275: True Crime Theater 2: The Pizza Bomber

WE ARE BACK! We will be bi-weekly from here on out, explanation in the episode. We are releasing this one now since it's been a while, but we will resume with Tuesday release days in two weeks.

In this episode we discuss a case that sounds like something straight out of a movie. A simple pizza delivery turns into a scavenger hunt ending in a horrific scene... and then unravels a deep plot involving many people.

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Music by:Kai Engel"Daemones"Blooper music by:Art of Escapism"Coal Miners"This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.

Sources:
web.archive.org/web/20180514141517/
http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/08/05/pizza.bomb/A Childlike Pizza Deliveryman at the Center of a Puzzling Crime -
The New York TimesPizza collar-bomb case solved, official says
Wayback MachineFOXNews.com -
Pennsylvania 'Pizza Bomber' Co-Defendant Pleads Guilty in Bizarre Bank Heist Plot - Local News | News Articles | National News |
US NewsU.S. v. DIEHL-ARMSTRONG | 739 F.Supp... | 20100921a80 | Leagle.comIndictment: Bomb victim in on bank plot - USATODAY.com
Watch Evil Genius: the True Story of America's Most Diabolical Bank Heist | Netflix Official Site

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Hey, everyone is Jen and this is Lindsey and we're back.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Who knew back? Yes, finally, it's been a long, daunting
past few months.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
So there's a reason. There is a reason. We've had
lots and lots of life events. I personally have gone
through a divorce, found some stuff out and decided not
my cup of tea anymore. So I decided to file
for a divorce and move. So in the past several
months I have found a house, I have completed the

(00:54):
divorce and happy, calm, peaceful life is great.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Hey man, cheer's to that. So that's why we've been
absent and just giving some time just to that's a lot,
that's heavy stuff. So we just wanted to give y'all
a little bit of insight. Let you know we didn't
just abandon you, but we are back. With that said,
we feel like given the new life arrangements that we

(01:21):
can commit to every other week, so it may look
a little different, but just know that's what we're shooting for.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
And yeah, we're so sweet. We saw so many posts
about did they are they okay? We are okay? Now?

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah we are okay now, yes, absolutely, and we're super
excited to be back with you guys. We are still
smack in the middle of our true crime theater series
and Jen has a doozy for us tonight, Jen, why
don't you kick us off?

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Alrighty this one? There is a documentary on Netflix. I
totally recommend you guys getting a weekend because it is bingeworthy.
So with that being said, picture a sunny afternoon, August
twenty eighth, two thousand and three. This is in Erie, Pennsylvania.
People in this community are enjoying a warm, hot sunny day.

(02:12):
Everything seems normal. Then a man delivering pizza would bring
the whole town to an absolute standstill, blocking roads, stopping traffic,
news cameras go crazy, and this undercover wild and crazy
conspiracy plot. This plot involved a bomb, a bank robbery,

(02:36):
a bizarre, crazy scavenger hunt, and unfortunately, his death. Brian
Wells he was born and raised in Erie. He is
one of six children, and in nineteen seventy three, when
he was sixteen years old and he's a sophomore, he
drops out of East High School in Erie and went
to work as a mechanic. Now, Brian is this really sweet,

(02:59):
unassuming man. He's forty six delivering pizzas working at Mama
MIA's pizzeria. He has a reputation of being super nice.
He's a relatable guy, though he wasn't known for a
major part in the local scene. He kept himself friendly
when you talk to him, but he was a quiet guy.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
So people who knew him described him a little bit childlike.
So he's very nice, he's reliable, he comes to work,
but he's the acts a little bit younger for his age.
So at the time that all this happened, he had
been working at Mamma MIA's pizzeria for at least ten years.
So again, very reliable. You can count on him. So,

(03:41):
just after one thirty pm on August twenty eighth, this
is two thousand and three, the pizzeria received a phone
call is coming from a payphone. The payphone's at a
nearby gas station, and the owner could not understand the
customer and passed the phone to Wells. He received a
call to deliver two pizzas to eighty six thirty one

(04:03):
Peach Street, which was just a few miles from the pizzeria. Now,
this address was the location of the transmitting tower of
WSEETV SO, a news station at the end of a
dirt road, a knowing at this time, this simple what
he thought was a simple pizza delivery led him into

(04:25):
a life or death situation completely shocked the nation. And
when he arrived at the address, immediately things did not
seem right. So he's delivering pizza. He expects to see
people waiting for lunch, hungry people or a kid or
a friendly face, thank you for delivering the food, whatever,
But he was met by a group who forced him

(04:47):
into a deadly game of survival. So he is handcuffed
and a bomb, a real bomb, is strapped around his neck.
This bomb can insisted of a hinged collar and it
worked like a really big handcuff, So it goes around
the neck and kind of like snaps and clicks together.

(05:09):
And there's four keyholes that go under the chin, a
rectangular housing containing two pipe bombs and two kitchen timers.
One electronic timer hung down over his chest. And this
device had several decoys, so it had some unconnected wires,

(05:29):
a toy cell phone, deceptive warning stickers. But then there's
also some real parts as well, So if someone was
trying to deactivate it, what do you do? Which part
do you pull? And this is clearly a homemade bomb,
and there's not a very obvious way of deactivating it.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
The group of strangers gave him a bizarre set of instructions.
One to rob a bank and then bring the money
back to these strangers for exchange of his life. He
was giving a nine page handwritten scavenger hunt. So instructions
included a list of strictly timed tasks of collecting keys

(06:10):
that would delay the detonation and eventually diffuse the bomb.
I'm just going to read you five of the instructions
and you're gonna get how crazy this is. So Rule
number one, you must follow a course of instructions to
find the keys and the combination codes to disarm the bombs.
Do not insert keys into key holes until instructed. Some

(06:32):
key holes are booby trapped to prevent tampering. Rule number two.
Drive sixty miles per hour two to three minutes throughout
the course. Rule number three only use two to three
minutes at each stop. A century will be watching each
stop to ensure that you are not being followed. Rule

(06:54):
number four. The bomb has trip wires forcing or tampering,
it will detonate it. Rule number five all weapons papers containers, tapes,
et cetera, must be returned to us. Each item you
find after dropping off the money has a key and
or combination words. You will need to decipher the combination.

