The Bizarre Collar Bomb Bank Robbery

this week on buzzfeed unsolved we discussed the bizarre collar bomb incident though some of the culprits in this one have seemingly been identified the details in this one remain murky we sort of toil and merc don't we i would say so but like i said we do know some of the main players or at least we think we do but then we don't but then we do i guess you have to stick around to find out i mean on august 28 2003 a phone call is made during lunchtime rush to mamma mia's pizza located at 5154 peach street tony ditmo the owner of mamma mia's takes an order for two large sausage and pepperoni pizzas tony cannot understand the customer telling him the address so he hands the phone over to his employee brian wells wells is about 5 feet 3 inches age 46 and balding on top wells takes down the address 8631 peach street and heads out south on peach street for what seems to be an ordinary delivery and yet roughly two hours later brian wells is on live tv for robbing a bank he is handcuffed and surrounded by state troopers in the parking lot of eyeglass world with a bomb strapped to his neck wells tells the police that the bomb was fastened to him by a group of black men who ordered him to rob a bank after about 30 minutes of gently trying to communicate his plight well says to the police quote why is it nobody's trying to come get this thing off me i don't have a lot of time it's gonna go off i'm not lying did you call my boss end quote at about 3 18 pm the caller starts emitting a loud and rapid beeping noise and then the bomb detonates and wells falls backwards slowly dying while medics and police are baffled in the background wells dies on the pavement two minutes later the bomb squad finally arrives you know this is why i take issue anytime anyone you know some trivial thing goes wrong in their day and they say that's true fml bro look what happened to this man in two hours yeah he woke up that day just going to sling some za yeah yeah yeah he was a zoslinger yeah and he got a little bit more than he thought he was going to get out one false move suddenly his life is in tatters that's horrible we take so much for granted we do take so much for granted right let's appreciate each day you never know when things are going to go south like getting a bomb strapped to your name right collar bombs have only been known to be used by colombian drug lords in turf wars making the use of one in eerie pennsylvania especially strange even more odd police found several pages of instructions telling wells how to rob the bank and remove his explosive caller the notes were addressed to the quote bomb hostage end quote the instructions were hand written with illustrations it appeared that wells was telling the truth he was sent on a hunt and his reward was his life this case seemed pretty cut and dry but as more details arose it appeared that wells may not have entirely been a victim like i said things aren't exactly what they seem in this case obviously this man appears to be a victim but appearances can be deceiving profound stuff all right let's move on to elucidate this possibility further let's look into wells wells's landlady and neighbor linda payne states that wells was an ordinary erie pennsylvania resident linda said quote he liked to help people he used to get up get his breakfast at mcdonald's or somewhere and a newspaper come home and hang out until it was time to go to work he was very shy he took the hubcaps off of his car because they were too shiny he was a perfect tenant end quote at the age of 46 wells lived alone with three cats he was a dedicated employee at mamma mia's pizzeria in the 10 years of his employment there he had only called in late for work once due to the death of one of his cats admittedly none of this seems to scream high-profile bank thief let's jump into the timeline the phone call to the pizzeria was made around 1 47 p.m wells agreed to take the delivery even though it was the end of his shift wells would have arrived at 8631 peach street at about 2pm during investigation it was found that the delivery location was not a home but a tv transmission tower site in a wooded area off of peach street it was only reachable by a dirt road the area was swept and they found footprints that matched well's footwear and the tire tracks of his geo metro the area offered no clues as to how he had been lured there or what exactly happened when he arrived but one thing is clear it's during this time that wells was outfitted with the collar bomb because 20 minutes later at roughly 2 20 p.m wells walked into the pnc bank wearing the collar bomb the bank was about two miles back up pete street and wells was wearing a t-shirt with the word guess across the chest a shirt he was not wearing before and a shirt that relatives say was not his like the brand no no the word it was written on the shirt yes strange my family they don't know what shirts i have i've got some i barely ever wear yeah yeah that's true i got i got shirts in there i haven't worn for years maybe we could do a little spring cleaning together yeah no i mean we lived in separate locations yeah we could do it like concurrently though facetime yeah that's true we could do that yeah this weekend sure fun little saturday wells was instructed to quote go to the bank quietly enter with the weapon you were given avoid panicking the tellers or customers use the weapon if anyone does not cooperate or attempt to leave the bank end quote john seckel a witness at the bank robbery saw wells walk into the bank with a shotgun disguised as a cane and what appeared to be a shoe box under his shirt the bomb was already around wells neck at this point how do they expect this man not to scare anyone it