July 31, 2025 • 63 mins
Welcome back to another episode of Scream and Sugar, your true crime coffee hour. In one of the most bizarre and twisted cases in American true crime history, Brian Wells walked into a bank wearing a collar bomb, and what followed was a deadly, real-life scavenger hunt that stunned the nation.
This episode delves into the infamous "Pizza Bomber Heist" of Erie, Pennsylvania —the shocking events of August 28, 2003, the tangled web of suspects, and the question that still haunts many: Was Brian a willing participant or an unsuspecting pawn in a murderous game? Join us as we break down the chilling timeline, the manipulative mastermind, and the jaw-dropping aftermath that inspired a Netflix documentary and continues to captivate armchair detectives.
And remember, stay spooky, y’all.
Case Notes:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-in-america/id1547409175
Evil Genius Docuseries: https://www.netflix.com/title/80158319
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/scream-and-sugar-true-crime-coffee-hour--6015946/support.
This episode delves into the infamous "Pizza Bomber Heist" of Erie, Pennsylvania —the shocking events of August 28, 2003, the tangled web of suspects, and the question that still haunts many: Was Brian a willing participant or an unsuspecting pawn in a murderous game? Join us as we break down the chilling timeline, the manipulative mastermind, and the jaw-dropping aftermath that inspired a Netflix documentary and continues to captivate armchair detectives.
And remember, stay spooky, y’all.
Case Notes:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-in-america/id1547409175
Evil Genius Docuseries: https://www.netflix.com/title/80158319
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/scream-and-sugar-true-crime-coffee-hour--6015946/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome back, everyone to another episode of Scream and Sugar at,
the true crime podcast that dives into the darker side
of humanity while savoring a little sweetness on the side.
I'm your host, Candace.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
And I'm Saharah, and today we are going.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
To be talking about the pizza bomber heist. Ye ye yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Ye hey Sairah can heyes? How you do a girl
doing so? Okay? How a.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Same? I'm good. I'm good, very caffeinated and ready to
fucking rock and roll. Not really, let's get that eat
that wheat, eat that wheat. Yeah, yeah, I'm good. I
feel like, uh I already mentioned it before. It's been
(01:27):
really nice to have summer off and not be uh
going local and la cabasa, because last summer I was
literally in fucking You're the entire came around and I
was in Europe for like the entire summer. So it's
nice to be back.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
It is. I love how you just sneakily added that
I was in Europe for the entire summer.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
It was a long summer, it was a beautiful summer.
It was a beautiful summer. Today, I want to talk
about this little ice cream shop downtown called Sugar Boulevard.
It's in Midtown, so it's by two chicks and they
are delicious. They make all their ice cream in house.
They also have waffle cones that are different flavors. So
(02:12):
when I went in, I got a blueberry waffle cone
with lemon poppy seed ice cream, and then I did
a blueberry drizzle on top of it, and it was
fucking chef's kiss. One of the most god dam delicious
ice cream house I've ever had in my entire goddamn life.
So check them out. They also you can walk away
with a pint of ice cream. They do small scoops
(02:34):
which are actually gigantic, and they've got all kinds of
toppings and a cute little section for different gifts that
you can get for people, like candles and all the shit.
So go check them out. Very yummy. Yeah, the attendant,
there's one person working. He was very sweet. So I'm
just saying, go in there, check it out and ice cream.
(02:57):
It's summer time. It was so and we'll have to
go back again. Oh no, have you met Richard?
Speaker 3 (03:05):
I was like literally every every couple weeks or like
every week, he like always texts me and it's just
like ice cream my dard and I don't respond because
I was like, I can't eat ice cream.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Like listen, dude, you and you do all this activity,
he's like super fit. I'm like, okay, it must be nice,
like shut up, dude. Well he yeah, that's how Will is.
He's just like never gains a pound. He doesn't work
out at all, and he's so strong. And I'm like,
I work out like four times a week and I'm
working out so hard and I feel like I'm just
a little weekling. Come on, I know I.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Do not work out that much. But this case is
fucking wild, So it might be a two parter if
you don't know about this case. It happened in two
thousand and three, and there is like video footage because
news came like immediately upon hearing about a bank robbery,
so there's news crews that were there filming this whole
(04:03):
ordeal happen. Man, you can actually see the footage of
him exploding.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
That's pretty much Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Okay, trigger trigger warning. We're gonna be talking about robbery.
Also fucking murder obviously, but explodes, explosives, very violent death
and uh yeah, so okay, we're going to get into it.
It's a it's a fucking wild ride. It goes all
over the place. I don't even know how to explain
(04:34):
it to you. Just now in my head, I'm just
like all over the place thinking about the ship that
I fucking I'm excited and heard and break it down, Mammy,
break it down, okay. So, Erie, Pennsylvania, August twenty eighth,
two thousand and three.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
That is my birthday. Oh my god, I had you
had a birthday last case and that's my birthday.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Wild too, gaud You weren't born in Erie, but I
was alive.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
You were, and you know what I was probably doing,
playing with that weird foam slime.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Oh bitch, try not to eat it.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, okay, pop off.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
So On August twenty eighth, two thousand and three, forty
six year old Brian Wells was called to deliver two
pizzas to an address on the outskirts of Erie eight
six three one Peach Street, which was a television transmission
tower that wasn't in. I wasn't working, there was no
one actually on site U and it was surrounded by woods.
(05:34):
So this order was fake. He arrives and walks up
to the individuals that had placed the order and kind
of sets their pizzas on the trunk and is waiting
for payment. Unfortunately, at this point, Brian is surrounded and
(05:57):
has a metal collar clasped around his neck.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Oh okay.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
He tries to run away at first, so he sees
the man bring out this contraption. It's a large box,
like a metal box with what looks like a handcuff
made for the neck, and Brian sees it his eyes
go wide. He tries to run away and one of
the assailants shoots around into the air, and then Brian
(06:29):
reluctantly allows them to attach this collar to his neck.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Another woman that is present puts over this white T
shirt that has the emblem of guests like jeans hand
drawn on it and to kind of conceal what they
have just attached to his chest. Okay, So then he
(06:56):
is instructed to head to the P and C Bank
in Erie, Pennsylvania. They hand him an eight page letter
that has it is addressed to bomb hostage, and they
give him also what appears to be a walking cane
but is actually like a homemade gun.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
They instruct him to go into the P and C
Bank on Peach Street and give the teller a note
demanding two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
And the note that he's given to give to the
teller is four pages long, handwritten in small like font,
which later they discover was actually they had printed out
the instructions and then written over it to prevent them
from like finding like doing handwriting analysis.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
So anyway, that's interesting. So these people are really good
at I guess, building stuff and then pretty knowledge of
when it comes to forensics. Interesting.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Okay, what Brian thinks is like a prank. He thinks
the collar around his neck is a affixed to like
a fake bomb.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Sure, that's what I would think.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
It turns out that when they fix it to his neck,
they turn a key and there's like four different key
holes on the collar, and so then he hears this
clock start ticking.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
He's told that he has fifty five minutes to pull
off this heist. They give him the instructions to go
to the bank first, but then he also has to
like complete this scavenger hunt within fifty five minutes to
be able to remove the collar from his neck. There's
four different key holes. There's all of these wires all
over the place on this fucking bomb, And basically they're like,
(08:52):
if you finish in time, you'll live. If you don't,
you'll die. Like act now, think later.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
In the sea, due in the world.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
I know. Anyway, So he goes to the bank. He
kind of stands in the queue for a while waiting
to go up to the teller and then is kind
of like, hold on, I probably need to be a
little bit more prompt about this.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Seriously.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
He brings the note to the teller. She her eyes
go wide immediately because she realizes that this is a
stick up basically, and then he lifts the shirt and
shows her the bomb and was like, I'm serious, but
he's very calm and collected.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
He pulls a lollipop out of like the bowl that's
sitting on top of it by the front, by the
little desk the window, pops it in his mouth and
the teller tells him, well, I don't have access to
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. My bank manager is
on lunch right now. If you want to wait for
thirty minutes.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Oh my god, she'll be.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Back basically, and he's like, I don't have that time.
So she's like, okay, well, I can just give you
what in our registers right now, which equates to be
about eight thousand dollars. What which is not two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
He was also told that if he wasn't able to
get the money, he would die, so he kind of
he's like, okay, well get what I can. He leaves,
and some like witnesses say that he was twirling the
cane gun and the money back like very casually, like
walking out.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
He goes to he was in shock.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
I don't know. I think maybe he.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Thought that it was just a joke, like not real.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
He didn't think it was real at first.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
I gotta be honest, I feel like that would be.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Me right, and you're like, this isn't real.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
I'd be like, I'm gonna do what I can. But also,
this isn't a real bomb, Like that would be crazy
for them to do this, right, something so elaborate.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
So the next part of the scavenger hunt requires him
to go kind of across the parking lot to the
McDonald's where there is a rock they drew like this
little this all the instructions and they drew like this
little meage where it has like the sign with the
arches McDonald's, and then it points it has an arrow
pointing to this rock, and it's like your next instructions
(11:07):
are going to be under this rock. So he gets
to that point. Then they tell him, okay, now you
need to go over to Lee from the back and
then head over to Eyeglass World, which is like next door.
At this point does a couple of people at the
bank had already called the police and said, hey, this
dude just fucking row us for eight thousand dollars. He
(11:29):
has what appears to be a bomb strapped to his chest,
and they give him the description of the car because
he's driving like this little Ford Fiesta, like a blue
Ford Fiesta. They surround him almost immediately.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
At the Eyeglass door at Eyeglass World.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
And have him sit cross legged and on the pavement
while like all of these cars wuckings form him. Officers
tell him to put his hands behind his back. They
approach him, he tells him that they're there is a
bomb attached to his chest. An officer handcuffs him, lifts
up his shirt to see what is under it, sees
(12:07):
that it's a bomb, and you immediately see them in
the footage fucking back up, back way the fuck up.
They all draw their fucking guns on him.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Has he not told anybody that this is being coerced or.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
He does? Okay, so he tries to tell them it's
going to go off. I'm not lying. He's very calm
at this point. He tells them that he was set
up and that there is pages of a scavenger hunt
that he needs to complete in order to remove the
collar from his neck.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Imagine if you're a copy here that you're all, okay, buddy,
kind of PCP are you.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Want exactly exactly? And I mean that in Arie, Pennsylvania,
the drug issue is a fucking rampant. So they are
just kind of standing there waiting for the bomb squad
to get there. I guess their protocol is, you do
not approach somebody that has something that even appears to
be a bomb attached to them. And then less than
(13:05):
fifteen minutes later, the caller starts or the fucking bomb
starts to beep, and at first it's slow, like every second,
and then it goes beat, beat, beep, and fucking explodes,
Oh my god. And like I had mentioned, camera crews
were already there.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
So there is footage of this happening. I do not
suggest you fucking watch it, but it's, oh my god,
very fucking sad. And he like you can see the
panic in his eyes. He tries to back up, like
as from instinct, I think he tries to like get
away from the bomb, which is you know, secure to
h my god, and that is unreal, unreal, right, bomb
(13:49):
squash shows up three minutes later, of course, because they've
gotten stuck in traffic, because they literally shut off Peach
Street to traffic and it had caused like this hole
fucking yeah guys. Also they were ten miles away, so
then yeah, so I mean he was like he had
a lot of time, He did not have a lot
(14:09):
of time. And there was also they found later that
there was a screw on the homemade bomb that I
guess had shaved off three minutes, so it would have
blown up right as soon as they had gotten there anyway.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Wow wow, Yeah, So do you think that they did
this like the people who made the bomb did it
on purpose, like made the whole scavenger hunt thing and
made sure that it would take longer.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
I'll get into that. Okay, it's pretty fucked.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
It's pretty fucked for eight thousand dollars, unreal, Well.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
It's supposed to be for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
but still, which is like such a weird amount of okay, bank,
But we'll get into that, which I always say, I
feel like we'll get into it.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
We'll get into it.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Let's get into it. So the Eerie police Department and
the bomb squad atf shows up. They get the FBI involved,
obviously because they believe this is they're not sure if
this is a hostage situation or if Brian Wells was.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Bonkers.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yes, it kind of. I mean, they just don't know
like if he was this was of his own volition,
or if he was a hostage that was coarse oh okay,
or forced into doing this. They also, unfortunately, have to
decapitate Brian in order to remove the collar without setting
off what they believe could be another explosive. So eighteen
(15:32):
hours after the bomb goes off at the site where
he dies, they remove his head to keep the collar.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Oh my god, his family must have been livid on
Oh my god. Okay.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
His sister also finds out from the news that night.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Oh my god, they forgot to call the family.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
They did not notify the family.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Oh my Jesus Christ. Okay, okay, police, all right, County.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
So who was Brian Wells? He worked for this pizzeria.