(07:15):
So they're gonna give them a riddle that he has
to figure out these words and numbers for this bomb
around his neck. It continues, this will disarm the trip
wires before you unlock. This procedure is to make sure
you leave no materials behind.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
Have you ever seen saw? It makes me think of that.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
So this is an extremely intense, complicated and this is
only five rules out of the nine pages.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yeah, that was like part of page one. That is crazy.
So more warnings continued, saying that wells with the under
constant surveillance. Any attempts to contact authorities or to call
for help in any form would result in the bomb's detonation.
And it said now think later, or you will die.

(08:03):
And that was the final parting phrase at the bottom there.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
But he has all of these riddles, he has to
think it through.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
He has no idea if this is reel or a prank.
So he drives to a local bank. He's got a
ticking bomb around his neck. He's wearing blue jeans. He
was wearing two T shirts. The one underneath was gray
and the one on top was baggy and white with
guess jeans written across the front in dark letters.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
So it was written with a sharpie. Oh, guest jeans
was written in a sharpie on a white shirt.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
Interesting, okay. So he enters PNC Bank at Summit Town
Center Pete Street Bank, and he walked up to the
chief teller, Barbara Leapinkis at two thirty pm, and she
thought that he's this impatient customer. She thinks he's wearing
a body cast at first, okay, because like a neck

(09:01):
brace type thing. She held the canister from the drive
through window and she said, hey, I'm working this window
at the moment, and said you have to get in
line and wait your turn, because he's coming up to
her and she's, hey, I'm over here working this window.
So the man hands her a white envelope that has
a blue stripe from a highlighter on it, and she

(09:22):
has worked here for a while, she instantly knows what
it is. It is a demand note. The note said
that the man wanted two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
which is a very large sum of money for a
bank to have on hand. He's panicking because the bank
does not have this amount of money on hand. But
he has a note that is saying people are watching

(09:44):
to make sure you get this cash. And not only that,
after I leave the bank, I will get directions to
figure out how to deactivate this bomb that's around my neck.
The note that he slid to the teller did state
that he had shotgun that he would use on anyone
who did not cooperate or tried to flee.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
So he is given a stack of notes once this
scavenger hunt, one saying it's going to detonate the teller.
Envelope that he gives the teller is very detailed. He
has another set that is supposed to give to the police.
So when they're talking about you have to bring all
of this documentation back with you. It's talking about all

(10:25):
of these notes, like no one can keep these notes,
so you.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Gotta get it back. You give it to the teller.
Can I have this key piece of evidence back? Please?
So throughout this process he demands to speak with the
manager and when the manager comes up, because he's got
a note for the manager as well, he lifted that
white shirt up showing more of the bomb. And he

(10:48):
was in the bank a total of eleven minutes trying
to get this money. But plot twist is that they're
saying he actually did not see nervous. So the teller
is panicking. But the way that everyone in the bank
recounts it, he was very calm. He waited in line,
he was eating a lollipop. So the banka's like, look, everybody,

(11:11):
just pile together whatever money you've got. Given the money.
They don't have access to the vault. So the only
money that could be given to him was eighty seven
hundred and two dollars, quite a bit under what he
was supposed to get, which he took and he left.
So when he got the money, he started swinging his
cane gun and the bag of money like Charlie Chaplin.

(11:36):
So this is a cane outfitted into a gun that
was loaded and he is swinging it around. Now here's
where a question comes in. Does that sound like someone
who is panicked and nervous or does it not? Keep
that question in mind because that becomes key later on.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
So growing up, my mom, who was born in Bred Boston,
Boston Strong worked as a teller in a bank. This
was right out of high school, and she was drobbed
three times. Now. Her protocol was, you just give them
everything out of the tailer. You just let them go.
And she said the third time that she was and

(12:15):
all of them had been on gunpoint, and she said
the third time they someone put a gun in her face.
She said some explicit words to him and told him
what he could do with himself, puts down her keys
to her tailor drawer and walks straight out of the bank.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Oh wow.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
She walked directly to the Navy recruiting office because it
was Vietnam War at time, and she enlisted for the
Vietnam Wow, and that's how she met my dad.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
That's interesting and somehow does not surprise me because your
mom just sounds so like fierce in an amazing good Kay.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
She's cannon absolutely all right. So Wills was told to
deliver the money to another location.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
Right.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
It was a remote spot in the middle of nowhere.
But as he was traveling to his next destination, the
bomb began to tick louder. The counter is ticking down.
So when we're saying that he had a kitchen timer
on his chest, they could hear it at the bank.
Everywhere he goes, he is ticking. Now.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
Keep in mind, though, keep in mind though at this
point in time, he does not know is this a prank?
Is this real? Is this what exactly is going on here?
Or does he We don't know at this point because
he's also swinging the cane gun around.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
So sure, but remember his mentality, like people said, he
was very childlike. So did he think this was a
joke or was he in on it?