was a cane it looks like i don't care how hard you try to disguise a shotgun as a cane he was kind of in an unwinnable situation because he has this bomb yeah and he has a shirt that has the word guess across it so already he's drawing some weird looks wells gave a bank teller a white envelope and spoke in a low voice wells note to the bank teller said quote gather employees with access codes to vault and work fast to fill bag with 250 000 you have only 15 minutes end quote he then lifted his shirt and showed the teller his bomb which the note confirmed at one point the teller yelled audrey the code for a robbery that's a pretty good code word no it's not yeah it is because also you don't want the code word to spook everyone so if you're sitting in a bank waiting in line and you see a one of the tellers go oh audrey you go oh they're just you know i'm pretty sure that if the if the banker goes peacock's nest one teller whispered to a customer to leave and a group of people began to exit the teller told wells that there was no way to enter the vault at that time and was only able to hand over eight thousand seven hundred and two dollars sekkel said about wells quote we walked right past him he didn't bat an eye end quote sequel said that wells didn't appear scared or cocky he was actually calm wells left a sealed note for the police along with his driver's license with the teller as he was told to do a woman with a cell phone called 9-1-1 and about three minutes later wells walked out of the bank sucking on a dumb dumb he took from the bank counter pretty [ __ ] baller he took off in his car who knows what state of mind he's in if he's like oh this is it i only got eight k i think it's fair with a dum-dum in my gullet baby i'm gonna imagine it would be pretty hard for me to remain calm during this situation i'd at least be sweating yeah but to be just cool as a cucumber that's pretty it's pretty impressive impressive or suspicious is probably the better word police would later find pages of instructions in wells car the first note read quote exit the bank with the money and go to the mcdonald's restaurant get out of the car and go to the small sign reading drive through slash open 24 hours in the flower bed by the sign there is a rock with a note taped to the bottom it has your next instructions end quote if you want someone to go to an inconspicuous location don't go to a mcdonald's flower bed that's true you loiter around a drive-through people start yelling at you also i don't think i've done that but it's also like very uh obvious to have a a grown man rummaging through a flower a giant cow digging through the flower bed at a mcdonald's asking for witnesses then again he's only incriminating himself yeah i guess at the mcdonald's wells collected a two-page note that directed him to go up peach street to a wooded area several miles away shortly after wells was stopped by state troopers and handcuffed while he told them about the bomb the troopers left him sitting on the ground shouting for help they called the bomb squad as soon as they visually confirmed the device around his neck and the rest is history the notes directing wells said quote this powerful booby-trapped bomb can be removed only by following our instructions act now think later or you will die end quote wells was warned that he would be watched by centuries and that quote if anyone follows or interferes we may leave and allow timer to detonate or call cell phone detonator end quote if wells did as he was instructed which included driving around the city to gather passwords clues and keys that would disarm the bomb wells would end up with a combination to free himself from the bomb however it seemed based off of the instructions that brian wells never stood a chance the plot assumed that he would be able to rob a bank of 250 thousand dollars and drive around in a geo metro with a collar bomb without interference from the police so he was kind of doomed from the start here yeah i was gonna say it seems like the deck is kind of stacked against him what i think they wanted to do was they wanted him to go to the next point make the hand off with the money continue the scavenger hunt and then they get rid of a loose end because the bomb goes off what's wrong with these people they're criminals man cops tried completing the hunt themselves hours after wells had died bouncing from clue to clue until eventually one of the clue locations came up empty it seemed that whoever was executing this plan had called it off once the police interfered one thing to note is that the instructions contained words like we and us making it appear that they were multiple conspirators so now let's get into the suspects any one of these suspects could be part of the gang that carried out this crime i see yes so one maybe two maybe more than that may be responsible but i will say at the end of this at least one of these people is responsible oh boy so for once we will have some bit of closure stick around yeah you got a good hook the first suspect is william a rothstein rothstein was a six foot six inch hoarder who only wore dungarees and chest pouches filled with pens and notebooks he spoke multiple languages was an engineer and a high school shop or introductory mechanics teacher less than a month after the collarbone incident rostein called the police and told the dispatcher quote at 8645 peach street in the garage there is a frozen body it's in the freezer end quote the address was rothstein's home and he claimed the body was there because he was storing it as a quote favor for a friend end quote big favor big favorite big ask yeah i don't think i could call any of my friends and be like hey man remember that time i helped you move that