He was a peace of delivery man at Mamma MIA's
for ten years.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
His boss told him, like told reporters and investigators that
he was extremely mild mannered, would show up for work
almost for all of the shifts. So within ten years
he had rarely ever called out, if ever, always on
time to his shift, like always in a good mood,
(16:31):
like he was happy to be there. Like it seemed
like he really enjoyed his job. His coworkers also described
him as maybe even a little naive, but like just
a normal dude. His landlord, his landlady he lived in
like a smaller house behind her main house, said that
he paid his rent on time, if not really. He
had three cats and he kept them all inside, and
(16:52):
he really loved them. Every once in a while he'd
carry them out to like, you know, say hi to people,
but loved animals. Yeah, was like you know, he wasn't married.
He was like a single man, maybe even a little lonely.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
And it was just like so shocking to this community,
like no one would have ever suspected him of even
like thinking about harming anyone or himself. So just was
a big, huge shock for a family, friends and family.
Strangely enough, they had no suspects, like after this, there
(17:30):
was no DNA evidence. There was no forensic evidence on this,
on the collar or the bomb or Brian himself. Like
I had mentioned, the scavenger hunt notes and the instructions
that he was given had been printed out and then
written over in by hand, but no fingerprints, no way
of telling like where it came from, like if it
(17:52):
was a typewriter or if it was like it all
the indentations, like they kind of caught on eventually, like
all the intentations and how like like precise all of
the handwrite the writing was they later discovered that's what
had been done. So and just like very meticulous, long
fucking drawn out notes that were to send him to
(18:12):
those two locations in front of P and C Banks
and McDonald's. I glass rolled and then he was to
drive to a yield sign that like it was literally
just like the sign itself that shows you that there's
going to be a light up ahead he was meant
to go to there. Police tried to get to that
area after like the bomb had gone off to see
(18:34):
if they could find any more clues, and they find
some tape like orange tape that has Vietnam written on it,
and it's connected to a folders ten okay, or like
an old copy can basically that looks like it should
have had something in it, but it's been removed.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Did they think it was keys? Oh god, oh god.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
The last location they get to, the main officer on
the case gets there, sees another bed of tape, and
there's also this blue van that's kind of like behind
some bushes. Looks like they were also heading to the
same location. Oh that van pauses for a moment and
(19:20):
then fucking takes off. Oh shit, and the officers like,
in the back of his head, he's like, the fuck
was that? But they're not able to pursue because they're
on the opposite side of the fucking woods or like
brush or whatever, and uh whack. When the FBI gets involved,
he mentions this to them and they just kind of
brush it off like, Okay, whatever, are you serious?
Speaker 2 (19:40):
So welcome back, all right?
Speaker 1 (19:42):
That will come up again. Two days later, another delivery
driver from Mamma MIA's is found dead. He's odeed and
they find traces of cocaine and methadone in his system.
And what his mom says, so this is Thomas, Robert
Thomas Pinetti, forty three year old Robert Thomas Panetti. What
(20:04):
his mom says and her interview is basically that he
came home was acting kind of weird, and he said, oh,
I just must have had too much to drink. And
then a couple hours later she finds him face down,
Oh my god, an overdose. It's ruled accidental. They don't
(20:25):
believe it has anything to do with it. But seventy
two hours and you have two dead pizza pizza delivery
guys from the same restaurant.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Do you think that maybe he was in on it
and then he had guilt and then he got killed
for it so that they could keep him quiet. I'm sorry,
my brain's on fire.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
What I'm saying. This one's fucking weird. Like I said,
it's ruled accidental, but.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
It's very suspicious.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
It comes out later that he was involved with planning
the heist and or at least was like an accessory
to it, and to keep him quiet.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Allegedly supposedly, allegedly supposedly they dosed him. I shouldn't be
happy about that.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
And he was very paranoid. He was supposed to talk
to police that Monday. He had asked them like, hey,
can we talk about this on Monday?
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Oh my god, he was gonna snitch.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
He died Sunday.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Fucking Christ. Just think if they had just said, let's
talk now.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
I wonder if he was like that kid was not
supposed to die, Like what the fuck?
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yeah, no, he wasn't. So, like you had mentioned before,
the fifty five minute time limit that he was given
to complete the bank robbery and the scavenger hunt, the
(21:49):
FBI recreated similar circumstances, same time of day, like, same
temp like they like fucking made sure the weather was
the same. They re ran like like retrace the steps
of the scavenger hunt that Brian was supposed to complete,
and it was impossible to complete it within this York Okay. Yeah,
And it literally had him going in a circle around
(22:11):
where he had robbed the bank. So there was an
on ramp. You could literally be over in New York
or where Erie, Pennsylvanvania is situated, Like you could like
really easily across the state line over into New York,
or you could head over into Ohio. So the ninety
is literally right fucking there and Erie is in between
(22:34):
both of them, like on Lake Erie itself, and then
it was literally like a fifteen minute drive to New
York or like a twenty minute drive over to Ohio.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
So when investigators were looking at this, that kind of
also drew suspicion because they're like, why would he be
going and like why would they make him go in
a circle if they actually thought that he was gonna
be able to get this money, and like there's a
really easy escape route. You would literally cross over for
state lines and could disappear right way easier than if
like you're just making him fucking do this loop.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
That that is weird, and it would by staying in
the area would really increase his chances of getting.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Caught exactly exactly and with this bomb attached to his neck, like,
they also found that there were a lot of red
herrings on it, so there were wires that led to nothing.
There there was only two key holes that would actually
have taken the collar off of his neck, and he
had had to have both of them like at the
same time to remove the lack. There was also a
(23:34):
pen that he could pull to give him an additional hour,
So I'm wondering if maybe they had instructions for him
to pull that pen at some point. There was also
like a fucking plastic phone inside of the bomb itself
that like they think that may may have been like
to try to confuse the bomb squad into thinking that
(23:56):
maybe it could be detonated by phone.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
What the fuck?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
And then there were two kitchen timers kitchen timers because
it was meant to just throw them off and confuse.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Do you think it was supposed to be some kind
of like attention diverter like look here while we.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Do exactly so look here, or if they were trying
to disarm the bomb, like it would have been distracting
and confusing and taken a lot of time to do it. Ah.
They had also told Brian if police did try to
remove it from his neck that they would detonate it.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
So wow yeah, wow.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
So what it seems like is that they had no
intention of Brian completing these tasks, and that he was
meant to like kind of be rid of because they'd
seen his face, he had seen their faces, so he
was never meant to survive.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
They also never got their money.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
They did, so we'll get into the whole heist and
like what they had planned to happen, and then obviously
it's just it was just all very poorly planned and executed,
which is crazy because it was so yes, very elaborately
like planned. But then I just I don't know why
(25:14):
they thought the police wouldn't be called immediately after. Anyway,
they don't find any leads, Like they have no leads
on this fucking case. They put out like a bulletin
of who they'd be looking for. They basically say that
the perpetrator would have been highly intelligent, probably somewhat of
a loner, a pack rat, somebody that is handy and
(25:38):
has good working knowledge of like electronics.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Maybe on fucking PCP and myths.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Probably on some fucking it's just crazy, right, uh, And
the case just kind of hits a fucking we like,
there's no there's nothing, nothing Like tips had been pouring in,
but there was really nothing that they could go off
that let anywhere. Okay. One thing that Brian had said
(26:03):
when they had asked him who had done it to
him was that four black men had surrounded him and
attached this to his neck. Okay, And the lead detective
on the case was like, probably not. He's they always like,
he's like, probably was coached to say this or something,
because he's like, this isn't.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Typical of a this isn't a typical black crime exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
And we had mentioned that last episode where it's like,
what the fuck does that mean?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
There's a lot of myths around like what is considered
black crime and what is right?
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Right?
Speaker 2 (26:35):
People are people? People be peopling exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
So a month later, all of a sudden, the case
gets a little bit of a break, just barely.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
On September twentieth, two thousand and three, Bill Rothstein calls
nine to one to one and tells them there's a
body in the freezer of his garage and it belongs
to James Roden. He'd been shot in the back by
a twelve gage shotgun, and that they needed to go
and question the woman that is there, Marjorie deal Armstrong.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
What okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna trust her. I'm gonna
trust for you. Trust the process, complete pivot, take me,
take me there.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
The cops are like the fuck and so they're like
questioning him and there he's like, I was not involved
in his murder. I did like help her put the
body in the freezer at my house, but I had
no involvement in his murder. I had a change of heart.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
It's called mother fun.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Huh. I had a change of heart. And you really
should go talk to Marjorie.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
And he says, I will come in for questioning after
you have her in custody.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Custody Damn, Okay.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
She's fucking crazy. So Rostein's house, located at eight six four.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Five Peach Street, shut the front door.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Was less than a mile from where Brian Wells delivered
his final pizza. So the fucking television towers are literally
up this dirt road right to the side of his
fucking house. Like it's literally like a dirt road very
close to his fucking house. So they're like weird, like
they're kind of not quite putting it together yet, but
they're also like that's kind of weird that they're this
(28:24):
man Brian Wells literally told us he went to deliver
pizza to this television tower on Peach Street, and the
robbery happened on Peach Street. And now we're at Bill
Rosstein's house finding a body and a freezer on Peach Street.
On Peach Street, stay away from Peach Street if you
go to ere, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Yeah, Peach Street in it.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
So James Roden had been the boyfriend of Marjorie for
ten years. He was, by all accounts, very quiet dude.
Marjorie very much kept him under her thumb. Okay, and uh,
people said that they would get into arguments.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
And uh, just not maybe the most healthy relationship.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
It was a very fairly toxic relationship. Bill told authorities
that Marjorie had killed Rodin in a fit of rage
and then helped, like asked for his help to dispose
of the body. So they had decided we're going to
start in this freezer. He literally like she had told
him that he had murdered James. He went and got
(29:27):
this fucking meat freezer for his garage and then helped
her bring the body from her house over to his
house and put it in the freezer. Yikes, he'd been
in the freezer for five weeks. So he was in
the freezer three weeks before Brian Walls's murder. Murder, Okay,
so just keep that in mind too, keep that in
the little bag of your noggin. The police are kind
(29:49):
of like, okay, this is weird. Rothstein had also written
a suicide note, and they bring him in for questioning.
He tells them like, yeah, I thought about fucking killing myself,
couldn't do it. In this docuseries, he's leading them around
Marjorie's house, showing them like where it happened, how he
(30:11):
removed James's body from the bed, because James had been
sleeping on his stomach when Marjorie came in and shot
him in the back.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
He's told them about how he put a tarp down
on the ground, dragged him down the stairs, and then
he replaced the stairs, replaced the fucking floorboards underneath the bed,
and they had gotten rid of the mattress. Had planned
on disposing of Dame's body with either a wood chipper
or they were gonna use like an ice crusher because
his body was fucking frozen solid. Oh my god, I
(30:41):
can't okay, so I can't you you have to watch
this fucking docuseries because the forensic or the medical examiner
on the case is like, when we got him and
this isn't funny, but just the way that he worded it,
I'm like, that's such like a fucking forensics brain. Like
he's like, it was like one of those frozen turkeys
you get at the supermarket. It was frozen solid.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
We give it a little clunk clunk, and it goes, yeah, exactly,
brozen turkey.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Duck to the side of the freezer and in the
fetal position. Anyway, that's that's horrific. After they go over
the property, they've take him back into custody and then
he tells them.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
Like an investigation along with the state police.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
In regards to helpful conversation you had, uh they uh
before Saturday nighbor in which you initiated calls to the sacies.
Could you explain what that was all about?
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Okay?
Speaker 4 (31:40):
That was basically it was the person I am the
late City Barly seven introduce h.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
She had.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
A body in her house that she wanted to remove
and helped her with it. Uh that Saturday be destroyed.