Speaker 2 (13:45):
We don't know.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
We'll get to that. Yeah, all right, There is a
witness at the bank. They call nine to one one
at two point thirty in the afternoon reporting the mail
leaving the bank with a bomb and something strapped around
his neck. Fifteen minutes later, also is standing outside of
his car at a McDonald's to retrieve a handwritten note
from a flower bed when the police start to surround

(14:08):
him and arrest him. So instead of going directly to
this destination, he had to stop by McDonald's first to
get the directions to go to that destination. But the
police are there, they surround him, tell them to get down,
bomb around his neck. They put handcuffs on him and
tried to arrest him. The police hear the ticking, so

(14:29):
they just sit them down on the ground in the
parking lot because they have protocol too. First called the
bomb squad. He tells the police that three unnamed black
people had placed the bomb around his neck and provided
him with a shotgun, his little cane gun. I shouldn't
say littleknan gun because that means a long It was pain,
it was a gun, and told him that the three

(14:53):
black men would kill him unless Wells committed the robbery
and completed several other tasks. Now, the law enforcement are
not experts by any means when it comes to disarming
a bomb. They don't know if it's real, they don't
know if it's fake. But they are now focused on
clearing the entire area because they have to get everyone
out of McDonald's. It's a populated area. They have to

(15:16):
clear everything just to make sure the public stay safe.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
And somebody is getting arrested. So people are gathering because
people watch that kind of thing, and so they're like,
there's onlookers here, there's all these people that we have
to get out. So during this whole time, Wells is
shouting to the police and pleading with them, saying get
this off of me. It sounds like it's about to
go off. I think this is real, and he kept

(15:41):
saying it's ticking, it's ticking. You have to get the keys.
So the bomb squad was called at three h four pm. Now,
if you are keeping track of timing on this, that's
about thirty minutes after the nine to one to one
call and ten minutes after the arrest three eighteen pm,
three minutes before the bomb squad got there. Police and

(16:03):
bystanders looked on in horror as this bomb exploded. Wells
is standing in the middle of the street. He is
killed instantly, and one of the news stations there caught
the entire thing on a live feed and they actually
aired it. It was out there, they saw it. Police

(16:24):
later said that the bomb squad was delayed because of
the traffic jam that this whole situation caused and they
couldn't get there any faster. So the station provided the
footage to the FBI ABC's head office, a sister station,
and the footage was leaked obviously because it's like the

(16:44):
thing you can't look away from, And it was leaked
to a radio station in Washington, DC who posted it
on its website. So it's going viral, so to speak,
which is a horrible thing to go viral. It's traumatic,
it's bloody, it's not pretty.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
And two thousand and three, this is well before the
iPhone craze and the tiktoks and everything, So for it
to go viral, then it's pretty big.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah. So the immediate aftermath, as you can imagine, was
completely chaotic. Investigators are like, what the heck just happened?
And so they start with the device and what's left
of the device, let's say, And they discovered that the
bomb was not simple by any means. It was highly sophisticated.

(17:36):
It was intricate. It required very specific knowledge and skills
to construct, and this was not something that just any
average Joe could do. Now there's more confusion that gets
added in here because who gets the case. Because the
FBI handles bank robberies, atf handles explosions. The state police

(17:57):
did not want to give it up since it was
on their turn. So you're getting into the whole jurisdiction
fight that we hear in so many cases. So there's
this huddled discussion at the scene of this big explosion,
and it was decided that the FBI would take over
the case.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
Wells's last words were also kind of a mystery. He
claimed that he had been forced into the robbery and
that the bomb was real. He had told officers that
people who had forced him to carry out this heist
were a part of a much bigger scheme, but the
police really didn't want to listen to him. That night,
the FBI got a warrant and searched wells home. They

(18:34):
found absolutely nothing there except a very small address book
which listed several sex workers in their numbers. It would
be about three a m. Before the coroner could remove
Wells from the parking lot to bring him in for
an autopsy. Now, the collar bomb is still on his neck,
and for safety they had to surgically decapitate him before transport.

(19:02):
They had to do this in the parking lot at McDonald's.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
Okay, so one, that is obviously horrific, horrific, but I
am a little shocked that he was that intact. As
awful and gory as that.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
Sounds, his chest wasn't because it forced everything down into
his chest. The bomb did, so that's what instantly killed him.
It destroyed his heart, it destroyed his lungs, and his organs,
but everything on top didn't sustain damage.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
Wow, which actually is pretty intricate because when you think
of a bomb, you think.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
The sixty radius.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
Correct.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
Wow, this was forced down. Wow.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
So on August thirty first, a coworker and friend of
Wells named Robert Pinetti was discovered unresponsive by his family.
Of course, an autopsy was ordered to try to find
out how he died. Now, before his death, his behavior
had changed. He became super nervous, paranoid, and witnesses state

(20:13):
that he was going around trying to buy protection firearms
weapons and when police requested an interview for Monday, it
was that Sunday before it that he died. Pinetti had
a history of substance abuse, and preliminary tests appeared to
show methadone and valium type drugs in his system, but

(20:36):
there was no trauma, and officials said they didn't know
if his death was connected with Wells's case. Now, thing
about Pinetti, he was also a pizza delivery person from
the same pizzeria and they died within weeks of each other,
and he was fearful of something. So on that note,

(21:00):
we are going to take a quick promo break and
we will continue on with this insane story when we
get back.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
All right, guys, welcome back. If you think the story's over,
it's not. Investigators are now turning towards the bomb caller
to see if they can get any clues about the
person or persons who made it. Now, remember this bomb
is sophisticated. It looked like a piece of junk. It
was clunky, and it had a lot of these booby trips,

(21:32):
but it was a really well thought out bomb. Jason
Wick from the ATF was tasked to investigate the caller.
The maker of the bomb was able to hide their
tool markings, so they couldn't figure out what exactly was used. Normally,
if you're building a piece of furniture, you're gonna leave
like little screw marks scratches exactly, But this was pristine.

