortly in giving
him what he's saying a reasonable amount of time to
pack his things and move out. But he's saying that
his fight is not over yet and that he'll be
following an appeal to get a stay and eventually stay
(02:10):
in the house. I guess that's a that's the goal.
How long was this going on for? I mean, I
imagine my parents telling me, get the heck out of
the house, and you know, in a couple of weeks
you feel the heat and it's time to leave. But so,
how long had this been happening? Well, he says that
his parents first started to mention that they wanted him
out of the house back in October, but it was
quickly after that November that they stopped paying for his
(02:31):
food and starting to do things like that. And then
it was in February when he got the first written
notice telling him that he had fourteen days and he
needed to leave. And that's when we kind of got
into this whole court mess that we're in right now.
That was the beginning of the legal action that was
taking official notice, is saying you're evicted, you need to
get out of here. Right. What was their relationship, like,
(02:52):
I mean, was he as he always lived there. Did
he move out and move back in? Did they finally
get tired of him? It's that's the most curious part.
What what happens to this family behind closed doors? I mean,
that's a great question. I think I'd love to be
a fly on the wall in there just for a day.
But he did move back with his family eight years ago,
so he's been living there for the past eight years.
(03:13):
He did move away for at least a few years
prior to that. But I think things really started to
go south just within this last year here again, starting
in about October November. So what was in some of
those letters that they sent to him. One of them
mentioned a broken down car that had been in the
driveway for an annoying amount of time to them up
on blocks. So they said that he needed to get
(03:34):
that fixed and they would even help him financially there
if they could do that by providing him eleven hundred
dollars to get that done and kind of get his
search going for an apartment and to kind of start
his the next step in his life. But the other
ones are very they've got the legal ease in there,
and they they're very blunt they just say, you have
a certain amount of time before you have to leave
this house, and he's kind of taking those and built
(03:56):
his own case against them, saying that he thinks he
deserves at least six months notice before he needs to leave.
You were in court when the ruling came down yesterday,
described to us that scene. How did the judge act,
how did Michael and his parents act? The whole court appearance. Really,
the judge, you could kind of tell there was a
little bit of a smirk, a little bit of a
smile to his face at times, just the fact that
(04:17):
we were are they were arguing this in court. His
parents were sitting twenty ft away from on the other
side of the courtroom, watching their third year old son
plead his case as to why he shouldn't be kicked
out of their house. But when the ruling came down,
it did get a little testy. You could tell that
that Michael was was annoyed. He he asked for an
adjournment at one point that the judge obviously rejected. He
(04:38):
continued to give his statement there but his decision. But yeah,
he was he was very testy, and he told the
judge right away that he plans on appealing, and he
was trying to schedule his appeal during this appearance, which
of course is not not allowed. It's not proper procedure
to do that. Just from reading some of stuff going
on in the court, it said that the judge called
his demand for six more months outrage and then Rotundo
(05:01):
responded by saying, your eviction order is outrageous. So, you know,
reading these things, that just seems like wacky court, just
everything going haywire in there. It was definitely a little surreal.
It's definitely not the typical court appearance you'd you'd see,
and and that is true. He he did say that,
he did say it was outrageous. Right when the judge
gave his decision. You just heard heard him say that
(05:22):
it was outrageous. And reports also said that the judge
was had praised him for doing a bunch of legal research.
He was representing himself. But you know, they said that
he did a good job of that is is that so? Yeah?
I mean he was citing case law, he was making
his own motions. I mean, the judge really complimented for
his research and citing that case law. But the judge
said he missed at least one that UM kind of
(05:43):
didn't qualify him for that six month requirement of notice
to leave. And even when he was complimenting Michael's legal research,
Michael's downplayed it, saying it only took a few minutes
a quick Internet search and that's all it took. I
think he was trying to prove a point that this
is a clear cut case that he should be given
more time. Even downplayed the judges compliments there his praise,
I guess and after court, after the ruling came down,
(06:05):
you got a chance to speak to him. What happened there?