Speaker 5 (32:09):
It would be Marjorie Armshaw Marchie armshow okay.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
So this is when he's brought into custody. He also
so he asks them like did you get my suicide note?
And they were like, bro, what what? They find a
suicide note in his house. He's a horder, by the way,
so is Marjorie. Okay, great, so the ship fucking everywhere. Yep,
they find a suicide note. And he basically goes into
(32:38):
not too much a lobbary detail, but he lists out
points that he wants to make and the first point
is this has nothing to do with the Brian Wells case.
And they're like, hey, bro, why did you say that?
Speaker 2 (32:54):
It seems a little specific.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
He's like, I just didn't want you guys to get
confused and think that the two were related, and they're like,
why to be Bill.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Buddy pal.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
He also tells that when this happens and they get
like this fucking Brian Well's reference from his suicide note,
the FBI is notified and the lead agent on the
case is like, okay, I want to fucking come and
question this Bill guy. He's like, okay, this is enough
for me. Baby. He gets in the room with Bill.
It's literally just Bill and the FBI agent, and the
(33:27):
FBI agent is like, hey, how's it going. And Bill's like,
I just want to let you know I'm the smartest
man in the room. Like I'm the smartest person in
this room right now.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Okay, Yeah, tell me more about that.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Narcissist much Okay. And he's like, okay, cool, let's fucking
talk talk to me about, like what happened.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
I'm just a dumb guy. Can you explain what the little.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Man that.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Dude?
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Let's talk about Marjorie a little bit. I know we're
gonna jump around a little bit, and I apologize, but
it's like there's so many fucking weird, little nuanced things
about this case that it's just like, bro what So
(34:22):
Marjorie and Bill had dated at one point, they were
also engaged, but Marjorie says that Bill was a fucking
giant perv and so she broke it up with him. Okay,
that's what she says. He says she was a fucking
bitch and crazy. And it turns out that she is
diagnosed with bipolar disorder borderline personality disorder, and she also
(34:46):
has like a schizo effective disorder. And this is from
like she had gone in when she was twenty six
to talk to a psychiatrist because she realized that her
way of thinking or her brain was right, So she
knew something was wrong. She just has like this documented
history already of mental illness, so that on top of
(35:09):
her uh being highly intelligent. She has a bachelor's degree
in sociology, she has a master's in education. She's like
this very well spoken, charismatic, tall, gorgeous gal in her
twenties and can kind of get men to do whatever
the fuck she wants. Is she?
Speaker 2 (35:29):
So she has the diagnosis, but did she ever get treatment.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
She did have treatment on and off. But as you
probably know, a lot of people that have mental disorders,
if they're not they don't have someone else kind of
keeping them on track. It's very hard for them to
continue to taking their medication.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
And a lot of times you think, oh, actually, I
think I'm okay, I need that much. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
You stop taking them because they make you feel like
shit or you know, not like you Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Because yourself sucks. No, Oh okay, I'm on medication. I'm
better this way.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
I mean, there's no shame in it. But she also
had her first husband die of what was considered a
suspicious death like they had only been married a few months.
She calls the dispatcher and basically says, my husband fell
(36:21):
and hit his head. Please send somebody. He dies two
days later, and then she sues the hospital for negligence.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
Interesting did she win?
Speaker 1 (36:30):
She wins? Okay, Well, her next boyfriend she shoots to
death while he's sitting in his recliner. She shoots him
six times while he's asleep, and then pleads that it
was in self defense, and she went, case.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Holy shit, how did she win that?
Speaker 1 (36:50):
I guess character witnesses, and I guess they had had
a very abusive relationship, allegedly supposedly.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
So they went through the.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Batter woman defense and she got off on that one.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Okay, allegedly she did get off, but allegedly supposedly he
was abusive.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Got it. She also had like another partner kind of disappear,
and then she dates Bill for a while. They break up.
He's still alive though, and then and then fucking she
ends up shooting and killing James Rodin and tries to
say that it was also in self defense, but she
tries to get out of his body.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Okay, so she's like, oh, I don't want to go
through that court system again. All right.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Bill Rothsteam tries to play it off like he's just
a bystander. He's just trying to help fucking March out
because he feels bad for hers. What he tells them,
he's like, I just didn't know what to do, Like
I felt bad for her, like she'd always had kind
of these tumultuous relationships, and I was just trying to
you know, I thought I was helping. I've known her
for thirty plus years, and you know, I just okay, yeah, exactly,
(37:59):
all right, Bud, they find.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
I mean, you say she's pretty manipulative. He's not nearly
as intelligent as she is.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
He's extremely intelligent. He is too, but he's obsessed with Marge.
We'll just put it that way, Okay, I think lightly
like he never like they dated, were engaged, she broke
it off, and then he just kind of never dated
anyone or saw anyone seriously after that. I see, And
this is thirty this is thirty years after.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
When you're like that smart, you usually don't start off
by saying that you're that smart.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
No, right, right, okay, all right, No, he was very intelligent,
He is able they take, they give him a polygraph,
they ask him about Brian Wells. He passes the polygraph,
which I mean, it doesn't mean shit.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
They also find notes in his house that like describe
how to beat a polygraph and a note describing how
he was going to help dismember Rodin's body and then
grind it in the ice crusher. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Okay, all right, buddy, Yeah, okay, I actually read it.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
But also, like you put, if you put, this has
nothing to do with the Brians Wells case. Like the
first line of your fucking suicide note, it raised a
lot of suspicion, of course, obviously, right. This is kind
of introducing you to the main players in this case. Next,
there was Kenneth Barnes, who was a fishing buddy of
Marjorie's and also a known crack dealer. So he had
(39:16):
been on disability and to supplement that disability money, he
dealt crack out of his house. He also was known
to rent out rooms by the hour to sex workers
in the area.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
He was at Madam.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
He openly admits to helping plan the heist and claims
that Marjorie actually wanted this money from the bank so
she could pay him to kill her father. Wow, So
she had daddy issues. Her mom had died three years
prior to that and had been kind of this doting
(39:51):
mom that she was the only child, so like apple
of her mom's eye, they were constantly helping her out
with money because Marjorie obviously had these mental health issues,
couldn't hold down a job, had drug addiction issues, and
you know, just couldn't get her life together. So they
kind of enabled her very much.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
So.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
And then after her mom dies, her dad's like no,
and he goes down to the bank, takes the safety
deposit box that was his wife's, which has a ton
of money and like goods, and I guess she gets
pissed off because he starts helping out his neighbors and
friends giving them money, like by cutting some people cars. Yeah,
(40:34):
cuts her off completely buying people cars and like helping
them out with their mortgages or helping them get on
their feet. Very generous guy. And he tells Marjorie like,
I'm not going to give you any more money. So
she's pissed. She feels an entitlement to this money because
it's her mother's but also like spouse, Trump triumphs fucking
kids in most cases. So she puts out this let
(40:59):
it hit on her dad. Kenneth Barnes claims that he
was just joking. He said, Marjorie just kept like fucking
asking him and asking him like, will you kill my.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Seem to have an issue killing people?
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Didn't. Well, that's what she says later in an interview.
It's like, wouldn't I just do it myself? But but
then if she killed him and got caught, she wouldn't
get any of the money.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Yeah, but I mean if she kills him in through
a hitman and gets caught, she won't get any.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Of them, right right. They were trying to make it
seem like it would be like a random because he
lives in this He lived in Eerie, Pennsylvania too.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
Maybe she just needed an alibi. She wanted to make
sure she had us exactly exactly interesting.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
So ken Barnes just like thinks it's a joke. He
doesn't think that she's serious about it, allegedly, is what
he says. And so this this plan starts to go
into motion, that they're going to find somebody to rob
(41:57):
this bank for them so that they don't have any
ties to it. MM hmmm. And so Ken, Bill and
Marjorie are all in ken Ken's like fucking living room,
which is he's also a hoarder. Like everyone in this
case is a fucking quarder.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
Okay, Pennsylvania and just all hoarders.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
I don't know if you're from Mary, Pennsylvania, sorry, and
you're not an order. But so, uh so they start
to like concoct this plan okay, and they talk about
robbing specifically P and C Bank because that is where
Marjorie's mom had kept her safety deposit box. Interesting she
(42:34):
had done and tried to sue them because they had
given over. Oh she was mad, Yeah, she was big man.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
She wrote like a whole scathing letters.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Which they would find later and then tie her to
like I have even more evidence that she had a
fucking she had beef with fucking P and C. So,
as they're fucking talking about this fucking plan that they're
going to fucking carry out, sex worker Jessica hoopsick overhears
them and they kind of turned to her and they're like,
(43:07):
do you have like a John or someone that you
could convince to do this job for us? Or do
you know somebody that would is kind of like a
Patsy is somebody that you can kind of like just
into doing this, and she's like, let me think about it.
They offer her five thousand dollars to find a person
(43:31):
for this wow fucking heist, and she gives them the
name of Brian Wells.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Oh no, Brian.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
She also says that she asks for some money up front.
She gets high for three days. Kenneth Barnes offers her
some crack, and then Marjorie gives her fifteen hundred dollars Wow,
for the name of Brian Wells. Wow.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Okay, she sold her soul. I wonder if she knew
that Brian I was gonna be murdered.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
I don't think so. What they had initially told everyone
was that the bomb was fake those bitches and if
as long as he just went along with it there
it would be fine.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
Wow, that's fucked up.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
So the plan was that Brian would rob the bank
at the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, would hand
off the money to Bill. Bill would leave, and then
Brian would complete the scavenger hunt to free himself from
the collar. Didn't happen. They literally watched Brian go into
the bank from across the street, like in a parking
lot with binoculars. Kenneth Barnes and fucking Marjorie. They passed
(44:39):
the binoculars back and forth, and there is a clip
of fucking Kenneth Barnes saying Marjorie, ha ha, looks like
somebody just robbed a bank, and then like they take
off when the cops show up because they see they
were watching him do it. The cops show up and
they're like, oh, fuck, god, dude, it's fucking wild. So
(45:02):
years passed before charges were filed. Marjorie was obviously found
guilty of fucking James Roden's murder. They continue questioning her
about Brian Wells and she doesn't give them anything, so
they haven't exactly cracked open the case. They haven't like
put all of the pieces together. Bill Rothstein ends up
(45:24):
dying the next year from a non Hodgkins lymphoma. Wow,
so he'd already been terminal. It was like stage four
at this point, and they think maybe Bill participated in
this and built the bomb just as like a last
little fuck you to the world. Fuck you to the world,
and like, look how fucking smart I am I pulled
off this fucking heist and you never caught me. He
(45:47):
blames everything on Marjorie though, and says that she literally
told him that she would kill him if he didn't participate,
and had already killed James Roden and had like literally
he had James's body in the freezer, so that she
was very capable of it. But I feel right, I
(46:08):
think that's like, that's what kind of what he was
thinking too, is like, oh, now you don't have your boyfriend.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
So hey, what about me? If I do this for you, like.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
We've done this before, I promise I won't be as
pervy cross. There's also this, Okay, so there's another man
that's hiding out in Rostein's house. He's a convicted fucking
child rapist who is on the lamb from fucking Washington.
He had raped a sixteen year old disabled girl and
was on the run basically, and Rothstein.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Was hiding him.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Yeah, gross Mattingham. Floyd Stockton is the one that puts
the fucking collar around Brian's neck, so he's also involved
in the house too. He fucking disappears. They catch up
to him later and he gives them all of the
details of the heist. Basically, that gives him immunity, and
(47:01):
they drop the charges on the heist. On the heist
but disappears. They're not able to like interview him later.
He doesn't have anything to do with the case. There's
literally yeah, he's yeah, he's a piece of shit. He
moves away and gets married again for some somehow gets married,
(47:22):
so he's able to kind of aid the FBI in
putting together what happened days before the heist. He tells
them though, that Brian had come over the day before
and had been fitted with the caller. So they say
that Brian Wells knew that he was going to be
the one robbing the bank and was a co conspirator.
(47:47):
He wanted to pay off his debt to Kenneth Barnes
because I guess he had been seeing Jessica Hoopsick, and
in order to get sexual favors from her, not sexual favors,
but just get sex from her, sex work from her,
he would trade Kenneth for crack and so they would
(48:09):
go over. This is what allegedly they say that they
would go over to Kenneth Barnes's house with Jessica like
him and Brian and Jessica would go over to Kenneth's house.