(21:55):
There were no markings whatsoever to be found. They did
discover that out of the four key hosts disguised on
the device, only two were functional. The other two were
just playing fake. The collar itself looked to have been
an enlarged handcuff and worked in the same manner, so
once it clicked on, only a key is going to
unlock it. It was estimated to have taken over a

(22:17):
month to build. The first timer was just like one
of those little white kitchen egg timers that activated when
a pin was pulled. They found a second pin, which
if it was pulled, would have given Wills approximately another hour.
It had so many wires that were red herrings and
just didn't do anything along with this cheap plastic play

(22:41):
telephone or cell phone that was in it.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
If they finished a task, then the instructions were given
to him to say pull that pin. So the ATF
could not trace any of the items used in the
bomb and it's turning into a dead end, which keep
in mind, this is top tier people working on this,
and they're like, we don't know how this was done. Meanwhile,
a team of FBI agents worked the scavenger hunt and

(23:06):
followed this whole charade to see if any clues were
left behind. Fine with whatever was left now working that route,
they determined that Wells could not have finished the tasks
before the bomb detonated. He was not meant to live.
He was not going to make it out of this,

(23:27):
and they knew that. Investigators did get their first big
clue just three weeks later on September twentieth of three,
Bill Rothstein, who lived near this news tower, called police
to inform them that the body of a man named
James Rodin was hidden in a freezer in a garage

(23:50):
at his house that he shared with a woman named
Marjorie Dial Armstrong. Now, after he called police and says
there's a body in my freezer, Rothstein wrote a suicide
note indicating that his planned upcoming zath had nothing to

(24:11):
do with Wells. Investigators do not believe now looking back,
that Rothstein ever attempted suicide and rode In. The man
deceased had been living with Marjorie deal Armstrong for ten years.
So let's get into this a little bit more, because
this is a very interesting call to get and there's

(24:31):
a potential suicide note involved, But there was never a suicide.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
When detectives arrived at Bill Rothstein's house there it was
from the scene like the hoarders. Have you ever seen
the hoarders on TLC or something. There is no room
to walk in this garage or even to get through
the house. In the back wall was hanging of the garage.
There's a tart hanging behind the tarp was the So

(25:00):
you had to really work to get back to where
he was, and in that freezer they found the frozen
corpse of James Roden like he was in a deep freeze.
Nobody had been looking for him. There was no missing
person's report filed, so he could have been in that
freezer for years to come and nobody would have known

(25:22):
about it. Rostein told the police that he felt guilty,
which is why he called. He hadn't murdered Rodin, but
he knew who did. He confessed that his ex girlfriend
Marjorie called him asking to help get rid of Rodin's body.
Rostein then cleaned up the scene. He admits to that

(25:43):
he cleaned up the scene and he hid Rodin in
exchange for two thousand dollars, so he's an accomplice. He
did part of the whole murder thing. Now, he didn't
physically kill him, but he did all this other work
for it. He said. He used a blow torch to
turn the shotgun into sludge, and the place found bags

(26:06):
of the victim's blood in the basement. He admitted that
he had not gotten around to burning the mattress yet
with Rod's blood on.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
It, but police made their way into the house and
they arrested Marjorie. She had not bathed in weeks and
was mumbling to herself constantly. Keep in mind, this is
a scene out of hoarders.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
Here.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
There's stuff everywhere. They're having to step over stuff, trash, magazines,
you name it. It's just all out there. She was
an extreme horder. This means, as Jen alluded to already,
there were rooms and parts that you could not get
in just because of the amounts of clutter. So when
the police are going through everything, because now this is

(26:47):
a crime scene, you gotta go through a house, and
this is a doozy of a house to go through
and little trigger warning here, but through that process they
actually found two deceased cats, and they also found huge
amounts of money in the form of cash because she
did not believe in banks. So the next day, Marjorie

(27:11):
was charged with killing Rodin, and while she's in jail,
she calls a local news station and gives an interview,
telling the reporter how Rothstein had killed Rodin in a
jealous rage. Rodin was killed three weeks before the bank heist.
She ultimately did plead guilty, but by reason of being

(27:33):
mentally ill to third degree murder, and she said that
she shot him with a twelve gage shotgun during a
dispute about money and a purported robbery that had taken
place at her house. So at first she tries to
say it's him. Then she admits to it, but she
says I have mental illness, which we will get more
into that as well.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
Yeah, no one's denying this. Her mental illness is not
up for debate at all, and you'll see why to. However,
as the investigation into the pizza bomber case is starting
to unfold over the next several years it is going
to take them years to do this, prosecutors start to
believe that Marjorie had actually murdered Rodin because he knew

(28:18):
about her plot and had threatened to turn her in.
So right now prosecutors are thinking she's the mastermind behind
this whole pizza robbery thing. Before we go too far
down this Robert hole, let's give you some background on Marjorie.
She's a woman with a criminal history, a long one,
and she has an even longer history of manipulation behaviors.

(28:42):
She quickly emerged as one of the prime suspects in
this pizza bombing, and they wouldn't have done that unless
she had killed Rodin, and we know she killed him
because she admits to it. Rossine said she did it.
It's a pretty tight case there. Marjorie had a reputation
of being smart, which also ruthless. This is a bad

(29:04):
combination here. She had a history of suffering from multiple
muntal illnesses, including bipolar, and she struggled with paranoia. Again
not up for debate. She legit had these being adopted.
Marjorie was an only child, and she often expressed feelings
of being isolated and fixated on the belief that she

(29:26):
should have been an only child.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
This is it.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
You have me, you need no one else. So this
became her personality, up and down beside the barrel. This
is her personality.

Speaker 2 (29:37):
But it's interesting because you would think if someone is
saying because she did express feelings of being isolated, so
one would think that would be like, oh, I shouldn't
have been an only child, then then I wouldn't feel isolated.
But that is not what she is saying. She is
saying I should have been the only child. This was

(29:57):
the right thing because I deserved all of the focus
and all of the attention. However, being an only child
did contribute to my feelings of isolation, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
She described herself as someone who needed to be the
sole focus of attention. If she was in a room,
everybody's eyes and ears needed to be on her. Her
mother was known to be a very overbearing mother, but
Marjorie loved her, and when her mother passed, Marjorie did
not handle it well.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
Her mom also was apparently a perfectionist, like she expected
the best grades, the best appearance, everything, So that's part
of that overbearingness. It showed itself in perfectionism.