couch yeah gonna call one in this is kind of like that except instead of a couch it's a dead person yeah the friend in question was a woman named marjorie deal armstrong the body was 45 year old james rhoden who was killed by his then girlfriend marjorie by shotgun blast while he was sleeping in her bedroom this occurred on august 13th about six weeks before rodin's body was reported rothstein had twice been engaged to deal armstrong so given their history he agreed to get rid of margaery's shotgun and stored the body but stated that he called the police once marjorie suggested that rostein put the rest of rhoden's body in an ice grinder too much yep that was if she stepped over the line man either way i love the disguise has this odd moral compass where it comes to like hiding the body's fine the next step is chopping the body up he can't do that i imagine her talking to him on the phone and just suggesting like while we're on on the horn here do you mind taking that body and putting it through the ice grinder then just a bead of silence and he just kind of sighs and she knows she's going she's like oh [ __ ] [ __ ] that one what was i thinking yeah one too many damn margaery he was placed in custody hours later he agreed to testify against marjorie for immunity he told the police that he had been feeling incredibly guilty and at one point was considering suicide police found a suicide note in a desk at his home interestingly the note started with quote this has nothing to do with the wells case end quote which truly is an odd thing to say because from an outside perspective it has no apparent relation my friend went to new orleans recently and she was like oh i'd love to buy a house here yeah and one of the signs said for sale and under that sign was a big red sign that said not haunted oh that house is i don't believe in ghosts but i believe that that house is haunted that's as weird to me as saying this has nothing to do with this case that has nothing to do with this don't look into it at all the only link between rostein and brian wells seemed to be a coincidence rothstein's house was one of the only houses in the vicinity of brian wells's last pizza delivery in the woods rothstein's house was a mere five minute walk away additionally the phone call that placed the order of pizzas was traced to a payphone on 8228 peach street at a shell garage only a half mile away from rostine's home lorraine blodgett the manager of the convenience store at the shell garage stated rostine would often come in quote he'd come in to buy newspapers and cookies he'd sit outside in his car and have brunch read the paper end quote rothstein also used to make calls from the pay phone when you combine these circumstantial details with the fact that rostein brought up the wells case unprovoked it is undoubtedly suspicious and brings to the forefront rostein's mechanical prowess police searched his home and found power tools welders and quote piles of old machinery end quote one npr article states that rosting quote had the mechanical know-how to build the ingenious bomb that killed wells end quote the collar was made up of quote a triple bended metal collar with four key holes and a three-digit combination lock and an iron box containing two six-inch pipe bombs loaded with double bass smokeless powder the hinged collar locked around wells's neck like a giant handcuff end quote investigators were able to tell that the device had been made using professional tools in 2007 a pennsylvania grand jury agreed that rostine had dumped over 1 000 pounds of evidence at a local landfill but even if rostein did make the bomb he didn't quite fit the profile of the mastermind of such a cruel operation and thus we discuss marjory deal armstrong our second suspect after rostein tipped off the police to the murder of james rhoden police entered marjorie's home which was a mess of dog feces clothes and fast food cartons the police had to wear toxic hazard suits i hate all of this story ryan the filth here is making my skin crawl this is the woman who had him store a body for her her murdered boyfriend she must have been real pretty or devious i mean why are you two times proposing to a woman whose house is full of dog [ __ ] maybe she just had a hook on him you know you just can't let go every time he'd go out for a walk and smell a little dog [ __ ] he'd be like ah marjorie marjorie the aroma the aroma of margaery margery already had a reputation in erie and had killed before she admitted to having shocked her boyfriend robert thomas in 1984 but she was acquitted because she stated that she was a victim of domestic abuse her first husband hung himself and her second died after hitting his head at home on a coffee table i mean she's obviously a an evil person but just to live a life that's so fraught with with chaos sounds stressful but also this person needs to be eradicated from the rest of normal society we should separate her yeah for sure we should put her over there find a spot for her where she can no longer get married to people because it's obviously a fatal thing according to her former high school classmates she was known for her intelligence but over the years it mingled with madness she suffered from multiple mental illnesses including bipolar disorder paranoia and narcissism her moods would swing and she seemed unable to stop her rapid fire speech the local d.a brad falk who had also attended school with marjorie described marjorie as quote one of those folks that thinks she's smarter and slicker and brighter than everybody else and that at the end of the day she believes she'll win or she'll prevail on anything that she does it's the way she's been for 40 years end quote she seemed like the type that