What did he say? Well? As soon as court ended,
Um Michael left fairly quickly. I was kind of right
near the door, so I ran out first, and I
was the first reporter to approach and to see if
he would be willing to speak on camera. I kind
of had my camera on my shoulder and he said
he kind of gave me the motion to hold on
one moment. He walked back into court to ask everyone else,
(06:28):
all the other reporters and photographers in the courtroom to
come out, and he kind of threw this impromptu press
conference where he started answering people's questions as as best
he could, and there was some strange answers in there.
What did he say? Some of the things he said,
as he mentioned in court that he doesn't think he's
a burden because he does pay for his own food,
he does his own laundry. We kind of got a
(06:48):
little bit more of an insight into the family dynamic
that they don't communicate. They don't speak at all in
the house, which is a little strange. He was very
emphatic about the fact that he doesn't live in his
parents basement. He actually lives in a bedroom in the house.
So well, he doesn't want to be considered a crazy
basement guy video game or something. Yeah, he doesn't want
to be the basement guy. So he does live in
(07:10):
a bedroom there. Does he have a job? Does he
do anything for money? Yes, he did say that he
has a job. From some of the research we've done,
we believe it's something to do with online, like an
online type job, but we're not sure exactly what that is.
And he wouldn't get into it at all. He was
very um, very closed off about his work. He would
kind of get into what line of work he's in.
He said he didn't want to drag his business into this.
(07:31):
But whatever it is, obviously it's not supporting him enough
financially too. I feel comfortable enough to make the move. Wow,
that's just an amazing story. You know, Like I said
at the beginning, what parent tells is kicking you out
of your house. I mean, you feel the heat and
you go. But this guy is fighting tooth the nail
to stay. So very good report. Thank you very much.
Justin Paige, reporter for CNY Central and Syracuse. Thank you
(07:53):
for joining us, Thanks for having me. Cryptospritium is a
tough little parasite. It can survive even in a clean,
you know, well disinfected pool for days. Joining us now
is Rachel Becker, Science reporter for The Verge. So summertime
(08:17):
is coming, vacations are coming, everybody's going out to hotels,
water parks, things like that. I will tell you just
for me personally, I never had a pool growing up,
So whenever I get out to a hotel, whether permitting,
that's one of the first things that I'm always looking
forward to is getting in the pool, getting a great
swim going. But the CDC just came out with a study.
(08:37):
They were looking at a bunch of outbreaks over the
past years, and they noticed that hotel pools specifically are
one of the worst places to be going into What
did they come out with their findings? So they looked
at about five outbreaks between the years two thousands and
ten that were linked to pools, spas, water parks, and
(08:58):
these outbreaks me more than seven thousand people sick, and
they found that about a third of the outbreaks could
be traced back to hotels, motels, inns, lodges and their
pools and hot tubs. One of the simple, big, simple
rules that they say, I thought it was kind of
funny and says don't let your your kids swim if
they're sick with diarrhea. I feel like that's a no brainer.
(09:19):
But what else did they say about that? Right? I know,
it's like, the last thing I want to do is
if if I have diarrhea is going to swimming pool.