Speaker 1 (30:41):
Her reports indicated she became inner exit during her youth.
Her weight dropped dramatically from one hundred and thirty five
pounds to eighty five pounds, so dropping below one hundred
on her body frame was not a good idea. She
blamed parental pressure and internalized trauma for all of this,
and it's going to feed into other facets of her

(31:04):
personality and her mental health.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
Before her mental health deteriorated in her twenties, Marjorie was
an exemplary student in high school. She was a valedictorian.
She earned a master's degree in education from Gannon College.
Very smart, very bright applied herself again. Keep in mind,
her mother, even though she passed, had ingrained that perfectionism

(31:29):
in her. Not only was she highly intelligent, but she's
said to be a skilled musician and loved poetry and astrology.
At age twenty three, she took herself to the doctor
because she was scared that something was wrong with her mind.
And over the years she would seek treatment thirty eight times,
and this is specifically for mental health. So she recognized

(31:51):
it early on and she sought out help, but it
was something that continued on through her life. But she
grew increasingly dis de seitful, manipulative, and violent along with this.
So in nineteen eighty four, she actually killed her boyfriend
Robert Thomas by shooting him six times as he lay
there on the couch. She was subsequently acquitted of murder,

(32:15):
claiming that it was self defense, and her claim was
that he was abusive, so she was let go on
that now, her own attorney said that it was quote
only a matter of time before she would do something
like this again.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
Her own attorney didn't believe that the whole self defense.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
And he was right because she ended up getting married
and her husband died after hitting his head on the
coffee table. Just before he was buried, she asked the
doctor for a piece of his leg bone so that
she could possibly clone him in the future. Then another
boyfriend hung himself after she moved out, and in total,

(32:59):
five parts of hers died under let's say, weird circumstances.
Some are downright suspicious, some are weird. But there's a trend.
There's a trail once, okay, twice coincidence three times. It
starts to raise.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
Some questions she would raise. Look at up the staircase murder.
Both spives died by falling down the stairs, and that
caused a lot of concern. Yeah, five is a little much.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
Absolutely, and I one of the attorneys at one point
in this case even said, if you look at her,
wherever she goes, there is a body to follow. So
it's just an interesting tie in though, that she wasn't
in jail for murder, because if it happened five times,
she's not in jail for it. She's getting away with it.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
And this speaks to how smart manipulative she is too,
that she is able to manipulate the legal system, the jurors,
the judge, everyone that comes in contact with her. She
puts it on and she gets it. She knows it.
They were able to connect her to Wells through rossing
because remember Rossine wrote that suicide note. He called and said, hey,

(34:13):
this is what's going on. They have a body this time,
but Marjorie did not act alone. In April two thousand
and five, Marjorie met with the FBI agents. She's in jail, remember,
and she told them that she would confess to everything
she knew if she could be transferred to a minimum
security prison. Then she admitted that she was finally involved

(34:37):
in the plot because she hasn't been charged yet with
the pizza incident. She's only been charged with the death
of Rodent. She said that she was aided by a
group of individuals, including Kenneth Barnes, a man with the
history of criminal activity. He gave himself a nickname, and
it's Cocaine Ken. Very interesting subtle. Yeah. Ken was also

(35:03):
a massive hoarder, it's a trend, and in his home
were piles and piles of computers and electronics. This was
his thing that he liked to collect. Wells would often
take sex workers he picked up to Ken's house where
they would complete the transaction, and when the transaction was done,

(35:23):
Wells would give her the money and she would buy
drugs off of cocaine.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
Ken.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
So Ken has a hoarding house with electronics. Ken is
tied to Marjorie. Mister Wells, the pizza delivery man, would
take his sex workers to Ken's house to complete the transaction.

Speaker 2 (35:45):
Barnes, who we just mentioned a moment ago, Kenneth Barnes
was a retired TV repairman, hence a lot of those electronics.
He was a crack cocaine dealer, and he was Marjorie's
quote unquote phishing buddy. Barnes, who was initially believed to
have been an innocent accomplice so just didn't know what

(36:05):
he was involved in kind of thing, was later revealed
to have played a key role in orchestrating the heist.
And then the third accomplice that she is naming is
William Rothstein, so we know that the two of them dated.
It was in the late sixties and early seventies, and
he was implicated in a nineteen seventy seven murder after

(36:27):
he gave a handgun to a friend who used it
to murder a romantic rival. He later attempted to destroy
this weapon. But he was given immunity from prosecution in
exchange for his testimony, so he's got an indirect sort
of body count as well. Rothstein was a handyman. He

(36:48):
was a part time shop teacher and was a part
of a group called, quote, the fractured intellectuals, and this
basically was a group of people who were very smart
but not well adjusted. So this actually makes a little
bit of sense here. So he came from a very
wealthy family. He went to college, but he dropped out

(37:11):
and started working with the family business, which was a
bottling company. So you can see again that higher education,
very smart people, but maybe not quite adjusted socially. We
know Marjorie has some mental illness. So the last person
that she names is Floyd Strockton, who was the last
of the group of the kidnappers. He was a convicted

(37:32):
rapist of a disabled teenager and he lived as a
fugitive in Rothstein's house. So investigators are piecing together all
these details, naming all these people, and they learned that
this plot was actually like this really convoluted scheme.

Speaker 1 (37:49):
At Kenneth's Barnes home, Marjorie and Rostain discussed plays that
they could make money. Albeit she had loads of cash
hidden in a nut house else too, so the need
for money probably really wasn't there. But Marjorie suggested that
Barnes kill her father, Harold and she would receive the inheritance.