They would use one of his upstairs bedrooms, which it's disgusting,
so I don't know how there's like a mattress on
the floor of shit everywhere. They would participate in sex
and engage in sex, and then Jessica would get money
from Brian go downstairs and pay Ken for crack. Okay,
(48:33):
but I guess Jessica and Brian had more of like
a section, more than just a sexual relationship. Brian, I
guess drove her to doctor's appointments, he would take her
grocery shopping, they would give brides. Yeah, he they like
had more than it was more than just like a
client fucking at least on his part on his part. Yeah,
(48:54):
and she says that she did have feelings for him,
but also she was on crack, so her head was
not on the right spot. Yeah. So Avery One allegedly
says that fucking Brian Wells is a co conspirator and
that's why he was saying. Because of this, they would
not be seeking the death penalty in the case of
Brian Wells's death. So they do get charged with co
(49:20):
conspiracy to rob a bank and also with death involving
a bank robbery, but they don't explicitly get murder one
for kidnapping Brian and fucking forcing him into this bank
heist and then.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Murdering him. I don't understand. So why would he agree
to that if he he must have thought the bomb
is fake, period.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
That's what they say. They say that when he went
over the day before, on August twenty seventh, that he
was in Bill Rostein's living room, they were all talking
about it and they like, like I said, measured his
neck for this fucking handcuff that went around the throat,
so a fucking neck cuff, and that he they showed
(50:05):
him the bomb, it was not real, and then the
next day when he showed up, it was a real bomb.
And that's why he fucking freaked out and try to run.
And I'm also like, why did he wait to get
paid for the pizza? Like there's a bunch of like
little so you think they're lying. I think they're lying
because they wanted to avoid the death penalty.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
Honestly, Yeah, that checks, and so it would explain his
very odd behavior.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
Right well, Like I said, he thought that it was
a fake bomb maybe or a prank. Yeah, that's a
really fucked up prank.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
It is a really fucked up prank. I don't know.
That's wild. What a twist mm hm, and what a
dix dude, if that's true, Like, I feel like you
should double down on murder because that's fucked up.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
Right. When they interview Kenneth Barnes, it's kind of one
of those things where like the first person to talk
it's immunity, right, or at least a lesser sentence.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
Restaurant gets a cheese uh huh.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
So Kenneth Barnes obviously talks first. He tells them Margie's
the fucking smartest woman I ever met, but she it
was absolutely insane. He says that she was the mastermind
behind all of this. She had planned it out for
months and had convinced him to be involved, and he
just wanted the money. He wasn't gonna kill her dad, really,
he just wanted to see how stupid she was and
(51:15):
see if he could get the money from her.
Speaker 2 (51:17):
Okay, okay, bed It's like she's already.
Speaker 1 (51:21):
Killed at least three of her fucking suitors allegedly in
self defense, so as I don't know. She was very
manipulative to the point where it was like, well, now
you're involved. They believe that she killed her boyfriend because
he was supposed to be the getaway driver and then
he got cold feet. Oh so he backed out a
(51:43):
couple of weeks before this was all supposed to go down,
and she was like, we're gonna get rid of them,
or he's gonna talk.
Speaker 2 (51:49):
Damn dude. Bet she didn't expect a old boy to
flip on her.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
No, she did not. She thought that she literally had
Bill wrapped around her little finger, which she did up
until he was I think he just had a fucking
I don't know, guilty conscience or I don't.
Speaker 2 (52:05):
Even maybe he was maybe he thought she was gonna
get back together with him.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
Or maybe or maybe she pissed him off.
Speaker 2 (52:11):
Yeah, pissed him off somehow.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
So maybe she like said something that fucking triggered him.
And then they were at his house that night planning
on fucking going through with getting rid of the body,
and he couldn't stomach it or something.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
Maybe she's like, you just need to do it, and
he was like, fuck you.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
If you really love me, you'll do it, right. So
Marjorie starts talking to this investigator. He like writes through
a letter while she's in prison, asking him to talk
to her, and just like he wants to know her
life story because she's a serial killer at this point,
like she's killed at least three men, probably more and
gotten away with it until this last guy, and he
(52:51):
tries to bring up the Brian Wells case, and she
fucking vehemently swears up and down that she had no
involvement in the case.
Speaker 2 (52:58):
Hmm okay, bud.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
So she refuses to cooperate, but eventually the FBI is
able to get her to go around and show like
the different locations, and they stop off at like a
country fair, get her some pretzels and like a diet coke,
and they're like literally just driving around and she's pointing
out the areas where they had set stuff up for
the heist. She still says that she has nothing to
(53:24):
do with Brian's death, that it was supposed to be
a fake bomb, and she was like, I'm not I'm
I'm innocent, I'm innocent. It was all Bill.
Speaker 2 (53:34):
And Bill is dead at this point, so she's trying
to fucking pin it on him.
Speaker 1 (53:38):
Pen it all on Rossine and emascators are like, no,
like Bill's friends and family also said that he was
a little eccentric, you know, highly intelligent, and that's kind
of why him and Marjorie had been drawn together. They
were able to have like very lengthy intellectual conversations, and
he just was completely enamored by Marjorie, his best friend.
(54:02):
His meets Marjorie when they're in their twenties and it
was like, no, like this girl, girl's back and Bill
doesn't listen. And obviously his life after their engagement breaks
off just starts to fucking spiral. And I think they
just have like this very codependency with one another.
Speaker 2 (54:19):
And now he's dying all up.
Speaker 1 (54:21):
To their Yeah, now he's dying. And I think it
was just another like a like a last will fuck
you for leaving me type thing or not choosing me.
Speaker 2 (54:29):
Yeah, because now he's like, now you'll go down for it.
Speaker 1 (54:31):
Yeah, now you're gonna go down for it. Stupid pitch,
fuck you, you never loved me, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (54:37):
That's wild. Hey, I have a question where none of
these people are black. No, So he was not telling
the truth.
Speaker 1 (54:45):
He was not telling the truth, Marjorie had told him
as they were strapping the bomb to his neck.
Speaker 2 (54:49):
That's what he had to say.
Speaker 1 (54:51):
That if you do get caught, tell them that four
black men jumped you and put this bomb around your neck. Wow, Okay,
that would eliminate them as suspects. So they're they're like
trying to figure out how the fuck Brian Wells is
connected to this case. They're trying to figure out if
(55:12):
he is a co conspirator, if he's a victim. There
was one sex worker they found Brian Wells had like
an address book. They took that claim that like a
group of black men had jumped him with a grain
of salt. And so they find his fucking address book
and they find the phone numbers of a couple of
sex workers, Jessica being one of them, and then this
(55:34):
other girl who's black and has a black boyfriend as
the other. And he was actually ex military and had
been like an explosives.
Speaker 2 (55:43):
God God, they go over and search us incident.
Speaker 4 (55:46):
I know.
Speaker 1 (55:48):
They go over in search his house and they find
no fucking evidence linking him to the crime.
Speaker 2 (55:51):
So they're like, Okay, well, at least they didn't try
to pen it on.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
Him, no, thank god. And so the FBI is like
they think it's a little bit of A and B.
So they think that Brian Wells knew about the heist,
knew that he was going to be delivering these pizzas
out to the television tower, and thought that the bomb
was fake, but it ended up being real and that
is why he acted so casually about it. I think
(56:14):
he was just in shock. And there is a segment
at the end of this fucking docu series where they
do connect Jessica Hoopsick and Brian and then Jessica Hoopsick
and Ken Barnes, which then connects them to Marjorie and Bill,
(56:35):
and Jessica ends up. She says that she doesn't want
to talk to an investigator. She's not ever brought in
for questioning, and then this investigative reporter connects these dots
and is like, I would love to have an interview
with you, and she says okay and tells them to
meet her down at this dock, never shows up, and
(56:59):
then texts and says I'm sorry, I just can't okay.
Years later, she gets arrested for a drug charge and
is put in the same prison as fucking good old
Marjorie fucking Deal, and Marjorie fucking immediately starts fucking harassing
her and calls her a crack horror and says that
she like she just like wants to fuck her up.
(57:20):
And so Jessica then decides to reach out to this
investigative reporter and says, I want to fucking talk to
you about this shit, like I need to tell you
before something happens to me.
Speaker 2 (57:30):
Basically, wow, oh my god, fucking plot twist. So now
we get all this info.
Speaker 1 (57:37):
So now we get all this info. So she is
corresponding with his investigative reporter through letters and phone calls.
She gets out on work release and is able to
meet with Trey, the investigative reporter. She sits with him
and basically says Brian was innocent. He didn't know that
(57:59):
it was a real bomb. He didn't know that the
heist was going down. The day that he showed up
to deliver those pizzas was the first day that he
found out about it. She's like, I am the one,
like I had mentioned before, I am the one that
suggested that they use him. They asked me for his
work schedule and I gave it to him. I gave
(58:20):
it to them, and they just knew that he was
kind of I told him that he was a pushover,
very naive, and so.
Speaker 2 (58:31):
Double plot twist. Oh my god, I know, I know.
Speaker 1 (58:34):
It's really sad that poor boy dude. She mentions how
nice he was and that they did have like a
deeper connection. She's like, not like a love connection, but
like a very like she considered him a friend, and
she fucking betrayed him. Yes, and I'm not saying that
it's her fault, but she was also on the influence
of drugs, and drugs kind of make you do fucking
(58:57):
stupid shit. Yeah, and she says he was in on it.
He was a victim. I put him in that situation
and it haunts me every day.
Speaker 2 (59:04):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (59:05):
I just needed to make sure to come clean. I
needed to do his family, clear his name and yeah,
so that is like part of the story that a
lot of people don't know. The FBI came out like
a press release saying that they had solved this case
and that they labeled Brian as a co conspirator. So
(59:28):
no one that was involved in the heist was ever
was ever charged with charge. Bill A. Rostine, like I said,
died in July of two thousand and four, less than
a year after the heist, so a lot of the things,
like the details of this case kind of were lost
with him as well. Marjorie Deal was a fucking lunatic
and died in too. She was finally convicted in twenty eleven,
(59:51):
so fucking eight years later, and she vehemently denied up
and down that she had anything to do with Brian's death,
so that he was involved, was a co conspirator. She
was sentenced to life in prison plus thirty years for
the death of James Roden and for her co conspiracy
(01:00:12):
with the fucking heist. She died in prison in twenty
seventeen for breast cancer. Kenneth Barnes was sentenced to forty
five years after pleading guilty and cooperating, so he got
that lesser sentence, and then, like I said, floyd' Stockton
was granted full immunity because he spoke up and like
gave details about the heist. Unreal and that is the
(01:00:34):
fucking pizza bomber case.
Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
What a fucking twisty tourney.
Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
Yeah, it's like there's so many fucking nuanced like details
about this case and like the levels of like deceit and.
Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
Fucking just all over yeah, it's kind of a crazy
turn twist. Attorney, it seemed like, did any.
Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
It feels like it could be a fucking movie.
Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Oh yeah, no, doubt it could be a movie.
Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
Way.
Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Well, thank you for sharing that. Rest and peace, Brian Wells.
I'm glad to hear that he was finally cleared by her,
even though the FBI obviously never cleared him.
Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
But he's not gonna be cleared on paper, but.
Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
In our hearts. Yeah, rest and peace. That's fucking horrible.
Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
Right, absolutely horrible. Thank you for Jessica Hoopsick for coming clean,
clearing his name, coming clean. And I'm sure there's just
so much guilt that she lives with still.
Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
I can only imagine.
Speaker 5 (01:01:25):
Dude.
Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
I wonder if, like when they were putting it on him,
they're like, listen, you do this, we'll take care of you.
Don't worry.
Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
I think the prosecution or like their their defense eternities
probably were at some point told them that if you
fucking say that he wasn't involved, you're going to get
the death penalty. Yeah, so they.
Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
Were like, okay, well let's all together.
Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
Yeah yeah, or maybe when it went wrong, they probably
all talked to each other like there's a bunch of
fucking shit that goes on this. Like I said, it
was a four part fucking docuseries. The docuseries is on
Netflix right now. It's called Evil Genius, The True Story
of America's most diabolical bank Heist.
Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
It's worth the watch, awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
We'll link it in the fucking show notes of course.
And I also got a lot of information from the
podcast Murder in America. They do like a two hour
long yeahs like deep dive into this. So yeah, I
don care. Well, thanks for sticking around and listening to
me Rant and Rave. If you have any case corrections, recipes,
(01:02:29):
coffee shops, or you know, I just want to say hi.