But they said, uh, don't swim or let your kids
swim if sick with diarrhea. And the CDC's website actually
says that swims who were sick with diarrhea or who
have been sick in the last two weeks risk contaminating
(09:40):
the pool water with germs, and some of those germs
can include this one bug specifically called cryptosporidium, which is
a parasite that's really hard to kill with disinfectants. Okay,
I want to come back to that one because there's
a little bit more on that. But there's a couple
of other infections diseases that you can get being in
(10:00):
some of this dirty water. One of them could lead
to Legionnaire's disease. That's right. Yeah, it's called it's a
bacteria called legion Ella, and it can cause this dangerous
pneumonia called Legionnaire's disease, and also flu like illness called
pontiac fever. And that's one of the ones that older
people need to be more mindful of and getting in
a hot tub specifically. Yeah, that one is spread through
(10:22):
uh drop airborne infected droplets, So if you inhale them,
it's a it's a problem, especially for people who are older,
who have compromised immune systems, who have lung disease, or
are smokers. There's another infection that you can get could
cause some skin rashes what people call swimmer's ear. Which
one are we talking about here, Yeah, that's pseudomonius and
(10:42):
that's spread if you touch contaminated water, and it can
cause rashes, can cause swimmer's ear, as you said, all right,
and the major culprit I know, we already talked about
it briefly, but crypto spiridium this is the one that
gives you diarrhea. The one that you do do not
want to get chlorine and bromine, things that they usually
used to help sanitize the pools. These bugs can survive
(11:04):
that stuff. They don't. They're not easily killed by the chlorine. Yeah,
it's cryptos Prydium is a tough little parasite. It can
survive even in a clean, you know, well disinfected pool
for days. One of the grossest parts of this that
I found, and if you can shed some light on it,
it says that the bacteria forms together and it creates
(11:25):
something called a biofilm. What is this biofilm? Oh goodness,
it's hard to figure out how to explain biofilms. They're
basically this like slimy aggregation of bacteria. It's it's especially
tough and they can sort of protect one another. They're
hard to clean off of surfaces, so they clump together
and they you know, greater in numbers kind of thing,
(11:47):
and then it the chlorine doesn't really kill them, Yeah, exactly.
So I'm curious and I don't know, if you know,
is this something that forms like on the top of
the water, it can stick to the floor or something
like if I step in a pool and I feel
something slippery and slimy, is that what this is? I
don't know. That's a really good question, OK, just because
I'm I read these stories and now I'm hyper aware
of it, so I'm gonna keep looking out for these things.
(12:08):
The CDC suggested that people buy their own test strips
to test pH levels, and that just seems really like
I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to
go to the store and buy a test trip test
the water, and then if I see something nasty, I'm
going to notify everybody and be the guy that killed
everybody's vacation. But but that's what's something that they're advocating for,
(12:29):
to buy these test trips and and do your due
diligence before you get into pool. CDC has this really
handy dandy checklist for how to make sure that the
pool you're going into is healthy. One of them is
to kind of you basically do your own inspection. So
you can buy these little pH strips that change color
and can tell you about the acidity level in the pool.
(12:53):
You can also buy little kids that tell you how
much chlorinees in the water. They tell you to look
at whether the drain of the deep end of the
pool is visible, but I think that probably tells you
if the water is murky or not. But I mean,
in the end, these these are microscopic bugs, right, so
even if the water is clean looking, there still might
(13:14):
be something in it that could make you sick. Right.
And then they also stress you know, taking showers before
you get into the pools, cleaning off the sweat and
the oils and the body because that interacts with the
chlorine and might not get all the cryptosporidium or anything
like that if not disinfect properly. So I know that
that's another big thing. Take a shower, and obviously don't
pee in the pool. Don't pee or poop in the pool,
(13:35):
I think is the big takeaway from both of these things. Yeah, seriously,
please don't poop or pee in the pool. The showering
is to get the your sweat and your lotions off
of the off of your skin before you get in
the pool, because those proteins can interact with the chlorine
and form something called chloramines, and those can be irritating
for you to breathe. They sort of float off of
the surface of the water and can can irritate your lungs.
(13:58):
All right, Well, hopefully none of us come down with
any of this stuff. And I'm gonna keep it. Like
I said, I'm gonna HyperWare now, so I'm gonna keep
looking at all the pools. Rachel Becker, science reporter for
The Verge, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks
for having me to be device suddenly started emitting an
(14:22):
accelerated beeping noise. Be the beep that ended with it
exploding and Brian Wells tragically dying in the force of
the blast. Joining us now is Rich Shapiro. He's a
journalist based in New York and he followed this specific
case we're gonna be talking about for years when it
was happening. Rich. Thank you for joining us, my pleasure.
(14:45):
The story we're gonna talk about is the incredible true
story of the Collar bomb heist. It's the subject of
Netflix's latest true crime show, Evil Genius. The true story
of America's most diabolical bank highest But this is really interesting.
There's a couple of key players that we can it too.
I know it's a long story and we don't have
much time, but let's start off with pizza deliveryman Brian Wells.
(15:06):
This is how everybody kind of came into the story.