(38:13):
In an interviews, she disputes this though. She said, here,
I am I've killed two boyfriends and self defense. But
I've killed two boyfriends, right, Why would I hire kin
to kill my father? Would I just not have done
it for free myself? Essentially, she's saying, look, I've already

(38:34):
killed all these people, quote unquote self defense. Why would
I just not do it myself and save the money.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
And that's the key difference though, is you could claim
self defense when it's a domestic partner. But again, fool
me once, fool me twice, Why the third time if
you claim it again with your father? Your father domestic
violence there too, Like it starts to become a little
bit more convoluted. So yeah, I think you would potentially.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
But this was much more personal to her. Nancy Bank
held a safety deposit box that was owned by Marjorie
and her dad. Now she claims that the bank let
her dad empty it with all the valuable items that
had belonged to her. This was the same branch that
was robbed, and she's furious. She's mad because she believed

(39:18):
whatever was in that box was rightly hers and not
her dad's. So she is mad at her dad and
she's mad at the bank.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
Which that is not illegal, by the way. So Barnes
told her that he was willing to do this for
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Now that's the second
time we're hearing that amount, because remember that's the amount
that Wells was told at the beginning of the story.
So the collar bomb bank robbery plot was originally hash
to obtain enough money to pay Barnes to kill her father,

(39:49):
so in return for a reduced sentence. Barnes later told
investigators that Marjorie was the mastermind of the crime and
she wanted the money to pay Barnes to kill her father,
who she reportedly believed was squandering her inheritance. One some
of the jewelry is gone, but not only that, his
actual money too. She thinks, oh, he's dwindling it down.

(40:12):
I gotta get it while I can.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
So Wills was he in on this? Was he not?
He's connected? But he's not, because, let's be.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
Honest, the guy, for lack of a better term, was
blown up. So did he volunteer for that just because
he knew these people or did he not? That is
the big question.

Speaker 1 (40:31):
The entire investigated team believed that Wills participated in the
planning of the bankruppery. Now he believed that the bomb
is fake, So that's why he's like swinging this cane
and he's so calm. Look at his lollipop smacking it
against his teeth.

Speaker 2 (40:47):
That's what I think. I think that he was in
on it, but he thought it was fake to make
it seem real. And when he started panicking with the
police at the end, thaying get this off me, get
this off me, he realized it wasn't. That's what I think.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
I'm gonna hold my theories, my famous theories, until the end, okay.
According to an FBI affidavit, two witnesses confirmed that Wells
talked about the robbery about a month before it occurred.
I struggle with this, I exactly exactly. But I struggle
with people coming out after the fact claiming they knew

(41:23):
it before the fact to support the theory that Wells
was in on it. People had seen him leaving Rossett's
house the day before the incident, and investigators believed he
participated in a rehearsal of sorts, and it was believed
that Wells was killed to reduce the number of witnesses
to tie up loo sins right. Wells family and friends

(41:46):
dispute his involvement in the bank robbery and his own debt.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
So the FBI is playing Barnes against Marjorie, and Barnes
was the first to break So in late two thousand
and five, Barnes is in jail on unreal related drug
charges and he was turned in by his brother in
law after revealing details of the crime to him. So
they're like, you can get him on this, take him

(42:10):
in on drugs here's and then see if he gives
his side of the story. So this is Barnes side
of the story. He says that at the house the
idea was thought up about the whole bank robbery. Barnes,
Marjorie Rothstein, Stockton Pinetti. Now there's that name we haven't
heard in a while. That's the guy who died, who
also worked at the pizza place, and Wells were all

(42:33):
there so everyone that we've talked about was linked to this.
According to Barnes, he said that it was his job,
Barnes's job, to be the lookout. And she came to
his house just before noon the day of the robbery
and Marjorie picked him up. Asked where Rodin was. Now
by this time, Rodin's dead in the freezer, and she

(42:54):
gave the excuse that he was sick with the flu.
He can't make it today. So they drove to the
Shell gas station. Rothstein was there. Together they made the
pizza call member we know it came from a payphone
at a gas station. Those three now went to Rothstein's house,
which is just right down the road from where the
pizza was going to be delivered. This was near that

(43:17):
TV station. So when Wells went there, he placed the
pizzas on the trunk of the car. Wells is out
there waiting to get paid for the pizza, and Barnes,
Rothstein and Marjorie were talking to him when Stockton brings
the bomb out of the building. Now, when Wells sees
the bomb, he's scared. He starts to run, but Barnes

(43:40):
catches him, paunches him while he's on the ground, Stockton
puts the collar on him. Rothstein shoots a gun in
the air to scare him and make him be still.
Then he has handed these notes. Give these to the bank,
give these to the manager, give these to the police.
And she said, if you get caught, tell the police
that it was some black guys, so that the heat

(44:02):
does not come back on us. Then they gave Wells
the cane gun and told him to shoot anyone who
got in the way. A few things here, So he
did say. Wells did say that it was a group
of black people, So that part does line up the punching.
Did he have any bruises on him? Did he have?

(44:23):
And why? Why? Did?

Speaker 1 (44:26):
They may not have been visible because of the destruction of.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
The bomb, that's fair, And maybe he was punched in
the gut and not in the face. But why then
would he be so surprised if he was in on this,
sitting at the house with everyone else and they're coming
up with a plan. Wouldn't he know this is the plan?
Why would he be acting scared when they bring the
bomb out?

Speaker 1 (44:49):
See this is why I think he wasn't a part.
I think he was the fall guy. He was inavertently
not connected to where they believed they wouldn't be tied
back to him. No, there's definitely a conne there. But
I think his manner at the bank comes into question two.
Was he there listening to this, not comprehending what exactly

(45:11):
what's going on? Did he think that it was just
big talk and it's not really going to happen, And
turns out it is happening, and that's what freaks him out.
He didn't really think it was true.