Case suggestions, you can hit us up on the old Instagram.
Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
At Scream dot and Dot Sugar.
Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
Dot podcast, on Facebook.
Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Scream and Sugar True Crime, Coffee Hour, TikTok, Scream Dot
and Dot Sugar, or on Gmail Scream and Sugar Reno
at gmail dot com. That's right, I feel like I said,
Scream and Sugar won too many times, and I'm also
feeling real.
Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
Check out our merch Oh yeah, fucking Prentifi and if
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Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Us, review us, tell your friends and family like follow us.
It really helps us out and we appreciate you all.
Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
Common tom Ship and remember stay Suoki y'all.
Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
Adios h.
Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
My mouth is sur dry.
Welcome back, everyone to another episode of Scream and Sugar at,
the true crime podcast that dives into the darker side
of humanity while savoring a little sweetness on the side.
I'm your host, Candace.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
And I'm Saharah, and today we are going.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
To be talking about the pizza bomber heist. Ye ye yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Ye hey Sairah can heyes? How you do a girl
doing so? Okay? How a.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Same? I'm good. I'm good, very caffeinated and ready to
fucking rock and roll. Not really, let's get that eat
that wheat, eat that wheat. Yeah, yeah, I'm good. I
feel like, uh I already mentioned it before. It's been
(01:27):
really nice to have summer off and not be uh
going local and la cabasa, because last summer I was
literally in fucking You're the entire came around and I
was in Europe for like the entire summer. So it's
nice to be back.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
It is. I love how you just sneakily added that
I was in Europe for the entire summer.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
It was a long summer, it was a beautiful summer.
It was a beautiful summer. Today, I want to talk
about this little ice cream shop downtown called Sugar Boulevard.
It's in Midtown, so it's by two chicks and they
are delicious. They make all their ice cream in house.
They also have waffle cones that are different flavors. So
(02:12):
when I went in, I got a blueberry waffle cone
with lemon poppy seed ice cream, and then I did
a blueberry drizzle on top of it, and it was
fucking chef's kiss. One of the most god dam delicious
ice cream house I've ever had in my entire goddamn life.
So check them out. They also you can walk away
with a pint of ice cream. They do small scoops
(02:34):
which are actually gigantic, and they've got all kinds of
toppings and a cute little section for different gifts that
you can get for people, like candles and all the shit.
So go check them out. Very yummy. Yeah, the attendant,
there's one person working. He was very sweet. So I'm
just saying, go in there, check it out and ice cream.
(02:57):
It's summer time. It was so and we'll have to
go back again. Oh no, have you met Richard?
Speaker 3 (03:05):
I was like literally every every couple weeks or like
every week, he like always texts me and it's just
like ice cream my dard and I don't respond because
I was like, I can't eat ice cream.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Like listen, dude, you and you do all this activity,
he's like super fit. I'm like, okay, it must be nice,
like shut up, dude. Well he yeah, that's how Will is.
He's just like never gains a pound. He doesn't work
out at all, and he's so strong. And I'm like,
I work out like four times a week and I'm
working out so hard and I feel like I'm just
a little weekling. Come on, I know I.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Do not work out that much. But this case is
fucking wild, So it might be a two parter if
you don't know about this case. It happened in two
thousand and three, and there is like video footage because
news came like immediately upon hearing about a bank robbery,
so there's news crews that were there filming this whole
(04:03):
ordeal happen. Man, you can actually see the footage of
him exploding.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
That's pretty much Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Okay, trigger trigger warning. We're gonna be talking about robbery.
Also fucking murder obviously, but explodes, explosives, very violent death
and uh yeah, so okay, we're going to get into it.
It's a it's a fucking wild ride. It goes all
over the place. I don't even know how to explain
(04:34):
it to you. Just now in my head, I'm just
like all over the place thinking about the ship that
I fucking I'm excited and heard and break it down, Mammy,
break it down, okay. So, Erie, Pennsylvania, August twenty eighth,
two thousand and three.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
That is my birthday. Oh my god, I had you
had a birthday last case and that's my birthday.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Wild too, gaud You weren't born in Erie, but I
was alive.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
You were, and you know what I was probably doing,
playing with that weird foam slime.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Oh bitch, try not to eat it.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, okay, pop off.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
So On August twenty eighth, two thousand and three, forty
six year old Brian Wells was called to deliver two
pizzas to an address on the outskirts of Erie eight
six three one Peach Street, which was a television transmission
tower that wasn't in. I wasn't working, there was no
one actually on site U and it was surrounded by woods.
(05:34):
So this order was fake. He arrives and walks up
to the individuals that had placed the order and kind
of sets their pizzas on the trunk and is waiting
for payment. Unfortunately, at this point, Brian is surrounded and
(05:57):
has a metal collar clasped around his neck.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Oh okay.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
He tries to run away at first, so he sees
the man bring out this contraption. It's a large box,
like a metal box with what looks like a handcuff
made for the neck, and Brian sees it his eyes
go wide. He tries to run away and one of
the assailants shoots around into the air, and then Brian
(06:29):
reluctantly allows them to attach this collar to his neck.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Another woman that is present puts over this white T
shirt that has the emblem of guests like jeans hand
drawn on it and to kind of conceal what they
have just attached to his chest. Okay, So then he
(06:56):
is instructed to head to the P and C Bank
in Erie, Pennsylvania. They hand him an eight page letter
that has it is addressed to bomb hostage, and they
give him also what appears to be a walking cane
but is actually like a homemade gun.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
They instruct him to go into the P and C
Bank on Peach Street and give the teller a note
demanding two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
And the note that he's given to give to the
teller is four pages long, handwritten in small like font,
which later they discover was actually they had printed out
the instructions and then written over it to prevent them
from like finding like doing handwriting analysis.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
So anyway, that's interesting. So these people are really good
at I guess, building stuff and then pretty knowledge of
when it comes to forensics. Interesting.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Okay, what Brian thinks is like a prank. He thinks
the collar around his neck is a affixed to like
a fake bomb.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Sure, that's what I would think.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
It turns out that when they fix it to his neck,
they turn a key and there's like four different key
holes on the collar, and so then he hears this
clock start ticking.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
He's told that he has fifty five minutes to pull
off this heist. They give him the instructions to go
to the bank first, but then he also has to
like complete this scavenger hunt within fifty five minutes to
be able to remove the collar from his neck. There's
four different key holes. There's all of these wires all
over the place on this fucking bomb, And basically they're like,
(08:52):
if you finish in time, you'll live. If you don't,
you'll die. Like act now, think later.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
In the sea, due in the world.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
I know. Anyway, So he goes to the bank. He
kind of stands in the queue for a while waiting
to go up to the teller and then is kind
of like, hold on, I probably need to be a
little bit more prompt about this.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Seriously.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
He brings the note to the teller. She her eyes
go wide immediately because she realizes that this is a
stick up basically, and then he lifts the shirt and
shows her the bomb and was like, I'm serious, but
he's very calm and collected.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
He pulls a lollipop out of like the bowl that's
sitting on top of it by the front, by the
little desk the window, pops it in his mouth and
the teller tells him, well, I don't have access to
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. My bank manager is
on lunch right now. If you want to wait for
thirty minutes.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Oh my god, she'll be.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Back basically, and he's like, I don't have that time.
So she's like, okay, well, I can just give you
what in our registers right now, which equates to be
about eight thousand dollars. What which is not two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
He was also told that if he wasn't able to
get the money, he would die, so he kind of
he's like, okay, well get what I can. He leaves,
and some like witnesses say that he was twirling the
cane gun and the money back like very casually, like
walking out.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
He goes to he was in shock.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
I don't know. I think maybe he.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Thought that it was just a joke, like not real.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
He didn't think it was real at first.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
I gotta be honest, I feel like that would be.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Me right, and you're like, this isn't real.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
I'd be like, I'm gonna do what I can. But also,
this isn't a real bomb, Like that would be crazy
for them to do this, right, something so elaborate.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
So the next part of the scavenger hunt requires him
to go kind of across the parking lot to the
McDonald's where there is a rock they drew like this
little this all the instructions and they drew like this
little meage where it has like the sign with the
arches McDonald's, and then it points it has an arrow
pointing to this rock, and it's like your next instructions
(11:07):
are going to be under this rock. So he gets
to that point. Then they tell him, okay, now you
need to go over to Lee from the back and
then head over to Eyeglass World, which is like next door.
At this point does a couple of people at the
bank had already called the police and said, hey, this
dude just fucking row us for eight thousand dollars. He
(11:29):
has what appears to be a bomb strapped to his chest,
and they give him the description of the car because
he's driving like this little Ford Fiesta, like a blue
Ford Fiesta. They surround him almost immediately.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
At the Eyeglass door at Eyeglass World.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
And have him sit cross legged and on the pavement
while like all of these cars wuckings form him. Officers
tell him to put his hands behind his back. They
approach him, he tells him that they're there is a
bomb attached to his chest. An officer handcuffs him, lifts
up his shirt to see what is under it, sees
(12:07):
that it's a bomb, and you immediately see them in
the footage fucking back up, back way the fuck up.
They all draw their fucking guns on him.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Has he not told anybody that this is being coerced or.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
He does? Okay, so he tries to tell them it's
going to go off. I'm not lying. He's very calm
at this point. He tells them that he was set
up and that there is pages of a scavenger hunt
that he needs to complete in order to remove the
collar from his neck.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Imagine if you're a copy here that you're all, okay, buddy,
kind of PCP are you.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Want exactly exactly? And I mean that in Arie, Pennsylvania,
the drug issue is a fucking rampant. So they are
just kind of standing there waiting for the bomb squad
to get there. I guess their protocol is, you do
not approach somebody that has something that even appears to
be a bomb attached to them. And then less than
(13:05):
fifteen minutes later, the caller starts or the fucking bomb
starts to beep, and at first it's slow, like every second,
and then it goes beat, beat, beep, and fucking explodes,
Oh my god. And like I had mentioned, camera crews
were already there.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
So there is footage of this happening. I do not
suggest you fucking watch it, but it's, oh my god,
very fucking sad. And he like you can see the
panic in his eyes. He tries to back up, like
as from instinct, I think he tries to like get
away from the bomb, which is you know, secure to
h my god, and that is unreal, unreal, right, bomb
(13:49):
squash shows up three minutes later, of course, because they've
gotten stuck in traffic, because they literally shut off Peach
Street to traffic and it had caused like this hole
fucking yeah guys. Also they were ten miles away, so
then yeah, so I mean he was like he had
a lot of time, He did not have a lot
(14:09):
of time. And there was also they found later that
there was a screw on the homemade bomb that I
guess had shaved off three minutes, so it would have
blown up right as soon as they had gotten there anyway.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Wow wow, Yeah, So do you think that they did
this like the people who made the bomb did it
on purpose, like made the whole scavenger hunt thing and
made sure that it would take longer.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
I'll get into that. Okay, it's pretty fucked.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
It's pretty fucked for eight thousand dollars, unreal, Well.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
It's supposed to be for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
but still, which is like such a weird amount of okay, bank,
But we'll get into that, which I always say, I
feel like we'll get into it.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
We'll get into it.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Let's get into it. So the Eerie police Department and
the bomb squad atf shows up. They get the FBI involved,
obviously because they believe this is they're not sure if
this is a hostage situation or if Brian Wells was.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Bonkers.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yes, it kind of. I mean, they just don't know
like if he was this was of his own volition,
or if he was a hostage that was coarse oh okay,
or forced into doing this. They also, unfortunately, have to
decapitate Brian in order to remove the collar without setting
off what they believe could be another explosive. So eighteen
(15:32):
hours after the bomb goes off at the site where
he dies, they remove his head to keep the collar.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Oh my god, his family must have been livid on
Oh my god. Okay.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
His sister also finds out from the news that night.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Oh my god, they forgot to call the family.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
They did not notify the family.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Oh my Jesus Christ. Okay, okay, police, all right, County.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
So who was Brian Wells? He worked for this pizzeria.