It was just so amazing, so crazy. What happened to him? What?
What happened to Brian Wells? On August two thousand three,
Brian Wells walked into a bank in Erie, Pennsylvania. He
had a something bulging from the under the collar of
(15:26):
his T shirt, and he had would look to be
a cane in his hand. He handed the bank teller
a note basically announcing that it was a robbery and
revealing that the device kind of dangling from his neck
was in fact the bomb. The teller handed him a
(15:48):
bag filled with cash. Brian Wells casually walked out of
the bank and drove off, but he didn't make it far.
He was surrounded by Steve troopers less than a mile away,
and he was cancuffed and put on the street. Um
he pleaded with those state troopers. He said that he
(16:10):
has a bomb around his neck and that it's going
to go off. Several minutes passed as the state troopers
awaited for the bomb squad to arrive, and then the
device suddenly started emitting an accelerated beeping noise. Be the
beep that ended with it exploding and Brian Wells tragically
(16:36):
dying in the force of the blast. Now I've been
able to see some video of this. Local news was
there on the scene. They were getting this stuff, and
the video is dramatic. You hear the beeps and the
explosion comes and his chest literally blows up right there.
They tackled the police tackled him down, you know, and
it wasn't until he said I have a bomb here.
That complicated things because they had to call the bomb
(16:58):
squad and followed procedure. But it goes on beyond that,
you know. It's he had this elaborate caller. That's what
they call it the collar bomb. It was like a
handcuff around his neck and attached to that was the
bomb and there was like a series of locks on it. It. Uh.
We found out later through the investigation that it was
at you know, that he had instructions on how to
(17:21):
unlock the caller. It was almost like a scene from
the movie Saw, where you gotta follow his instructions and
play the game and then you could possibly get out
of this. And that kind of leads us into all
the other players in this story. Tell us a little
bit about the note that he had, and then how
everybody else figures into this story. The investigators when they
went into his car, they found that he had these
(17:43):
handwritten notes that essentially laid out what was a scavenger hunt,
with Brian Wells being directed to various locations in Erie,
at which point he would receive a clue, a key,
and a clue for the next for the location of
the next site. The notes said that he had to
(18:09):
complete this in a in a specific period of time.
If he didn't, he would he would die. The bomb
would go off, and the only way for him to
actually survive this was to complete this scavenger hunt and
get the four keys that were required to actually unlock
(18:30):
the device that was strapped around his neck. Later we
found out that whether the people perpetrating this on him
gave up or not, there was really never any chance
he had to take this color bomb off. He was
going to go either way. That's right. The investigators say
that that the device was raped such that it was
inevitable that it was going to explode, and that there
(18:54):
was actually no way to actually disable it. So let's
forward wind in the story a little bit. There's two
major players here that were involved that we're kind of
quote unquote the masterminds. It seems like they came up
with most of this plot, and it was let's see
Marjorie Deal Armstrong and Bill Rothstein. How do they figure
(19:15):
into this? It's a good it's a good question. They're
they're they're both very bizarre characters with a complicated past.
But basically, the authorities say that this, this entire plot
was started with Marjorie Deal Armstrong who wanted to hire
a hitman to kill her father, and the way that
(19:37):
she was going to pay that hit man was by
using the proceeds from this bank robbery. Um, that's Marjorie
Deal Armstrong's involvement, and that's kind of how the crime
came to be according to investigators. Then you have her
former boyfriend, a man named Bill Rothstein, who was a
(19:58):
an eccentric, very elligent handyman who lived in in Erie, Pennsylvania,
and he was someone who lived not far from the
location where Brian well delivered, made his final pizza delivery,
and Bill Rostein ended up dying before the police actually
(20:24):
brought charges, and even up until even on his deathbed,
he denied that he had anything to do with this.
But other other members of this crime say otherwise. Okay,
(20:46):
we will leave it there for today and pick it
up tomorrow. Tomorrow will explore one of the strangest elements
of the story. Brian Wells, the man who was blown
up by the bomb, reportedly helped plan the bank heist.
Join us on social media at Daily I've pod on
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(21:07):
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