Speaker 2 (45:22):
Unless he thought He's going into this thing thinking, Okay,
my group in general is planning a bank robbery. I
know about this. I maybe get a cut of it.
But then he doesn't realize that they're planning for him
to be the fall guy. Shows up, sees it and
freaks out, But then he's like, no, they're not really
gonna kill me. It's fine. This is how we're making
it work, and that's why he's nonchalant, and then freaks

(45:44):
out when he realizes the bomb is real. Maybe maybe maybe,
I mean, well, I don't think we'll ever know, because
we're gonna have we have five people a part of this,
and we're gonna get a thousand different stories. Marjorie changes
her story depending on who she talks to. One of
them was found in a freezer, another one had the

(46:05):
caller with the bomb. So you're going to have a
lot of different kind of point of views when it
comes to this.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
Sure Now September third, Ken Barnes pleads guilty to conspiring
to rob a bank and aiding and a bedding. On
December third that year, he sentenced to forty five years
in prison by a federal judge in Pennsylvania for his
role in the crime. His sentence was later reduced to
twenty two and a half years after he testified against Marjorie,

(46:34):
so he could have fifty percent of his sentates mixed
for turning her in. Now, remember she's talking to the FBI, right.
She said that she would tell them everything if she
was transferred to that minimum security prison that she had
asked for earlier. During the series of interviews, she admitted

(46:55):
to providing the kitchen timers used for the bomb and
stated that it was Ross who masterminded everything. He came
up with a plot, he came up with the letters,
he came up with how to make the bomb, and
Stockton actually created the bomb. Now Wells, according to her,

(47:16):
was directly involved in the plan. Rostain masterminded Wells was
a part of it.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
But you know what, I think this is a prime
example of remember when we did the series on co Killers,
people who killed together. What was the number one thing
that happened in that series is they all ended up
throwing each other under the bus, And so you never
really got the true story unless there was some sort
of plea deal because they were all just trying to
save face. And this is totally what it seems like here.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
Oh and remember she has that history of extreme manipulation,
the lying and the charming. She got scot free on
five other murders.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
So she thinks she can do it again.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
Absolutely she thinks she can.

Speaker 2 (47:57):
So in July of seven, US Attorney Mary Back Buchanan
announced that Marjorie Deal, Armstrong and Ken Barnes had been
charged with the crime, and Marjorie was named as the
mastermind the deceased Roth Stcene. He actually passed away of
cancer by this time, and Wells were named as unindicted

(48:20):
co conspirators, so they do have Wells legally tied to
this if bu Canon stated that Wells had been involved
in the plot from the beginning, but that his co
conspirators fitted him with a real bomb that would have
exploded even if it were removed. So it sounds like
Buchanon's theory is, yeah, he was part of it, but
maybe bit off a little bit more than he could chew,

(48:41):
or that he was aware of it sounds is what
she is saying.

Speaker 1 (48:45):
I really picture this as a group of teenagers sitting
on the couch discussing rolling somebody's yard with toilet paper,
and you have that kid in the kitchen that did it.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:59):
Yeah, I had his kid in the kitchen that's just
going to go along with it because he wants to
be a part of the bigger group, like not really comprehending. Oh,
I might get in trouble for this.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
Yeah. So then they interviewed Stockton, who his story was
basically exactly like Barnes. They basically said the exact same thing.
So now it is time for the official trial of
Marjorie deal Armstrong. On July twenty ninth, of eight US
District Court Judge Sean J. McLaughlin made an initial finding

(49:30):
that Marjorie was mentally incompetent to stand trial due to
a number of mental disorders which we know are real,
indicating that this ruling would be reviewed after she had
received a period of treatment and a mental hospital, and
she was sent to treatment at a federal mental health
facility in Texas. Then after a while they had another

(49:53):
hearing where she was deemed competent to stand trial after
her treatment. So in October of twenty ten, did what
we say not to do. She took the stand to
testify on her own behalf part of her own defense.
She asked for a change of venue, arguing, basically, I
can't get a fair trial here. This is a media circus.

(50:13):
It's impossible and to be fair. That's a solid argument.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
But it was on live TV.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
But that's the problem is it was online TV and
it went two thousand version viral. You weren't going to
get a fair trial anywhere. If that's the case, you're not.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
Going to get a jury that has not heard of
the case before. I will say it could be. It
would be a fair trial. It's just they're going to
have a they're going to be able to see it.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
OJ Now this was denied, noting that the allegations were
unusual because he said, quote, the coverage as a whole
has been about as factual and as objective as it
could be under the circumstances. So he's basically saying, look
if yeah, it's out there, but it's it has a
been sensationalized. On November one of twenty ten, Marjorie was

(51:05):
convicted of armed bank robbery, conspiracy to commit armed bank robbery,
end up using a destructive device in a crime. So
since they put Wells as a partner in the robbery,
they actually couldn't charge her with his murder because that
was my first question. I was like, excuse me, where's
the murder charge? But it sounds like he's signed up

(51:26):
for this, so it's not murder, which still sounds like
it murder maybe if he didn't know about it, But
how do you prove he didn't know about it? There
wasn't enough for them to know for sure whether or
not he knew or not.

Speaker 1 (51:40):
On February twenty eighth, twenty eleven, she's sentenced to life
in prison and to be served consecutively with the prison
term imposed for actually murdering Rodents. So she's already in
jail for murder. Now she has to serve another life sentence,
so she's not getting out of jail she did not
get a get out of Jay all free card with

(52:00):
this at all. Now, through all of the appeals, even
some going to the Supreme Court, her conviction and sentence
was never overturned. She fell into a deep depression and
died of breast cancer. Jessica Hoopstick's she was a sex
worker that came forward to say, hey, this is my
side of the story. In twenty eighteen, she admitted to

(52:25):
her own involvement in the plot. Melissa Chan from the
Times wrote, Hoopstick says a conspirator approached her to find
a gopher who would be scared into robbing a bank.
In twenty eighteen documentary Evil Genius, Hoopstick identifies the co
conspirator as our near and dear friend Cocaine Ken Barnes,

(52:48):
and alleges that she recommended Wells, whom she described as
a pushover.

Speaker 2 (52:54):
This goes back to the whole.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
Kid in the kitchen. Point to him and he knows
about it. He's heard about it, but he didn't really
understand the full impact of what it is.