He was a peace of delivery man at Mamma MIA's
for ten years.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
His boss told him, like told reporters and investigators that
he was extremely mild mannered, would show up for work
almost for all of the shifts. So within ten years
he had rarely ever called out, if ever, always on
time to his shift, like always in a good mood,
(16:31):
like he was happy to be there. Like it seemed
like he really enjoyed his job. His coworkers also described
him as maybe even a little naive, but like just
a normal dude. His landlord, his landlady he lived in
like a smaller house behind her main house, said that
he paid his rent on time, if not really. He
had three cats and he kept them all inside, and
(16:52):
he really loved them. Every once in a while he'd
carry them out to like, you know, say hi to people,
but loved animals. Yeah, was like you know, he wasn't married.
He was like a single man, maybe even a little lonely.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
And it was just like so shocking to this community,
like no one would have ever suspected him of even
like thinking about harming anyone or himself. So just was
a big, huge shock for a family, friends and family.
Strangely enough, they had no suspects, like after this, there
(17:30):
was no DNA evidence. There was no forensic evidence on this,
on the collar or the bomb or Brian himself. Like
I had mentioned, the scavenger hunt notes and the instructions
that he was given had been printed out and then
written over in by hand, but no fingerprints, no way
of telling like where it came from, like if it
(17:52):
was a typewriter or if it was like it all
the indentations, like they kind of caught on eventually, like
all the intentations and how like like precise all of
the handwrite the writing was they later discovered that's what
had been done. So and just like very meticulous, long
fucking drawn out notes that were to send him to
(18:12):
those two locations in front of P and C Banks
and McDonald's. I glass rolled and then he was to
drive to a yield sign that like it was literally
just like the sign itself that shows you that there's
going to be a light up ahead he was meant
to go to there. Police tried to get to that
area after like the bomb had gone off to see
(18:34):
if they could find any more clues, and they find
some tape like orange tape that has Vietnam written on it,
and it's connected to a folders ten okay, or like
an old copy can basically that looks like it should
have had something in it, but it's been removed.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Did they think it was keys? Oh god, oh god.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
The last location they get to, the main officer on
the case gets there, sees another bed of tape, and
there's also this blue van that's kind of like behind
some bushes. Looks like they were also heading to the
same location. Oh that van pauses for a moment and
(19:20):
then fucking takes off. Oh shit, and the officers like,
in the back of his head, he's like, the fuck
was that? But they're not able to pursue because they're
on the opposite side of the fucking woods or like
brush or whatever, and uh whack. When the FBI gets involved,
he mentions this to them and they just kind of
brush it off like, Okay, whatever, are you serious?
Speaker 2 (19:40):
So welcome back, all right?
Speaker 1 (19:42):
That will come up again. Two days later, another delivery
driver from Mamma MIA's is found dead. He's odeed and
they find traces of cocaine and methadone in his system.
And what his mom says, so this is Thomas, Robert
Thomas Pinetti, forty three year old Robert Thomas Panetti. What
(20:04):
his mom says and her interview is basically that he
came home was acting kind of weird, and he said, oh,
I just must have had too much to drink. And
then a couple hours later she finds him face down,
Oh my god, an overdose. It's ruled accidental. They don't
(20:25):
believe it has anything to do with it. But seventy
two hours and you have two dead pizza pizza delivery
guys from the same restaurant.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Do you think that maybe he was in on it
and then he had guilt and then he got killed
for it so that they could keep him quiet. I'm sorry,
my brain's on fire.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
What I'm saying. This one's fucking weird. Like I said,
it's ruled accidental, but.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
It's very suspicious.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
It comes out later that he was involved with planning
the heist and or at least was like an accessory
to it, and to keep him quiet.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Allegedly supposedly, allegedly supposedly they dosed him. I shouldn't be
happy about that.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
And he was very paranoid. He was supposed to talk
to police that Monday. He had asked them like, hey,
can we talk about this on Monday?
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Oh my god, he was gonna snitch.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
He died Sunday.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Fucking Christ. Just think if they had just said, let's
talk now.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
I wonder if he was like that kid was not
supposed to die, Like what the fuck?
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yeah, no, he wasn't. So, like you had mentioned before,
the fifty five minute time limit that he was given
to complete the bank robbery and the scavenger hunt, the
(21:49):
FBI recreated similar circumstances, same time of day, like, same
temp like they like fucking made sure the weather was
the same. They re ran like like retrace the steps
of the scavenger hunt that Brian was supposed to complete,
and it was impossible to complete it within this York Okay. Yeah,
And it literally had him going in a circle around
(22:11):
where he had robbed the bank. So there was an
on ramp. You could literally be over in New York
or where Erie, Pennsylvanvania is situated, Like you could like
really easily across the state line over into New York,
or you could head over into Ohio. So the ninety
is literally right fucking there and Erie is in between
(22:34):
both of them, like on Lake Erie itself, and then
it was literally like a fifteen minute drive to New
York or like a twenty minute drive over to Ohio.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
So when investigators were looking at this, that kind of
also drew suspicion because they're like, why would he be
going and like why would they make him go in
a circle if they actually thought that he was gonna
be able to get this money, and like there's a
really easy escape route. You would literally cross over for
state lines and could disappear right way easier than if
like you're just making him fucking do this loop.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
That that is weird, and it would by staying in
the area would really increase his chances of getting.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Caught exactly exactly and with this bomb attached to his neck, like,
they also found that there were a lot of red
herrings on it, so there were wires that led to nothing.
There there was only two key holes that would actually
have taken the collar off of his neck, and he
had had to have both of them like at the
same time to remove the lack. There was also a
(23:34):
pen that he could pull to give him an additional hour,
So I'm wondering if maybe they had instructions for him
to pull that pen at some point. There was also
like a fucking plastic phone inside of the bomb itself
that like they think that may may have been like
to try to confuse the bomb squad into thinking that
(23:56):
maybe it could be detonated by phone.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
What the fuck?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
And then there were two kitchen timers kitchen timers because
it was meant to just throw them off and confuse.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Do you think it was supposed to be some kind
of like attention diverter like look here while we.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Do exactly so look here, or if they were trying
to disarm the bomb, like it would have been distracting
and confusing and taken a lot of time to do it. Ah.
They had also told Brian if police did try to
remove it from his neck that they would detonate it.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
So wow yeah, wow.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
So what it seems like is that they had no
intention of Brian completing these tasks, and that he was
meant to like kind of be rid of because they'd
seen his face, he had seen their faces, so he
was never meant to survive.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
They also never got their money.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
They did, so we'll get into the whole heist and
like what they had planned to happen, and then obviously
it's just it was just all very poorly planned and executed,
which is crazy because it was so yes, very elaborately
like planned. But then I just I don't know why
(25:14):
they thought the police wouldn't be called immediately after. Anyway,
they don't find any leads, Like they have no leads
on this fucking case. They put out like a bulletin
of who they'd be looking for. They basically say that
the perpetrator would have been highly intelligent, probably somewhat of
a loner, a pack rat, somebody that is handy and
(25:38):
has good working knowledge of like electronics.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Maybe on fucking PCP and myths.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Probably on some fucking it's just crazy, right, uh, And
the case just kind of hits a fucking we like,
there's no there's nothing, nothing Like tips had been pouring in,
but there was really nothing that they could go off
that let anywhere. Okay. One thing that Brian had said
(26:03):
when they had asked him who had done it to
him was that four black men had surrounded him and
attached this to his neck. Okay, And the lead detective
on the case was like, probably not. He's they always like,
he's like, probably was coached to say this or something,
because he's like, this isn't.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Typical of a this isn't a typical black crime exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
And we had mentioned that last episode where it's like,
what the fuck does that mean?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
There's a lot of myths around like what is considered
black crime and what is right?
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Right?
Speaker 2 (26:35):
People are people? People be peopling exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
So a month later, all of a sudden, the case
gets a little bit of a break, just barely.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
On September twentieth, two thousand and three, Bill Rothstein calls
nine to one to one and tells them there's a
body in the freezer of his garage and it belongs
to James Roden. He'd been shot in the back by
a twelve gage shotgun, and that they needed to go
and question the woman that is there, Marjorie deal Armstrong.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
What okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna trust her. I'm gonna
trust for you. Trust the process, complete pivot, take me,
take me there.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
The cops are like the fuck and so they're like
questioning him and there he's like, I was not involved
in his murder. I did like help her put the
body in the freezer at my house, but I had
no involvement in his murder. I had a change of heart.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
It's called mother fun.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Huh. I had a change of heart. And you really
should go talk to Marjorie.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
And he says, I will come in for questioning after
you have her in custody.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Custody Damn, Okay.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
She's fucking crazy. So Rostein's house, located at eight six four.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Five Peach Street, shut the front door.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Was less than a mile from where Brian Wells delivered
his final pizza. So the fucking television towers are literally
up this dirt road right to the side of his
fucking house. Like it's literally like a dirt road very
close to his fucking house. So they're like weird, like
they're kind of not quite putting it together yet, but
they're also like that's kind of weird that they're this
(28:24):
man Brian Wells literally told us he went to deliver
pizza to this television tower on Peach Street, and the
robbery happened on Peach Street. And now we're at Bill
Rosstein's house finding a body and a freezer on Peach Street.
On Peach Street, stay away from Peach Street if you
go to ere, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Yeah, Peach Street in it.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
So James Roden had been the boyfriend of Marjorie for
ten years. He was, by all accounts, very quiet dude.
Marjorie very much kept him under her thumb. Okay, and uh,
people said that they would get into arguments.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
And uh, just not maybe the most healthy relationship.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
It was a very fairly toxic relationship. Bill told authorities
that Marjorie had killed Rodin in a fit of rage
and then helped, like asked for his help to dispose
of the body. So they had decided we're going to
start in this freezer. He literally like she had told
him that he had murdered James. He went and got
(29:27):
this fucking meat freezer for his garage and then helped
her bring the body from her house over to his
house and put it in the freezer. Yikes, he'd been
in the freezer for five weeks. So he was in
the freezer three weeks before Brian Walls's murder. Murder, Okay,
so just keep that in mind too, keep that in
the little bag of your noggin. The police are kind
(29:49):
of like, okay, this is weird. Rothstein had also written
a suicide note, and they bring him in for questioning.
He tells them like, yeah, I thought about fucking killing myself,
couldn't do it. In this docuseries, he's leading them around
Marjorie's house, showing them like where it happened, how he
(30:11):
removed James's body from the bed, because James had been
sleeping on his stomach when Marjorie came in and shot
him in the back.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
He's told them about how he put a tarp down
on the ground, dragged him down the stairs, and then
he replaced the stairs, replaced the fucking floorboards underneath the bed,
and they had gotten rid of the mattress. Had planned
on disposing of Dame's body with either a wood chipper
or they were gonna use like an ice crusher because
his body was fucking frozen solid. Oh my god, I
(30:41):
can't okay, so I can't you you have to watch
this fucking docuseries because the forensic or the medical examiner
on the case is like, when we got him and
this isn't funny, but just the way that he worded it,
I'm like, that's such like a fucking forensics brain. Like
he's like, it was like one of those frozen turkeys
you get at the supermarket. It was frozen solid.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
We give it a little clunk clunk, and it goes, yeah, exactly,
brozen turkey.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Duck to the side of the freezer and in the
fetal position. Anyway, that's that's horrific. After they go over
the property, they've take him back into custody and then
he tells them.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
Like an investigation along with the state police.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
In regards to helpful conversation you had, uh they uh
before Saturday nighbor in which you initiated calls to the sacies.
Could you explain what that was all about?
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Okay?
Speaker 4 (31:40):
That was basically it was the person I am the
late City Barly seven introduce h.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
She had.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
A body in her house that she wanted to remove
and helped her with it. Uh that Saturday be destroyed.
Speaker 5 (32:09):
It would be Marjorie Armshaw Marchie armshow okay.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
So this is when he's brought into custody. He also
so he asks them like did you get my suicide note?
And they were like, bro, what what? They find a
suicide note in his house. He's a horder, by the way,
so is Marjorie. Okay, great, so the ship fucking everywhere. Yep,
they find a suicide note. And he basically goes into
(32:38):
not too much a lobbary detail, but he lists out
points that he wants to make and the first point
is this has nothing to do with the Brian Wells case.
And they're like, hey, bro, why did you say that?
Speaker 2 (32:54):
It seems a little specific.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
He's like, I just didn't want you guys to get
confused and think that the two were related, and they're like,
why to be Bill.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Buddy pal.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
He also tells that when this happens and they get
like this fucking Brian Well's reference from his suicide note,
the FBI is notified and the lead agent on the
case is like, okay, I want to fucking come and
question this Bill guy. He's like, okay, this is enough
for me. Baby. He gets in the room with Bill.