would make a bank heist more complicated than it needed to be and she also seemed to be the type that would need to brag about her genius plan the fbi made a profile of the collar bomber based on behavioral analysis the collar bomber was profiled as a hoarder comfortable with shop machines and power tools the collar bomber also had access to work with these tools alone and took pride in their creations with dual purposes a collar and a bomb and a cane and a shotgun they had a violent past and a superiority complex this profile fit the combination of rostein and dil armstrong she had a complex a violent pass and he had shop skills though we aren't done with deal armstrong i'll now introduce our third suspect a man named kenneth barnes a witness came forward in 2005 that said kenneth barnes was involved he was a former tv repairman turned crack dealer earlier in 2007 27 year old sex worker jessica hoopsick came forward saying she knew brian wells and had quote turned tricks and quote with him at the home of kenneth barnes hoopsick had left a message on brian's answering machine and was a link between brian and deal armstrong it turned out that kenneth e barnes who would supply hoopsick with drugs used to go fishing with marjory deal armstrong hence connecting barnes brian and now armstrong so he knew these people what a town barnes had spoken too freely about the collarbon plan and his brother-in-law turned him in while barnes was already in jail for unrelated drug charges barnes and deal armstrong had also been seen driving the wrong way on the highway near one of the locations of the search barnes said he would exchange information for a reduced sentence barnes also confirmed the fbi's belief that dil armstrong was the mastermind he stated that dil armstrong needed the money because she wanted to pay barnes to kill her father who she believed was blowing through his fortune which was money she expected to inherit barnes claimed that he was kept in the dark about most of the plan but he had already corroborated with much of what the fbi had already heard other than barnes investigators had previously spent weeks with informants who said that dil armstrong talked about plans of the bomb in intimate detail a fellow inmate of dil armstrong told authorities that deal armstrong had admitted to killing her boyfriend james rhoden because he was going to expose the bomb plot the fbi met with deal armstrong while she was serving time for the murder of james rhoden deal armstrong promised to tell them everything if they would transfer her from muncie state penitentiary to cambridge springs a minimum security prison closer to erie dil armstrong insisted to the fbi that she had nothing to do with the collarbone plot but she did supply the kitchen timers used for the bomb and was within a mile of the bank robbery when it happened she agreed to drive around eerie with the agents and showed them where she had been that day linking her to several locations of the crime marjorie also admitted to the fbi that on the day brian died she had gone to the shell station with her jeep and bought ten dollars of gas rosting and barnes were also with her rosting had used the pay phone before wells died implying that rothstein made the phone call to the pizzeria she then claimed she would provide no further information without immunity but she had already given away too much information the fbi informed diel armstrong that they had enough information to indict her frankly this is stressful ryan it's very stressful so she gave him all these details i was like i'm not going to tell you anymore unless i get immunity and they're like you've told us all this everything enough to indict you you know so she effectively put herself behind bars yeah which is kind of funny she claimed that rostein planned the whole thing and more importantly that wells was in on the heist which brings us to our fourth and final suspect brian wells now that is surprising why would this man be in on it himself well what i'm about to break down may make you a little upset it's been a very upsetting day ryan yes it has been let's hear more all right when looking at the known details of the timeline two things come off as suspicious on the part of wells first that wells demeanor was so calm during the robbery and second that it seems there was no evidence to back up wells's story that he was attacked by a group of black men who locked him in the collar at gunpoint wells's calm throughout the situation troubled the police who were never quite able to rule him out as a conspirator in his own death in 2007 district attorney mary beth buchanan stated that she believes wells was in on the plot along with rostein barnes and dil armstrong who was the mastermind the d.a also believes that deal armstrong and barnes had planned on taking the money from brian as soon as he had robbed the bank but fled when they saw the cops and left brian for dead because wells allegedly never had a chance in his doomed scavenger hunt d.a buchanan believes that brian was part of the operation and given a collar bomb for an alibi the caller would also ensure that brian would stick to the plan hand over the money and if things went downhill quote he would not survive to be a witness against the other conspirators end quote kenneth barnes also claimed that wells had been talking about the robbery about a month before it happened according to the fbi affidavit another witness had corroborated this in july 2007 d.a buchanan announced the investigation was over stating that dil armstrong and barnes were charged with carrying out the crime the indictment also stated that rosting and wells were conspirators based on information gathered over four years of over a thousand