Speaker 2 (53:08):
That is interesting, she's saying, okay, confession. It was because
they wanted, essentially, like you said, a fall guy. That
is interesting.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
Now she completely admits to setting up wills in exchange
for money and drugs, and she expresses true regret for
her role, and she said that Wells had no advanced
knowledge of the robbery. Is she doing the right thing
by confessing? Is she? If she's telling the truth, absolutely,
she's clearing Wells's name, which could lead technically to a

(53:36):
murder charge. But they most of them have already passed
due to illness and cancer now. ATF agent Jason Wick
stated Hoopstick was uncooperative in two thousand and three, and
they always believed that she knew more than what she
was talking about. To be honest, I can't why she

(54:00):
wasn't fully cooperating. It knew more because she's already doing
an illegal activity they didn't get if they had offered
her immunity. I think we would have found out about
Willson's involvement way before this Netflix documentary came out. If
she's telling the truth.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
And that's the question, because they don't necessarily feel like
she was completely credible. But we are in true crime theater.
So Evil Genius on Netflix came out in twenty eighteen.
It was really big. People were talking about it all
over the place totally see why because this straight up
does not sound like it would be a documentary. This
sounds like it would be like a Tom Cruise, like

(54:43):
thriller or action movie because it's so outlandish. It's so wild,
just having a bomb around your neck and robbing a bank.
Just that alone is.

Speaker 1 (54:53):
With a scavenger hunt a lot. In fact, the police
were able to follow all the way through the end
of this average hunt. That's impressive.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
Yeah, yeah, this is insane. And the fact that she
was never really held accountable for five weird we'll say
weird deaths. We know she killed two of them.

Speaker 1 (55:12):
She straight up and says she killed two of them,
three d and the first round.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
But yeah, her boyfriends her first two boyfriends, but there
were three more that were like lovers. There was the
husband who hit his head, And that's.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
Just This show would be an hour more if we
just talked about her mysterious past.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
But I think it is important though. It does go
to show how smart and manipulative she was, even though
she very much has had legitimate mental illness. She also
two things are true at the same time, she also
was very manipulative, deceptive, and was a smooth talker.

Speaker 1 (55:54):
It's when they arrested her. She had not showered, literally
in three weeks. Yeah, and you could see the downfall
of the mental illness and how much it impacted her
day to day. And I'm sure the hoarding was a
symptom of it. And you look at all the people
that she associated with, sure super intelligent, and the fact

(56:16):
that you get three highly intelligent, above average people together
and all three of them seemed to struggle with mental stability,
and it's so and all of a sudden, it's.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
A recipe for disaster, It really is.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
And I think they studied that bomb to ad nauseum
because of how intricate and how it looked so rudimentary
when you're looking at it and you're looking at Will's
going into this. There's video out there that you can
see Well sitting on the concrete or in the parking
lot begging come take this off. But behind them, did.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
You see the explosion? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (57:00):
Un Fortunately they show it in the documentary.

Speaker 2 (57:03):
I don't know if I want to see that. You
can fast forward, you can know when coming back.

Speaker 1 (57:07):
Yeah, it's coming, okay. But I just feel so bad
for Will's family because of having them have to do
the medical decapitation in the parking lot. Yeah, that hurts
my heart for them.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
Yeah that's rough. That's rough, but that wraps up the
story of the pizza bomber. Go watch Evil Genius on Netflix.
There's also lots of other like little interviews and stuff
out there by news sites and stuff. But that's the
biggie if you want to go and watch it. Keep
in mind we are going to be bi weekly, So
we are back, but we're bi weekly, so just keep

(57:42):
that in mind. We have another one waiting to go,
so in two weeks we'll be back with that one.

Speaker 1 (57:49):
Yeah, single mom. Sometimes you got to schedule it.

Speaker 2 (57:53):
Yes, So we're ready to go, but it will be
bi weekly, so we're really excited to be back. We're
recording this video for Patreon, which is something we don't
always do. God bless y'all because this is both the pjs.
I'm in cat pajamas and this is our first time
recording in months and it was a little rough. So
happy it was a little rough.

Speaker 1 (58:15):
Oh don't forget. We're gonna get an updated address for
Rocky because he moved.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
He moved. We're so excited.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
He's all the death Row. We if we have done
anything right, I am so thankful that we were apart
a very small part, but we were a part of
his journey to get him onto the road to be free.
We're gonna go ahead, and I'm gonna try to get
with Casey, his lawyer, to get his address so we
could post to some people can write to him.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
Yes, because he loves postcards and that's how he sees
the world is through postcards and whatnot. One thing but
I haven't even told you this because I was gonna
tell you on the podcast. But he called this week
and he says something really interesting that just it just
struck me that he said, because now now he is,
he's not on death row anymore. And in the Saint

(59:04):
Clair facility, one of the inmates had an idea of
having a death row party for all the people who
were on death row and who have now made it
here and celebrate. And he asked the prison can I cook?
I'll cook for them and everything, and they said yes,
and so he was like, yeah, it was yesterday, and
he's telling me all about it and they let him

(59:25):
have the cafeteria and all that, and I was like,
we hackyo, that sounds amazing how many people were there,
and I'm thinking for five six about thirty five.

Speaker 1 (59:36):
Thirty five people.

Speaker 2 (59:38):
Yes, that were on death row and now are not
now tons of different reasons for that. I do know
that at least one of them ended up getting clemency
like Rocky, and that there were several appeals involved in
a lot of those. But it's telling me that a lot,
not all, but a lot of them were not supposed

(59:59):
to there in the first place. And it just I
was expecting a handful and when he said thirty thirty five,
I was like, oh, oh my gosh, that's a lot
of people to cook for. It shocked me. But then
he said that people were like smelling the food and
coming by, and they had to act like bouncers at
the door, and they were like, get out here. This
is for us, not y'all. And you don't want to
be part of this crew because we were on death row,

(01:00:20):
so go away and leave us to our food. So anyway,
but we will go ahead and wrap up and we
will be right back with you guys in another two weeks.

Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
We're excited. Woo all right. You know what they said
to Felicia, Bye bye,