It's literally just Bill and the FBI agent, and the
(33:27):
FBI agent is like, hey, how's it going. And Bill's like,
I just want to let you know I'm the smartest
man in the room. Like I'm the smartest person in
this room right now.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Okay, Yeah, tell me more about that.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Narcissist much Okay. And he's like, okay, cool, let's fucking
talk talk to me about, like what happened.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
I'm just a dumb guy. Can you explain what the little.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Man that.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Dude?
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Let's talk about Marjorie a little bit. I know we're
gonna jump around a little bit, and I apologize, but
it's like there's so many fucking weird, little nuanced things
about this case that it's just like, bro what So
(34:22):
Marjorie and Bill had dated at one point, they were
also engaged, but Marjorie says that Bill was a fucking
giant perv and so she broke it up with him. Okay,
that's what she says. He says she was a fucking
bitch and crazy. And it turns out that she is
diagnosed with bipolar disorder borderline personality disorder, and she also
(34:46):
has like a schizo effective disorder. And this is from
like she had gone in when she was twenty six
to talk to a psychiatrist because she realized that her
way of thinking or her brain was right, So she
knew something was wrong. She just has like this documented
history already of mental illness, so that on top of
(35:09):
her uh being highly intelligent. She has a bachelor's degree
in sociology, she has a master's in education. She's like
this very well spoken, charismatic, tall, gorgeous gal in her
twenties and can kind of get men to do whatever
the fuck she wants. Is she?
Speaker 2 (35:29):
So she has the diagnosis, but did she ever get treatment.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
She did have treatment on and off. But as you
probably know, a lot of people that have mental disorders,
if they're not they don't have someone else kind of
keeping them on track. It's very hard for them to
continue to taking their medication.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
And a lot of times you think, oh, actually, I
think I'm okay, I need that much. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
You stop taking them because they make you feel like
shit or you know, not like you Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Because yourself sucks. No, Oh okay, I'm on medication. I'm
better this way.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
I mean, there's no shame in it. But she also
had her first husband die of what was considered a
suspicious death like they had only been married a few months.
She calls the dispatcher and basically says, my husband fell
(36:21):
and hit his head. Please send somebody. He dies two
days later, and then she sues the hospital for negligence.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
Interesting did she win?
Speaker 1 (36:30):
She wins? Okay, Well, her next boyfriend she shoots to
death while he's sitting in his recliner. She shoots him
six times while he's asleep, and then pleads that it
was in self defense, and she went, case.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Holy shit, how did she win that?
Speaker 1 (36:50):
I guess character witnesses, and I guess they had had
a very abusive relationship, allegedly supposedly.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
So they went through the.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Batter woman defense and she got off on that one.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Okay, allegedly she did get off, but allegedly supposedly he
was abusive.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Got it. She also had like another partner kind of disappear,
and then she dates Bill for a while. They break up.
He's still alive though, and then and then fucking she
ends up shooting and killing James Rodin and tries to
say that it was also in self defense, but she
tries to get out of his body.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Okay, so she's like, oh, I don't want to go
through that court system again. All right.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Bill Rothsteam tries to play it off like he's just
a bystander. He's just trying to help fucking March out
because he feels bad for hers. What he tells them,
he's like, I just didn't know what to do, Like
I felt bad for her, like she'd always had kind
of these tumultuous relationships, and I was just trying to
you know, I thought I was helping. I've known her
for thirty plus years, and you know, I just okay, yeah, exactly,
(37:59):
all right, Bud, they find.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
I mean, you say she's pretty manipulative. He's not nearly
as intelligent as she is.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
He's extremely intelligent. He is too, but he's obsessed with Marge.
We'll just put it that way, Okay, I think lightly
like he never like they dated, were engaged, she broke
it off, and then he just kind of never dated
anyone or saw anyone seriously after that. I see, And
this is thirty this is thirty years after.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
When you're like that smart, you usually don't start off
by saying that you're that smart.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
No, right, right, okay, all right, No, he was very intelligent,
He is able they take, they give him a polygraph,
they ask him about Brian Wells. He passes the polygraph,
which I mean, it doesn't mean shit.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
They also find notes in his house that like describe
how to beat a polygraph and a note describing how
he was going to help dismember Rodin's body and then
grind it in the ice crusher. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Okay, all right, buddy, Yeah, okay, I actually read it.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
But also, like you put, if you put, this has
nothing to do with the Brians Wells case. Like the
first line of your fucking suicide note, it raised a
lot of suspicion, of course, obviously, right. This is kind
of introducing you to the main players in this case. Next,
there was Kenneth Barnes, who was a fishing buddy of
Marjorie's and also a known crack dealer. So he had
(39:16):
been on disability and to supplement that disability money, he
dealt crack out of his house. He also was known
to rent out rooms by the hour to sex workers
in the area.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
He was at Madam.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
He openly admits to helping plan the heist and claims
that Marjorie actually wanted this money from the bank so
she could pay him to kill her father. Wow, So
she had daddy issues. Her mom had died three years
prior to that and had been kind of this doting
(39:51):
mom that she was the only child, so like apple
of her mom's eye, they were constantly helping her out
with money because Marjorie obviously had these mental health issues,
couldn't hold down a job, had drug addiction issues, and
you know, just couldn't get her life together. So they
kind of enabled her very much.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
So.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
And then after her mom dies, her dad's like no,
and he goes down to the bank, takes the safety
deposit box that was his wife's, which has a ton
of money and like goods, and I guess she gets
pissed off because he starts helping out his neighbors and
friends giving them money, like by cutting some people cars. Yeah,
(40:34):
cuts her off completely buying people cars and like helping
them out with their mortgages or helping them get on
their feet. Very generous guy. And he tells Marjorie like,
I'm not going to give you any more money. So
she's pissed. She feels an entitlement to this money because
it's her mother's but also like spouse, Trump triumphs fucking
kids in most cases. So she puts out this let
(40:59):
it hit on her dad. Kenneth Barnes claims that he
was just joking. He said, Marjorie just kept like fucking
asking him and asking him like, will you kill my.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Seem to have an issue killing people?
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Didn't. Well, that's what she says later in an interview.
It's like, wouldn't I just do it myself? But but
then if she killed him and got caught, she wouldn't
get any of the money.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Yeah, but I mean if she kills him in through
a hitman and gets caught, she won't get any.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Of them, right right. They were trying to make it
seem like it would be like a random because he
lives in this He lived in Eerie, Pennsylvania too.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
Maybe she just needed an alibi. She wanted to make
sure she had us exactly exactly interesting.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
So ken Barnes just like thinks it's a joke. He
doesn't think that she's serious about it, allegedly, is what
he says. And so this this plan starts to go
into motion, that they're going to find somebody to rob
(41:57):
this bank for them so that they don't have any
ties to it. MM hmmm. And so Ken, Bill and
Marjorie are all in ken Ken's like fucking living room,
which is he's also a hoarder. Like everyone in this
case is a fucking quarder.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
Okay, Pennsylvania and just all hoarders.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
I don't know if you're from Mary, Pennsylvania, sorry, and
you're not an order. But so, uh so they start
to like concoct this plan okay, and they talk about
robbing specifically P and C Bank because that is where
Marjorie's mom had kept her safety deposit box. Interesting she
(42:34):
had done and tried to sue them because they had
given over. Oh she was mad, Yeah, she was big man.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
She wrote like a whole scathing letters.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Which they would find later and then tie her to
like I have even more evidence that she had a
fucking she had beef with fucking P and C. So,
as they're fucking talking about this fucking plan that they're
going to fucking carry out, sex worker Jessica hoopsick overhears
them and they kind of turned to her and they're like,
(43:07):
do you have like a John or someone that you
could convince to do this job for us? Or do
you know somebody that would is kind of like a
Patsy is somebody that you can kind of like just
into doing this, and she's like, let me think about it.
They offer her five thousand dollars to find a person
(43:31):
for this wow fucking heist, and she gives them the
name of Brian Wells.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Oh no, Brian.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
She also says that she asks for some money up front.
She gets high for three days. Kenneth Barnes offers her
some crack, and then Marjorie gives her fifteen hundred dollars Wow,
for the name of Brian Wells. Wow.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Okay, she sold her soul. I wonder if she knew
that Brian I was gonna be murdered.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
I don't think so. What they had initially told everyone
was that the bomb was fake those bitches and if
as long as he just went along with it there
it would be fine.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
Wow, that's fucked up.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
So the plan was that Brian would rob the bank
at the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, would hand
off the money to Bill. Bill would leave, and then
Brian would complete the scavenger hunt to free himself from
the collar. Didn't happen. They literally watched Brian go into
the bank from across the street, like in a parking
lot with binoculars. Kenneth Barnes and fucking Marjorie. They passed
(44:39):
the binoculars back and forth, and there is a clip
of fucking Kenneth Barnes saying Marjorie, ha ha, looks like
somebody just robbed a bank, and then like they take
off when the cops show up because they see they
were watching him do it. The cops show up and
they're like, oh, fuck, god, dude, it's fucking wild. So
(45:02):
years passed before charges were filed. Marjorie was obviously found
guilty of fucking James Roden's murder. They continue questioning her
about Brian Wells and she doesn't give them anything, so
they haven't exactly cracked open the case. They haven't like
put all of the pieces together. Bill Rothstein ends up
(45:24):
dying the next year from a non Hodgkins lymphoma. Wow,
so he'd already been terminal. It was like stage four
at this point, and they think maybe Bill participated in
this and built the bomb just as like a last
little fuck you to the world. Fuck you to the world,
and like, look how fucking smart I am I pulled
off this fucking heist and you never caught me. He
(45:47):
blames everything on Marjorie though, and says that she literally
told him that she would kill him if he didn't participate,
and had already killed James Roden and had like literally
he had James's body in the freezer, so that she
was very capable of it. But I feel right, I
(46:08):
think that's like, that's what kind of what he was
thinking too, is like, oh, now you don't have your boyfriend.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
So hey, what about me? If I do this for you, like.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
We've done this before, I promise I won't be as
pervy cross. There's also this, Okay, so there's another man
that's hiding out in Rostein's house. He's a convicted fucking
child rapist who is on the lamb from fucking Washington.
He had raped a sixteen year old disabled girl and
was on the run basically, and Rothstein.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Was hiding him.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Yeah, gross Mattingham. Floyd Stockton is the one that puts
the fucking collar around Brian's neck, so he's also involved
in the house too. He fucking disappears. They catch up
to him later and he gives them all of the
details of the heist. Basically, that gives him immunity, and
(47:01):
they drop the charges on the heist. On the heist
but disappears. They're not able to like interview him later.
He doesn't have anything to do with the case. There's
literally yeah, he's yeah, he's a piece of shit. He
moves away and gets married again for some somehow gets married,
(47:22):
so he's able to kind of aid the FBI in
putting together what happened days before the heist. He tells
them though, that Brian had come over the day before
and had been fitted with the caller. So they say
that Brian Wells knew that he was going to be
the one robbing the bank and was a co conspirator.
(47:47):
He wanted to pay off his debt to Kenneth Barnes
because I guess he had been seeing Jessica Hoopsick, and
in order to get sexual favors from her, not sexual favors,
but just get sex from her, sex work from her,
he would trade Kenneth for crack and so they would
(48:09):
go over. This is what allegedly they say that they
would go over to Kenneth Barnes's house with Jessica like
him and Brian and Jessica would go over to Kenneth's house.
They would use one of his upstairs bedrooms, which it's disgusting,
so I don't know how there's like a mattress on
the floor of shit everywhere. They would participate in sex
and engage in sex, and then Jessica would get money
from Brian go downstairs and pay Ken for crack. Okay,
(48:33):
but I guess Jessica and Brian had more of like
a section, more than just a sexual relationship. Brian, I
guess drove her to doctor's appointments, he would take her
grocery shopping, they would give brides. Yeah, he they like
had more than it was more than just like a
client fucking at least on his part on his part. Yeah,
(48:54):
and she says that she did have feelings for him,
but also she was on crack, so her head was
not on the right spot. Yeah. So Avery One allegedly
says that fucking Brian Wells is a co conspirator and
that's why he was saying. Because of this, they would
not be seeking the death penalty in the case of
Brian Wells's death. So they do get charged with co
(49:20):
conspiracy to rob a bank and also with death involving
a bank robbery, but they don't explicitly get murder one
for kidnapping Brian and fucking forcing him into this bank
heist and then.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Murdering him. I don't understand. So why would he agree
to that if he he must have thought the bomb
is fake, period.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
That's what they say. They say that when he went
over the day before, on August twenty seventh, that he
was in Bill Rostein's living room, they were all talking
about it and they like, like I said, measured his
neck for this fucking handcuff that went around the throat,
so a fucking neck cuff, and that he they showed
(50:05):
him the bomb, it was not real, and then the
next day when he showed up, it was a real bomb.