interviews wells was charged with being in on the scheme from the beginning kenneth barnes claims wells was willing to help with the promise of money because he was in an expensive relationship with sex worker jessica hoopsick according to the indictment completed in 2007 wells thought the bomb was fake and so he agreed to wear it he was told it was meant to fool the cops if he was caught he could blame the threatening instructions barnes claims wells only realized when he delivered the pizzas to the tv transmission tower that the bomb was real and he was locked into the device at gunpoint when he tried to run away why didn't he just assume it was fake still he was thinking probably some cartoonish looking bomb he gets there it's professionally made and he realizes holy [ __ ] this actually may be a real bomb maybe he even said something like hey that bomb looks pretty real guys and they all kind of didn't laugh when he started chuckling he's like oh oh i guess you get what you pay for if you're if you're hanging out with people who all agree that maybe it's a good idea for you to wear a fake bomb and rob a bank you can't be outraged when they put a real one on you district attorney buchanan said that over time wells had changed from a co-conspirator to an unwilling participant wells was double-crossed to make things more confusing a week later the fbi concluded that the whole plot was a hoax they believed that the bomb would have gone off if anyone had tried to remove it and wells would have died no matter what jim fisher a retired fbi agent believes that welles's death was part of the planned quote it was a first degree murder this was an intentional premeditated homicide moreover it was extremely cruel in the way the crime was executed end quote despite the debate wells family firmly believes that he was a victim as buchanan completed her statement of the investigation one of welles's sisters continuously yelled liar the official aftermath unfolded as follows in february 2011 marjorie deal armstrong was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years for her role in the heist dil armstrong claimed on her first day on the stand that she never knew brian wells and had never heard of him until he was on the news deal armstrong claimed that she is not the killer and that they are still out there deal armstrong died on april 4th 2017 of natural causes in a texas prison kenneth barnes was sentenced in 2008 for quote conspiracy to commit armed bank robbery using and carrying a firearm during a crime of violence end quote barnes's 45-year sentence was reduced to 20 because he cooperated with authorities and admitted involvement he's expected to be released in 2027. william rostein died of terminal cancer in the summer of 2004 before facing any charges for what it's worth retired fbi agent and criminal justice professor jim fisher believes that rostein was the true mastermind quote the son of a [ __ ] ended up winning he died with all of the secrets he died taking all the answers with him he gets the last laugh in that sense he escaped punishment he escaped detection end quote and finally brian wells whose supposed involvement is what classifies this case as a cold case for many despite the official conclusion that wells had been a part of the plan many point out evidence against this idea such as the fact that he let people at the bank leave during the robbery and the note he left with the teller easily led the police to him but some prosecutors say that was intentional wells family and friends say he was quote 100 innocent end quote and there was no way he could have been involved others say well started out as a willing participant but was double-crossed and became a victim it appears clear that deal armstrong rosting and barnes were all involved to some extent but whether or not brian wells involvement goes beyond simply delivering a pizza at the wrong time remains murky although the official ruling is that wells was in fact a participant in at least the heist there are many who still classify his role in this heist as unsolved i could see how there is it's still a murky situation in terms of his involvement i could buy that maybe he wasn't involved to begin with i also feel like this barnes character yeah may be saying anything to get out of any any kind of reduced sentence i don't like this barnes guy one bit we're trusting the word of a lot of uh slippery people here and i don't like the idea of a dead man being put on trial one thing for sure is out of this collection of a-holes he seems to be maybe the most non-duty less i mean they all seem like monsters or yeah they're all actually murderers yeah and he was a guy who tried to get some cash for a relationship at worst just just a pizza guy he also didn't murder anybody in the bank no so whether or not he was involved in this he at least had some commendable qualities and he loved those [ __ ] cats apparently that's true he did love those cats [Music] you

Channel: BuzzFeed Unsolved Network

Views: 9,169,854

Rating: 4.9423981 out of 5

Keywords: Cold case, Creepy, Mini doc, Murder, Mystery, Ryan bergara, SffZ, Shane madej, Unsolved, bank, bank robbery, bank theft, bizarre robbery, bomb squad, bombing, buzzfeed, buzzfeed unsolved, buzzfeed unsolved network, collar bomb, conspiracy, crime, documentary, ghosts, haunted, investigate, investigation, robbery, theories, true crime, unsolved mysteries, unsolved mystery, unsolved network

Id: 63tQ7yGmsmI

Length: 28min 5sec (1685 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 20 2018

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If u guys are interested in this story I highly recommend watching the Netflix documentary on it called “evil geniuses” it’s really good