And that's why he fucking freaked out and try to run.
And I'm also like, why did he wait to get
paid for the pizza? Like there's a bunch of like
little so you think they're lying. I think they're lying
because they wanted to avoid the death penalty.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
Honestly, Yeah, that checks, and so it would explain his
very odd behavior.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
Right well, Like I said, he thought that it was
a fake bomb maybe or a prank. Yeah, that's a
really fucked up prank.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
It is a really fucked up prank. I don't know.
That's wild. What a twist mm hm, and what a
dix dude, if that's true, Like, I feel like you
should double down on murder because that's fucked up.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
Right. When they interview Kenneth Barnes, it's kind of one
of those things where like the first person to talk
it's immunity, right, or at least a lesser sentence.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
Restaurant gets a cheese uh huh.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
So Kenneth Barnes obviously talks first. He tells them Margie's
the fucking smartest woman I ever met, but she it
was absolutely insane. He says that she was the mastermind
behind all of this. She had planned it out for
months and had convinced him to be involved, and he
just wanted the money. He wasn't gonna kill her dad, really,
he just wanted to see how stupid she was and
(51:15):
see if he could get the money from her.
Speaker 2 (51:17):
Okay, okay, bed It's like she's already.
Speaker 1 (51:21):
Killed at least three of her fucking suitors allegedly in
self defense, so as I don't know. She was very
manipulative to the point where it was like, well, now
you're involved. They believe that she killed her boyfriend because
he was supposed to be the getaway driver and then
he got cold feet. Oh so he backed out a
(51:43):
couple of weeks before this was all supposed to go down,
and she was like, we're gonna get rid of them,
or he's gonna talk.
Speaker 2 (51:49):
Damn dude. Bet she didn't expect a old boy to
flip on her.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
No, she did not. She thought that she literally had
Bill wrapped around her little finger, which she did up
until he was I think he just had a fucking
I don't know, guilty conscience or I don't.
Speaker 2 (52:05):
Even maybe he was maybe he thought she was gonna
get back together with him.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
Or maybe or maybe she pissed him off.
Speaker 2 (52:11):
Yeah, pissed him off somehow.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
So maybe she like said something that fucking triggered him.
And then they were at his house that night planning
on fucking going through with getting rid of the body,
and he couldn't stomach it or something.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
Maybe she's like, you just need to do it, and
he was like, fuck you.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
If you really love me, you'll do it, right. So
Marjorie starts talking to this investigator. He like writes through
a letter while she's in prison, asking him to talk
to her, and just like he wants to know her
life story because she's a serial killer at this point,
like she's killed at least three men, probably more and
gotten away with it until this last guy, and he
(52:51):
tries to bring up the Brian Wells case, and she
fucking vehemently swears up and down that she had no
involvement in the case.
Speaker 2 (52:58):
Hmm okay, bud.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
So she refuses to cooperate, but eventually the FBI is
able to get her to go around and show like
the different locations, and they stop off at like a
country fair, get her some pretzels and like a diet coke,
and they're like literally just driving around and she's pointing
out the areas where they had set stuff up for
the heist. She still says that she has nothing to
(53:24):
do with Brian's death, that it was supposed to be
a fake bomb, and she was like, I'm not I'm
I'm innocent, I'm innocent. It was all Bill.
Speaker 2 (53:34):
And Bill is dead at this point, so she's trying
to fucking pin it on him.
Speaker 1 (53:38):
Pen it all on Rossine and emascators are like, no,
like Bill's friends and family also said that he was
a little eccentric, you know, highly intelligent, and that's kind
of why him and Marjorie had been drawn together. They
were able to have like very lengthy intellectual conversations, and
he just was completely enamored by Marjorie, his best friend.
(54:02):
His meets Marjorie when they're in their twenties and it
was like, no, like this girl, girl's back and Bill
doesn't listen. And obviously his life after their engagement breaks
off just starts to fucking spiral. And I think they
just have like this very codependency with one another.
Speaker 2 (54:19):
And now he's dying all up.
Speaker 1 (54:21):
To their Yeah, now he's dying. And I think it
was just another like a like a last will fuck
you for leaving me type thing or not choosing me.
Speaker 2 (54:29):
Yeah, because now he's like, now you'll go down for it.
Speaker 1 (54:31):
Yeah, now you're gonna go down for it. Stupid pitch,
fuck you, you never loved me, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (54:37):
That's wild. Hey, I have a question where none of
these people are black. No, So he was not telling
the truth.
Speaker 1 (54:45):
He was not telling the truth, Marjorie had told him
as they were strapping the bomb to his neck.
Speaker 2 (54:49):
That's what he had to say.
Speaker 1 (54:51):
That if you do get caught, tell them that four
black men jumped you and put this bomb around your neck. Wow, Okay,
that would eliminate them as suspects. So they're they're like
trying to figure out how the fuck Brian Wells is
connected to this case. They're trying to figure out if
(55:12):
he is a co conspirator, if he's a victim. There
was one sex worker they found Brian Wells had like
an address book. They took that claim that like a
group of black men had jumped him with a grain
of salt. And so they find his fucking address book
and they find the phone numbers of a couple of
sex workers, Jessica being one of them, and then this
(55:34):
other girl who's black and has a black boyfriend as
the other. And he was actually ex military and had
been like an explosives.
Speaker 2 (55:43):
God God, they go over and search us incident.
Speaker 4 (55:46):
I know.
Speaker 1 (55:48):
They go over in search his house and they find
no fucking evidence linking him to the crime.
Speaker 2 (55:51):
So they're like, Okay, well, at least they didn't try
to pen it on.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
Him, no, thank god. And so the FBI is like
they think it's a little bit of A and B.
So they think that Brian Wells knew about the heist,
knew that he was going to be delivering these pizzas
out to the television tower, and thought that the bomb
was fake, but it ended up being real and that
is why he acted so casually about it. I think
(56:14):
he was just in shock. And there is a segment
at the end of this fucking docu series where they
do connect Jessica Hoopsick and Brian and then Jessica Hoopsick
and Ken Barnes, which then connects them to Marjorie and Bill,
(56:35):
and Jessica ends up. She says that she doesn't want
to talk to an investigator. She's not ever brought in
for questioning, and then this investigative reporter connects these dots
and is like, I would love to have an interview
with you, and she says okay and tells them to
meet her down at this dock, never shows up, and
(56:59):
then texts and says I'm sorry, I just can't okay.
Years later, she gets arrested for a drug charge and
is put in the same prison as fucking good old
Marjorie fucking Deal, and Marjorie fucking immediately starts fucking harassing
her and calls her a crack horror and says that
she like she just like wants to fuck her up.
(57:20):
And so Jessica then decides to reach out to this
investigative reporter and says, I want to fucking talk to
you about this shit, like I need to tell you
before something happens to me.
Speaker 2 (57:30):
Basically, wow, oh my god, fucking plot twist. So now
we get all this info.
Speaker 1 (57:37):
So now we get all this info. So she is
corresponding with his investigative reporter through letters and phone calls.
She gets out on work release and is able to
meet with Trey, the investigative reporter. She sits with him
and basically says Brian was innocent. He didn't know that
(57:59):
it was a real bomb. He didn't know that the
heist was going down. The day that he showed up
to deliver those pizzas was the first day that he
found out about it. She's like, I am the one,
like I had mentioned before, I am the one that
suggested that they use him. They asked me for his
work schedule and I gave it to him. I gave
(58:20):
it to them, and they just knew that he was
kind of I told him that he was a pushover,
very naive, and so.
Speaker 2 (58:31):
Double plot twist. Oh my god, I know, I know.
Speaker 1 (58:34):
It's really sad that poor boy dude. She mentions how
nice he was and that they did have like a
deeper connection. She's like, not like a love connection, but
like a very like she considered him a friend, and
she fucking betrayed him. Yes, and I'm not saying that
it's her fault, but she was also on the influence
of drugs, and drugs kind of make you do fucking
(58:57):
stupid shit. Yeah, and she says he was in on it.
He was a victim. I put him in that situation
and it haunts me every day.
Speaker 2 (59:04):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (59:05):
I just needed to make sure to come clean. I
needed to do his family, clear his name and yeah,
so that is like part of the story that a
lot of people don't know. The FBI came out like
a press release saying that they had solved this case
and that they labeled Brian as a co conspirator. So
(59:28):
no one that was involved in the heist was ever
was ever charged with charge. Bill A. Rostine, like I said,
died in July of two thousand and four, less than
a year after the heist, so a lot of the things,
like the details of this case kind of were lost
with him as well. Marjorie Deal was a fucking lunatic
and died in too. She was finally convicted in twenty eleven,
(59:51):
so fucking eight years later, and she vehemently denied up
and down that she had anything to do with Brian's death,
so that he was involved, was a co conspirator. She
was sentenced to life in prison plus thirty years for
the death of James Roden and for her co conspiracy
(01:00:12):
with the fucking heist. She died in prison in twenty
seventeen for breast cancer. Kenneth Barnes was sentenced to forty
five years after pleading guilty and cooperating, so he got
that lesser sentence, and then, like I said, floyd' Stockton
was granted full immunity because he spoke up and like
gave details about the heist. Unreal and that is the
(01:00:34):
fucking pizza bomber case.
Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
What a fucking twisty tourney.
Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
Yeah, it's like there's so many fucking nuanced like details
about this case and like the levels of like deceit and.
Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
Fucking just all over yeah, it's kind of a crazy
turn twist. Attorney, it seemed like, did any.
Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
It feels like it could be a fucking movie.
Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Oh yeah, no, doubt it could be a movie.
Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
Way.
Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Well, thank you for sharing that. Rest and peace, Brian Wells.
I'm glad to hear that he was finally cleared by her,
even though the FBI obviously never cleared him.
Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
But he's not gonna be cleared on paper, but.
Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
In our hearts. Yeah, rest and peace. That's fucking horrible.
Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
Right, absolutely horrible. Thank you for Jessica Hoopsick for coming clean,
clearing his name, coming clean. And I'm sure there's just
so much guilt that she lives with still.
Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
I can only imagine.
Speaker 5 (01:01:25):
Dude.
Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
I wonder if, like when they were putting it on him,
they're like, listen, you do this, we'll take care of you.
Don't worry.
Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
I think the prosecution or like their their defense eternities
probably were at some point told them that if you
fucking say that he wasn't involved, you're going to get
the death penalty. Yeah, so they.
Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
Were like, okay, well let's all together.
Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
Yeah yeah, or maybe when it went wrong, they probably
all talked to each other like there's a bunch of
fucking shit that goes on this. Like I said, it
was a four part fucking docuseries. The docuseries is on
Netflix right now. It's called Evil Genius, The True Story
of America's most diabolical bank Heist.
Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
It's worth the watch, awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
We'll link it in the fucking show notes of course.
And I also got a lot of information from the
podcast Murder in America. They do like a two hour
long yeahs like deep dive into this. So yeah, I
don care. Well, thanks for sticking around and listening to
me Rant and Rave. If you have any case corrections, recipes,
(01:02:29):
coffee shops, or you know, I just want to say hi.
Case suggestions, you can hit us up on the old Instagram.
Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
At Scream dot and Dot Sugar.
Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
Dot podcast, on Facebook.
Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Scream and Sugar True Crime, Coffee Hour, TikTok, Scream Dot
and Dot Sugar, or on Gmail Scream and Sugar Reno
at gmail dot com. That's right, I feel like I said,
Scream and Sugar won too many times, and I'm also
feeling real.
Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
Check out our merch Oh yeah, fucking Prentifi and if
you would uh rate.
Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Us, review us, tell your friends and family like follow us.
It really helps us out and we appreciate you all.
Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
Common tom Ship and remember stay Suoki y'all.
Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
Adios h.
Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
My mouth is sur dry.
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